Category:Elves: Difference between revisions

'''Once More Into the Breach...Came Undeath!''' [Battle of Ta'Vaalor-5117]

The storm. The rain. The stench. All returned once again to Ta’Vaalor: the glorious Fortress and Elvenhome of the East was invested.

Only the day before the Crimson Legion Reserves had gathered in the crisp air of a Fashanos evening—made milder by the balmy clime of the south—amid the snapping pennons of Guardian Keep’s Courtyard. Arrayed in their formation, resplendent in their uniforms, the Legionnaires went through their maneuvers with well-earned pride before Lord Legionnaire Commander Cyik. They were, after all, the Crimson Blade of the East, the premier martial force in Elanthia. There the Lord Legionnaire had addressed them.

What had the search for the malevolent being known as Vengeance revealed?

Nothing. Just, nothing.

Squires had travelled north to the vaunted Great Library of Ta’Illistim. There, with the help of Lady Siierra of the Shining City and Branch Guardian Daenalan, they combed through copious lore. Yet little was revealed, lest it was how to serve tea to the Argent Mirror’s niece, or what cut of dress ought to be worn at the Festival of Lumnea.

First Legionnaire Esana had, fortunately, produced more substantive leads. In the library of her house, House Ilynov, she had discovered recent lore regarding orbs of power, used not long ago by a sorceress to waylay fair Ta’Vaalor. The Lord Legionnaire Commander apparently found this of interest as he, in turn, promised to launch an investigation into their situation and whereabouts in Wyvern Keep. And so, congratulating one another on their fine deeds, and commending the civilians of the Fortress on their own stalwart efforts, the Legion dismissed, a spring in their steps and with sparkles in their eyes.

The great and good among the Legion, High Legionnaire Kakoon, First Legionnaire Esana, Squires Pereus and Nihrvanah, were set about finding out the secrets of the loathsome Old City, to see if changes in certain magics there could coincide with the ravages of vengeance. Champion Menos himself, symbol of all that was right and noble and pure and Vaaloran, would be lending a hand in the search himself, it seemed. Surely, with such powers at work, the mystery would be solved and Vengeance annihilated in a week!

As events turned out, their presence would be sorely missed, desperately missed, because only Squire Legionnaire Nihrvanah would be on hand for the next day’s maelstrom.

The next day itself began normally enough. The spotless streets of the Fortress bustled with well-ordered commerce and a tranquility guaranteed by the sword. One Squire Legionnaire, Valaero Kernel-Yander, several years only into his hundred and borne of the lackluster, earth-tilling, and generally weird House Yander, ruled by a shadowy and remote patriarch known to them all only as ‘The Farmer’, took the opportunity to enhance his regular patrol by escorting several Vaalorans on a quick journey up to the Shining City. What a pleasant day it had been, how the Lake of Fear sparkled in the sun, how the diplomat and his entourage relished their wine on the ferry! A pleasure hunt with his dear friend, the Vaaloran sylvan Laraynis, who fancied herself a pirate but held in greater esteem her partial citizenship in Ta’Vaalor (not possessing, after all, the supreme gift of an unsullied Vaaloran elven bloodline) in the Maernstrike Caverns had completed the days enjoyment.

The stroll home, home!, glorious Ta’Vaalor, was splendid in the twilight through the Fearling Pass. Never growing tired of the pleasures of his race, house, and uniform, Squire Valaero eagerly returned the salutes of the gate guards as they welcomed him back to the Fortress. All was quiet, and the smell of gourmet dinners being prepared wafted through the meticulously constructed cobblestone streets. It was hard to believe, as he settled down for his own dinner at the Annatto Barracks, that Ta’Vaalor was once again at war.

Yet no sooner had he sat down to break bread than he noticed something…an odor…a stench. The blood drained from his face and the food fell from his open mouth. No! Not again! Surely, surely the horrors of the past few weeks would not-could not!-be repeated again so soon. Throwing his meal aside he ran to the window, looking to see the stars.

The stars were gone. In their place storm clouds rolled in; the wind began to howl. The otherworldly stench of undeath flowed across the Mistydeep.

But, the mighty of House Vaalor were absent! On searches and patrols to discover information, to end the horror! The foul entity known only as Vengeance was striking again, this time, whether he knew it or not, and perhaps he knew full well, at a dangerously undermanned defense. Quickly grabbing his blade and shield he vacated the barracks at a near sprint. A mercy was present, one only, in that Squire Legionnaire Nihrvanah was in King’s Court, addressing and organizing a crowd made anxious by the pendulous clouds and rising stench. With the Reserve’s higher ranking enlisted officers away, she took command of the situation.

The ballistae were manned; the alarm sounded. The Vaaloran elven maid Ancellya, whose aim had grown deadly with the fiery Drake, manned her post. Once again, saluting his sister in arms, Squire Valaero manned his post at the Annatto Gate, a post he had fought bloodily at constantly over the past few weeks. For a moment he was alone, alone in the face of the shrieking wind and incoming waves of rain and reek. But then a brother in arms, Squire Legonilas, joined him: they greeted and saluted. The wind grew fiercer, but striding against it came a third, Squire Malinya, and together they got into formation, defying any evil to enter their magnificent city.

Thoughts flew about the Fortress now: “Contact made at Vermillion!” The screech of the ballistae to the north was heard, was heard alongside the wings of demons in flight. The trio steeled themselves for an onslaught, felt the stink and hatred as palpably as the rain. But then they were joined by a fourth, not a Vaalor, not an elf, not a sylvan, not even (Arkati forbid, thought Valaero) a half elf. They were joined by a giantman, one who dwelled in the Fortress known as Orssus. This fellow, to Valaero’s mind, had grown too close to one of his kin. A brief nod was all the giant received from the Squire, indeed, there was time for little else.

For then it was that the skeletons were upon them. By the tens, by the dozens, and then by the hundreds. Bright steel flashed and the Drake’s fire sang, and the skeletons disintegrated before the bright eyes of the elves, terrible in their wrath, like chaff before the flame. The giantman’s executioner’s sword fell with wroth. In the melee, for like all the recent attacks the undead came in hordes beyond number, Valaero managed to catch sight of a tried and true comrade-in-arms, Squire Lyeraen. A brief grin, of defiance, not joy, was exchanged between the twain as they fell to in bloody combat.

On came the rotting hags: they were swiftly put to the sword alongside the never ending rivers of animated bones. It was an awe inspiring sight that so few fought so bravely, so bravely that it moved the heart, against a tide of such unrelenting evil and filth. But in the midst of the carnage there was little time to see that beauty, for all was terrible chaos. More defenders joined, the Vaaloran elf Legaci brought his magic and weapons to bear against the horde, and more defenders, Legionnaires, citizens, and foreigners, came besides. Quickly, very quickly, it looked as though the tide was turning. The revolting crimson death worms, not a new sight in these frightful days of war, came against the Annatto Gate too. Too, they were obliterated.

But then, as the brave warriors felt the tide turn, something else felt terribly wrong. For the first time they noticed crawling from the storm twisted Halfling liches with fell magics, casting poisonous vapors at the besieged Fortress. Slender dead women followed in their wake, trying to seduce the defenders with an evil siren song before falling in turn upon them. To his right, fighting furiously, Valaero saw Squire Malinya fall dead at his feet…a spectral elementalist was upon her and beneath her corpse the earth itself bubbled and spit. The defenders began to fall back towards the gate itself. A squire unidentifiable in the raging battle dragged Malinya’s valiant corpse past the gate to be raised by hard-pressed clerics in the city.

And lo! Hissing, a cold wind blew carrying a raspy mocking voice, "Where is your Champion? Where are your defenders? Oh yes....dead!"

The combat grew frantic. On every side the defenders were assailed, and barely held on. And then, with disbelieving eyes, Valaero saw them looming across Annatto Bridge: greater constructs. They dwarfed their undead compatriots, indeed, crushed many of them beneath those gigantic feet as they joined the fray. “Impossible,” Valaero screamed, “not constructs! Not on the Annatto Bridge!”

Those would be the last words he uttered for a long while. Legaci, come back from a rescue, was crushed. To his left, Legonilas was smashed into a pile of gristle and bone. The last thing the elf noticed disturbed him, deep in his heart, more than the evil that befell his brothers and sister. Those standing still against the constructs were not of Ta’Vaalor…they were foreigners, come from afar, the so-called mighty of Elanthia. Foreigners, from hairy humans to dark elves to every other sort of rabble, were holding at bay what the Crimson Legion could not. One among them, one called Ondreian, though he’d not heard the name before, was even battling one of the monstrosities!

And then he too, Squire Valaero Kernel-Yander, was crushed by the massive hand of a construct.

Squire Valaero awoke in the Hall of the Arkati, restored to life, by a cleric, a cousin from Ta’Illistim. His head was spinning too much to see her properly, but he felt her energies restoring him to waking life. He saw his kinswoman Squire Krystalena move adeptly away from him to another corpse, presumably she had healed his wrecked body. The scene was of blood and death, healing and restored life. It was too much, even here, not including his noble Illistim cousins, were foreigners prodding and ‘helping’ with busy hands…and laughing! He stumbled from the hall, staggering in a weakened state back to the Annatto Gate.

Peering through the gate he saw one thing, death. He beheld total defeat. The outside of the gate had been totally overrun. He could not believe his eyes as he saw all his Legionnaire brothers and sisters dead. To his side again he saw Squire Lyeraen, himself recently killed and restored to life. Together the brothers vowed to stand and die again, if need be, to slow the entry on the greater constructs into the city.

But the constructs did not enter. Such a gallant last stand would not occur. Bitterly did Valaero curse the thing known as Vengeance, for the havoc it wreaked…and worse, the humiliation it inflicted. On the very cusp of total victory ‘Vengeance’ had pulled its forces back, mocking the defenders to show it was in total control of the situation. It had earned its revenge, for whatever reason it had sought it, and earned it well. But still the humiliation for Squire Valaero was not over.

For now, overcoming when the Legionnaires could not, laughing as he strode into the melee, past the weakened and battered Vaalor elves, was Roblar the Great himself, about whom so many legends speak. Come from barbarous Icemule Trace he laughed in the face of the constructs, swiftly then did he slay them. Admiring his skill but silently cursing the fact he was needed, Valaero watched as one of the mightiest mortals in Elanthia quickly went about his business, brushing aside what was left of the enemy host as a hot sun burns away the morning fog. And he returned, grinning, and laughing, striding through the streets of fair Ta’Vaalor as if he owned them.

The battle, another battle, was over. So it was then that a cold wind blew again, carrying a raspy voice, "I will leave you to enjoy the scent of your own decaying dead...."

In a state of shock, exhausted beyond all measure, Squire Valaero crept back towards the Annatto Barracks. From King’s Court he heard cheers and laughs, from the ‘volunteers’ from afar who had-for all appearances-saved the day. Taciturn and defeated, recovering from death itself, Valaero slunk into his cot. Only now did he understand the full extent of the revenge and mockery and humiliation that ‘Vengeance’ had inflicted upon Ta’Vaalor, indeed, upon the House of Vaalor itself.

And worse, in his heart, Squire Valaero knew that it was not over. He knew that the undead filth and the hate and the revenge and the humiliation would continue to be inflicted upon his city, Ta’Vaalor, fairest of all the realms of Elanthia. And he knew that the ‘volunteers’ would come scurrying from every rolton-shack town of uncivilization west of the Dragonspine to ‘help’ and to save the day.

As he looked out the window the stars once again shone and the air was clear. But it was in the Kernel-Yander’s heart that clouds now formed, as dark as those over his city that eve.

How long would this continue? How long could this existence of horror go on? And when at long last his eyes closed and he passed into sleep, it was a sleep tormented by nightmares and by the voice of Vengeance…"I will leave you to enjoy the scent of your own decaying dead...."