Part 18: Wild Fronts and Frontiers

Chapter 11: Wild Fronts and Frontiers



The horn sounded the advance. Over the snowy hills and rocky earth legions of werewolves and trolls surged forth towards the towering structure. A detachment of old trolls has been destroyed by magical fires that night; now, lances of life magic flared and sped over the advancing troops to crash into anchor.
The black mages that were keeping watch reeled under the assault. And that was the only moment of laxity that werewolves needed. Elite troops climbed fleshy walls and tore into the mages, crushing their weak neck with massive canine jaws.

The black mages, knowing they could not hold the position, fled into the nearby forests… and into a werewolf ambush. The screams lasted till late night.



Finally came the trolls. Filled with lust for vengeance, they swung their heavy clubs and the walls of the anchor burst with black blood and foul smelling ichor. The first anchor was no more.

“That is one down. We need to find more, before Ardania is too far gone”

“I’m still curious, sire, as to why the mages would guard a structure of the Dremer. Most irrational”

“Melchior, we’re dealing with people who became ‘evil’ for the sake of ‘balance’. The closest they ever came to being rational was to become werewolf rations”.





A renewed Alliance with Miralbus (those got broken so often that King Lich kept the updated status on a chalkboard) allowed the forces of the undead king do some reconnaissance into the quarrelsome mage’s land. The picture was grim: the only lands not to bear the stigma of Dremer corruption were uninhabitable mountains and lava fields.



And there appeared to be a Dremer castle on the coast just outside the borders.

“Call for reinforcements. We’re going to check it out”



Soon enough and with the help of an Arethi air ship, the castle was destroyed. Unfortunately, it revealed more Dremer to the east.

And King Lich rediscovered how to make magical artefacts. These were simple magical trinkets, only slightly more magical than an enchanted jug of gypsy tears.



In a far away island, a miraculous light flashed and a nest of flying serpents was devastated. Serpent families were torn apart, with flashes taking either parents of children, leaving the rest behind to fend for themselves.

As for those who survived teleportation, they were pressed into service of King Lich V.



Pressed into dangerous service of scouting contaminated, Dremer infested regions.



“Lucia”

“Emerah”

“So, how is it, working with Sol?”

“It’s good, I’d say. Not much actual work, the constant border war is fought with ghost wolves and forts mostly”.

"A waste of your talents, I say"

"Sometimes I just want the Dremer to win to end the drudgery"



Sol’s envoy droned on about peace, friendship and camaraderie, about the importance of mages working together in the face of a common threat, a joint effort and other things of little meaning (especially considering the history of Miralbus-Sol wars).

King Lich’s attention was elsewhere. Among the sacks of gold and barrels of mana laid an unassuming scroll of terrible importance.

Meta-teleportation.

The spell was made or discovered by Randolph the (self-proclaimed) Great, a mage of great talent that he squandered on trivial and insignificant intrigues and petty crimes.

His use of meta-teleportation was probably the greatest example of such behavior. The spell was powerful, able to teleport creatures to any place of Ardania or even other planes. Compared to this, the regular teleportation spell was but a parlor trick.

Randolph used meta-teleportation to run a cheese smuggling ring.



The werewolves on the south-eastern front beat a hasty retreat into Miralbus’ realm. The combined pressure of Dremer were too much for them. On the other hand, they had some good news, too.
Werewolves were creatures of battle first and nobility second, and thus they evolved as they fought. One of these new developments was the poisonous bite.

That day, many a snake was bitten to merry howls of “oh, the irony”.



“Sir, this is a new ohricalcum-corundum alloy, straight from Galarcarn. The production run isn’t efficient enough to plate every new ship, but the more experience crews managed to requisition them”

“And now your people are affixing them with hammer and nail…”

“Nevril hammers, sir!”



Sound of hammers were heard in other parts of the world, too. Once the site of the Dremer anchor had been thoroughly burned, salted, raked over, frozen, burned again, blasted with bolts of darkness, then frozen once more, it was deemed safe for goblin and gnome habitation. So the new city of Riften rose, all with the express intent of studying the hell rift nearby.

Already scholars were noting down the color and size of flames that burst from the rift every time a goblin or drunk gnome wandered into it, as well as the intensity of the screams of the damned.



Fireball, an important spell for adventurous and/or suicidal mages, was barely a sidenote in King Lich’s research for greater, more important spells.



“Rintirn must fall” read the title of the petition scroll that an emissary of Golddale presented to the King. What followed was a weirdly eloquent text detailing the grief that Golddalians suffered at the loss of the flagship (and so far the only ship) of the realm’s navy, the Golddale Duck. It was summarized that Rintirnians, with their disregard for proper wilderness grooming standards and magical fauna extermination practices, were the ones most at fault for the loss of the ship. Underneath were the various human signatures.

“I don’t get it. How did they manage to pen a letter like this?”

“Mercenary scribes, sire. They’re quite ferocious and infamous for their skill in penmanship”



Yet again in far west, goblin cogs burned in a bay as werewolves left them defenseless in a drive to explore the unseen landmass. The loss of ships didn’t really matter much, since werewolves, freshly proven in the battle for the anchor, scoured the shores for fresh kills.

In their wanderings they overran a hermit hut full of wild werewolves. The wild beast were caught amid some sort of strange posing conquests and were cut down to (were)man. None survived and the hut was ransacked. A bag of gold was found, as well as a useless spell scroll.

Thirst for blood (and national service) satisfied, the troops continued their march.



“Sire, don’t you think such gifts are wasted on other mages?”

“Hopefully not. Still, the little border war can’t last forever, can it? Maybe then they’d improve their lands a little”.



And while the west was troubled by a stupid war with little progress and less gain, to the east werewolves were clearing our Dremer in vast swathes of unclaimed land. Invaders fell, one after another, as werewolves kept coming with claw and fang. Fresh troops relieved the ones at the front, and magical fire from a floating healer and Arethi ships rained from above.

King Lich took this chance to discover a way to summon Earth Elementals. In practice, they were more like angry, floating chunks of rock and crystal, and a lot more disappointing than their Fire Elemental cousins. Not really useful as laborers and taking up valuable casting time, they were quickly forgotten.



“See, the rock is carved with magical runes. Of course, elves would never use runes, but these serve the task quite well, you know”

“Quite”

“Yes, hmmm, and then we set the rocks on fire. And what a magical flame it is! Then we just put them in the magical driver and *SWOOSH*! Something is dead”



And while certain werewolf mulled whether he should be worried about gung-o attitudes of elven skyship pilots, a new city rose to the north of current conquests and the poetically naked Damnedpost. With magic cleaning just enough lands for settlers not to be immediately consumed, New Bigden was built to benefit of the nearby gold veins.



A furry fist punched clean through the skull of an old skeleton and another pile of bones clattered on the floor of the crypt. Werewolves of the western expedition had just cleaning up a crypt and were now looking for things to loot.

Various burial riches amounted to a fortune of 160 gold pieces. A corpse of a witch was found, clutching a scroll tightly to its chest. A little gentle persuasion and a few broken bones later, the scroll was liberated and sent to King Lich V to pore over.

“Figures that a dead witch would have a useless spell”.


Damnedpost finally finished a grand project: a Nevril smelter! Sure, raw nevril was extremely toxic to goblin diggers, transforming them into blueish, metal skinned wraiths that shambled around until collected by werewolf handlers for drowning. And the run-off from the smelter let to many horrible diseases and birth defects in the goblin shanty that took water from the creek.

“You know, m’lord, gnomes and dwarves are immune to such poisions and human diggers would only need a simple leather uniform to protect them. Why not use them instead of goblins?”

“Humans, dwarves and gnomes need to be paid, and that would raise the price of outfitting a unit by five gold pieces. And that protection from Nevril armor inserts can’t come soon enough”



And while increasingly large western expedition fought demonic trees, undead, vampires and ogres…



…and the south-east expedition neared one the last Dremer castles (that they knew of)…





…Nevril plates, scorched by foul Dremer magic, were about the only things that marked the final resting place of Emrah the Saviour, prime healer under King Lich V.