Open Chronicles The Battle of Crowfort

[Azrakar]

The Battle of Crowfort: Introduction

Welcome to the opening march of the Northern Campaign of the Hollow King.

Following the gathering of the Obsidian War Council, the forces of the Hollow King have descended upon Crowfort, a vital strategic stronghold that guards safe road from the Ixchel stone to the settlements in the north of the Spine.

Taking this fortress is a necessity to secure the supply lines and portal stones required for expansion.

The assault is divided into three distinct, interconnected storylines.

Players can engage with one or more of these paths to determine the success of the siege:



Gartz set the orc lines.

The orc tribes set their lines around the fort. They cut off supplies and prepare to flush out the human and dwarven defenders when the Gates are open.


Urzak Iron-Hold leads a treacherous journey through the mountain the fortress is backed against. They look to crack the foundations of the city, but they may need to contend with dwarven scouts.



Azrakar and Alak Rasivrein infiltrate the city under the guide of ranger and prisoner. They aim to strike at the Central winch chamber and disable the gate.

 

[Azrakar]

Alak Rasivrein

Axrakar could be a deceitful creature when he needed to be. They were far from the biting alpine wind of the peaks or the dry, volcanic heat of his own halls.

Azrakar moved with a fluid, measured gait that felt unnatural to his true spirit. In this humanoid guise his immense power was coiled tight, hidden beneath layers of travel-worn leathers and a cloak.

He had arranged his glamour in the style of an Allirian Ranger. He walked with quiet confidence towards the gate, his crimson eyes dimmed to a dull, wine-dark hue that didn't immediately betray his nature.

Vyx’aria’s challenge echoed in the back of his mind like a persistent itch. Learn how to dance.

"Guards!" he shouted.

They held their spears tight, but the gates were still open. He gauged the crossbows on the walls. They knew the orcs were coming.

"I found this drow spy down the river!" Azrakar called out. He stepped aside to reveal the dark elf with wrists bound in rope. The false knot would come undone easily enough, but it would do no good if the ruse failed and they were peppered with arrows from the walls.

 

[Gartz]

Some Cute Shit..​

It was the morning before they would begin their march. Gartz was making final preparations in his tent. At the corner of his eye, he caught the flicker of a shadow, glancing up to see the lithe form of Lysdania. He could never comprehend how she moved so silently. She could kill the camp a thousand overs in their sleep if she chose.

And yet what greeted him was a smile.

“Are you certain I cannot come for this?”

Gartz said nothing, glancing down at his choice of weapons. He had to pack efficiently and he had to gather the most reliable orcs for the task. Half of them were still snoring and nursing hangovers.

Lysdania sighed, “Very well. Will you……let me help you with your armor?”

Gartz scoffed at that, “I know how to put my-”

“I know that,” the drow woman hissed, “Let me tell you a secret almost no one outside of our people knows about. Putting the armor on another is very special.”

Gartz gave her a skeptical look, reaching for his pauldron. What a silly notion, he thought. After all any rich or important bastard could get someone to put their armor on for them.

Lysdania placed her hand on his to stop him, “-our nature is to be deceptive and suspicious. So when a drow trusts another to put their armor on, it is a sign they…”

“They..?”

Lysdania stared at him. Then she rolled her eyes. She said nothing else, picking up different plates of his armor and fastening them on. Gartz, to his credit, mercifully kept his mouth shut and patiently waited till she was done.

“Do not die a silly death out there,” she said before she lingered for a moment and left the tent. Gartz stared after her for a while. Then he grinned to himself, a private little thing before he had to put on the true armor of being a war commander the moment he set foot outside of the tent.

The Delta​

“Cut them,” he said.

The first command went to the timber clans. Orcs moved into the tree line along the southern fork of the Iuk-’u Delta. Axes bit into thick river oaks. They felled them at angles, trunks dropped into the shallows where the river narrowed, guided by ropes and teams to wedge between sandbars and stone.

More trees followed, layered, interlocked and weighed with stone hauled from the banks.

Within hours, the southern channel choked with a skeletal barricade of timber and rock, enough to slow any merchant craft, enough to force ships to cluster.

And where ships would cluster, they would burn.

“Pitch teams,” Gartz ordered.

Barrels were rolled to the bank. Thick, tarred bundles prepared. Archers took position along elevated ridgelines overlooking the fork, each given oil-wrapped arrowheads and reserve bundles of resin-soaked rags.

They would not fire yet.

They would wait.

The northern branch received a different treatment.

Rather than block it fully, Gartz left a narrow navigable lane, a deliberate mercy. Any captain seeking passage would think the channel still viable.

Hidden beneath the waterline, sharpened stakes were driven into the mud in staggered rows. Just deep enough to gut hulls. Just shallow enough to go unseen.

The river would do the rest.

The Roads​

On land, he turned to the roads.

“Drop the trees across the high road. Not here. There.”

He pointed to the bend where wagons slowed to navigate the narrowing between river and marsh.

Orcs felled timber there and lashed trunks together into layered barricades. Earth was shoveled and packed behind them to form low ramparts. Ditches were dug at angles to catch wheels.

Beyond the visible roadblock, scouts were sent three miles out in rotating shifts.

No messenger would pass unseen.

No relief force would approach uncounted.

The blockades were prepared and settling in, cutting off Crowfort from any kind of supply all before they realized what happened.

 

[Urzak Iron-Hold]

​

They moved when the light died and the main host settled into noise and smoke behind them. Urzak did not look back. Twelve climbers peeled away from the army and angled toward the harshest face of the Spine. No trail, no cut path. Just fractured rock and steep shelves.

They carried no banners. The lit no fires. They wore only light kit.

Exactly as Urzak had said they would.

The first stretch was a brutal incline of broken shale. Boots slid. Gauntlets scraped. Iron spikes rang softly as they were driven into cracks and tested before weight shifted onto them. Urzak climbed first, choosing holds without hesitation. If the rock failed it would fail under him not one of the younger warriors.

The wind sharpened once the sun dropped. Cold bit hard and fast. Breath streamed and vanished.

They spoke only when needed. "Rope." "Hold." "Shift Left."

Halfway up the face one of the climbers muttered "Loose seam."

Urzak wedged his axe head into the fracture and leaned his weight against it. The stone gave a little too easily. He spat over the edge.

"Not that one."

He hammered a spike two hand-spans higher and shifted the route. The others followed without question. Good orcs.

By full dark they reached a narrow shelf, barely wide enough for twelve armored bodies to crouch without knocking one another into the void. The land fell away beneath them in black silence.

No scouts would not be watching here.

Urzak remained standing while the others settled in rotation. He scanned the ridgelines ahead. Two more climbs like this and they would reach the outer ridgeline he'd marked in council. From there the quarry scars would begin to show. Old dwarf work was easy to read if you knew the signs.

Two nights to the seams. One more to study the anchors. He measured it again in his head. They were on pace.

"Sleep in turns." He said quietly. "If you fall, do not shout."

A few low grunts answered him.

Urzak wedged himself against the rock rather than lie flat. His axe rested across his knees. He let the cold settle into him and did not flinch from it.

Stone did not care who climbed it but it remembered pressure. And in a couple of days that memory would split a fortress open.

 

[Alak Rasivrein]

Alak had been forced to relinquish his sword to Azrakar but the armor and the life-storing jewel in its center was still present. He resisted the urge to test the bonds around his wrists, being forced to trust that they would slide away when the time came.

Internally, he was seething, though, and it made it all the easier to play the stereotypical role of violent and vitriolic Drow warrior.

I'm gonna rip at all your filthy little innards! he hissed as he was pushed forward by the demon.

A Drow, you say? one of the guards said, looking down at the pair with suspicion.

We ain't heard nothin about their filthy kind here. What unit you with, Ranger? the man called dow in reply as another guard came to look at the Drow. Everybody always wanted to come look at the Drow.

I'll boil your blood inside you if you even look at me! she shouted up at them, deciding the raving lunatic might actually lower their guard a bit. Obviously, a raving lunatic who was bound couldn't plan or be a real threat.

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

We ain't heard nothin about their filthy kind here. What unit you with, Ranger? the man called down

"Neither had I," Azrakar replied.

"Elm Section," he called back up. The Allirian Rangers had always been a loose band of fighters who protected the wilds around alliria. He was hoping that was still the case.

"Plenty of orc scouts around but caught this one off guard. They still killed my companion."

Azrakar threw some venom behind those words.

"I don't know why a dark elf is here. You can find that out. I'm not staying long. I'm a ranger and you have orcs closing in."

 

[Alak Rasivrein]

The guards looked at each other then at the captor and prisoner then at the horizon. There was no one else nearby in the surrounding and one nodded to the other to open the portcullis just enough to allow them through.

Hurry on, the both of you, the man hissed, and Alak began to make a show of trying to wrestle against being pulled into the town.

So close to being inside, but that was only the first - if one of the most difficult - challenges they would face.

Azrakar