Aril took his place on a fortified balcony, with one of his master's guns. Like many others, it was converted from a captured fuse musket, now sporting a hammer and frizzen to blast away at the pull of the trigger. No matches needed, and one could actually focus on aiming the thing. It took the dwarves of Idodur seven years to perfect this since they first acquired such a gun from a foreign dwarven trader.
For all their want of quiet, the Giants were very loud going into battle. When the lot of them poured forth through the crack in the wall, Aril opened the first cartridge, and lowered the ear flaps on his hat before lining the barrel to aim. Today would not be quiet at all.
Kerblam! His and fifteen other shooters' volley tore right into the crowd, cracking the Giants' stony hides and knocking some down before they could close in to bang at the gates. Aril grit his teeth. Reload, aim.
Kerblam! Some of the Giants began trickling back while others just roared in fury as they leapt upon the steel bars. There, Aril could see a squad with axes and spears shifting around into a hasty shieldwall. He cursed as he fumbled with the gun to ready it for a third shot. The gates shattered. No way to aim into the fray.
It took just a minute for the battle to devolve into a total meat grinder of chaos. He saw banner poles cracking, bodies getting tossed about, a Giant with his leg hacked clean off, along with his foe headless on the ground. The dwarves fell back in a disorganized fashion, clearing the inner area behind the gates. Aril's own position atop the wall was about to be forfeit, but he wouldn't let them have it so easy. Because he also had grenades.
***
Two days before this, a bedraggled bunch of Ratlings had arrived to the gates opposite of these. Their leader, an old blind rat, spoke of monsters in the western caves under the command of a powerful goblin witch. The guards were going to turn them away but one of the guildmasters intervened on the Ratlings' behalf, and they were allowed to settle in the lower caves. Today, a few Ratling sharpshooters were up here with their crossbows, helping defend Idodur.
Aril missed the last part of the battle; he managed to lob three grenades before a piece of collapsing ceiling hit him on the head. When consciousness returned, he wasn't sure if he was out for a minute or a day. There was smoke, and shouting; stumbling, he found a way downstairs and across the courtyard, praying not to pass out again on one of the corpse piles.
"Another survivor!" Multiple hands grabbed him and carried him inside the gates. There were people, many wounded and bandaged, the room smelling of herbs and blood. A makeshift infirmary; Aril was surprised to find an old Ratling busy with herbal preparations while two apprentices assisted a Dwarven surgeon in another corner.
"Did we win?"
That was a stupid question. Of course they did.
Epic fight!
The Giants roll: 5, +8 for numbers for 13 total.
The Dwarves roll: 1, +8 for numbers, +3 for foundries, +1 for the artifact shield, +1 for the Ratlings' aid, for 14 total.
Without the Ratlings it would've been a tie, meaning heavy losses for both; I chose to represent it as the Ratlings having a talented healer, which minimized death on the Dwarven side.
***
During the same summer, Ngerxung successfully bred corpse fiends, using the old tombs as feeding grounds. Now she had a sizeable number of them to set up as a new minion group. She decided to bolster it with the golem as well, and there was a perfect target to try out its strength. Some so-called druids worshipping a man-eating plant in a corner. Their flesh and bone would feed her hungering horde through the rest of the year.
Ngerxung's minions roll: 6, +4 for numbers, for 10 total.
Ÿare's followers roll: 5, +2 for numbers, +1 for being an isolationist enclave, for 8 total.
Throughout the fall, all factions regained their breath a little, except for the druid cave which was completely destroyed in just two attacks. Giants tried to raid Ineth Nil, and lost again as the city's defenses were bolstered by Dwarven engineers now. An expedition was sent from Idodur to rescue the contents of the old library of Asteshdatan, adding more scrolls to the Dwarves' growing repository of knowledge.
In the winter, the Dwarves were busy chronicling the events of the year. Despite the shared victory, the Ratling tribe never really integrated into the city-state, preferring to remain a satellite much like the now-industrialized Theliiri commune. There were plans to accommodate both of those later, but for now looming overpopulation prevented much of the unification effort.
Despite technological advance, Idodur's resources had their limits; they could sustain eight extended families whereas any excess would have to spearhead Dwarven expansion, or splinter off into a settlement of their own. The latter was precisely what happened in the spring of 85. Seven dwarves, a donkey and a single pick was the recipe for a new colony over the unoccupied gold mines. The seven hoped to gain a veritable name for themselves, and they started by naming the mine: Kadbash Atol, "Hamaxe of Truth".
In case you're wondering why Ngerxung doesn't have a visible territory on the map, it's because her power base is distributed: she can move anywhere and send her minions anywhere. Other factions only have such ability as far as their territory extends. All of the dirt and stone are already hers as far as she is concerned; what matters to her is to control the creatures inhabiting it. She also uses burial grounds as her outposts, as evident by the supply caches there.
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Topic: Oldlands: Age of Dwarves (Read 34320 times)