Event: The Battle of Saviours Road

The Battle of Saviours Road

At the time of writing the Battle of Saviours Road is the largest single battle to have ever occurred in living memory on the continent of Malteria. The outcome of the battle was hugely impactful to the future state of political affairs in Central Malteria and indeed even in the North beyond the Bleakwoods and beyond the southern jungles.

After Indagators from the Order of Adventurers discovered a way station in the Northarm, as part of an extensive covert operation by the Wardens to capture humans and move them north to work as labor for their continued expansion. The Warden's realized that they could no longer use subterfuge to slowly destabilize the civilized nations of the Bay of Gleshmere. They formed up their army of nearly 6,000 soldiers and marched them southeast occupying the towns of the Northarm and setting up hastily constructed watch posts and command centers throughout the region. They arrived at the outskirts of Tambea, which was at this time under the control of the Scintillian Empire.  While the leaders of the Wardens met with the Corrupt Awoken of Scintillia to debate the situation, a Contibrium (a term describing a detachment of soldiers varying widely in size usually between 25-1000) broke off the main army and immediately assaulted the walls of the Northern Border Fortress. 

The force was, in fact, able to sieze the walls of the fortress for a period of a week, and threatened Norastrah itself briefly, but was seen off by repeated assaults by Norastrahian Wave Guard, Levy and Indagators. After recapturing the fortress fighting with the initial Contibrium went on for almost weeks in the woods and swamplands beyond the wall.  Eventually, the lordsmen were able to assault and secure the Contibriums main command post, seeing an end to the immediate threat to the Northern Border Fortress. The Lordsmen had heard of the approach of the armies march through the Northarm,  but mistakenly believed that the force they had destroyed at the Fortress was 1/2 of the full army. 

The Lords rallied huge numbers of levies, in an attempt to decimate the Wardens, in a single decisive battle, and sue for peace. While the fighting occurred around the Border Fortress, the rest of the Warden's army had come to an agreement with the Scintillians who handed Tambea over to the Wardens out of respect for their people's cooperation in ancient times and as a gift for their return to the continent.  The engineers of the Wardens are second to none, commanding immensely powerful technologies learned in centuries of conquests on the continent of Pessawyr, and it was little effort for them to turn Tambea into a mighty stronghold in a matter of weeks. 

Seeing the initial Contibrium's withdraw, the commander of the Dark Warden's forces named Hett Kallis concocted a deadly trap for the humans. A strategy referred to in Warden combat doctrine as "The Barbed Oyster", a fortification, city, or technology would be constructed by the engineers and occupied by a special sacrificial Contibrium. The enemy would assault the "pearl" of the fortress etc. only to find out too late that they were in fact enveloped.  It was an old tactic, one that the Warden's opponents on Pessawyr had learned to out fox a hundred years ago, but the Lordsmen did not have the benefits of such knowledge. 

The massive "Army of the North" marched out of Norastrah to the sound of cheers. The Lordsmen had never before seen such an array of martial strength in its entire history. 

None Would Return

The Army of the North launched its assault on Tambea and within a week had destroyed the Contibrium within, breaching the fortresses' walls by overloading the fortress's power supply center.

The initial assault proved to be suprisingly costly. But the army was in good morale. 

The day after the Lordsmen had captured the Fortress, Hett Kallis sprung his trap. Bombards, armored troop carriers and shambling cohorts of servitors swarmed the Fortress alongside the Warden's footsoldiers. 

The defense lasted for 3 days, the lordsmen fought with immense tenacity to the very end. Indeed causing such heavy casualties to their attackers that the Warden's could no longer launch an effective invasion of the River Lords proper. 

In the aftermath, panic ripped through the River Lords. Grain riots, banditry spread like wildfire as the citizens of the merchant kingdom scrambled to ensure their own personal safety.  

The surviving military assets of the Lords moved north, abandoning other fronts, like patrolling the coast for Tempest Orc raids, bandits or the Khalaks.  All eyes moved north. 

The Indagators became ever more important, as small specialist units of trackers operating outside of the bounds of morality, or political stipulation were needed to gather intelligence, and neutralize threats before they grew untenable.