THE FALL OF URGUAN

[spaazmatism 1018]

Asuka smiles the sun's smile. Her thousand-mina debt was now null, with Cerulia utterly destroyed. 

[Rig 17580]

 

In the dark quietude of another land, there sat the lonely Demon King Vriza atop his ornate throne. Before him lay the sprawl of a ginormous cavern where many statues stood frozen in time. Beside his throne sat his trusty shield and gem-steel warhammer, the eyes of St. Owyn's engraved face on the weapon echoing steely melancholy. 

 

Men's hearts always lead to the same place. I had to do so little to even help them purge the infidels.

 

The Maw, an enormous pit down below the jagged clifface where his throne stood, stirred as the corpses of the damned rose to the surface. The rotten ill fruit of wickedness, those who had opposed him, brought there to join him forever in solitude. Far from an angry creature, the zeal of the Demon King was unmatched, and there was nothing he would not do for His God. To destroy wickedness, he had taken upon himself a grimoire, and forsaken nearly his entire soul.

 

Little did Vriza know that he was now the very thing he had sworn to destroy. Such thoughts are not beholden to those with a messianic mission. He felt no pity for whatever small part he might have played in the undoing of these people. The Red Hand of Ixris thought of them only as dirty beasts who opposed his plans. 

 

"I wonder? Do you hear me?" He said to the drifting carcasses as the blood whirlpooled, untold amounts of debris floating in the water with them.

 

"Do you see the coming of Our Lord?"

"... Surely, you must see it as I do."

 

... The halls went quiet once again.

[Luto 439]

“.. We won.” These news were murmured unto the sickbed of her sworn charge the morn after. His coma wasn’t easy for her to stomach - the war is won, but no amount of small talk to an unconscious man could change that she stood one less companion to spend peacetime with. Nonetheless, she vowed him the Smiling Sun's wellbeing 'fore leaving. “I’ll look after Robert.”

Back in the countryside of Rittersburg, the serf who was squired, knighted, and endured thoroughly in the long war kneels in front of a wayside shrine, of finely carved oak and lacquered by Raev woodwork mossed over into dilapidation. There, wheat fields glittered ‘neath beautiful glare of sun around Noiye. Her shoulders slouch with an achieved sense of inner peace, knowing that tomorrow she can wake up a bit lighter amongst friends.

[Riot 743]

Spoiler

https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Dwarf_Navy?file=Dwarf_Navy.jpg

 

 

Dorin Starbreaker and Ulfar Starbreaker would be sitting at the Ballista aimed at the chokepoint inside the gate.

 

As time went on, they waited for an enemy that never came. Dorin and Ulfar would watch the initial 3 Balista men running back into the city with an Orc sent to retrieve them. expected to be lost to the war, it seemed the gods were smiling highly upon them. He waited by Ulfar's side as the footsteps of soldiers and blasting of cannons could be heard nearly breaching the gate. He would hold down the watch at the tunnel's entrance, ready to call to Ulfar to let loose the balista bolts. But no enemies came.

The noise stopped, and the air fell silent. The explosions in the distance went quiet. Ulfar and Dorin looked at each other worriedly. 

By the time they found their way back from the trap set, the battle was over, and Dorin had a heavy ache in his heart. Looking at the many dead Dwarves, Hobbits, Musin, and Orc bodies lying sprawled across the city, he would realize he had missed the entire fight, nearly falling onto the ground in anger and disappointment at all the men and women of Urguan that he promised to fight alongside, to die beside. He would bend down and pray over their bodies. He knew their souls were currently being bid highly upon as he prayed. But he feared his absence would bar Dungrim from allowing him into Kaz'adentrum. He would bury the bodies before returning to Ulfar and the remaining dwarves.

He walked up to Ulfar and asked him what they were to do. Ulfar responded,

"I was your Grand King of the Grand Kingdom of Urguan. There is no longer a Grand Kingdom for me to rule. So the following is up to you."

"But what of our citizens. What of the Starbreakers?" Dorin retorted. Ulfar looked at him and replied. 
 

"We set for the Seas. Pack your bags, my sweet great-grandchild. The dwarves are not dead yet. Find yourself a place with the citizens you escaped with. I will send a bird for you when we can meet again."

Dorin would look around for Alaric before deciding there was no more time to wait. About 50 people joined Dorin on his way out to the city. All broken from war or still too young to know the struggles to come. "Let's hope Dorrak was able to destroy the trap..." he would say to his constructs by his side as they set sail with the war refugees.

[Magister214 116]

 

A familiar goblin stares at the last painting of Urguan. Painted by himself mere days before the siege. The wooden fortifications at the mouth of the mountain. The Urguani banners that rose and flapped in the chilled wind towards the corners of the painting. The cannons and numbering ballista that eerily waited for their claims. Yet, the flowers, ferns, and trees swayed in peace as if war was a ever distant memory. 

 

Reminiscence...

 

Finally the goblin glanced around from his bed. His home. Quiet except for the muffled celebrations of victory from some Idunian soldiers and the creak of wood from the subtle shifts. Despite the 'victory', he remained frowning. His long blue ears drooping down in sadness. He promised he would try to fight for Urguan. But he could not find himself to hurt and betray his friends from Idunia. He could only imagine the grave numbers lost to this pointless war. His friends laying dead under that mountain. 

 

The goblin taps at a bracelet before a bushy looking cloak, soft and emerald, forms around him. He gently slides the collection of paintings in his pack. Finally he leaves his home in search of a dwarf. 

 

[_xMika 284]

"An expected Victory"

Edgar boomed with a smile happy that the war had been won. With a gentle sigh of relief,  for a moment  he looked to the sky a curious thought forming in his mind one he came to state aloud

"What comes next, my emperor?"

A hand came to gently set itself atop of his sheathed blade, all though he didn't participate in the last war effort he still put himself at work. After all, despite all of the empire's victories the real enemy of the realm still stood very tall, hidden in the shadows, scheming for the future perhaps even plotting for the destruction of the empire itself. 

"I wonder, where they hide now, if they fear what is to come"

The smile faded from his half burnt visage and with a grumble that moment of enjoyment slowly faded, this war wasn't over far from it. This, a fact he knew all to well at this point. No matter, he had an oath to upkeep. As he walked a simple phrase echoed 

"Ave imperium"

[M1919 2298]

 

They went in at the run, a ragged wave of warriors storming towards the flimsy bulwarks before the gates.

The order to advance had come as a hand on his pauldron—his master, seizing him, shoving him forward with sudden, living force. That, more than any trumpet, had been the true signal: life back in the Emperor's eye, a hard, bright smile that wanted to win. Corswain had dragged his own men onward in turn. Fanaticism was a flame that needed very little to catch.

Havoc soon deteriorated into a savage, running melee in the smoke and howling, tunneled filth. Bodies crashed into bodies, blades swung and smashed, armor cracked and whined. An Imperial sapper, so covered in blood that his surcoat made him look as though he were born in it, ploughed through the chaos, taking heads and arms like a man diligent farmhand.

Lucis, the Hospitaller thought. 

 

Fervent bleatings and zealous desires for a last stand might have brought out the dwarven spirit, one would think. Corswain was not so ignorant as to disregard the lore of hard-bitten heroes and doomed last stands. No beast backed against the wall is ever without its talons and claws.

But he is led by the Emperor, who is shrouded by his Imperial knights, and even in sickness, Hadrian is far more than most men. The filth he is fighting is half-starved, and far, far less. 

A dwarven crossbowman appears on a ledge just metres above Corswain, the strings of his weapon whirring as it angles down to splash the Hospitaller off the artificial wall. Corswain thrusts upwards with a fiery arc of his longsword. Clean and true, the weapon punches through an overhanging lip of rock and impales the half-man leaning over it. Blood showered from his punctured breast, and more seeped from the ragged tunnel made from where it opened into the other side. The flaming blade had ruptured the poor soul’s lungs, cooking them inside bone and muscle. When Corswain ripped the weapon free, the front of the dwarf’s abdomen came with it in a wet tear, red and grey flecks spattering the advancing Dragon Knight. As the burning, incomplete body plunged past him, Corswain climbed over and met the next enemy whose axe rang against his shield.

The metal barked a shrill note as the edge dragged across it, and Corswain’s riposte sent the dwarf recoiling, disappearing into the blizzard of rushing bodies. On the ground level now, he finally saw the garish heart of it all. It was a messy tide, embellished by the jostling, incoherent mass of dwarfs, a few fatherless elves, and the remnants of uruks surging like spiders eager to be crushed.

A portcullis, just yards away from the Dragon Knight, buckled and writhed under the pounding of his master’s vanguard. The battlements behind dripped the spent and the stumbling, and the triumphant stamped them down into the conquered rockwork without so much as a glance. Half-men shrieked in the grey and brown pall of smoke, torsos spinning from their own legs. They died quickly, awkwardly, and Corswain could not even summon pure hatred for them—only disappointment, tinged with a quiet, simmering irritation at them, at the day, and at himself for ever believing this would be anything more than another messy, forgettable killing field.

It was not the victory he had dreamed of. He had expected more from them. He went to the field prepared to face legends, to meet the kin of the once-king he had slain. Instead, there was not even a shadow of ancestral favor. A Hyspian soldier, of all things, had chased the monarch of these stunted souls along his own lines, and the dwarf had only fled. This was their king—the one who had demanded the Emperor’s abdication and sworn his people would stand firm and hold. The same who had thrown in with Druscans and other run-of-the-mill carrion, whose greatest claims to glory lay in murdering children or dying badly and often at the sword. The disgrace of it all was almost an insult to the dead he already carried.

And, in minutes, it was finished. By the end of the madness, he was simply standing there, his hand closed around a small ring while he searched the crowd. He had brought it with him, this little thing, and it was meant to serve a purpose for him. A celebration, a claim made to decorate an already decorated moment in time.

Around him, the physicians and camp-followers moved through the conquered halls, turning bodies with boots or the tips of spears, marking those who still twitched and those who did not. Flies had already found the blood, a dark, humming halo gathering over the worst of it. The air stank of rotten mulch, hot oil, and the sharp, metallic breath of opened bodies.

Corswain grew distant, seeking out only one in particular.

 

That afternoon, the knight ducked through into his tent and let the canvas fall shut behind him, muting the camp's ambience to a low, cloth-dulled rumble. The air inside was cold, and still smelled of the alchemistry that he had burned before heading out. He unbuckled his sword belt sluggishly, feeling the drag of dried blood on cracked leather, and laid the sheathed weapon across the small campaign table. Fingers closed tight, dragging against the palm of his hands before opening back once more.

For a time, Corswain simply stared at the guard and the bronze embellishments on the kharajyr hide that sheathed its lethal edge. The dull metal wore a thin skin of reflected flame, candlelight stuttering over every nick and scratch. Tomorrow, he would have the blade broken and smelted down for a new set of horseshoes and hang the hilt above his hearth. A relic of service that perhaps his future children could fuss over.

Sinking onto the low stool by his desk, Corswain unlaced his gauntlets and set them aside, his palms still tingling from the remembered blows. Time thinned and slipped; seconds bled into minutes as he drifted somewhere outside the present, his thoughts scorched white by the memory of soulfire bursting again and again across his vision. Each flare had been observed so clearly amid the toiling chaos, coagulating for a heartbeat in that aetheric firelight before it was flung upward to the skies or hurled down into whatever hells waited beneath. 

That chapter was closed now, the page turned with a final, immemorable snap. He leaned forward and pressed his hands into his brow, fingers digging into a headache that felt ready to split his cursed skull. The uneasy thought came again, quiet and insistent—that it was not just his enemies, but the whole world that was smaller and cheaper than the ignorant imaginations that had once made him dream.

 

“My lord?” An utterance echoed in the knight’s ears, low and careful. The soft slap of canvas had not broken the trance’s hold, but someone’s voice had, and Corswain blinked his stinging eye to bring Lucis into focus, framed in the dying candlelight like a half-formed ghost at the threshold. Behind him, the horizon bled out in strips of amber, wine-red, and tired blue.

“... they salted pork for dinner.”

 

[JediMaestro 240]

The nun, upon hearing word of the death knell of Urguan, sets off from the gates of Alduun, walking a long ways past Tir'Glas to the gates of Duncoed, the Callaghan family keep. Descending to the crypts - and finding them mercifully empty of the Lady who so often haunted its halls - she draws near to one stone coffin, whose head is marked "MORWEN CALLAGHAN."

 

Kneeling down, Solveig remains silent for a few moments before speaking, her hollow voice echoing strangely around the mausoleum. "You were gone much too soon, Morwen, and not a day goes by when I do not remember you, my little sister in all but blood. Your execution still gives me nightmares, and I shudder every time I walk past Tir'Glas' front gates. But, today, I give thanks to God or the Balance or whomever orchestrated this bloody affair that your death was quick and merciful, rather than at the tip of an Imperial fanatic's sword. I hope, wherever you are, that passion that so drove your life into danger again and again now lets you live a truly fulfilling life wherever your soul has flown."

 

She spends a moment more in silence, reflecting on all the dead this war has created. Much as the fall of Urguan makes her fearful for the reign of the Empire to come, she is glad to finally see the cursed conflict come to an end. Maybe, at least, she and Bron can live a few more years in peace and comfort before the world conspires once more to tear them apart. With this thought in mind, equal parts gloom and hope, Solveig rises to go home, hug her children, and kiss her husband.

Edited March 23 by JediMaestro