Battle of the Titanworks

Greetings!

Yet another battlereport from the bloody fields of the Flamescar Plateau as my Sunsplitterz seek to conquer the Titanworks. The Order army of the Thule Brotherhood stands in my way, so there's some bashin' to do!

This battle is part of the ongoing Firestorm Campaign.

The battlefield is an ancient industrial-ish area where great titans were once forged and assembled. Now the entire region is littered with their rusty husks and remains. The battle itself was all about burning and pillaging the ancient dwellings of the area to deny the enemy of finding anything valuable.

On with the story!


_______________________________________________________________________

Having been severely defeated once more at the Eyes of the Prismatikon, Prophet Wozoc Squinteye had returned to his tribe's mainland in the Magebane Dungeons to the south. There he preached to his followers about their great success in the conquest of the plateau so far, until word came in from hunting parties that "da thunder door" had appeared in the neighbouring region. Not only this, but the wandering realmgate had also spewed forth an entire cohort of 'umies, all prepped up for war in their puffy hats and swirling flags.

What an excellent chance to get on a good scrap and to redeem himself in the eyes of his followers!

They marched day and night to reach the region to the north, the Titanworks. A grim graveyard of gigantic titans, rusting away around the abandoned husk of an ancient industrial city.

The freeguilders of the Thule Brotherhood had already set up a makeshift camp in the ruins. A camp the Sunsplitterz had come to tear down for sport. Summoning up the last dregs of authority left for him in the eyes of the warband, Wozoc gestured his orruks to charge in and kill.

That was the one thing they knew how to do and that would make them very happy.

Apparently sent on some unspecified quest to the Titanworks, the Thule expedition was led by Luther Flamestrike, a renowned battlemage of the Bright College. His name or title was of no interest to the orruks, though; there was a giant bird to be stabbed at, after all!

Surging forth, the Sunsplitterz paid no mind to the shower of bolts rained upon them by the enemy crossbowmen. Bolts sticking from their orange hides, the brutes slammed merrily into the freeguilder ranks before they could wind their weapons again.

To make sure his boyz stayed in the fight, Prophet Squinteye wove protective spells around them to shield them from harm. He had lost enough followers in the past few weeks to make even an orruk rethink his employed tactics.

In melee the crossbowmen proved to be a tougher nut than their marksmanship had suggested; although many of them fell under the cold bites of the weepwood chompas, their castleforged daggers claimed unwary orruk lives in return.

 A trio of Demigryph Knights began a counter-charge along with their griffon-mounted general. The Arrowboys sent a cloud of shafts to greet the monstrous newcomer but the creature merely shrugged off the shoddy arrows and kept coming. The boys were excited at this prospect of real challenge!

The Demigryph riders crashed into the Big Stabbas on the left, stomping the spear-carriers to the ground or spitting them on their lances. They were simply too swift for the cumbersome orruk weapons to catch.

On the right the rest of the Big Stabbas ran for the griffon, intent on caliming its powerful bones for the tribe. The Arrowboys used their hunter's cunning, backing away from the foe to draw in the impatient freeguilder noble and his mount.

Wozoc watched his tribe at work. The warriors to the front were struggling with the crossbowmen who blocked entrance to the rusted building the orruks were supposed to burn. Arrowboys tried to play cunning and the Big Stabbas rushed towards the big bird.

Big Boss Grom the Punch of the Shifty Mountain leapt to the help of the Stabbas on the left flank, beheading a demigryph in one swing and jumping on the fallen knight to strangle him to death. The remaining two riders slashed their weapons across the back of the Boss, drawing out a painful groan from the brute, even as their mounts tore apart the last spear-carriers.

The two Big Stabbas on the right never scratched their target. As soon as they drew in within range of the beast, a massive claw swept them aside. Their crushed forms rolled on the dry, grass-spotted ground before coming to a halt beside their giant splintered spears.

Up by the building the fighting dragged on, the orruks hacking away at crossbowmen who  screamed in panic as they dodged the clumsy blows one after another. From his vantage point in the middle ruins Wozoc saw it all and prayed for the great Gorkamorka to let his useless followers succeed in something even once.

His prayers were for naught. A massive regiment of Freeguild Swordsmen crashed into the rear of the boyz, their drums beating hectically as in anticipation to the coming bloodshed. The orruks would never reach the building anymore.

Even as the swordsmen butchered their surprised prey, sinking their blades hilt-deep into exposed orange backs, Big Boss Grom finished off the demigryphs.

Leaping up from the carcass of the first knight, Grom shouldered the second from his mount and rolled to the ground with him. A swift backhand swing of the giant weepwood axe beheaded the screeching beast, before descending to split the grounded man's helm in half. The third knight rushed in, only to have his mount wrestled to the ground by the orruk and himself crushed beneath its rolling weight. Eventually Grom popped up from the cloud of dust and feathers, roaring triumph while standing atop the mangled corpses of three of the enemy's elite.

Even with the knights gone, there were still many humans to deal with. The boyz by the burnable building had managed to set one corner of it on fire with torches and flintstones, only to get stabbed to death by swords afterwards. Only the totem bearer of the boys still stood, roaring impotent rage as the last two crossbowmen withdrew from the battle, leaving the melee to their more proficient colleagues.

Losses to the front, Wozoc thought. Losses to the rear too, he guessed, as the flap of giant wings ended in a ground-shaking stomp and screams of dying orruks. The griffon was tearing apart his Arrowboys, who were enthusiastically stabbing at the monster with their arrows.

A booming voice on the wind tore the Prophet out of his thoughts. The human mage was casting a spell. With echoing words of power and much waving of hands, the wizard conjured up a massive fireballl and hurled it at Wozoc.

"Ooooh, bugga..." Squinteye muttered, before wrapping himself up into a ball inside his drakeskin cloak and crouching behind the building's window frames. A wave of heat brushed over him, magical flames still clinging to the ruins and crackling ominously as the Prophet raised his head again.

"Hah! Ya missed, 'umie zapper!"

With only one building partially aflame, his boyz and Big Stabbas all but slain and a griffon tearing apart his hunters, Wozocs hopes were on his second-in-command. Big Boss Grom the Punch of the Shifty Mountain roared out a challenge as he ran around the smouldering building, setting his one good eye on the crossbowmen guarding it. They would need to die if he was to set the rest of the structure burning, too.

"T-t-that's a big one! Flynn, your crossbow winded yet?", asked one of the men with a quivering voice.
"N-n-no. Yours...?" replied the other, staring at the charging Big Boss with his mouth hanging open.
"Nope. We'd better get at it, and fast, then!"

One last sweep and the Arrowboys were gone. The ground around the griffon was littered with orange corpses, the general atop the beast waving his sigmarite hammer and whooping as if drunk on his triumph.

Prophet Squinteye didn't like the odds of the battle stacking against him and climbed down from the ruined building. Halfway down the wall he heard a wooshing sound to this right, turning his masked head around just in time to receive a fireball to the face. He fell down to the ground on his back, coughing up black smoke and using his gnarled hands to slap at the flames clinging to the smouldering stumps of his mask's feathers.

"Roight, ye'll pay for dat, cursed 'umie!"

Grom let out a mighty bellow as he leapt in for the kill. The two crossbowmen had just managed to wind and reload their weapons, both closing their eyes as they leveled them towards the charging brute and squeezed the triggers with white-knuckled hands.

Two bolts thrummed off into the air, hissing as they went. One of the hisses stopped short. There was a grunt and a thump. Something scratched across the dirt. Flynn, his eyes still pressed shut, felt pressure on his left foot.

"Oh no, oh no, oh dear god Sigmar please preserve us from the fury of the..." 
"Flynn? Flynn! Open your eyes, you oaf, you hit it!"
"What?" 
"You hit it! Clean through the neck, just like that!"

Opening his eyes, the young crossbowman stared down straigth into the slowly clouding red eye of the Big Boss. Its massive body lay limp on the ground at the end of a short trail of dislodged dirt, its forehead laying on top of the man's foot. A pool of dark blood was spreading beneath its throat from which a single bolt protruded.

With the Big Boss dead, his Arrowboys dead, his Big Stabbas dead and the last of his warriors getting chopped apart before his eyes, Prophet Squinteye realized he was alone. There were enemies everywhere around him.

The regiment of swordsmen turned around and started running towards him. Grinning beneath his bady burned mask, Wozoc raised his staff and barked out the words of his most powerful spell.

The Fists of Gork (or possibly Mork)!

He pounded his fists up and down in the air, laughing maniacally. Suddenly several green, spectral fists the size of boars appeared right above the freeguilders, starting to pound down upon them mimicing the rhythm of Wozoc's own. Men were crushed flat or sent hurtling sideways as the giant fists hammered down again and again, halting the regiment's advance as the soldiers broke formation to jump aside away from the death from above.

Squinteye used this moment of respite to his advantage and charged the lonely mage standing off to the side, staring grimly at the apparition battering his forces.

Wozoc swung out with his ju-ju-staff, only to have it intercepted by the mage's pyrestaff. Sparks clouded the prophet's vision for a moment, and from out of the cloud came the mage's hand, wreathed in flame. Wozoc took a step back to dodge the blow, before lunging in with his weepwood knife. He struck something, twisted the blade and drew it back. A ribbon of red cloth was hanging from it.

"Huh..." the orruk sighed in disbelief. With a smile upon his face that didn't quite reach his eyes, the human mage swatted his flame-topped staff across the prophet's temple. As the orruk recovered from the stagger, the battlemage conjured up another fireball in his hands and sent it washing over the prophet. The swordsmen had reached them by then, plunging into the resulting cloud of black smoke screaming bloody murder and stabbing in with their blades.

Their swords found no purchase in the smoke, and after a moment of frantic search the cloud began to disperse. There was no sign of the orruk.

"There it goes, after it!"

Directed by the shout of the rearmost swordsman, the rest set after the fleeing Prophet until the entire freeguild cohort was chasing the flapping drakeskin cloak across the rusted landscape. Once again the one who only sought to split the sun had to run for his life in defeat, his enemies hard on his heels.

____________________________________________________________________

A victory for the Thule Brotherhood!

This game wasn't even a close one, the freeguilders soundly beat my orange backside and mopped the floor with the bleeding corpses of my warriors. Now the forces of Order have a Garrisoned region right at my doorstep. Things aren't looking that great for the Sunsplitterz in the campaign, so let us hope that one day Gorkamorka smiles upon his beleagured people.

Until next time!