Author: lani
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Geoffrey Heartsworn, son and heir to the Heartsworn line, no longer has it in him to believe in glory this morning.
As the sun of Telon makes its first tentatively foray over the mountain peaks to the east, Geoffrey surveys the carnage before him. Nothing stirs below him except the occasional torn forlorn Legionnaire banner. The pass before him has turned into a torrential river of Death. Most of the night, it'd been one of Undeath. Within that River of Death three little islands littered with uniformed corpses stick out as a kind of inverted whirlpools, not pulling one down to Death, but up.
They came in relentless hordes all through the long night, the undead and worse, the Shinaik Agents who appear out of thin air to slay, and to revive, as undead as well as other vile greenskin creatures of the Gulgrethor clan. Ah! He'd been so proud but one evening ago, or was it a lifetime? The fight, nay the slaughter felt like it took an age to resolve. But if it hadn't been for those, those mercenaries, they'd all be dead now. Each and every glorious Paladin and Cleric of the Heartsworn household troops would have been dead and the heartlands open to the teeming hordes of the dead. His gaze goes over the three ludicrously small diamond shaped bulwarks almost but not quite blocking the pass, a mere three hundred yards from the fortress gates.
It had been those three hastily erected bulwarks of earth and wooden pikes that had saved the night. Them and the men women and, well creatures of The Legion who'd given their lives manning them.
Ah, the arguments that had caused in the days before, the raging fit his father had thrown when their liege, King Targonor, had transgressed against tradition and custom, on the say so of a foreign ruler even, to put the commander of that rag tag group of ruffians, scoundrels and Necromancers! in a position of authority. A woman to boot! It had been impressive to see that clash, on the one side dominant, angry Lord Heartsworn gesticulating widely in front of his hearth as he berated the commander for her insane plan, and on the other hand that diminutive, quiet woman, name of Secura, who'd born that onslaught with quiet yet determined grace. She'd let the Lord vent his rage, then simply ignored him thereafter and executed her 'insane' strategy, the three diamond bulwarks in the pass. Geoffrey would soon need to face the consequences of the apoplexy his father had suffered as a result now. For now, his attention is given to the evidence of the heroic tragedy before him.
The three earthen bulwarks had looked so fragile, presumptuous even, in the late afternoon light the previous day. But rather than be overwhelmed within moments by the vanguard of the hordes, they'd actually functioned as a funnel, slowing down and compress the enemy into a tight mob, making the enemy's momentum work against it rather than for them. With manic glee and delight in their eyes, the Legion's Sorcerers and Druids had made the most of the tightly packed targets, or so it had looked to Geoffrey who'd never seen this strategy applied before, though he'd read about it in a tomb of foreign warfare. But brilliant as the strategy was, that alone would not have stemmed the tides of undead who were just to many to defeat with conventional warfare. If it hadn't been for the Legion's Necromancers. Oh how that smarted. Still does in a way, to allow such, vile creatures amongst the ranks. It had been through the intervention of those Necromancers that each of the seven or so times during the night when the diamonds had become all but overrun by the teeming hordes and all seemed lost, that the Legion as a whole had persevered. But oh, how had that rankled prior to this night. This use of conventionally Evil beings more than anything had been at the core of contention between the Ahgram Foreign Legion on loan from and apparently paid for by the Sultan of Ahgramun and the Heartsworn of the Thestran Watch.
"We do not fight for glory or for what is Good. We fight to win and for what is right!" Secura'd said to her troops in that soft but carrying voice of hers. "We will use all that is available to us, any advantage we can use. Our Chaplain, Tyrannon calls this Total War. It may not be pretty or glorious", here she'd almost spat, "but it gets the job done. Thestran Heartsworn! You're all set to bravely and heroically die in a glorious manner, and in vain. We may expect not to survive either, but by Ghalnn, if we have to die, it'll be with victory in our grasp and spiteful vengeance in our eye!"
And she'd been right. Both in that they'd not survive and that they'd win. The Legionnaires were veterans of many battles each and all and though they appeared a motley crew at first glance, it was their very diversity that saved the night. The Necromancers, reanimating the bodies of their fallen comrades as they fell, preventing the Shinaik Death Agents from raising them instead and forcing living soldiers to slay the corpses of their own former comrades over and over again. The reserve of maniacal Gnome Berserkers, now gone to the last man, throwing themselves and sometimes each other into the thickest sections of the fray again and again. It'd been the Legion's Psionists, another school of magic often frowned upon by the Thestran Watch, who'd been instrumental in staying the Shinaik Death Agents, those all but invisible and invincible slayers who nevertheless were detectable by and vulnerable to the mental powers of these powerful sages.
Most poignant, and bizarre had been to witness after the gate of the Fortress had been blown apart by a Gulgrethor Sorcerer to see it be replaced by the shimmering blue aura of a Vulmane Shaman's magic. The Legion's Shaman stood alone atop the portcullis for the better part of the night. Braving bot missile and spell to keep up the most incredible display of defensive magic Geoffrey had ever witnessed, until the sheer power he'd been channeling through his mortal frame consumed him in a conflagration of pink fire a mere hour before the dawn. Geoffrey had trouble believing it, but several Guards swore they saw a fiery bird take off from that spot in which now remained nothing but a dark smudge. They'd not had time to investigate fully as this was the first and only time the Heartsworn had had to draw blade themselves. By this time they'd been so humbled by the Ahgram Foreign Legion's display of sheer stubborn perseverance that they'd set to with a vengeance and managed to keep clear the gates till dawn.
So many representatives of the races and classes frowned upon as Evil, or at the least not Good, by Thestran morals had given their lives this night. Without glory, without honor they'd fought, but in dieing in droves on foreign soil, fighting to protect a people who, for the most part, had trouble distinguishing them from a horde of invaders, they'd shown a kind of loyalty and nobility that is truly rare. Geoffrey from this day on would never judge a person on reputation alone, but by their actions he'd witness himself.
As the sun finally overcomes its bashfulness and leaps into the sky in full, movement stirs amongst the heaps of dead. Immediately Geoffrey's gaze is riveted upon the center most diamond, the on that'd been nearest the fortress, yet hit the hardest for all of that. The movement could really mean only one thing, undead rising! But no, the shapes look all but dead, covered in grime and gore as they are, but their staggering isn't the shuffling gait of the poorly controlled zombie, but the stagger of near exhaustion, yet glad to be alive one experiences only in moments such as this, when one has passed beyond the point where sheer exhaustion should have been enough to kill. From between the piles of dead stir the heroes of the Legion. Sergeant major Secura of the quiet strength, Chaplain Tyrannon, pecked by those who know as one who will go far within the Legion, Shinta Gubglub, the Goblin Shaman who will perish decades from now while ensuring the freedom of her descendants by forcing a Gulgrethor slave ship to ground on the rocks of northern Martok. Several others, tho precious few of the Necromancers and Psionists who'd turned the tide. No patriots them, no glory hounds. You'd insult them if you called them heroes or tried to stick a medal on them. Loyal only to each other and whatever cause their mysterious 'Marshal' chooses to serve, they nevertheless fight Evil with a vengeance. They may not be Good, but they fight for what's right, and how!
They are, the Ahgram Foreign Legion.
The Legion's headquarters
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