After marching for weeks, the Great Horde arrived at Freegate. For days the massive dust plume from the Horde marched closer to the city. Each night the ruddy glow from their massed campfires lit larger and larger portions of the night sky. The glow of the fires was counter-pointed by the weird glows that occasionally lit the ancient walls of Zentil Keep [a small castle within the walls of Freegate] where the University wizards had painted giant copper glyphs. The mood in the city see-sawed between confident optimism and sullen stoicism.
The day and
night before the Horde came into view, swarms of giant bats could be seen
performing aerial reconnaissance along the canyon sides, occasionally being
attacked by ranged spellfire from the city. When the Horde finally came into view on the
12th of September, it became obvious to all that the Horde had split in
two and was marching up both sides of the mile-wide canyon Freegate was in the center of. It took a full day for the
Horde to move into position, during which time the last of the refugees entered
the city and the University chose to activate the city’s magical defenses.
Two-thirds of all the wizards in the city gathered at Zentil Keep to perform a massive ritual spell that would take six hours to complete. As the casting began, the glyphs on the Keep started to glow stronger and more vividly. After three hours of casting, pulses of light started travelling down copper cables strung from the walls of the Keep to the walls of the City.
At
this point the Horde launched a massive air assault of bat riders on the city to disrupt
the casting. Those wizards not part of the ritual, including Tim, were on
watch for such an attempt and responded with a mass volley of spellfire. Most of the attacking goblin batriders were killed in the initial volley and those that
did not immediately turn and fly away were killed in the follow up volleys. The
townspeople and the Freegate Guard let out a mighty cheer at this first victory over the
Horde! Unnoticed by most of the townspeople, while the goblin batriders took
massive casualties, the bats themselves took few losses and returned to their
mobile roosts.
While the part
of the Horde on the western canyon wall continued to invest the Mountain Gate barbican, the eastern part of the Horde slowed, allowing part of it to race forward and rush the Sun Gate barbican. The celebrations in Freegate died quickly when
this avante garde appeared. It
consisted of hundreds of the lizardriders lead by an apparent dragon! [At this point in the world dragons had not been seen for several millennia and most considered them long disappeared if not fully extinct.] The
City Guard at the Sun Gate barbican braced for the assault as best they
could. The dragon literally slammed into the barbican, knocking everyone in
it to the ground and damaging the fortifications. It then breathed fire
across the battlements, ending any questions about it being a dragon. After this the
lizardriders swarmed over the breaches in the walls, seeking to overwhelming the defenders.
Fearing the
eastern approaches would be lost, the Commander of the City Guard authorized
the limited use of Tim’s Double Distilled (TDD) in the defense of the barbican. Due to range limitations, the TDD had to be deployed from on the East Bridge
itself. Members of the High Energy Thaumatics department, supported by Tim’s
Outlanders, left the eastern gate of the city and advanced along the East Bridge carrying
three bottles of TDD. Moving from building to
building along the East Bridge, the group advanced into range of a telekinetic
spell attack.
With the
defenders in the barbican being overrun by the goblin lizardriders and the
dragon repeatedly slamming into the barbican, Tim himself levitated the first
bottle of TDD into the fray. Attempting to position the bottle near the
dragon for remote detonation (one of the other wizards would shoot it with a
fireball), Tim was caught unawares when the dragon shifted attack mode and
breathed fire on the top of the barbican. The bottle of TDD was caught in
the backwash of the flames and detonated. The resulting explosion knocked
stone off the barbican, deafened everyone in or near the barbican, stunned the
dragon, and panicked the lizards the goblins were riding. Many of the
defenders and the goblins were either stunned or knocked unconscious, ending the
fighting going on outside the barbican. Those goblins inside the barbican
were quickly overpowered and killed by the defenders who had been shielded from the explosion somewhat by the stone walls.
Outside, the dragon shrugged off the effects of the blast while the lizardriders regained control of their mounts. They then moved to attack the barbican again. Tim, realizing only one of the wine bottles of TDD was not enough, tied the remaining two together. He then had a delayed fireball cast on one of the bottles and levitated both bottles at the dragon. Not being able to get a good line of sight on where he wanted the bottles to go, Tim had one of the other wizards lift him higher so he could see better. While providing a better vantage point, this also drew attention to Tim who was now a brightly glowing target. The dragon noticed Tim and chose to breath fire at him just as Tim brought the bottles in front of it and the timer on the delayed fireball ran out.
The explosion
from the two bottles detonating flipped the dragon tail-over-snout and nearly
destroyed the barbican as well, knocking stones off the upper works. Fortunately, this also completely panicked the goblins and their mounts, which
fled back to the rest of the Horde. The dragon itself, seeing Tim still
floating in the air (but not knowing he was stunned from the explosion) decided
to leave as well to recover from the pummeling it had just received. The wizards
lowered Tim and the group moved forward to assist the surviving defenders. The Commander of the City Guard immediately passed an edict stating that TDD was
not to be used within 300 yards of friendly units, ever.
Over the next
two hours, survivors from the barbican were pulled out of the rubble. Members of the University Department of Elemental Magics moved forward and worked on repairing
some of the damage to the barbican and stabilizing the rest. Reinforcements were sent to
re-man the barbican and Tim’s Outlanders were stationed there with a small
supply of TDD and strict orders on when and where they could use it. The eastern half of the Horde marched closer to the city, apparently choosing to finish investing the
city rather than lose more units in rushed attacks.
As the Horde's
siege engines were moved into place, they started firing at the barbican. At
the same time, ground units of the Horde started chanting their battle cries on
both sides of the canyon,
Once the magical defenses were in place, the barbican defenders at both rims staged fighting retreats along the bridges, back to the city.
[Flight of the Bottles – Every mage with TK levitated
containers of TDD to the Western Rim. Once over the Horde, every mage with a
fireball spell fired on the containers, detonating the TDD within. This
broke the moral of the portion of the Horde on the Western Rim and they staged
a revolt against the shamans. Then they fled west into the mountains.]
The Siege
With the rim defenses abandoned, the Horde pressed in on both sides and took control of the smashed fortifications. The Horde's troops started to advance along the two bridges to the city, only to discover ambush troops hidden in the buildings along the bridges, inflicting heavy losses on the advancing troops and slowing them down.
Over the next several days, as the fighting gradually made its across the bridges, the Wizards of Outlands University stepped up. Combined attacks by units of wizards either killed the Horde troops on the bridges or pushed them off the bridges and let gravity do the dirty work. This heavily bolstered the morale of the city. Unfortunately, the Wizards knew this was unsustainable - eventually they would run out of reagents for their magics and then the Horde would have the numbers to break one or both sets of gates into the city itself.
This gave rise to a plan of desperation - the Arch Chancellor of the University authorized the mass distillation of Tim's Double Distilled. This consumed all of the alcohol inside the city [at least all that could be found]. The mass of Double Distilled was used to fill as many glass or ceramic bottles and jugs as the University could procure. While this happened, scrolls of extended telekinesis were mass produced as delivery systems.
The Flight of the Bottles
Four days later, in the early morning before the daily assault along the bridges by the Horde, while their warriors gathered near the entrance to the western bridge, tens of Wizards along the western walls of the city cast the extended telekinesis spell from the scrolls and as one, each lifted and sent clusters of bottles of Tim's Double Distilled across the gap between the city and the rim until the bottle floated over the massed goblinoids. Then one Wizard launched a fireball at center of the massed bottles, triggering a chain-reaction detonation of all the bottles over the western half of the Horde.
The resulting airburst was devastating.
Hundreds if not thousands of goblinoid warriors were killed outright [plus an unfortunate number of the enslaved population of the Bayern District and other places south]. Squadrons of batriders were swatted out of the sky. All of the immense rolling buildings the Horde had brought all the way from the Great Swamp were destroyed or set on fire. The stone fortifications on the rim were heavily damaged, portions blown over into the chasm below. Western-facing windows in the city [over a mile away] were damaged or destroyed. Few of the defenders along the wall were injured because they had been warned to hide. [But of course some didn't heed the warning because they thought they knew better than wizards and self-selected themselves out of the gene pool.] Fire, smoke, and dust rose over the western rim of the chasm.
An hour later, another flight of bottles rose and started its way across the chasm, towards the besiegers on the western rim. Many of the warlords on that side took one look at the new wave of approaching bottles and said, "Nope."
Ignoring [and occasionally killing] the shaman leadership of the Horde trying to get them to stay, the warlords turned their troops west and fled the area at best speed. Nearly 50% of the Horde on this side of the chasm broke and ran, heading for the mountains to the west-southwest of the city [an extension of the Worldspine Mountains known as The Spur]. The remainder, barely held together by the religious leadership, flooded onto the bridge, hoping to close with the city and escape the deadly explosion that was immanent.
Seeing this, the Wizard in charge of the attack cast his fire spell early, detonating the bottles before they were all over the rim. This airburst killed thousands of warriors and gouged a huge chunk out of the rim wall itself. Those goblinoids on the bridge were blasted clean off, their bodies falling down into the chasm below, where the things down there ate well.
This second attack broke the morale of the warlords of the Horde. Those on the eastern rim organized their troops and headed northwest, towards the next target on their Grand Quest, the city of Crendia, capital of the Crendian Empire. Any shaman that objected to the Horde leaving Freegate suddenly found themselves on the wrong end of multiple spears or pincushioned by many arrows. The smart ones kept silent, accepting the defeat. They could regain control over the Horde later. Those goblinoids on the western rim still loyal to the Grand Quest [a significantly reduced number] packed up and headed north to march around the northern end of the chasm and eventually meet up with the eastern half of the Horde. The rest fled to the mountains.
The Wizards breathed a sigh of relief. They could not have done a third wave, having used up 90% of the alcohol in the city in these two attacks and virtually all the bottles available. The resulting celebrations in the city consumed the remaining 10% of alcohol [previously very well hidden away] until more could be brewed or distilled.
DM Discussion
[So this version includes the original writeup of the event I finally found in my pile of unidentified files coupled with the summary I wrote from memory. My original writeup was detailed about the Horde arriving but only had a short summary of the Flight of the Bottles, which I embroidered on at the actual session. It also reminded me the Flight of the Bottles happened on the western side, not the eastern side. I had also forgotten about the magical defenses of the city and that a dragon appeared, breaking a secret about the world - dragons still exist.]
Against the Horde
Mansion of Illusions
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