Three-Colored hunt

Origin of Floating Cities, part 1

The darkness and the silence of the old study were disturbed by only two things: the light of a candle and the sound of pages turned by the hand of the archivist. His bespectacled eyes followed the text, not turning away from it even when he took another sip of his tea. A sudden knock on the door became a source of an internal struggle for him; should he answer it or ignore it? After the third knock, his curiosity won, and so he called out: "Come in!"
The door was slowly opened and the head of one of the students of the Academy peaked out from behind it.
"Professor, I have a question related to today's lecture."
"Is it about the floating cities?"
"Yes. While you explained how they work, I wanted to know how they came to be."
The professor took off his glasses and cleaned them with his handkerchief. "While numerous events led to the creation of the first floating city, I guess this story should start with the death of three Witches. Sit down...

Back when the Age of War had just ended, it was immediately replaced by the Age of Witches. This name came to be once the Witches started to carve the world into their territories. Depending on the Witch, they ruled whole kingdoms or only small villages, they ruled on their own or the land fell under the control of a Witch Coven. As one can imagine, not many people were too fond of the changes in the management that were taking place. And so, the people revolted. The nobles who just lost their position and people who had had enough of being ruled by others. Back then, the knowledge that one shouldn't just kill a Witch, wasn't too common, yet.

Background and prelude

Before it became what it is now, Aren Hillside was home to a few different tribes. These people kept to themself and if not for some explorers, nothing probably would be known about them until long after the events of the Three-Colored Hunt. As one could expect, there were some minor conflicts between the tribes, but they never escalated over being minor tribe wars. There were enough resources and space for all of them.
The cause of the next thing that happened isn't known. Be it through word of mouth of the explorers who came there or through sheer luck, a Coven of three Witches found that place. And with them, the big changes came. The Witches quickly presented their overwhelming powers to the tribes living around the hillside. With no one able to oppose them, they started raiding and plundering the tribes for their resources and goods. At the expense of others, they could live without any struggle.

The escalation

While damaging and sometimes violent, the plundering of the Witches was something the multiple tribes could deal with. There is only so much three people can eat and the members of the tribes quickly learned to act in ways that wouldn't annoy the Witches too much so the most some people suffered were bruises and some humiliation. But at some point, something changed. It seemed that the Witches became bored of their routine. They wanted more.
And so, they started to destroy more, steal more, and finally, "invite" people to participate in various games and rituals of their making. It didn't matter if the participants were volunteers or were taken by force. The ones who returned from those rites always returned without something. All of them had some fragmented memories of taking part in inhuman ceremonies and feasts that would wake them up in the middle of the night. Some came back with marks, scars, or missing limbs. Some never returned.
Those who saw what happened to their kin, families, and tribesmen had enough. It was time to get rid of the Coven. Just after the next raid, when the tribes knew there would be some time before the Witches would show up again, the representatives of all tribes had a meeting.

The battle plan

The plan to get rid of the Witches was both straightforward in its structure and extremely hard in its execution. While all the warriors would draw the attention of the Witches, they would try to position the three of them in a straight line. That's when a hidden sniper would load and shoot their shot with Green Noise Lance. If it all worked out, one shot would kill all three. And they would only have one shot, as creating a beam concentrated like that requires a lot of energy to form even a single charge. And so if it missed, the shooter would probably be dead before the second shot even started to charge again.

Course of events

"Of course, plans and reality are two completely different things."

When the attack began, the Coven was surprised for way shorter time than expected. They immediately started their counterattack. Instead of using spells, they simply spread their Colors around the area, immediately oversaturating both it and anyone unlucky enough to be in the range of their splashes. Depending on the Color currently dominating, the landscape changed its shape, making it even harder for attackers to do anything. And so, instead of keeping to the plan, everyone spread out, hoping to survive. This spread out the Witches, too, making it impossible for the sniper to take their shot. It seemed that everything was lost.

One shot

That is when two of the Witches targeted two special targets. The first one was a squad of warriors coming from the southern part of Aren Hillside. They didn't submit to the fear. While pretending to run away, they led Maroon Witch back to the middle of the battlefield. When one of them died to their spells, another drew their attention, bringing them closer and closer to the target. The second one was one of the leaders of one of the tribes, targeted by Cream Witch. No matter how much their spells oversaturated and warped her body, she kept going forward. When she couldn't run, she limped, when she couldn't stand, she crawled.
Those two factors managed to create a single moment where all three targets barely lined up. But that was all that was needed. To the Green Noise Lance, it didn't matter if the shot was a direct hit or merely a scratch, as long as it made contact with its target, piercing through it. One breath held and one squeeze of a finger later, the three Witches were dead.

Outcome

The victors didn't even have a chance for a short cheer. They didn't know that killing a Witch is a fatal mistake, as all of the seemingly endless amounts of Colors contained within their bodies start to spill, searching for the one who killed them, the unlucky person from now known as Witchkiller. And since normal people can only contain so much Color inside of their bodies, the excess flows out of them, corrupting the land around them. And this time, it was the sum of the Colors of three different Witches.
Everyone who took part in the hunt besides the Witchkiller was dead or mutated into an oversaturated beast within moments. The whole Aren Hillside became uninhabitable within the next few minutes. The sniper became a being known as a Beast That Spurts, wandering its domain until it dies.
But, at least, three Witches were killed.

Three-Colored Hunt

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Conflict Type

Battle

Battlefield Type

Land

Location

Aren Hillside

The two sides of conflict

Witch Bandits of Aren Hillside

by Revyera

Coven of three Witches whose names were lost to time. Today, they are only known by the Colors they used and wore as a Maroon Witch, a Grape Witch, and a Cream Witch, two women and a man. They terrorized and plundered the Aren region, plundering the nearby villages for any resources they needed. this didn't garner them too much sympathy. According to rumors that survived until today, two members of the Coven were siblings.

Aren Hillside Warriors

by Revyera

"We, the proud people of Aren, will not stand this oppression any longer."

500 men and women mobilized to eliminate the threat posed by the three Witches finally. Volunteers and chosen warriors, young and old, all who had enough of the terror of the Coven. Some of them even knew how much danger the Witches may pose.

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Location

The hunt took place near the campsite of the Witches, in the heavily forested part of the Aren Hillside. While the camp located on the top of the hill gives it a height advantage, the thick woods around it would both help the attackers move in quietly for the ambush as well as partially protect them from the spells of the Witches.

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Special weapon

Unbeknownst to the Witches, an inventor lived in one of the villages they harassed who also had enough of their reign. They managed to create a device capable of giving the Witches migraines, and even causing physical damage to their internal organs should the exposure be long enough. Since it used some of the Green Color to disrupt the Colors within their bodies, its creator called the device a Green Noise Transmitter. At first, they only used it whenever Witches visited their village and their demands became too cruel. However, once the plan to kill the three began to form, the inventor was asked to modify their creation. If the transmission spread out through the air could already cause damage to the Witches, what would happen if it was concentrated into a single beam? The answer is a Green Noise Lance.