Tilea Campaign Part 23

The Battle of the Isean Hills

Prequel: Each to Their Own

The army of the Disciplinati di Morr, bereft of its beloved founder, the Praepositus Generalis Father Carradalio, but still bound to the service of holy Morr, had drawn close to the city of Ebino, then halted. When they learned the vampire duchess had more than sufficient forces within the city to repel any assault they could launch, their new pastor-general, Father Lorenzo of Urbimo, ordered the fortification of their camp so that they might instead blockade the city, harrying any forces attempting to leave the city or join the garrison, while awaiting reinforcements of their own.

Fully aware of their depleted strength (indeed, having sent her servant Adolfo to prey upon them and bring about this very end), the Duchess Maria decided she would not give them time to lick their wounds, nor allow any more forces to join them, but would instead march from the city in strength to deliver her ‘colpo di grazia’.

On the morning of the battle, each of the two armies prepared themselves for the fight ahead. In the part-completed, fortified camp they were building upon the Isean Hills to the south of the city, the Disciplinati di Morr gathered for prayers; while in the fields below the ruined Church of San Sabrella to the east of Ebino’s moated walls, the vampire Duchess Maria drew all the unliving servants contained within the city to her.

The Disciplinati’s new pastor-general, Lorenzo, was not the orator Father Carradalio had been, and so instead of an inspired, stirring speech, he simply read from the holy book of Morr. A swathe of dedicants crowded around him, as well as lesser priests and Captain Vogel’s palace guards, and all fell silent as he intoned.

Father Lorenzo chose his passage carefully. While in Urbimo, overseeing the cruel cleansing of the town, he had favoured the verses concerning the purity of soul required to gain passage into Morr’s heavenly garden, and the punishments necessary for those who tainted themselves with wicked words, deeds and thoughts, or lured Morr’s living servants into the same. When the impure were burned, he had concentrated on the chapters describing the torments awaiting those who were not suitably cleansed either through their own will and discipline, or by the punishments inflicted upon them as a curative penance.

Here, however, before battling the vampire duchess’s foul army, he knew that something more uplifting was required. The men gathered around him were to face an unliving hell later that day, which made threatening them with the same seem somewhat redundant. He wanted to inspire them to fight fearlessly, to lay down their lives without hesitation, and so it was that he read of the abundant rewards awaiting them in Morr’s garden-paradise.

Several priests, their hands clasped in humility, stood closest to Father Lorenzo. These few knew the text well enough to add their own voices to the most important parts, thus ensuring those words were better heard by all. Other than the priests’ occasionally conjoined voices and the fluttering of the ragged banners (these fashioned from the tattered remains of ancient saints’ robes and other such holy relics), the only other sound was the occasional ripple of mutters and whispers through the crowd as they involuntarily muttered repetitions of this or that inspiring phrase.

The holy book’s words revealed that every drop of blood the dedicants shed in Morr’s service would be amply compensated with heavenly wine; that long labours for their lord-god would earn them ages of ease; and that every moment of agony would be rewarded by eons of contentment. Indeed, those who were sufficiently holy in the here and now could experience the first hint of that eternal ecstasy within the very agonies themselves, their pain tinged with the perfect pleasures to come.

The dedicants’ attention was given a keener edge by the knowledge of what they were about to face, and as they listened to the holy book’s powerful promises, their fears were swept away and replaced with excited anticipation. The more they suffered this day, the greater the rewards would be.

It was all many of them could do not to begin their flagellation there and then!

…

Maria knew Lord Adolfo was dead, for she had felt his demise two weeks previously. As for Biagino, he had gone so far from her that although she could sense something was amiss, she could no longer know whether he (un)lived or not. Here and now, her only her vampiric servant was captain Bernhardt, who was to be her lieutenant in battle.

There was also a necromancer, Saffiro, a wretched fellow whose fawning company she could hardly bear, his blood so dry as to be undrinkable, his very being seeming to be composed entirely of mould, dust and rags, but even ignoring her distaste for him, such a creature would prove a poor second on the field of battle.

Bernhardt, on the other hand, was very much a warrior, having been a condottiere captain in life, during which he fought both in the northern realm of the Empire and all over Tilea.

As her army assembled almost in silence, she beckoned Bernhardt over. He was clad in full plate armour and carried an enormous blade almost as long, from tip to pommel, as she was tall. It would take incredible strength to wield such a weapon, which he luckily possessed. When he came to a halt before her, she said,

“Good captain, faithful, favoured servant, your hand.”

Despite not knowing why she asked, he reached out without hesitation. She laid her own hand upon his, her cold, pearl-white fingers resting upon the layered steel plates of his gauntlet.

Now he understood. This action was a sign of her favour – that this day she honoured him above all others. As she looked at him, her eyes seemed just as palpable as her touch, and for moment he forgot all but his fierce love for his mistress. All about them the duchess’s undead servants became still, momentarily bereft of any directive will.

Moving one step closer, Maria brought her mouth almost to Bernhardt’s cheek. She spoke quietly concerning what she expected of him in the battle to come, which was that he should give his all in her service: his sword arm, his military ken and, if necessary, his life. She wanted the foe killed to a man, so not a single one could escape to reveal the nature of her own forces to her enemies in the south. Having been sired by her, and utterly beholden to her will, he willingly accepted all she commanded. He could do nothing else.

Less than an hour later, near the head of the army, the two of them rode together towards the enemy’s camp. Beside them were mounted warriors from ages past, doing in undeath exactly what they had done in life, but feeling neither joy nor sentimentality. Nor did they need such things, only the ability to fight as they had done long ago.

…

The Battle, Part 1

Working with an almost frenzied vigour that few ordinary soldiers or labourers could ever match, the Disciplinati Di Morr’s dedicants had constructed substantial defences for their camp, despite the short time available before the Duchess marched out against them.

(Game Note: I allowed the Disciplinati player to put the scenery, including the hills, however he liked within his deployment zone, to represent the fact that the army’s commanders had chosen the best spot they could find to camp, and had built the defences as they wished.)

Their brace of guns, which had once guarded Remas’s southern gate, were placed in a bastion-battery atop a steep slope …

… while the two large regiments of dedicants defended the almost complete stretch of barricades running out from the base of the hill. Maestro da Leoni’s ‘Engine of Light’ had been hauled between the massed dedicants, while Captain Vogel and his disgraced, professional soldiers of the old palace guard waited in the rear, Father Lorenzo amongst them, intending to move up to wherever they were needed. The two small companies of crossbowmen, one Reman, one Urbiman, flanked the larger foot regiments, each having taken to raised ground to afford themselves a better view.

Barone Pietro Cybo, with his small company of light horse, waited out to the far left of the army atop a little hill, having promised he would attempt to outflank the enemy. In truth, he had been entirely nwilling to dismount to help defend such ‘walls of dirt’, so it was pride that had sent him out so far from the rest.

The vampire Duchess Maria, eager to destroy the foe quickly, amassed her army directly before the enemy’s defences, intending to march right at them with no fancy manoeuvring.

(Game Note: I commanded the vampire army, now an NPC army since the player left the campaign and the hobby!), and so any deficiencies you might perceive in the duchess’s tactics are down to my not-exactly ‘honed’ wargaming skills!)

Her foot soldiers, being skeletons, crypt horrors and ghouls, formed the right of her army, arrayed before the defended stretch of barricades, while her knights, wraiths and wolves, herself and Bernhardt included, were on the left, hoping to overwhelm the defences at their extremity, burst through and thereafter ravage the camp’s interior.

As Maria intended her army to assault the foe as one, she restrained her riders’ advance a little, so that when the army came close to the foe they would do so cohesively. (Game Note: No vanguard moves by either the wolves or wraiths.) Her second, the vampire Bernhardt, rode with the smaller body of mounted soldiers, dropping back slightly to keep an eye on the enemy horse to the right, and, if that enemy proved too cowardly to commit (which he suspected might be the case) to espy an opportunity to support the rest of the army as required.

The Morrite dedicants watched the undead army’s approach with a calm imbued by a resignation to their fate and the full belief that their god Morr favoured them above all others. He had tested them, without doubt, even allowing their worldly father to be cruelly taken from them, but they had proven themselves unshakeable in their faith. Most now fervently believed Morr’s love for them had only grown stronger.

One regiment fair-bristled with the steel edges and barbed tips of a myriad varieties of vicious halberds…

… while the other regiment hefted flails, whips and clubs. Both chanted words of devotion which filled them with an ever-growing lust for battle, a blind fury they were ready to release at any moment.

From above, the Reman gunners watched the enemy advance, judging the distances and adjusting the barrels’ elevation accordingly.

The undead foot, left a little behind by the mounted warriors’ initial advance (having only shank’s nag to transport them), and being a little too far away from the duchess to feel the full strength of her will, suddenly, but entirely as she and her necromancer had planned, lurched forwards, powerfully invigorated by the winds of magic conjured to course through them. In this way they re-aligned themselves with the horse soldiers.

(Game note: Vanhel’s Dance Macabre in action, as planned – it’s quite rare anything I build into an initial plan comes to fruition!)

Maria’s army was coming up fast indeed. Realising that to delay even a moment longer could mean he would fail even to distract the enemy as they advanced, never mind harm them, Barone Pietro led his horsemen down the slope to approach from the enemy’s right flank. They were the only part of the living army that moved.

The crew of the Luminark, having worked upon their machine almost constantly since it’s shamefully negligible contribution to the assault upon Viadaza, polishing the lenses almost hourly so that not one speck might ingrain itself upon the glass, now prayed fervently for Morr’s blessing as they wound the wheel that would bring the foremost, smallest lens into alignment and so both conjue and release a beam of scorching, etheric light.

The whole engine bucked as a crackling condensation of energy broiled between the stepped lenses, then burst forwards …

… to burn three of Maria’s knightly companions to dust!

The crew, however, failed even to notice the enemy riders’ deaths, for once again, in exactly the same manner as had happened at Viadaza, the mizzen lens cracked and, as well as momentarily sapping the breath from them, also sapped all hope that the engine would contribute any further harm to the foe.

They had but one such lens left, the least perfect of the three they had begun the journey with for its peripheries were not fully polished, and which would take many an hour to affix correctly and safely to the machine. Two of the crew shed tears at their failure, although within moments that disappointment had turned into fear as they remembered just how close the terrible enemy was.

Crossbow bolts brought down a few dire wolves and skeletons …

… then the first round-shot from the guns …

… shattered the entire rear rank of Maria’s knights, and the second broke the rest apart, even brushing Maria’s arm as it passed! (Game note, she passed her 4+ ward to survive!) Maria was left alone, with only her ghostly wraiths close by!

End of turn 1

…

The Battle, Part 2

Twisting in her saddle to see all about her, with a mere a flick of her wrist the Duchess Maria sent the dire wolves charging into Barone Pietro’s company of light horse. One wolf was brought down by an arrow on the way, but the rest tore into the enemy with tooth and claw.

In the first moments of the immediately ensuing fight four riders and five wolves were slain.

Another tiny gesture sent Maria’s mounted wraiths hurtling into the fanatical dedicants nearest to them. Four Morrites were hewn in two by the partly-ethereal scythes, while the living warriors could do nothing at all to harm such a ghostly foe.

(Game Note: I had never really worked out just what these hexwraiths were capable of, in the right circumstances. I had intended them to pass through enemy units, not to engage them directly, thinking rank and standard bonuses would swing the combats. Here I discovered how capable they were of pinning down even large units of a certain kind – the dedicants had no banner and so all they had going for them was their rank bonus. This combat resolution score the Hexwraiths were easily able to exceed with their great weapons’ strength 5 attacks, and their steeds’ attacks too.)

Maria herself joined Captain Bernhardt and his little company of knights …

… but the magics both they and her necromancer Saffiro conjured had no effect. The enemy’s prayers were not so weak, however, injuring one of the crypt horrors, and summoning a holy protective blessing upon Captain Vogel’s Reman Guard. The Urbiman crossbowmen brought down one of Bernhardt’s knights, and suddenly both vampires felt potentially vulnerable. (Game note: No ‘Look out sir’ on the knights anymore!) Then, just when they might have fatally wounded the exposed vampires, not one but both cannons misfired. Perhaps the crewmen’s haste had caused their fumbling failure? Perhaps they had lost Morr’s blessing as the god’s attention was elsewhere in the world? Or perhaps the powder was just a little too damp?

The Barone and his riders cut the last of the wolves down, then watched in horror as the blue-tinged wraiths continued their apparently unstoppable slaughter of the massed dedicants defending the wall.

Maria sensed an opportunity. She saw the dedicants’ blades sweeping by the dozen ineffectually through the hexwraiths, then noticed the gunners’ frantic activity, desperately attempting to put their eerily quiet guns in working order. She knew this moment could be her best chance, and so she ordered Bernhardt to leave her and charge the crossbowmen on the enemy’s camps’ extreme left …

… and her Crypt Horrors and ghouls to charge into the unengaged regiment of dedicants. The latter failed to reach the enemy, so the brutes were left for now to fight alone.

The crossbowmen failed to harm their attackers with their hurriedly launched bolts, then the vampire captain and his companions inflicted a brutal slaughter upon them. The last few fled and the undead riders’ mounts clattered over the bastion to penetrate the defences. Maria cast a deadly curse upon the dedicants fighting her wraiths, killing no less than eight of them, then the hex wraiths killed two more (again, just enough to ensure that the necromantic magic animating them stayed strong).

The Crypt Horrors found themselves facing a great mass of dedicants, ensconced behind a sturdy earth and timber wall.

They were to prove no match for the frenzied hacking of so many halberds, and all but one perished in the ensuing fight.

Standing a little way behind with the skeleton spear regiment, the necromancer Saffiro could see that it would take a lot more than a few horrors to defeat such a body.

Maria was also cognizant of the situation and took a moment to consider who to command to charge next. The Hexwraiths had completely tied up the other body of dedicants, but she wanted both regiments utterly destroyed. This was the army who had killed her pet Adolfo – she intended that they would pay dearly for that deed.

She felt a pleasing sense of reassurance that she was in a position to make such choices. Rather than being forced to respond to the enemy’s manoeuvres, she had wrested the initiative for herself. Her victory, she believed, was now surely inevitable. Many of her soldiers would die to achieve it, but they had all died before, and yet still they served her.

She was so delighted with how things stood that she entirely failed to notice Barone Pietro and his surviving riders approaching trepidatiously from her right.

They were very aware of her, however. The barone himself was even considering the notion that perhaps he could take her on.

Slowly, they closed upon her, the riders to loose their arrows, the Barone to fire his pistols.

Yet when they did, it was to no effect at all. Almost idly, Maria turned to look upon them, an evil euphoria coursing through her. They seemed to her to be nothing more than a minor itch. She smiled as she pondered if they themselves knew how little they concerned her.

While she so leered, her hexwraiths continued their bloody work, slaying another half a dozen dedicants …

… whilst the last of the brute Horrors was cut down. Forgetting the riders as soon as she looked away, she made up her mind – the ghouls would charge next.

End of turn 3.

…

The Battle, Final Part

The great mob of flesh eaters, who now equalled the enemy’s regiment in numbers, thanks to the brute Horrors’ attacks and the cultists own murderous flagellations to maintain their state of crazed frenzy, charged headlong into the defences.

Maria cantered with no real haste to the hex-wraiths’ flank and watched as Captain Bernhardt and his knights turned to threaten the Reman soldiery within the camp.

Whilst the winds of magic proved little more than a gentle breeze, so that not one spell could be successfully conjured, the fight between the ghouls and the dedicants proved very bloody indeed. Seventeen dedicants died in the initial assault, and eighteen ghouls! (Game Note: The ‘End is Nigh’ roll meant the dedicants could re-roll to hits and to wounds for their 38 (yup!) attacks. In light of this, perhaps 18 seems like a bad result!) Two more ghouls collapsed from the weakening of the magics that kept them whole.

Captain Vogel knew he had to act decisively, before the enemy riders could launch themselves at him and his men. But when he ordered a charge, his so-called professionals proved wanting, and the resultant, over-hesitant lurch meant that any initiative was lost – the vampire Bernhardt and his knights were already spurring their fleshless horses into action. Standing with the Remans, Father Lorenzo knew that the day was not going at all well, yet gave voice to prayers to gift Morr’s Holy Protection on the men with him. He sensed its power as it enfolded both he and them.

Upon the bastion-battery on the Disciplinati’s right, the cannoneers had shoved packets of grape shot down their pieces’ muzzles, and now both guns blasted the skeletons below them, shattering seven. (Game Note: 10 + 10 shots, but with 8th ed rules, you have to roll to hit as well as wound.) The bony warriors barely noticed, having long since been bereft of such concerns!

The broken machine trundled about behind the defences, it’s crew’s shame exacerbated by the knowledge that they were very unlikely ever to get a chance to prove themselves or their engine in future battles!

The Morrite dedicants fighting the ghouls, however, were so gripped with bloodlust that no such defeatist thoughts impinged upon their minds.

They slaughtered the last of the ghouls before them, to the loss of only one of their own to the foe’s vicious claws, but at a cost of two of their own to flagellation. The hexwraiths to their left, however, had cut down another four dedicants amongst their brother regiment, who despite their manic efforts could cause absolutely no harm in return. Meanwhile, Maria sat delicately sidesaddle beside them, as if nothing of consequence was occurring!

(Game Note: I was still amazed at what the hex-wraiths were doing, and could only imagine how frustrated I would have been about it if I had commanded the other side! BTW, we had toyed with the idea that the campaign player helping out by commanding an NPC army should command the undead, but as his player character, Lord Alessio Falconi, was currently engaged in a war against Maria’s servants in the south, it seemed only right that he should command here enemies in this game too!)

Maria was smiling, but there was not a soul alive who could see. She blew a kiss to the vampire Bernhardt, as he glanced at her upon the threshold of his charge, and then she joined the captain in hurtling headlong into Vogel’s hesitant Remans.

The Necromancer Saffiro had watched the slaughter of both the brute Horrors and the ghouls with interest and was now satisfied to see that only a few dedicants remained upon the defences. “My turn!” he thought to himself, then raised his hands to command his skeletons to charge.

In they went, scrabbling over the piles of corpses strewn before the barricade without a care in the world, to stab a veritable forest of spears at the few, poor, tired souls remaining at the wall!

Before long there was but one cultist remaining. He stumbled back, his pointed hood so obscuring his sight that he had no idea he was the last. Whatever idea he did have, however, was his last.

While the Hexwraiths’ scythes continued their bounteous harvesting of souls …

… Maria fatally cursed four of the Remans, then momentarily lost control of her magic while resurrecting the missing knight. She was only saved from injury by her magical wards. Several more Remans died to the vampires’ and knights’ blades, and two of the knights were cut down in return. Somehow, the Remans had survived the initial impact, but their situation did not look good.

As Maria’s fight continued, cannon balls were fired to little effect, more dedicants were hewn by the wraiths, and crossbow bolts clattered ineffectually against the corpse cart. Barone Pietro and his company rode to the rear of the undead and watched, aghast, as the slaughter went on. The riders dreaded the thought of charging in. Thankfully, for them, the barone gave no such command.

Maria now allowed a fury to course through her and she personally cut down six Remans.

This, as well as the bloody work done by Bernhardt and the knights, was too much for the Remans, and they turned to flee. Father Lorenzo was the first to be cut down in the flight, and moments later Captain Vogel’s head was deftly removed by Bernhardt’s blade. The rest of the soldiers joined them in death very soon after.

As the crossbowmen on the hill wished they had run away when they had the chance, and the gunners abandoned their pieces to tumble pell-mell down the far slope, Barone Pietro stared at the mass of skeleton warriors and the hideous corpse-chariot before them.