Outside of the vast walls of the northern fortress Gryphon’s Hold, the cold winds howled. Beneath her towering battlements, Vanir levymen, Gold corpsmen and Hetmanate freeriders gathered their strength to make clear the fate of their people. The winds whipped at them ceaselessly through their plate and mail, and the warming scent of their pork and cook fires. Through the bitter chill, however, headless of the north’s cold bite, each man was kept warm by the brother standing beside him, their fraternity sustaining them as they prepared to face the foe.
The Stauntons, usurpers and snakes, a riotous horde of manchildren bent on the destruction of Orenian civility and tradition, had boasted of their efforts to genocide the Raevir. As the Lord Paramount Fiske Vanir approached the battlefield, he did so confidently, and with the full might of the Raev armies at his back. Die Starke Armee, led by the Courlanic Marshal Aymer Fournier and the deplorable Ser Ulric, had long underestimated the strength of Carnatia. Each Coalition soldier was armed with a finely crafted scylfing sword, axe, or longbow - a parting gift from Eirik Colborn the pilgrim. The Northern Coalition and Die Starke Armee finally met in the frigid Curonian Forests, battle cries heralding their arrival long before the two armies caught sight of one another.
The crisp air licked upon the front rank of the Staunton vanguard. They marched forward, as the pride of the Courlandic culture, of the Courland national thought. They would, on this day, send the enemy to Judgement. Or so they believed. From the ranks of the Coalition army charged ahead a lone, unarmed warrior. His fellows in militaristic fraternity trailing behind with lesser speed. The war cries of the Stauntons turned to laughter, a single man! The Vanguard urged forth to meet the charging lone foe, before the rest of the Coalition van could meet with them to protect their brother. The winds pushed against the Courlanders, as did the Man. The unarmed man urged forth, pushed by wind and by courage, and tore into the enemy as a Krajian tiger tears into a fallen steed. A blade lodged in his chain was met with a gauntleted fist, crushing the windpipe of a poor draftee within his iron grasp. Another man stepped forth, only to be slammed into the earth in which he would rise to the Seven Skies from. As more and more men circled about him, they fell to the ground besides their brothers in arm and soon he would be overwhelmed. The thuds of battle were soon drowned by the screaming and whooping of the enemy vanguard, the soldiers smashed into the Courlanders besides their tigerlike brother and would wrought death upon those who had dared step against their champion.
Lacking the support of infantry, the Courlandic Cavalry lasted mere moments before being handedly routed. It was not long after their ragged retreat that they were joined by the bulk of Courland’s fighting force, whipped from the field by Commander Rick’s and Petyr Barbanov’s stampeding legions, Captain Kha slaying 10 courlanders himself. The Staunton levymen, undisciplined and outmatched, gave a brave enough fight despite their ineptitude, but God was surely with the Carnatians this day. Withered by Ser Osgod Colborn and a company of dragoons upon Vasili’s hill, wave after wave of Courlanders fell to whistling bolts as they turned their backs. In mere moments the battlefield roared with the sounds of a Carnatian victory, the dreadful racket of their spears and shields rising to the skies. The day is won.