Part Two of an Ongoing Series:
The unexpected arrival of the Sharp-Claws on Mundiga led to the halt of all Grendalkin raiding for the next several hundred years, until 497 AE, when the Grendalkin managed to break through Sharp-Claw territory via the village of Marrowak, and briefly raided a number of Romansh settlements in the southern reaches of the Median empire. Fortunately, at this point, the Grendalkin and Sharp-Claws were both exhausted to the point where neither race had the ability to continue sustained combat, leading to the reaffirmation of imperial authority in Southwestern Mundiga, in the form of the construction of Tarquin's Wall, which sealed off the Southern peninsula from the rest of Mundiga. The wall, along with the buffer state that the Sharp-Claw tribal territories were effectively turned into, kept the Grendalkin out of the civilized territories for the remainder of the time the Median Empire stood.
During the late third century AE, the seeds for the second of the three great empires were deposited in Mundiga. In the Eastern Mountains, a portal deposited a small number of highly mobile warriors, who were proficient swordsmen and magnificent archers, and were primarily cavalry troops. Hailing from a mighty army that had overrun a vast portion of their native world, these "Mongols" wasted no time in carving out a foothold. Riding down from the mountain foothills where they found themselves, they conquered the three closest tribes, and began to take wives, find herds, and establish breeding stock. After the passage of two generations, during which most of the old Mongol ways were preserved, adapted only enough to make survival in Mundiga more likely, the Mongols once again sallied forth, conquering another two tribes, and receiving tribute from numerous other tribes. The Mongols followed this pattern over the next fifty years, until, in 361 AE, the Mongols successfully attacked and overran the city of Kitchkinet, a walled city that became the seat of power of the miniature empire, as the particularly forward-thinking chief, Besar, who led the conquest saw the benefit of a fixed strong point to fall back on.
Fifty-six years after the conquest of Kitchkinet, an increasingly less Mongol culture had coalesced around the city. The old Mongol ways of tending to flocks and raiding neighbors were still in practice, but agriculture and long-term domiciles had become more common than the old nomadic ways, and a more formalized and rigorous government had begun to form. The new culture inspired the chieftain, Han He, to take the next step, and formally declare a new empire, with himself at the head. In 417 AE, the Kam-Chou imperial banner was raised in Kitchkinet for the first time. The new emperor, to both cement his authority and to create a new avenue for trade, led an expedition to the eastern coast, capturing several towns along the way. The expedition ended with the capture of the port town of A'ch'ak, which surrendered rather than be sacked. This expedition increased the territory under the Kaminese banner by an additional half of what their old territory had been, proving the effectiveness of Han He as a leader, and granting him a much stronger power base to pass on to his heirs.
It was his grandson, Han Liu, who began to use A'ch'ak as more than a provincial capital and fishing hub, by dispatching ships full of explorers to look for new possible holdings across the seas. Han Liu's father, Han Teban, had significantly expanded Kaminese territory to the north, but had not actually built much infrastructure, or done much with the new territory beyond extracting tribute. While Kaminese explorers began to brave the Outer Sea, Han Liu began an ambitious project of laying roads across his territory, radiating from Kitchkinet in all directions, all the way to A'ch'ak and all the other major towns and cities in the empire. These roads promoted mercantile activities, as well as increasing the centralization of the government, the speed of movement for soldiers and travelers, and the safety of travel throughout the empire. All of these activities led to an increased yield of tax, as well as the imposition of a systematic code of law across all the imperial provinces.
The Kaminese explorers discovered much, traveling across the Outer Sea, including the continent of Puerto, and the western-most archipelago of Vilnis, the Min Archipelago, named for the captain of the ship that discovered it. Some of their discoveries were positive, such as the Puertese, who, after utterly destroying the only attempt to conquer any part of the Puertese tribes (specifically, the Erebean Ha'Castle Tribe, located closest to the main continent), entered into a somewhat terse, but profitable, trading relationship with the Kaminese. Others were markedly negative; many islets that were discovered offered no provisions or useful resources to exhausted crews, which meant unprofitable expeditions. By far the most negative effect of the expeditions was the Kaminese's first encounter with the beastmen who lurked on Vilnis.
Since the establishment of the Pact of 242 AE, a strong bond had existed between the Eldrigans and the Romansh. The Eldrigans got fresh blood and resources that weren't found in Vilnis from the Romansh, as well as news from the outside, and cultural exports. The Romansh got technical know-how, an increasingly strong naval ally, and materials not found in Mundiga from the Eldrigans. The Eldrigans used the security of this bond to colonize and take over the Utrecht and Kubo archipelagos, as well as to further expand their capital at Point Deliverance, and to begin the process of building an industrial base. However, in the year 483 AE, the Eldrigans discovered that they were not alone in the islands - the two western-most archipelagos, the Min and Vater archipelagos were both heavily colonized by a race that made the Grendalkin appear near civilized in comparison: The Trollocs. Transported by the black spell of a magus who had sold her soul to an eldritch abomination from beyond the tapestry of the multiverse, the Trollocs were moved to pollute Mundiga with their filth, as they attempted to do in any world they were brought into. Raving with an insatiable hunger, moved by malign intelligence, and filled with an insatiable lust, the Trollocs (or "beastmen") had already rendered the Min and Vater archipelagos into blackened wastelands in the few years that they'd been there.
The Kaminese expedition, which had been decimated by their brief meeting with Trollocs while attempting a landing on Min archipelago on 459 AE, had returned to Eastern Mundiga, and had warned the Kaminese emperor of what lurked on the islands. No further Kaminese expeditions were dispatched for the next seven hundred years. This left the issue of the Trollocs to the Eldrigans and their Romansh allies; until the Romansh returned to Mundiga to deal with the Grendalkin incursion of 497 AE via the Sharp-Claw territory, and to build Tarquin's Wall.
In 484 AE, a year after the Eldrigans had first encountered the Trollocs on Vilnis, and twenty five years after the Kaminese expedition to the Min Archipelago barely escaped death in the first known human encounter with Trollocs on Mundiga, the Eldridgans dispatched an expedition to the Vater Archipelago, which was accompanied by a small detachment of Legio XII, in keeping with the Pact of 242. The expedition, led by Commander Natchez Smith, consisted of eight Eldridgan sloops-of-war, each with a veteran crew of seventy-five sailors, ten petty officers, and three officers, along with a detachment of twenty marines per ship. A single Romansh ship accompanied the Eldridgan fleet, the Singular, a troop carrier, on which the third century of Legio XII were billeted. The centurion, Paulus Quina, kept a detailed log of the expedition, which is the sole source of written material concerning the expedition, as the logbooks of the Eldridgans have, somewhere in the last three millennia, been lost to time. The logbook details the arrival at the ruins of the primitive stockade that the Eldridgans had established on the Vater Archipelago, before the Trollocs had attacked, and describes the landing procedures used when the Eldridgan marines and Romansh legionnaires stormed the beach, slaying roughly forty Trollocs, who had been taken unawares. Sadly, at this point, both groups of soldiers grew lax, as the soldiers confidence grew to unmerited amounts following such a promising victory. As a camp was established in the ruins of the old stockade, none of the soldiers (nor, apparently, Centurion Quina) noticed small knots of Trollocs gathering on a nearby hill. In the dead of night, a horde of at least three thousand Trollocs rushed down the hill, and overran the stockade. The Centurion and a collection of marines and legionnaires led a fighting retreat back to the landing boats, where they escaped to the sea, leaving behind 187 marine and legionnaire casualties. Only a quarter of the force that had landed on the beach had survived that appalling night. The Eldridgan sloops-of-war fended off attempts by Trollocs in boats, captured or otherwise, from following the fleeing survivors. The cannonade would have done their exiled ancestors proud, as ball after ball of wrought iron sank boatloads of Trollocs, and grape-shot raked the seething mass of horrible bodies that capered on the beach.
While the Eldridgan navy reclaimed their honor, the battle illustrated the deficiencies in the marine detachments. Of the 73 survivors, 61 had been Romansh legionnaires, battle hardened troops from the Sharp-Claw border, where they’d held of raids by the reptilian warriors, and from the eastern border of the empire, where they’d held off incursions by barbarian tribes, who had come to conquer new lands after fleeing before Han Teban’s armies. On the other hand, the marines of the Eldridgan navy were more experienced in combating smugglers and pirates, experiences that helped very little during the Trolloc attack. The Eldridgans, determined to fix this deficiency in the sudden awareness of the enemy that lurked so close to the home archipelagoes, purchased the services of two centuries of Romansh legionnaires to use as cadre in the training of a new armed force, the Eldridgan Home Army. Centurion Quina and his surviving troops were rotated out, and sent back to the homeland for a period of recuperation and debriefing. The fourth and fifth centuries of the Legio V were brought in, and established a training camp outside of Port Rigby, in the Kubo archipelago, to which volunteers from the civilian population, and transfers from the Navy and Marines were brought.
At the camp, the new Eldridgan recruits learned the traditional tightly disciplined fighting formations of the Legios, as well as the wide order skirmishing that had been added to doctrine, to deal with enemies while fighting in forests or in mountains. The recruits were taught how to use the gladius and shield of the Legio, how to march, and how to use the muskets that had been developed from the technology the Eldridgans themselves had brought hundreds of years earlier. The combination of close-order musketry, with the shield lines defending the musketeers against counter-attack had led to the dominating tactics of the Legio defending the Median Empire for the last two centuries against all comers. These tactics would prove to be the salvation of the Eldridgan people.
In the tenth month of 484, the 1st Division of the new Eldridgan Home Army marched from their training grounds at Port Rigby, and boarded naval vessels, which took them to Lacey Island, in the Utrecht Archipelago, the closest point in Eldridgan technology to the infested Vater and Min archipelagoes. There, on Lacey Island, the 1st Division, along with the finest stone masons and architects from both Crucis Portus and Port Deliverance, built Timothy’s Citadel and Naval Yards over the next four years, using stone quarried on Lacey as material. The Citadel, rearing high over the island, was surrounded in multiple walls, with a thick central tower standing in the center of the base. A fortified harbor, built within the second defensive line, provided a naval base within easy striking range of the Vater and Min archipelagoes. Timothy’s Citadel, built to hold a massive garrison for decades under a state of siege, became the home of the vast majority of the Eldridgan armed forces, as well as a large body of allied troops in the form of the Legios IX, X, and XXIV, who the Emperor, Aetius III Aquilinus Supremus, had sent to ensure that Trollocs would not join the legion of threats that faced the Empire.
During the four years spent building the fortress on Lacey Island, the Home Army recruited heavily, and soon had an additional five fully trained divisions, each consisting of one thousand men. The Navy also recruited heavily, and also began to train its crews with an eye for long range gunnery, extended combat operations against numerous enemies, and counter-boarder tactics, none of which had been used required against the primitive tribal fleets or pirates who had been the primary enemies that the Eldridgan Navy had engaged previously.
During the summer of 488, the remainder of the newly trained Home Army moved to join the garrison at Timothy’s Citadel, along with fifty Eldridgan ships, including three dreadnoughts, tasked with providing landing ships with heavy cannonades, to suppress Trolloc presence in the landing zones. A fleet of eighty Romansh troop carriers accompanied the Eldridgan warships to Timothy’s Citadel, to carry the three Romansh Legios and five Eldridgan Divisions (the 1st Division’s mission was to maintain the garrison of Timothy’s Citadel) to the Vater Archipelago, as well as the light cannon attached to each century and battalion. Also in the reprisal fleet were twenty civilian transport ships, which would act as the logistical support, hauling rations, medicines, ammunition, and other necessities to campaign.
The invasion fleet left Lacey Naval Docks the first day of autumn, 488. Expecting no naval resistance, the entirety of the warship group was first in the order of march, followed by the troop ships, which were ahead of the logistical ships. The voyage to the Vater Archipelago lasted eight days, as the fleet matched the speed of the logistical ships, so as to not outpace the necessities of campaign. Upon arrival, the picket ships located a wide, sheltered beach with easy access to the interior of the main island. The frigates, having been told the approximate locations of any Trollocs or constructions on the beach, formed a firing line, and began the bombardment of the Vater main island. At this point, the first surprise of the campaign came in the form of return fire from one of the fortified structures. The firearms and light artillery left on the beach by the casualties of the exploratory expedition had been adequate to give the beastmen a basic example of gun-casting; the composition of the remnant ammunition had also been discovered, allowing the beastmen access to crude and rather shoddy cannons that fired irregularly shaped lumps of pig-iron. While these crude artillery pieces had a low rate of fire, and occurred rarely, they were completely unexpected, and led to a marked increase in wariness amongst the commanders of the expedition.
Despite the coastal artillery, the combined 39-gun bombardment cleared most of the resistance to a landing out in a brief time, allowing for the landing to begin. Supported by light cannon fire from accompanying sloops, whose shallower drafts allowed a closer approach to the beach than the frigates were capable of, the veterans of Legio X Vaxillarus, accompanied by the 2nd and 4th Divisions of the Eldridgan Home Army, landed on the Vermin Beach. Almost as soon as the legionnaires and soldiers had jumped from their landing ships into the shallows, Trollocs boiled out of the shattered ruins of the fortifications and buildings that had encrusted the beach like an infected scab. Charging towards the landing force, the Trollocs were met halfway by volley fire from the majority of the invaders, save for the shield-men who formed a defensive line in front of the musketeers, and the II Century of the Legio, who used rifled guns to pick off the Trollocs who directed the horde.
After the initial surge, the Trolloc forces retreated back into their fortifications, prompting another round of bombardment from the frigates. Surprisingly, despite the proximity of the landing force to the fortifications and the relatively green nature of the sailors manning the cannons, very few friendly fire casualties were reported in the expedition’s reports.
Immediately following the second bombardment, the forces already on the land, totaling roughly three thousand, rushed up the beach and entered the fortifications, tunnels, buildings, and dugouts into which the Trollocs had retreated. They were immediately followed by the second wave of soldiers, in the form of the 3rd and 6th Divisions, and the Legio XXIV. The third wave, consisting of the 5th Division and Legio IX, moved up onto the beachhead, and began the process of fortifying the beachhead, as well as ensuring that the waterfront was completely clear of Trollocs.
Over the course of the next five weeks, the Legios and Divisions would learn a number of interesting facts, both about the habits of the Trollocs, and the nature of this war. Amongst other things, the fact that the Vater main island was honeycombed by a vast network of tunnels and caves had been completely unknown to the High Command and it was this network that would be the main battlefield of the entire invasion. The soldiers and legionnaires would also have a unique opportunity to understand the nature of Trollocs: Created by a wizard goaded on by darkness greater than his ken, the first Trollocs were the horribly mutilated prisoners of the same magus, forcibly merged with demons and beasts of all sorts. The Trollocs were defined from their very beginnings as beings of infinite hunger for suffering, and for flesh. Trollocs delight in misery, and cause pain in any way within their capabilities. While thuggish and small-minded, Trollocs possess an internal malice that manifests itself with a near genius in methods of cruelty unsurpassed in even the dankest slum of Crossgate or in the most infernal mind of the Grendalkin. Amongst their many habits, Trollocs savor the taste of cooked human flesh, preferably prepared whilest the subject is alive and fully conscience. Many soldiers, upon taking a Trolloc outpost, had the nauseating experience of discovering partially cooked and eaten comrades.
The tunnels and caverns of Vater Island severely hampered the advance during the first week of combat, as the tightly confined battlefield made large-unit tactics, the common tactic of both Legios and Divisions, completely impossible to implement. Soon, a modified plan of battle was devised, where squads (or, in the Legios, decios), would leapfrog up the tunnels in triples, with one squad using melee weapons and shields, the second using muskets, and the third either providing support or moving up to take the first squad’s place, at which point all squads change position.
This new method of organized, squad-based combat would lead the combined forces to victory, but only at a horrific cost. Squad after squad disappeared into the tunnels, never to reemerge from the darkness. Hours of near constant combat turned into days, with the constantly echoing cries, howls, and gibbering of Trollocs audible at all times.