Shaman’s Records
Tenth of December, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War.
Shaman Koroc the Singer of Clan Glacierheart recording
Shaman Mul the Silent put on quite the show last night! I'm not quite sure how she did it, but she managed to set off a chain of three explosions. They tore apart the peaceful night with flames and blasts fit to wake the dead. The first one was a muffled thwump on the wind. Not particularly loud or flashy at this range, but enough to let the sentries know that the show was beginning. The second explosion announced itself soon after the first, and this one was much larger. We couldn't see much of the fireball itself through the snow, but we could hear it. The rumbling krump of the detonation arrived some time after the muted flare of light, but we all felt it. The ground shook slightly, and you could see the shockwave in the brief eddy of snow carried sideways by its strength. The ominous glow on the horizon spoke of a great fire set by the glowing embers left in the wake of the first two explosions. Not long thereafter a third explosion shook the night. It flared as brightly as the second, and again the shockwave moved the snow and earth briefly.
I saw Tam and Aris Cretu standing on the wall looking south as the explosions shook the night. There was a look of grim satisfaction on their faces. It is far from an honorable way to fight, blowing up things in the night, and it should shame any warrior worth his ax and scars. But this is war. More than that, it is a war against a foe who has already committed betrayals low enough to sacrifice his own men just to see the blood flow. Tam and Aris clearly do not like the fighting and the killing. Just as clearly, they have no problem seeing to the defeat of the Army of the Jeweled Cities.
This war has left scars on all of our souls. Tam will be crying in her sleep tonight, Aris Cretu won't be eating in the morning, and Shaman Mul the Silent will spend the day staring at nothing in particular. I suspect many of the other warriors soldiers that survive this war will be much the same. I intend to withdraw to the valleys and streams among the peaks of the Glacierheart Mountains once this war is over. The wilds call to me, just as the vicious practicality of this war repulses me. But for now, I am needed here. We are needed here, taking these scars upon our minds and bodies, that others need not suffer as we do. We fight so that others need not bleed. We kill so that others do not die. It does not come without a cost almost to dear to pay. We have bled out our innocence on the snow, sacrificed our pride for practicality. But we are willing to pay it. I can only pray that we do not lose so much more in the doing.
Did you lose what won't return? / Did you love but never learn? / The fire's out but still it burns…[5]
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Aris Cretu's Journal
Tenth of December, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War
I can never go back to being a simple fisherman sailing Sapphire Bay. I don't pretend to be a font of all knowledge, nor a seer staring into the future. But if I have learned one thing about myself since joining the Ironbark Mercenary Company, it is that I am good at killing other people. I was always just a slight bit stronger, faster, and tougher than other people my age. I drank as much as anyone else, and got into my share of bar fights and back alley brawls. I always had a slight air, one that made other rowdy drunks think twice about picking a fight with me, once I walked away from my first few brawls. Well, drunkenly staggered, at any rate. The drills put an edge on those traits, and combat has honed it to a deadly killing edge. The gateway stand on the night of seventh polished it to a lethally graceful mirror bright finish.
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Killing a man in battle is one thing. Living to tell about it is another. Doing both puts you in a place that few go, and none can come back from, not sane anyway. I have done so on several skirmishes up in the goat trails of the Westmarch Valley, and now again here in this outpost. In doing so, I have lost count of how many men I have killed. Of the two hundred and sixty dead men of the Army of the Jeweled Cities stacked about the gate, fifty-four were killed by great swords. Only Tam and I were wielding such blades on that night. I don’t know how many of them fell at my blade, or how many of the ones I wounded succumbed to the cold. And this war isn't over. If I live through it, I will have done so by putting dozens, perhaps hundreds, more men in early graves.
Some would call me a veteran of the hardest school imaginable, heated in the fires of battle, shaped upon the anvil of war, and quenched in the blood of fallen foes. I do not disagree, but there is more to me than simply being a mercenary for hire. But perhaps that is the safest job, both for me and for those around me. There was a code of honor in the bar room brawls down on the Sapphire docks: no blows to a man's bits, no daggers or broken bottles, and no killing on purpose. If I ever got into another such brawl, I fear the blood would be running ankle deep by the end.
Unlike so many, I do not simply think I can kill another person. I know I can and have done so again and again, and I have the nicks in my blade and scars on my soul to prove it. Somehow, I think that whatever gods may be out there, none of them will look upon me with pride. And If they do, then I have no desire to follow their creed.
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Chronicler Vian's Log
Twelfth of December, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War
The Ironbark Mercenary Company is reunited again in all our martial glory. From a strength of one thousand men at the beginning of June, we are now down to just over four hundred and fifty. Four hundred and fifty-four men to be exact. The list of honored dead grows ever longer and heavier. Some of the names on that list have no story to go with the body, only the howling caress of the icy wind.
The Westmarch Militia are militia in name only. They had perhaps five hundred spearmen when this war began, and they can still muster almost two hundred and fifty of them. Each and every one of them is a veteran of bitter fighting. In fact, the greatest concern for most of their officers is that some of them have nothing left to lose. Their homes have been looted by the invading Army of the Jeweled Cities, or destroyed by the winter snow and winds after they fled that same army's approach. Those unfortunate souls fight like they have nothing left to lose, which makes them incredibly dangerous to friend and foe alike.
The Glacierheart warbands, man and orc alike, are well represented in our formation. In addition to the four hundred souls who arrived ahead of us on the eighth, another six hundred came with us. Their morale is high, even after the brutal winter, the fighting on the goat trails, and the raiding in the southern half of the Westmarch valley. Their discipline may be a little less than sharp on a parade ground or drill field, but it has yet to waver in combat. Equally true, they have yet to see a large-scale battle, but I expect them to do well.
In total, there are one thousand seven hundred and five soldiers ready to defend this outpost. Adding up the numbers from all of the scouting reports and after battle reports, The Army of the Jeweled Cities has between four and a half and five thousand men in the field, spread across two of the Northern outposts and Fort Westmarch. The odds are not in our favor for an open-field battle, but there won't be one with four feet of snow on the ground in most places. No, the Army of the Jeweled Cities is going to come and try to dig us out of this outpost. And we intend to break them against the walls when they do.