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

 

[Gartz]

Gartz stood upon a low earthen rise, arms clasped behind his back, watching the choke tighten.

Downriver, a human ranger patrol moved along the reedbanks as the orcs expected, far from where the siege was being set up. One of them, stricken with dysentery, shuffled away from the others to expel his demons without the snickering of his comrades.

Moments later, the steady rhythm of chopping faltered.

The scout began to squat and froze. Across the narrow channel, an orc engineer paused mid-hammer, tusked face turning slowly toward him.

They stared.

The ranger lurched upright too fast with a yelp, slipped into the shallows with a splash, and shouted. The engineer roared in answer.

“Loose!”

Arrows hissed from the ridge. One ranger dropped with a cry as the patrol rushed forward, catching a brief, terrible glimpse: timber choking the waterway, stakes beneath the surface, hulking shapes along the bank.

“Fall back!” their leader barked.

They dragged their wounded and fled through the marsh. Orcs began to gather their weapons.

“Do not chase!” Gartz growled to his men. “Let them believe it is an isolated orc tribe in the delta.”

A small breach. Not fatal, but not clean. He had to bank on his King getting his part done fast. He couldn't risk scattering his forces, and the scouting party would return with reinforcements.

“Double the southern choke,” he continued evenly. “Finish the northern stakes. Shift scouts upriver. I want no blind ground.”

Below him, timber splashed into water. Stone thudded into place. The river narrowed further under disciplined hands.

Gartz kept his gaze on the distant rise where Crowfort stood.

“Seal it,” he said quietly.

 

[Urzak Iron-Hold]

​

The second night was worse. The climb steepened into a black wall of basalt angled just enough to make footing uncertain and just steep enough to punish hesitation. Wind came hard along the face slamming into them and trying to pry fingers loose from cracks.

They climbed through it. Halfway up Urzak found the first true quarry mark. It was too straight to be natural, a cut line running horizontal through the rock. Old dwarf work. Weathered smooth but still there.

Then the mountain shifted. A crack split the dark above sharp and violent. A slab tore loose and came down in a grinding roar. Not large enough to bury them but large enough to kill.

"Down!" Urzak snapped.

Stone shattered against the ledge below fragments spraying like shrapnel. One shard punched through mail and into a climber's shoulder. The impact spun him sideways and his foot slipped.

For a heartbeat he hung. Urzak drove his axe into a seam and lunged catching the orc by the wrist. The weight hit him hard pulling at something in his shoulder.

"Climb." Urzak growled.

The warrior found purchase. Another seized his harness. Together they hauled him back into line. Blood darkened the mail at the orcs shoulder.

"Can you climb?"

The orc nodded, teeth bared in pain.

"Then climb."

Not one orc argued. They reached the outer ridgeline later than planned but intact. No fires. Not talking. The wind dropped suddenly as if the mountain had spent its anger.

Urzak crouched at the crest and scanned the terrain ahead.

Another ridge blocked sight of the pass. Beyond that would be the shelf he'd marked in council, the one that should hold the quarry seams and vent cuts.

Crowfort itself was still hidden.

He ran a hand along the rock beneath him. More straight cuts. More old work. Dwarves had carved deep into this spine once. Stone that has been cut before cuts easier the second time. Urzak rose and looked to his twelve.

"We rest one hour. Then we push."

They were on the mountain's back now. And the mountain did not know yet what rode it.

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar felt the heavy groan of the portcullis as it rose, a slow and jagged sound that seemed to grate against his sensitive hearing.

To the humans, it was the sound of safety; to him, it was the opening of a maw. He walked into the belly to kill the stone beast from the inside.

He didn't hesitate. With a sharp, practiced jerk on the bindings, he forced Alak forward. The drow’s struggle was well-acted, a frantic display of desperate pride that seemed to unsettle the guards even further.

Azrakar leaned into the role, his face a mask of weary, professional frustration.

"Quiet, you rat," he snapped, his voice carrying a clipped, authoritative tone.

As they stepped through the threshold, the shadow of the gatehouse fell over them, cold and damp. Azrakar’s gaze flicked to the guards, committing their faces, their armour, and the trembling of their hands to memory.

"Move it!" he hissed at Alak, shoved the "prisoner" through the narrow gap before the iron grate could descend again.

Once inside, the atmosphere changed. The town was a hive of frantic activity, the clatter of hammers and the shouting of orders creating a discordant symphony of preparation.

He felt the weight of the stone walls around him, the arrogance of the masonry. It was a cage of their own making.

"Where is the dungeon?" Azrakar asked, directed at the guard on the far side of the gate.

He was offered directions. The dark elf drew attention, but everyone was clearly busy preparing the defence of the fort.

"Break your binds," Azrakar hissed, "but keep your wrists together."

 

[Alak Rasivrein]

Alak was shove-pulled into the city and he immediately began to look to the surroundings and the many threats within. This place was crawling with soldiers and knights, armed to the teeth and gnashing for blood.

Her silently worked at the restraints, loosing his wrists but keeping them behind his back as he did.

That way! one of the men yelled, pointing toward an outcropping that led down underground, under an inner wall and into a dark, poorly lit tunnel below.

A twirling staircase led down but before they would be able to make it down to the bottom one of the guards caught up with them.

I can take the prisoner from here. You'll have to clear out of the city before the fight comes. Rumor is the horde'll be here within three days.

Azrakar

 

[Gartz]

He knew it wasn’t the last he had seen of the patrol. Gartz walked through the siege setup. All his careful planning, potentially thwarted by a soldier with the runs, had to be a career low. Fortunately, his King was nowhere near to witness the embarrassing sequence of events.

“Commander!” One of his men squealed, “A riding party approaches!”

“Form ranks,” He called out gruffly, “Spears out. Break the horses first.”

This was bad. A skirmish in the middle of the night where they could all barely see and while Azrakar and Alak were attempting to infiltrate, was a whole lot of things going wrong at once.

The riders were noisy, yelling a rallying cry as they charged toward the orc ranks.

“Hold,” Gartz said.

Orcs shifted into a braced line, spearpoints angled low.

“Now!”

The first horse went down screaming as iron bit deep into its chest. Another stumbled as a hooked spear tore through its foreleg. Rider and mount crashed into the mud together.

The clash came fast.

Gartz stepped forward into it, mace already in hand. He caught a charging rider across the helm with a brutal upward swing. Bone and metal gave with a wet crack. The man dropped without a sound.

“Left flank close!” He growled, "Drive them into the river!"

The skirmish was fully underway.

—--​

Meanwhile, on the walls of the fort, a sentry squinted as he watched fires flickering and smoke rising in the distance. He couldn’t hear it, but it was unusual enough to catch his attention. He called out, “Commotion near the delta! Should we send scouts out to investigate?”

The call would be audible to Azrakar and Alak, who would know that things were not going as smoothly as they hoped.

Azrakar Alak Rasivrein