In other news I have a job interview on Tues so will prob not be in on Mon due to need do prep & get sleep.
Hope it went well!
In other news... drums... drums in the deep...
The Battle of the Porphyrian Caverns.
When intelligence reports came to the Topaz Throne that the New Model Rat Army was attempting to literally undermine the Fortress of Onyx, the city guard prepared a sortie to venture into the underdeep. Some say the stygian Porphyrian Caverns represent the last vestiges of a cyclopean civilisation which flourished in the Zephyr mountains before the elves descended from the stars. Others assert that the piles of ochre masonry which tower above the traveller are naturally occurring. Regardless, between crumbling ruins, rivers of pitch, and the numberless trip hazards concealed by the dim light of veins of irradiated quartz, the Porphyrian Caverns are not a safe place for anyone, let alone a heavily-armoured assault force more accustomed to fighting above ground.
The rattish and elvish forces blundered into each other after days of marching and countermarching. Along the way, both sides had managed to forge impromptu alliances with races unheard of in the surface world. The Fomorians, currently believed to be a tribe of cave Kobolds, lent their substantial digging power to the NMRA, while the elves secured an alliance with the Sidhe, evidently the remnants of some long-forgotten elvish expedition into the depths.* Too late, both rats and elves realised that they had been drafted as auxiliaries in a war of the underdeep, and not vice versa.
The battle began as the Sidhe hurled their right flank forward with a dreadful howl down one of the causeways between great lakes of inky foulness. Crashing with wild abandon into the dense, gibbering masses of Fomorians, they were beaten back with heavy losses. The Fomorian line advanced, one of their dread shamans reaching his evil claw toward the Sidhe-elvish ranks and muttering a spell of discombobulation.
As the Sidhe rallied for another charge, the elvish guardsmen hauled forward a battery of bolt throwers borrowed from the fortress arsenal and worked frantically to load them. The hissing and bubbling of the tar pits in the depths put an oily residue on wood, metal and the thick bowstrings, making rapid work impossible. To cover the advance, a party of His Serene Highness' own Astral Swords took up station on the Sidhe right flank. It was there that the baleful illusions of the Fomorian mage entered their hearts and the Astral guardsmen wavered at the sight of the enemy line rolling forward like a tidal wave.
Then came the worst; the NMRA force finally found its way out of the depths and sited a dreadful multi-barreled cannon amidst a party of mousketeers. Belching black powder, it tore through the enchanted armour of the Astral Swords, laying low all but Dol-Hathon, the sortie's commander. With the City Guard still marching to cover the left flank of the elvish force, Dol-Hathon threw himself furiously on the rattish mousketeers, hacking many down and forcing them to drag their volley gun out of the firing line. As the verminous gunners were forced backward against the sheildwall of their supporting infantry, pursued by volleys of bolts, one bold mouseketeer finally collected himself enough to put a mousket ball through Dol-Hathon's head.
The Sidhe charged again, with more success. The war-cries of their chieftans mingled with the dying screams of Fomorians as both the peoples of the underdeep exacted fathomless vengeance on their ancestral enemies. On the left flank the elves and rats eyed each other warily, ears and whiskers twitching uncomfortably, realising they were all well out of their depth and were really hoping to see at least one more sunrise. They were aided in their reticence by former Lord Chancellor Calenhad, whose career had taken a knock after she had failed to deliver a decisive victory on The Day The Sky Turned Red. Calenhad's nineteen theses on underdeep magic were quite sufficient, it had been thought, to provide magical guidance to the sortie. Unfortunately, being underground plays havoc with the magical signal, and when Calenhad failed to cast so much as a swamp-light for the fourth time, both sides decided to cut to the chase and both elvish and rattish phalanxes advanced to meet each other.
The Fomorian chieftans, their largest axemen chanting blood-curdling battle songs, hacked down Sidhe warrior after Sidhe warrior until the right flank crumbled away entirely. In the centre, too, the Sidhe nobles made charge after charge into the Fomorian ranks, finally silencing the terrible mutterings of the Shaman with a spear to the throat. The dark, bubbling pools of the Porphyrian Caverns ran red with the blood of the underdeep.
Divided from the main action by the bubbling reservoirs of viscous evil, a wall of elvish spearmen crashed into the largest and most noisome of the NMRA's warriors. Elvish and rattish blood soaked into the earth as both sides hacked and thrust away at their opponents. As the battle lurched from one end of the cavern to the other, The rattish crossbowmen managed to loose a volley into Calenhad's own regiment, felling some of the sorceresses' own escort. At last, Calenhad summoned the wherewithal to send a blast of prismatic energy directly into the midst of the great rats, scorching several to the bone sending the rest scurrying back into the darkness. The rat commander's bodyguard, in response, scattered one of the elvish phalanxes and squared up to Calenhad's own troops for the final act of the battle.
By this time, the Porphyrian ruins were creaking and cracking under the strain and a disturbing rumbling emanated from the steaming cracks and crevasses which latticed the battlefield. The Sidhe nobility, having closed up on the elvish bolt throwers, were heaved backward by the rattish shieldwall onto the axe blades of their Fomorian nemeses. The last elves, rats and Fomorians prepared for the final assault. The rattish chieftan, with a chilling screech, crashed into Calenhad's guards and the rattish heavy infantry advanced into a hail of bolts. Calenhad's considerable time on both the polo and lacrosse fields turned out to be much more useful than the underdeep doctorate, and the rats found themselves forced back once again with a few missing heads and limbs.
With the entire operation a mess, even Calenhad had to admit that discretion was probably the best option. The Elves marched back down the tunnels in what they hoped was the general direction back up to the fortress. The rats, having achieved their primary aim of getting their fur good and matted with enemy blood, siezed what trophies they could and made their way back to the surface with a haste borne, they said, of sheer enthusiasm for the fruits of victory (i.e. a breath of fresh air and some nice copper ingots to chew on) and not at all of concern for the structural integrity of the Porphyrian ruins. As for the Fomorians... no doubt they had a favourable story to take back to their cave-cities, but without a shared military journal it has proven difficult for both rats and elves to assess the impact of the battle on the subgeopolitics of the underdeep.
*Elvish scholars have dismissed claims of a green and bountiful island named "Erran" in an underground sea many leagues beneath the Neythyr Regions. Despite the strangely coincidental descriptions by both Sidhe and Fomorian emissaries, this land is clearly the stuff of superstitious folklore.