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The Western flank/Anthill
In a rare glimpse of sheer dignity from the Dragon Legionaires, the pride and ailing, churlish arogance of the Warlock Order is overshadowed by the ferocity and valor of an ancient knightly order. Torikz, the dwarven commander of the operation itself gives an impassive nod towards his enemy across the shroud of darkness and infravision. It was time for him, as well as his subordinates, to accept the challenge of a most worthy enemy. Torikz is surrounded by the elite of the elite within his heavy infantry division - the Dragon Legion field commander's personal guard. The waraxes, heavy broadswords, and howling, whirling chainsaws of the Legionaires meet with the melee tools of the Godslayer's dwarven host for an epic conclusion to this epic engagement. The fight begins.

Torikz pushes up front, leading the advance into enemy ranks himself, surrounded upon all sides by his personal guard, the vangaurdish razor edge of a slicing sabre against the enemy. Around and behind him, the dwarven heavies and Hobgoblin stormtroopers advance methodically. Large body shields are contorted into a series of triangular formations - mimicking the Norse relics of past, bloody endgames, as the Legionaires split themselves up into three formations almost immediately. One, lead by Torikz himself assails dead into the center of their enemy, the other two force their way in twin slashes out from their commander's flanks. The dragons, surprisingly, are not yet attacked. Torikz, in his rigid, anti-hero's mien, seems to have read their impassive defensiveness as a sign that they are, as of yet, not ready to committ to an all out attack. For all his ruthlessness, a deffinate prerequisite for membership in the Legion, let alone a field commander's position, Torikz was a loyalist, and a soldier, with a defined cause and purpose on the battlefield. He despised the Great Allies and their backing of hated Venway - which most Warlock Order patriots still consider the archnemisis of their empire. However, he also knew that the Godslayer soldiers were men with a cause. He could not and help but respect their dignity in the face of his own fearsome division and all of their backing from the Hobgoblins. Torikz would allow them the oppurtunity to show him the same measure of respect. He would not attempt to flank the Godslayer advance. Attrition would be inevitable. But, sooner or later, both of these great armies had to fight face to face for a deffinate outcome. Torikz hews his way into the enemy with a grim and fatalistic smile gleaming at his foes. If they wanted victory tonight, then they would have to earn every last inch of ground. The "pitch fork" formation of the division as a whole was designed to press the attack, keep Torikz' every flank defended at the same time, and give the Legionaire Hobgoblin stormtroopers the space necessary to blitz forth to wreck swift stabs to the collective skull of the enemy.

Hobgoblin stormtroopers act, again, in units, but, as ordered, these blitz-soldiers have put away their submachine guns and shotguns, in favor of razored longswords, battle-axes, and bastard swords. They move from in between Torikz' group and his two sister formations. (Imagine a pitch fork, blazing lightning from in between the center prong and the outter ones.)

They make attacks aimed at disrupting unity and causing the opponents to falter, as the three groups of dwarven heavies push forwards. After short sprees of destruction, the Hobgoblins fall back, and significant pursuit will allow either of the two outter "prongs" of dwarven troops to collapse upon their foes. The superior speed and mobility of Hobgoblins trained specifically for stormtrooper tactics, coupled with the relentless tenacity of the Legionaire dwarves, should present a difficult set of obstacles for the Godslayer dwarves - who are battling their counterparts, while being hit up front by streaks of blitz attacks at the same time.

((Okay, I imagine that these two engaging forces are almost each others' equal, give or take. Heavy carnage on both sides is inevitable. So, am I right in assuming this is a battle of tactics? Who ever outmannuveres the other will eventually win... Your turn, Rob -g-))

The Hobgoblin infantry (not to be confused with their far more elite brethren in the storm trooper units fighting within the Dragon Legion.) to the North and South are, at first, stalled like a man with his breath knocked from him by the collaborate efforts of the elven snipers' original fire. An immediate request for aid from the Dragon Legion's Drow guerrillas, still unmarked and elusive within the field, is sent out via radio frequencies. Of course, the sniper fire surprisingly ends almost as soon as it began, and the Hobgoblins, for all of their heavy training and indoctrination, are caught totally offguard by the brilliant sword tactic of the elves - which was calculated with precision, at almost exactly the right point in time. Entire platoons of Hobgoblin rushers caught unprepared for the "Highland Strike" are laid down - cold, bleeding, and dead by the attack. The dragons' cover fire, with gouts of flame and, finally, mopping up with their brilliant swords gleaming and basking in the nihilism further crush the Hobgoblin infantry as they attempt to flank. The northern bayonet charge towards the dwarven regiments is virtually annihilated - and left dead in the waters, with Hobgoblins running for their lives in an all out route. The Dragon Legion's own northern flank is now exposed. Will the elves and dragons press their advantage, or allow the duel between the elite heavy weights to go on unhindered?

The Southern flank is cripled, to say the least, by the Highland Strike administered by the elves and the follow up tactics of the dragons. They can not hold on for much longer. So Warlock Order field officers begin to give the orders for counter-attacks.

Hobgoblins engage the elves here in melee combat, using their bayonets and sabres with deadly ferociousness. Others amongst these units are sent to attack the dragons directly, after they enter the melee, armed with two-handed "great swords" traditionally applied as an anti-cavalry weapon.

The orcish "death and glory" assault upon the anthill is a total botch in strategy (what strategy?) those lucky enough to survive the first 20 minutes or so of battle break and run, shrieking, into the night, some still pursued to their deaths by the raging, firey bulls. Black comedy for some of the more calloused or sick minded. But the orcs' devilish fanaticism to their heathen "God of Slaughter" and slavish devotion to the Baron was over, in a rather ignoble fashion.

The Fall of the Hagalz Line

The Spider Army's meager numbers skirmishers ((meaning the actual drow operatives involved)) did take some casualties from the unexpected use of gas weapons against their collapsed pitfalls which had murderously butchered more than a few of Archos' troops in the descent and the aftermath of flames and extermination. After a few drow are made examples of by the Godslayers' gas weapons, the Spider Army's villainous hierarchy is revealed. Death squads of bugbears and kobolds are sent in with everything from venomous daggers to outright flame throwers to continue the outright extermination of everyone caught in these pitfalls. Soon, the shadow elves have sealed off their own tunnels and vanishes to whence they came from. With no where left to run, their thralls generally die along with their victims in the pitfalls, as Archos applies in his own brand of extermination. Also heavily effected are the Dragon Legion dwarven sappers who were causing the technical effects of this earthen chaos. Many engineers meet their gruesome deaths, pre-burried in what used to be tunnels amidst crushed digging machines and tools.

So the dragon king is not above the horrific vicissitudes of gas warfare, muses the Baron. Excellent.

At this point, he knew that his own life was most assuredly forfeit. His grand Hagalz line had fallen to a force of inferior numbers and his strategy of attrition on devestating scales had been defeated. The Warlock Order tolerated no failure - especially from its senior generals. As much as his troops had paid the price for his strategy, so too would the Baron pay the price of his own failure to destroy the invaders with one of the mightiest fortresses the East has ever seen.

That fortress had fallen - finally.

Doriztenz gives the order for his soldiers to use their final card left in this pitched battle - Archos' forces were concentrated into two massive army groups. His own forces were thinned out over miles and miles of terrain. The Baron gives the order for the capitol of Galen Thal to prepare for outright siege, and the soldiers not trapped and destroyed by Archos' pin-pointed breach of the trenches, were commanded to fall back, abandon the line, and slowly form into a ring of defenders around the city. ((The shortening amount of terrain will allow the huge numbers of troops to mass out in defense of the capitol, but relief will likely be easier to mount when one section to another. i.e. less territory to cover=less time it takes to avoid a repeat of the Hagalz line's gravest error - not being able to use superior numbers to his advantage.))

The surviving ballistas around the line are burned by their female crews, who are carted away from the accursed trenches and back towards the city.

As for the Baron himself? He waits. Impassively observing the collapse of his evil dream - the Hagalz line and the Iron Web of cold attrition in which Galen Thal would be kept by the Warlock Order. The Knight of Oblivion general grimly smiles. He had met his match. Well done, dragon. Well done...

His own personal guard gathers about him upon that barren field as the rain begins to sweep downwards, once again reducing the broken countryside into filthy slush and gouting, flowing mud.

Haughtily, the Baron ignores advice from his personal "advisors" ((who feel more like fearfully patronizing hostages kept for the death knight's amusement and for his bursts of unsupressed rage)) to flee now, into the Spider Army's tunnels. To bloody hell with the cowardly and sniping shadow elves.

Baron Crispin Doriztenz unsheaths his arcane, rune-engraved sabre. It is a tyrannical weapon made for the iron-fisted gauntlet of an elitist tyrant - a curving, heavy and razored weapon of lunar shades - everything from blackest ebony to pallid, deathly ivory.

And so, the Baron of Galen Thal waits to finally meet his opponent from across this bloody and viscious chessboard, face to face.

((Okay, here's the summary of the fall of the Hagalz line.

The defenders began with 250,000 total troops as opposed to Archos' 40,000 men [correct?]

Approximately, give or take, 210,000 soldiers fought for the Warlock Order lines upon this final night.

Now, 111,000 remain to defend the capitol city, wisely falling back to fight on the open terrain. Note that they will be backed by some serious artillery action, as the artillery divisions of the Baron are still relatively intact.

The capitol has a "Hagalz Guard" of around 10,000 old men and boys from the city itself and the surrounding countryside mustered and ill-equipped, but still ready to defend the city.

Total casualties tonight for the Order equal approximately 99,000 in men killed, wounded and/or captured, and deserters. Total fatalities probably equal about 35,000 lives lost tonight. 64,000 more men were lost to injury and/or capture and desertion. Appalling, but those are the facts.

And Archos made every front page of every Allied newspaper out there, I'm sure.

The Hagalz Line has fallen.

I haven't calculated the casualties from the Dragon Legionaire dwarves' units yet. That battle is still going on.

What are Archos' casualties, so far?