[HQ Ignorance] Scene 53: The Longest Night, The Battle of Seguarane Forest

[Nic Hughes]

The calm before the storm. The small group sat around and for a time 
said little for what was there to say when death stared them in the face.

Aalmon had lived through this silence before and through the battle that 
followed it, so when he had let the enormity of the threat sink in he spoke.

"We cannot stand in ranks and face them down for they are too numerous" 
Aalmon shuddered at the memory "far too numerous. We must avoid their 
greatest strength and use our own strengths to fight on terms that we 
dictate."

He paused as he took out his crystal chess set and once more set out the 
pieces, in a pattern he remembered so well it could almost have been 
drawn on the insides of his eyelids "The king holds the army together 
and in this case the black king is Theoblanc. What we have to do is draw 
his army off and then concentrate our most lethal attacks on the king 
itself. In doing so we have to avoid a decisive battle at all costs for 
we would be overwhelmed and defeated.

Let us look to our advantages, firstly we know his dispositions and 
strength. He does not know ours and can only suspect it. If the Telmori 
do not descend upon him during the night he must think them far from the 
battle for the wolf-men have never before held back on the full moon and 
Theoblanc cannot know that we have the means to alter that unchanging 
fact of their nature. If he believes they cannot hold back then when 
they do not attack he will in his mind no longer need to defend against 
them, so we can have surprise if we can survive so long. He will suspect 
the men of the city are with us and will be ready for them, very well 
they can be the anvil upon which the hammer of the wolf-men can fall. We 
also have means to communicate and coordinate our forces, I am trained 
as a courier so I know how critical that is to any army - especially one 
in dense forest terrain where even to see your enemy is hard. If Anzhur 
stays with the knights then they can know what each of the rest of us is 
doing through the banner. If my brother goes with the main elf force and 
I with the skirmishers then they can coordinate attacks and withdraw in 
formation to avoid defeat, in the woods we should be able to stay ahead 
of his main forces." As he speaks he indicates pieces on the board 
representing each of these forces

"And we may need to make sacrifices. Icthya you have prepared water 
which will sweep away both enemies and trees, if Baros is with you we 
can try to lure the enemy into this trap and avoid losing either of our 
own forces but I fear this is uncertain. What is certain is that we can 
use this to buy time for if they fear to pursue us then we can skirmish 
all the better, yet if they pursue it is into a trap. I have seen the 
torches the army carries and I expect them to use fire, Icthya you must 
be ready for this and the Aldryami must not panic for there are ways to 
turn this against them. If when the fires light the forest is willing I 
can call on magics to use those fires to burn away the foul enchantments 
that brought up this army and force them to waste time and men dousing 
their own fires. To pose a great threat the trees would need to be 
willing to burn and aid my attempt by sending the raging fires back upon 
them.

With all this we must buy time for the Telmori to awake and we must turn 
the army of the enemy away from them so the leaders - standing at the 
rear -  are exposed to their attack. In the end Azhur and Jareena you 
will need to stand with the main force at the point of best defence and 
pin the enemy in place for this last desperate attack. The skirmishers 
can hold your flanks for a time but not forever so the men and wizards 
might have a hard time of it if we have not held them up well and 
stretched them out with our harrassing. Then then main attack must come, 
Kerala and Knarl our lives will be in your hands, for if the Telmori 
come too late then I doubt any of us will still be there to see them." 
He moves his hands across the board and the white queen makes a diagonal 
move to defeat the isolated black king far behind the massed lines of 
his pieces.

"Of course if anyone has a safer or better plan I'd love to hear it. 
This one puts me in the fighting from the moment they enter the forest 
and leaves my arse hanging out for a long long time. That's not a good 
feeling."

OOC: Once we agree on a rough plan then we can move onto detailed 
preparations, or does everybody else want to dive straight in?

Nic


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