The summer months of June would hold no hope for peace in Avalon. The sun beat down on the fortified city of Easulan, the checkpoint between Unluthio and Tharkas. This was once a demilitarized zone in which citizens of both countries could live without persecution from the opposing side. But now, with Unluthio occupied by the Orcs who poured out of the Gate in the North, the White Cloud Army has occupied the city and taken up defensive posts here, to avoid atrocities that were similar to the first war, where the checkpoint was taken and served as a passageway for the enemy.
Most of the knights who were stationed there were tired, and rather relaxed, even though they knew death laid just across the Vieth Plains waiting for them. It was too hot to be rigid, even Asura, Captain of the 3rd Knighthood understood that. Slowly, though, fear grew in the Knight's mind. Across the Eastern horizon a shadow began to grow. He feared that Unluthio had been completely caputured, and that Wren and his vaunted 1st Knighthood was obliterated.
The issue of the 1st Knighthood was still under heavy debate in Tharkas Castle, and among all the other Knighthoods. No one believed that Wren and his knights had truly perished when the 1st and 3rd were separated. "The hero of the Bandit Campaign can't be dead," they would say. Though no solid evidence of their being alive had been found yet. At the same time, nothing proving they're dead was located, either. It was one of the many mysteries of the early years in the Great War.
In Asura's war journals it specified that he lost track of the days living out in the Checkpoint City, away from the commotion of Tharkas. It was sometime around June the 18th according to his journals when they were first attacked.
The journal reads:
It started late last night, a few hours after the moon had risen up over the clouds that now hang over the East. They attacked in full-force, and the 8th Knighthood was caught by surprise. Their captain was lost early on in the attack, and so I assumed control of their ranks until the battle concluded. First the Orcs came at us with a volley of thick, venomous arrows, throwing several of our knights off the walls. The main gate was secure, they weren't passing through that without catapults, but the doors that lead through our defensive wall to the lower walls on the sides of the city that traverse the river were left unlocked by a tired gatekeeper of the 4th Knighthood. The doors on both sides of the wall were breached and we began an arrow fight over our own walls. The Orcs started to hoist up ladders and held them in support while Goblins scaled the rungs to get over the walls into the checkpoint. The 3rd and 8th Knighthoods, under my command, met them head on at both sides of the city. We held them back for a few hours, the moon had begun to sink past the peaks of the White Mountains, upon which Tharkas Castle is built.
It seemed like there was no end to them. Every time we knocked a ladder down and slew a dozen Orcs and Goblins, it felt like 2 dozen more had come in with at least 3 more ladders. We took pretty heavy casualties, these creatures fight with a tenacity unmatched. Not even our foes in the Bandit Campaign were this vigorous or inhuman.
By the time the sun began to rise, around the hour that the cooks would start up food for the reserves, was when we managed to push the attack back behind our walls. It came down to a fight beyond our own lower walls, trying to force the Orcs and Goblins back behind the High Wall. Eventually it was successful, though.
Once we were sure we'd won, I sent out surveyers to check damages on the High Wall and inner walls to see if there are any points that had been weakened to the point of giving way in another assault. Luckily, there was only one crack, and that was in the middle of a brick that had apparantly been hit by some blunt weapon an Orc had been weilding. No harm came of it, though, when the surveyer removed the cracking chunk of stone from one of the bricks. We were lucky.
The side gates are now locked and fortified. I have the 3rd Knighthood down there right now setting up infantry defenses, spears aimed up at angles so if footmen charge in, they skewer themselves. Past those are wood pikes set up in the same manner, aimed a little higher, and layered with 2 or 3 rows, to keep horses off the walls. But hopefully this will help.
Although... this quiet time after the battle, my mind wanders to Wren. After witnessing how these beasts fight with my own eyes, I fear for him.
~Asura, Captain of the 3rd Knighthood of the White Cloud Army
The first onslaught was a success for the White Cloud, but the next wouldn't be. This was just a taste of the enemy's power.
Behind the lines, back at Tharkas, word reached them about the defense of the Easulan, and the King was pleased. A celebration in the knights' honor was to be held later in the week. And every day, more and more men and boys joined the inexperienced ranks of the White Cloud Army, training to become the tools with which the Humans would hopefully succeed in stemming the tides and destroying this new evil.
-------------------------------------------------
The next few days along the lines were quiet. In the North no word of enemy activity came in, nor was there any activity between the lake and the Checkpoint. The Southern region, which had a vastly smaller army defending it because of the proximity to an ancient evil, hadn't seen any action, either.
The evil of which I speak is the Forbidden Port. It's a now-abandoned port city that's said to be haunted. The ghosts of hundreds of civilians and soldiers finding shelter there. The city itself was said to be ransacked by the Orcs in the First Demon War, and no one dares tarry too near, even 1200 years after. It was assumed that the Orcs wouldn't travel that way, either.
They were wrong...
Maybe two weeks later the Orcs led an attack on the warcamps in the South, far from any form of reinforcement. The 1000 knights that defended the region were overcome, and the remaining 500 that survived the initial attack fled to Furlinithen: a rural smithee village that was built after the original one was destroyed in the First Demon War. Three days after the knights in the South were slaughtered by thousands of Orcs and Goblins, the town of Furlinithen was sieged. The town's populace, including the 12th Knighthood (the 500 knights who escaped) were destroyed. The village was set aflame and the smoke rose up so high and was so thick that you could see it from the outer walls of Tharkas Castle. The Southern borders had been breached.
Battles were now poised to take place on the Kindoth Hills in the Southeastern region of Tharkas. Many of the Knighthoods who were left behind in Tharkas Castle were now preparing to ride out and meet their new threat head-on.
Meanwhile, back at the Capitol City, Tharkas Castle, messengers were being sent to Helineth Port City in the North, searching for aid from their friends in Hybernia, across the Carpean Ocean. If worse came to worst, the Knights would need their Ranger kin to aid them in battle against the Orcs.
Five days later one of the messengers returned to Tharkas City announcing to the King the successful passage of the other 3 messengers through the Shadow Pass into the Unknown Lands which would take them up around the cape, across the bay from Helineth, and through a secret underwater passage to Helineth. When the King asked why they didn't travel by boat, the halls grew quiet.
The messenger replied quietly, and with great trepidation, "Sire, some of our naval and merchant vessels were en route to Unluthio's ports along the Eastern shores of Avalon before news of the attacks on Unluthio reached us. We just recieved word three days ago from Helineth that their ships are unaccounted for. It's assumed that the ships were destroyed, their crews killed, and the cargo lost to the sea. I--I'm sorry, sire."
Tharkas' Navy was strong, indeed. Almost as strong as their military. But now they were operating with one quarter of their ships presumably destroyed. The King only now hoped that Fornilingoth, Kingdom of the Northrune Rangers, would send aid.
