Lebendeländer Civil War

The Kingdom of Lebendeländer sits on a geopolitical fault line between The Kingdom of Awegon to the west and north and Ausfenz to the east and controls the only major crossing point between them. In the year of 932 PA this came to a front when the king proposed starting negotiations with Awegon over the claim to the north of the valley which was and still is controlled by Awegonian forces. This outraged two groups of people: the military, who faced massive cuts to their budget if the chances of conflict with Awegon were reduced, and the Ausfenzians, who would lose a major lever they could pull against Awegon. In secret, these two groups met with The King of Ausfenz, Kerekes Von Louffen, promising to support the general Lebendeländian forces, Helferich Hetzinger, in a war against Awegon if they took control of Lebenlander.

Armed with this knowledge and some halberds, an elite team of soldiers attempted to storm the palace but the palace guards, loyal to the king, fought hard against them and when they finally breached the walls they found that the king was nowhere to be found. The king and the royal family with a few servants and guards had fled, through tunnels known only to them, under the Kurts and were now fleeing through Kurtsport to the Nacht Halt, an impregnable fortress at the top of a winding road into the hillside.

The taking of the Nacht Halt
When they arrived there they dispatched messengers to the Achthalian Capital, Pleitsdorf, and to garner support in the main military base, Krutsfurt. However, the commander of Krutsfurt, Captain Otto Landoltz, was strongly behind the plot and alerted Helferich. He could have left it there but was advised by the commander of the cavalry, who was, in fact, a disguised earth elemental, that the king might get away.

In reaction to this Captain Landoltz dispatched the cavalry to surround the castle until he arrived with a force of infantry and artillery. When he arrived, Landholtz started the first modern artillery siege equipped with Trebapults and a few primitive cannons and smashed the Nacht Halt into oblivion. As Otto later remarked, the walls of the Nacht Halt were never breached only broken.

Slaughter at Kurtsport
However, the King was never found in the rubble as he had already left the Nacht Halt with most of its guards and seized Kurtsport. It is important to note at this point that the army had seized Ebreichten on the grounds that the King was selling out Lebendelander and had posted some people to Kurtsport but as it could only be reached by boat it had remained relatively unaffected by the changes in the capital enabling Kurtsport to easily be seized by the royalists.

Hetzinger was furious that the king had taken land within a few yards of his forces and yet he could do nothing about it but send messengers to Kurtsfurt. They eventually tracked down captain Landoltz stomping through the rubble of the Nacht Halt pondering the location of the king.

He immediately dispatched his horsemen to engage the king at Kurtsfurt. The cavalry found a small band of ad-hoc militia outside Kurtsport who issued them an ultimatum. The cavalry lined up for a charge and the militia fled inside of the walls not even bothering to barricade the gate. The cavalry charged in after them.

They quickly found their charge blocked by lines of stakes guarded by well-equipped well-trained pikemen while the militia they saw earlier now armed with bows rained arrows down on them from houses. These irregular tactics caused a break down in the cavalry's chain of command broke down and a state of chaos descended upon them while the ones at the back pushed towards the front and the ones at the front tried to retreat.

Many were killed by the arrows, some by the pikemen but most fell off a dead or rearing horse and were crushed by their own comrades. Some survived by dismounting and taking shelter in the buildings, others by sheer luck and determination and at one point the barricade was breached only for the cavalry to find an equally impregnable barricade made only of pikes formed a dozen yards down the road. But never since has a well-trained army ordered a force of cavalry to charge into a town.

The siege of Ebreichten
Things looked just as bad for the army at Ebreichten with a force of Awegonian knights having been sighted moving in from the north. Marshal Hetzinger and his staff abandoned Ebreichten which proved a wise move as the knights had brought with them an earth bender who pulled apart the walls of Ebrichtetten like they were play things before the knights (who had had the wisdom to dismount) stormed through them. The guards who were hungry, abandoned and outmatched surrendered.

However, it was at this time that the army besieged Kurtsport. Without any artillery ammunition left (it had all been used against the Nacht Halt) the army could do nothing but request siege machines be brought up from Kurtsfurt and wait while the king fled back through the tunnels to return with members of the Awegonian knights.

The mighty battering ram finally arived from Kurtsfurt allowing the army to attack Kurtsport, wheeling it up to the gate and bashing it. The primitive woodern gate could not stand the beating and so the bar was soon shartered allowing the army to enter. The army proceeded to cautiosly troop into the town which they found to be deserted. Proceeding cautiosly and checking buildings as they went, the army found that the royalist forces had set up their pikemen across the streets.

In response to this the army deployed their archers against the lightly armored pikemen forcing the pikemen to redeploy behind the more heavily armourd knights who began marching towards the army archers. The army chose to deploy macemen.

While the macemen and the halberd armed knights battled for supremacy the army attempted to open up a new front by deploying their archers (armed with hand to hand weapons) through a peice of wall they had just demolished with the battering ram. This force, however, found themselves turning a corner to face pikemen who wasted no time in advancing towards the archers causing them to disperse and flee out of the town.

The fighting between the macemen and the awegonian knights went on and on and on. Macemen and knights and in the end night fell but the battle was in a stalemate. Eventually there was no light left to continue with the battle and both sides disappeared into the houses.

When dawn rose both the awegonian knights and macemen found themselves in disaray with no idea of where their commanders were or even who controled the town. The royalist pikemen were ordered to secure the town and clear out the macemen. However, if they simply lined up in the gaps in the town wall they would be moan down by the cannon and archers and if they advanced the remains of the cavalry regiment would find their flanks and rear easy pickings. Instead, they blocked the roads leading from the gate meaning that anyone attempting to shoot at them would have to be in close proximity.

Meanwhile the soldiers checking the houses were rousing the knights they found and offering the macemen death or imprisonment. The macemen had mainly neglected to organise a guard and awoke with a halberd or sword pointed at their faces and chose imprisonment. A few chose death and an even smaller amount had organised a proper guard but these didn't hold up long against the fresh pikemen and the awegonian knights. A even smaller amount managed to get away somehow or another but the army forces were depleted and retreating back towards the Kurtsfurt.

At the kurtsfurt
Kurtsfurt was surrounded on the west bank by the Awegonian knights and on the east bank by the royalist pikemen. However, neither had siege equipment and the walls had been proofed against elemental bending with the addition of iron chains to them. The Awegonian earth bender briefly experimented with the idea of hurling rocks into the town but quickly found that they were within the effective range of the remaining archers and that his earthbending skills did not extend to fending off a hail of arrows.

The pikemen and then the knights considered the idea of going down the stream into the new merchants quarter on the east side of the Kurts or the new town on the west side of the ditch which were not protected by walls from the river aproach but quickly found that if there was one thing worse than by shot at with arrows then it was wading through fast flowing water while being shot at with arrows. The knights were the only ones to actually try it, one of them got killed by an arrow and several drowned. None made it into the new town which was their aim. A portcullis was fitted after the war to prevent any future attacks like this.

The next attack was mounted by the pikemen who had dragged the siege equipment down from Kurtsport. The leader of the Awegonian cavalry met the king to plan their attack. The knights were assigned to use the battering ram under the covering fire of the royalists with the few rocks remaining for the catapult to hurl. Unfortunately, they neglected to inform the knights of the metal portcullis and rather than attacking the walls like intended they went for the gates they thought would be an easier target.

The king quickly dispatched a messenger to warn them but the knights refused to listen. The king informed the commander of the knights of this and he rode off with all haste. However, they had just broken down the outer gate and were wheeling the machine into the courtyard. The moment the commander of the cavalry entered they dropped the outside portcullis. The knights thought valiantly (or rather died valiantly as they had no ranged weapons to fight back with) but the defenders had a large collection of large stones especially reserved for this purpose. The commander of the knights is reported to have batted 2-tonne boulders away from his comrades but these reports are probably exaggerated.

It was in the midst of this battle that reports of incoming Ausfenzian hussars arrived. The king quickly decided upon a plan. He formed the Awegonian knights who he now commanded up into a line with pikemen on their flanks and behind them. The hussars decided to charge the knights rather than the pikemen but became engaged in combat against them allowing them pikemen to close in around the cavalry. The hussars took such losses that they retreated to regroup allowing the knights and pikemen to beat a hasty retreat across the Kurts.

After the Kurtsfurt
The majority of the royalist forces left northbound for Ebreichten but at the same time, a small force of knights departed south on the Hollefeld bound road. They took the ferry at the south of Ebreichten. At this time the royalists had made it to Ebreichten with the army forces hot on their heels. The new commander of the knights sent a message to the garrison stationed north of Lebenlander informing them what had happened and asking for immediate assistance.

Bitter street fighting engulfed Kurtsport and Ebreichten once more with the royalist pikemen and remaining Awegonian knights along with all the militia they could round up being pitched against the Ausfenzian Hussars, Army Militia, Army Macemen and remaining cavalry.

The army forces were weary of entering the streets of Ebreichten due to the number of defeats inflicted upon them there but the Hussars, dismounted, stormed the palisade which had been formed in place of the gate the earth bender had ripped down. They found themselves faced by a barrier of pikemen and called for the army archers. While they were waiting for the archers the royalist militia opened up on them from roof tops and balacanies while the Awegonian knights came charging out of houses and surrounded the Hussars. The Hussars fought their way out but became much more wary.

It took time for the besiegers to pluck up courage for their next attack but did mount a combined assault combining forces of macemen, archers and hussars which suveirly tested the defenders resolve but through cautiousness did not manage to get far into the city before night fell which prompted them to flee outwards as a disorganised crowd which was target to a number of royalist attacks.

The foreign armies arrive
The day after that a large Awegonian force came down the mountainside towards Ebreichten forcing the army and Ausfenzian forces to flee black to the Kurtsfurt where they dispatched messengers asking for more troops. Coincidentally more Ausfenzian forces were already on their way as a number of Hussar troops had decided that they wanted a peice of the glory. However when the reached the boarder they found that Battendorf had switched sides annd the catapults mounted on its battlements which commanded the valley were now hostile to the Hussars trying to get through the Batten pass were now unable to.

The source of their inconvenience was the mayor of Battendorf who was secreatly loyal to the king. He allowed the Ausfenzians to pass through when he had no other option but when the Awegonian knights had arived his possition was suddenly reversed and with reassurances that his town could be resupplied he turned his catapults on the Ausfenzians.

Even the Ausfenzians realised that they could not take Battendorf or go through the Batten Pass with its catapults trained on them so they decided to take another route, going around the mountains and into the Illian foothills. The Awegonians quickly occupied the land west of the Kurts while the Ausfenzians took the land to the east of the Kurts.

The first battle occurred when a force of Awegonian knights tried to cross through the tunnel under the Kurts. They launched a surprise attack of the Ausfenzians but the Ausfenzians fought it off with valour and courage. The Awegonains were forced back through the tunnel and its location became known to the Ausfenzians who destroyed it.

The next attempt to break the stalemate was made by the Ausfenzians when they attempted to cross the ford on the road between Nordlburg and seized Hightenheim which the raized. However, Awegonian forces arrived quickly when they saw the flames. They launched an unexpected attack on Ausfenzians who fled across the Kurts. They were never seen again.

The Awegonains attacked Hollenfeld in retribution, burning that to the ground and salting the nearby fields.

The Ausfenzians crossed the river at Hollenfeld and rode north to Ondersfield which they raized and rode north to Kurtsfurt where they attacked the besieging Awegonian force, most of which had been redeployed. The now freed army forced rode north towards Ebreichten.

The Awegonian forces rode out to meet them on the field of combat. The Ausfenzians Hussars bravely charged the Awegonian pikemen but it failed misserably. They then deployed their archers against the pikemen which the Awegonian knights promptly charged at. Faced with no other option the Ausfenzian Hussars countercharged. While this bitter battle took place the army cavalry attempted to make a decisive move. They charged around the Awegonian pikemen straight towards King Henry von Steten who was watching that battle.

The cavalry commanders lance was lined up with the stunned kings head, his bodyguard frozen in terror. Then a figure appeared in front of him and cut straight through him with a scythe. But rather than spurts of blood coming out of him, his figure changed to that of an earth elemental which disintergrated in front of their eyes. The battle stopped. Arrows hung in the air.

The soldiers staggered forwards as if awoken from a daze to see Heltzinger and Von Steten standing together upon an improvised platform made of a shield and some spears.

"Awegonians go home," said the king.

"Ausfenzians go home," said the marshal.

"Soldiers go home," they said together.

Then the platform collapsed and they did.

Treaty at Kurtsfurt
Heltzinger and von Steten met at Kurtsfurt to draw up a formal peace treaty. They agreed to limit the monarchs power as well as military activity and negotiate a peaceful settlement to the disputed lands at the north of the border.