War Progression Story The Von Brühl Beacon

The war in Drixagh between the Calemberg Union and the Northern Pact was about to get a whole lot hotter again. All the denunciations and public posts from all the concerned parties aside, the first to move were the Drache and Ravenstad levies who were mobilized and pushed to march against the von Brühl defences along the Drache border. The Drache and Ravenstad levies rose up quickly, obviously supported by the call for an honorable defense of an honorable man, and the cause for civilized Regalians to resist another assault from the Skaggers which the locals had fought wars against for hundreds of years. Von Brühl’s defence line didn’t resemble much of a defence line however. His own family members called for a mobilization of anti-Baron troops, essentially triggering a civil war in the von Brühl Barony itself. Accompanying this fact, while the Drache and Ravenstad levies marched on the Drache-Brühl border, the Baron rode personally with a religious procession, and left his own barony behind by crossing the border into von Rahm lands.

Needless to say, the imminent civil war in von Brühl’s barony, the impending Ducal-Baronial army outnumbering the defence troops that were thinly spread by 6 to 1, and the fact that von Brühl was now seemingly abandoning the civilian population to their fate caused a mass desertion among von Brühl troops who believed their Baron had actually gone mad and was asking them (even with religious provenance) to abandon their families and their homes with a large army invading them on the doorstep, while his own relatives essentially started a civil war and unchained chaos in the lands. Von Brühl managed to only cross the border with around 10 to 20 troops who remained zealous, while the rest of von Brühl’s army simply deserted or broke apart in the civil fighting. Drache and Ravenstad armies crossed past the defense lines without any issue, and captured some of the major castles along the way to the capital without any trouble, which would have properly held in a siege against their invading armies if the Baron hadn't chosen to abandon his lands. The locals in fact respected and expected the knightly orders to treat them fairly, and in sight of the utter chaos about to beset von Brühl lands, welcomed them by opening the gates in exchange for favorable settlements. Von Brühl was essentially just paralyzed with mass desertions, and completely foiled the attempt of Viduggla to remain undetected by using every Holy Sanktist ritual in the book to make his zealous procession of 20 odd soldiers as un-subtle as possible. All along the track they moved, peasants would notice the glowing sword of the Baron and the Sanktist glowing ritual runes on the heads of the levies, even during the night, leading the Drache scouts right to the landing zone where Viduggla was about to land his troops, like a lighthouse beacon.

The Count Viduggla sent emissaries to all the major North and Skagger Kingdoms, some even outside the Empire, some inside the Empire. With the return of the Imperial hosts, the foreign nations in the North Belt did not dare involve their troops in an internal struggle in Regalia, in fear of provoking an actual invasion or naval bombardment. Nordskag itself also, which was also courted by Sorenvik, declined. The matter was overlooked that king Krumme was actually a Viridian himself, and a childhood friend of von Treppewitz, who was part of the Calemberg Union. The King commented that the Northern Union had made the critically foolish mistake to rely on treasonous scum from the southlands as well as religious zealots that probably were planning their ultimate demise and conversion behind their backs, and simply left it at that, speculating that von Brühl was probably a double agent the entire time. Viduggla’s levies then shipped off somewhere else, sailed around the Drixagh landmass (alerting every Norrvakt, Howlester, of Brilonde and other non aligned houses along the way) eventually leading to the landing zone that House von Brühl and Viduggla had agreed upon. The moment the sloops landed, a wave of Typhonus lancers and Uhlans crashed from the treeline and swept across the coastline, cutting down both von Brühl and Viduggla troops who were both exhausted from spending long period creating defenses, then being shipped off, and then rowing ashore. The Viduggla troops hastily organized a retreat, able to drag the Baron von Brühl with them, but casualties on the beach were high. Drache scouts which had shadowed the von Brühl movements, and the fact that fleet based ship movement of a few thousand Viduggla troops being shipped around could not possibly be hidden, had alerted the Typhonus cavalry units and thus sprung a trap.

Simultaneously, it was that attempt at expertly masking the movement of the troops that also ended up being their downfall. Sorenvik had about 30,000 men slowly trickled out of the main camp, hoping that this somehow would not end up being noticed by the Empire’s most skilled General and field Marshal. While Sorenvik made the clever attempt at providing for a patrol distraction and keeping campfires active during the night, it became fairly obvious that the camp was running on empty because of the lack of people sitting at those campfires, the lack of sentries all around the camp, and the lack of food supplies going in, only supply trains going out. This coupled with the movement of von Brühl made it relatively clear that “something” was going on, and because of how obvious von Brühl moved, the direction became clear. There was a short scare that Viduggla would attack Calemberg directly, but the idea was quickly rejected because of how impractical an invasion of one of the greatest bastion cities in the Empire would be for a Skagger army.

Eventually, Krupp and Sorenvik and Sterke-enn were once more met with the Typhonus wall on the von Rahms border, and proceeded with an immediate assault-siege. Despite warnings by military theorists and scholars during the events of a few days ago that using artillery against the vantage point of Hadrian’s wall would be pointless, the Krupp forces tried to create artillery anyway, only to have their trebuchets summarily crushed by the machines already present on the wall. The assault on the wall itself proceeded with haste, relatively well up until the wall itself, where the grind in the assault up the ladders was gruelling. About halfway through the battle, it also became obvious that the Krupp and Sorenvik troops weren’t fighting Typhonus troops at all, but von Rahm troops which had been put under Typhonus command by the Count who hoped to woo the Calemberg Union for leniency. Typhonus had allowed their mobilization in light of the Sorenvik and Krupp assault on the wall, using them as meat shields to soak up damage from the weary Skaggers who would then face a cavalry charge alongside the Drixagh side of the wall, from cavalry that had mounted and reached through a gate some miles out by the side. Because moving 30,000 troops through a trickle out of a camp was such a convoluted process, their movements were simply shadowed and the assault resulted in massive casualties on both von Rahm and the North Union side, but very few on Typhonus. When the Cavalry waves crashed past the Skagger units, they let them go again, not following them into their base camps where the Northern Union had obviously positioned cavalry traps, and simply disappearing in a ride along the wall again to return to the other side. Then, when the battle seemed lost and the Northern Union was about ready to retreat, the von Rahm troops marched out of the wall, opened the gates, and the whole battlefield sank into silence as both the von Rahm and Typhonus troops simply left the whole area, leaving the Northern Union behind with an open gate in front of them, though a wall peppered with Skagger and von Rahm dead.

Across the landmass, both van der Veer and Harhold troops mobilized, Harhold troops with the promise for “revenge on the heathens”, and van der Veer with no particular reason. The levies were just being told they were all being mobilized and shipped off to the colonies without a clear purpose. Obviously, since the threats of war between the Veer and Harhold were still fresh in mind, the move of soldiers to the colonies by the Count looked like a suicide move. Many of the Barons and Mayors of the van de Veer lands refused to mobilize their troops and the Veer Rebels equally refused to mobilize to leave their new homeland. In the end, the van der Veer troops only managed to mobilize about 10% of their homeland levy, and send them to the colonies, though the troops in the colonies did all mobilize in response to Rote mobilization. Harhold troops had success in mustering, using the revenge Casus Belli to whip up a storm, but the army did not move, and remained in Vlissinghelm.

Finally, Letoirneau summoned their warmoot as well for a mobilization, but attained absolutely no support for a mobilization. Being almost 400 miles away from the front, and having no direct conflict relation whatsoever to what was going on, the Ithanian Mayors and Aldermenn refused to simply raise their levies and abandon their palaces and working fields for a ghost war that would likely never happen. The Ithanians of the Letoirneau lands refused to abandon their pacifist methods unless it was absolutely necessary, or war was imminent, but Letoirneau’s lands seemed so far away from the battle that mobilization proved pointless. Further attempts to woo Lusits and Pileran and Wodenstaff houses in an alliance proved equally fruitless. The southern realm houses did not feel the urgency of any conflict arising in the relatively peaceful south that had not seen any conflict for many years now, and were reluctant to get dragged into a coalition war should one erupt (NPC’s are generally very reluctant to form alliances unless it is absolutely necessary for their survival).

In retrospect, the Military analysts scratched their heads that, despite warnings of artillery being pointless to be used against Hadrian’s Wall, why the Northern Union chose to reject such a warning and go ahead with it anyway, losing valuable siege equipment in the process. Furthermore, some speculated that the ruse to confuse the Typhonus troops was “too complicated”. One even commented that it had such a brain capacity that it felt like a contrived strategy from House Augustat’s tacticians, which were so convoluted that they often ended up being self-detrimental. While great attention was made to take care of clever ploys to avoid detection, there was a very consistent lack of martial proficiency in the Northern Union, who were up against someone who was lauded as the most intelligent tactician in the Empire of this age. The fact that the armies split up from each other (with Viduggla sailing off) also removed the only advantage the Skagger horde had: equal numbers, reducing their combat advantage, and then throwing infantry against a wall assault, something that would draw the troops away from their defensive cavalry spikes and into the meat grinder against the defenders. The spectators were left confused at why Typhonus and von Rahm troops under Typhonus controls abandoned Hadrian’s wall section there however, and opened the gates. The Typhonus army remained stationed on all other sections, and had disappeared behind the wall again, leaving a theoretical path wide open for the Skagger host to move through the gate and into von Rahm’s lands unhindered, but some also speculated it could be a massive trap. Regardless, it seemed like beating a dead horse, but all fingers pointed at von Brühl again who made the critical mistake of abandoning his people in their hour of greatest need, and then using the least subtle way to sneak around behind hostile lines, alerting every opposing party of the ongoing plans.