Battle of Brey River

Military action

The first major battle of the Crusade of the Pure Legion and the bloodiest battle in the first 30 years of the Last War

In early 919, Keeper Serrain spoke to an enraptured crowd in Flamekeep. His vague exhortations concerning a “flame sweeping across nations” were, once again, not widely divergent from long-standing Silver Flame dogma. In the context of the Righteous Kingdom, however, they were more than enough to inspire a fresh crusade.   By the time it arrived at the Brey River in midsummer, the Pure Legion was more mob than army, but its numbers were daunting. Roughly 29,000 levies and peasant volunteers, many of them child soldiers, were supported by 3,000 Thrane regulars, 4,000 militant priests of the Argent Order, 3,000 irregular archers, and 1,000 light cavalry.   They were met at the Lower Ford of the Brey River, within a day’s march of Vathirond, not by the city’s nominative owner Breland, but by a force of roughly 12,000 well-prepared Cyran troops. Cyre fielded 3,000 veteran archers, 1,500 noble cavalry, 2,500 levy light foot, 2,000 regulars, 2,200 Valenar foot mercenaries, and 800 battlecasters from the First and Second Metrol Wands. At first, the trained and professional Cyran troops made the river crossing a slaughter for the green levies of Thrane. They held the ford on the first day of the battle, and during the night.   At that point, an army of Brelish arrived in the west. Wary of each of the forces arrayed—the massed Silver Flame faithful as well as the Cyran enemies from Marguul Pass—the Brelish troops took up defensive positions. They sent riders to each side informing them that their orders were to keep the combatants from moving toward the Brelish heartland. This inactivity sat poorly with Breland’s hired goblin marauders, but the battle’s second bloody day passed without movement by Breland. Thrane’s troops continued to suffer significant losses, but their assaults wore at Cyran numbers and morale. Were it not for the ferocious elves who appeared to move about the battlefield unhindered, the Cyran position would have been far worse at day’s end.   Thrane and Cyre clashed again on the third day, but by this time the Brelish goblins had had enough. They broke ranks and rushed the nearest combatant. As it turned out, they slammed into the Cyran left flank. Assuming that Breland had finally decided to back Thrane, the Cyran army’s strained morale failed, and it fled east. In three days, thousands died. Bodies washed downstream for miles, with fishermen in Scions Sound and Eston catching corpses in their nets days and even weeks later. The Battle of Brey River was easily the bloodiest battle of the first thirty years of the war.