Snow over Iconessa

Athulae was worried. She had started to feel uneasy a few weeks ago, when rumors arrived in the woods of Iconessa that the Human hero Jorghan the Paladin had left for the North after subduing the Orcs, and no news of his expedition had surfaced since then [the last game of my Empire army against Isthak was such a crushing defeat that I didn't feel like writing up a report... Jorghan survived, though]. And now, apparently out of thin air, an Isthaki force with lots of Demonic hordes had arrived very close to the Elves' homeland, the forests of Iconessa. How they had come there, whether by magic or (Athulae hoped) on foot, marching through the regions east of the human empire that were deserted by the Orcs after their last defeat, nobody knew. The Elvish counselors were all very uneasy about these events.

As a first line of defense Athulain Gilfar had been tasked to face the invaders with a hastily collected ragtag army - some local Thanaril hunters, skirmishers, archers and spear bearers brought together by Ilea the Nymph had been joined by a detachment of badger people under the leadership of Farendil, their master. Athulain had brought a unit of Luthari archers with him. When they deployed in the hills outside of the Elves' home forest they realized that in the night a few treemen had moved up to a little woods in the center of their position to aid the Thanaril in defense of their home.

But what Athulae saw lined up on the other side of the battle line was truly frightening: Two units of huge Dai Re Coon ice demons and an even larger Ice Giant in the center, some Torgogs and two units of fierce looking beastmen [brothers of the Icelord and Berserkers] on the Isthaki's right and some Polar Bear Riders behind a wild looking hero [Barsak] on their left, with several single figures, a few women that looked like magic users and a mounted knight behind their lines.

One of the magic users must have been a powerful conjurer, because without an interruption three Dai Re Coon commanders joined the ranks of the Isthakis as the battle was joined. As the Isthakis closed up to the Elves, they lost very few fighters to the Elves' missile fire. Athulae herself found few targets for her bow of Iconessa, although she did manage to hit a few of the Dai Re Coon. The only help for the Thanaril was the forest itself - even though they were not within their own proper territory, the Elvish influence was still so strong that the one Ice Witch magic user failed to create a blizzard for more than a few minutes until the soft warmth of the trees brought the sun out again [the Ice witch fumbled on her second attempt at a blizzard spell and lost all magic abilities for the rest of the game]. 

On the Elves' left flank the Thanaril skirmishers couldn't do more than slow the big beastmen berserkers down. But they did that so efficiently that the beastmen did not contribute singificantly to the rest of the battle [the brothers of the Icelord were stuck behind the Torgogs all the time and didn't really do anything, either. Which means that Isthak effectively won the battle using 1800 points against 2000...]. At the same time, Ilea daringly went to the front to try and banish some demons before they hit the Thanaril ranks, and to attack the Torgogs with the Lord Bow she had brought to the battle. However, before she could do anything she was attacked by the Isthaki knight [Norfred] and killed despite Athulains attempts to defend her (of course the cowardly evil knight hit on the Loreath before turning against the High Elf hero...). After Ilea fell Athulae lost sight of Athulain as he struggled with the masses of Torgogs around him [he was swallowed twice, and due to a rule mistake we made him take too many hits from the Torgogs - had we played the Torgogs correctly he might well have survived].

On her right, Athulae saw the polar bears smash right into the Thanaril archers and spear bearers after Barsak had tied up the bowmen in melee. The bears were cut down very slowly by the numerically superior wood elves, but tied up the whole flank for nearly the whole battle.

In the middle, the Ice Giant spent most of his time stomping and trampling over the Thanaril, badger and Luthari lines again and again. One after the other, all the defenders of the forest there died under the feet of the giant or in melee with the overpowering demons, the only survivor being Farendil who held his own against one of the Ice witch fighter heros, The only local success for the Elves came as the treemen emerged from their hiding places in the woods and fell into the Dai Re Coons' back as they were fighting the wood elf hunters and spearmen. This one unit of demons was completely eliminated, and due to the timely help of the treemen even Athulae, who had been drawn into the melee, survived this clash.

But as night fell, more than half of the Thanaril and the Ilah Ri were destroyed, Athulae and Ilea were nowhere in sight, and the field belonged to the demonic hordes from the north.

As she withdrew with the remaining troops towards the forests of Iconessa, Athulae could only hope that the sacrifice of this advance force had not been in vain. At least the next wave of Thanaril defenders would have to face less of the frightening Ice Demons, and most of the evil heroes, as well as the huge Giant in their ranks, had suffered many wounds that would not heal in time for the next encounter. So maybe this wave of intruders could be stopped, after all. But it was clear that the Elves would not be able to sustain similar losses very often, and Athulae hoped that the powerful Elvish mages in the capital would soon figure out what had caused this Isthak incursion in the south, and find ways to prevent them in the future. In any case, the Elves would have to take up patrolling their borders much more aggressively than they were used to.

Units lost by both sides (# of lost elements, if not all, in brackets)

Copyright Notice: This report (C) Klaus Herrmanns 2001. All rights reserved. Please only pass this on to others for private, noncommercial use. If you want to use this article elsewhere, let me know koljag@SPAMBLOCKyahoo.com (remove the SPAMBLOCK and the following dot before using the mail address. If you quote me as author and add a copyright notice like this, I'm perfectly happy to let you re-use this article.