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.