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The Battle of the Pointy Black End
It was hard for the Regalians to imagine the war raging on, yet thousands of soldiers clashed with each other in far away lands on shores never even seen by the many citizens in the Holy city. More and more states joined into the conflict that started taking ever greater proportions, yet the biggest surprise was yet to come from the Orcs which had finally reached the center of the conflict. In the past years, Dwarves had been working with Human engineers and Orc crafters to produce the Orc Dredge Fleet, a mobile force fueled by Regalian coal, Dwarven engineering and Orc explosives. The Dredge fleet, while moving slow, required little rations resupplying due to it's grotesque size. The fleet sailed around Regalia trough Hadar, blacking out the sun on several islands before arriving at the southern part of Farahdeen near the city of Aftalasah. The battle that was about to transpire was named by the Orcs "Battle of the Pointy Black End", and it came not a moment too soon. The Regalian war effort in Calipehene was failing, the Regalian army being numerically overpowered by the Qadir.
The Orcs opened up a second front on the Qadir side by invading the Pasha directly, the dredge fleet closing in on the coast at a crawl's pace. The entire fleet was covered in a sandstorm, or at least what looked like a sandstorm from a far until they were at the coastal defenses covering the sand dunes before the city. Suddenly the black iron smoke stacks rose up from the smokes covering the fleet, the towers themselves grotesquely large. Almost reaching the size of a small church tower, Orcs sat at the top as lookouts, and various platforms were attached to the sides of the smoke stack with Dwarves moving around them to try and hold the whole thing together while the ships shuddered and groaned from the stress on the metal.
When the Qadir realized the sandstorm was in fact the fleet covered in coal smoke, it was already too late as the Orc cannons bellowed their rain of destruction on the coastal defenses and even shelling the city in the distance. The first shell hit one of the Qadir temples, ironically exploding the foundations of the spire and causing the sun disk to come crashing down on the faithful below. Terror broke out in the city and the soldiers rushed to the defense of what was to be one of the most confusing invasions ever witnessed. The Orc vessels, barely visible trough the smoke, could not be properly pointed out by the Qadir yet continued to rain shell after shell on the coastline, meanwhile a whole swarm of Orcs swam trough the water towards the coastline like an angry nest of ants jumping at an attacker.
Qadir cannons fired in all directions, occasionally hitting their own batteries and archers shot blindly in all directions in the hope of hitting anything before the Orcs climbed over the walls and hills and took axes and club to the Qadir. The marauding unit crashed over the defenses and spilled out into the town, all the while chanting some Orc battle song from three centuries ago when similar displays were seen during the Orc invasion of the Elven Empire. In the aftermath, much of the city had been exterminated, those lucky enough to have fled escaped with their lives. The Orcs continued looting and trashing the city for the next four days before the Dwarves managed to get them back in line to continue along with the plan, packing up resources and moving forward towards the next Qadir city.
Opening up the new front, and indeed the sheer terror caused by the Orc destruction caused a shift in the Qadir war where more troops were being funneled back to the homeland. The Regalian troops in Caliphene managed to strike a decisive victory against the Black Banner Army of Aqta Al-Shaluhuwa, forcing the Heraatz Rebels back beyond even their initial front lines and separating the Qadir bulk armies from the Heraatz. The situation in Regalia became more tense. The Qadir were becoming fewer in number, series of fleets being called back to Farahdeen. The repression in the city meanwhile became more severe, random arrests and executions started happening almost daily, the Qadir certainly having turned against the idea of peaceful occupation. Various Qadir units also started breaking into businesses, churches and other public properties looting anything of iron, gold, silver or other value they could find loading it onto their ships.
The situation left much of the population of Regalia in uncertainty. The occupation was getting worse, but there were signs of the Qadir simply packing up and leaving. Should the people just sit still and await eventual liberation, or take matters in their own hands and force the Qadir out by sword and blood?
