Doomed Crusade
"I'm not telling you about the Doomed Crusade. I couldn't get it through to you what it was like. Even the smell was something alien and unique, and that's just a stink. What could you understand about losing most of your friends, about the feeling of ordering a charge down a slope so steep you know that many of your people are going to die just from falling? What could you experience from me telling you that my fiancee was taken by Hrothklo himself as we pushed his enormous chariot over the cliff? Nothing, and I'm not at all sorry that you'll never know these feelings."
~Ellayne Warbough, Sheriff of Alcedene
The Conflict
Prelude
Samyon Nil the Greater, the Margrave of Cambreath was assassinated by order of Hrothklo Bloodyfingers, general of the 18th Goblin Legion. Hrothklo claimed the head of Samyon to increase his standing and ‘prove’ that humans were too weak to defend themselves. The coup brought to his side the 16th Goblin Legion and the 10th, creating a dangerous triumvirate the like of which unseen for over a century. To smash this threat and avenge the well-respected Samyon, the Executive Council ordered an expedition be sent, and the new Margrave, Samyon Nil the Lesser, was to lead it. Samyon planned a careful raid designed to slay Hrothklo and his core leadership, while keeping the goblin population at large untouched. Bishop Vander XIII, who had claimed at the New Year Orrery ceremony that the divines had declared this a perfect year to eliminate the goblin menace once and for all (as he did every year of his prior 9 years in office) and saw that this was a perfect opportunity to show up the Three Virgins and Primal Cult adherents with his unrivalled power.
Deployment
Vander XIII declared a crusade into the badlands. At a massive ceremony around the Sunfire Bell, he declared a geas on every criminal and sinner to seek absolution by marching into the goblin lands. For the first time since the Goblin Wars, every canton moved as one, pushing nearly every military age Deminite male and many of the women and even a few children westward to invade the goblin lands. This resulted in Hrothklo uniting eighteen legions and thirty disparate ‘subgoblin’ tribes under his banner to respond to the “human menace” from a position of strength, just in time to meet and slaughter Samyon the Lesser’s corps of knights.
The Engagement
The crusading rabble was surrounded and slaughtered, with all of the experienced adventurers, professional soldiers, and trained knights doing their best to protect the ill equipped and poorly trained militiamen. Not thirty miles inside enemy borders, the humans routed. The experienced fighters largely stayed behind as a rearguard, their fate is assumed and hoped to be death in battle. The deserters raided and looted every town of Cambreath, usually fought only by the small local law enforcement and rarely effectively.
When word of a victory-swollen goblin horde amassing against the Barrier Mountains to end the world of man reached Cambreath, the Executive Council led the next wave themselves, expecting to never come back. They pulled the suddenly battle-hardened bailiffs and their deputies from their posts, along with any militia that had been wise enough to resist the calls of the Demiurge Crusade. With this ragtag army, they struck down from the mountains as Hrothklo’s mighty warboar-drawn chariot crossed the narrow pass between the southernmost mountain and the seaside cliffs.
Nearly half the army died in the charge, losing their footing and tumbling down like an avalanche of half-trampled corpses preceding an onrushing shieldwall. They didn’t fight Hrothklo, they didn’t give him a chance to respond. The vanguard, led by the bailiff of Alcedene Ellayne Warbough and comprised primarily of her deputies, simply shoved together with their shields and threw the mighty warchief off the edge and into the sea, where he and his famous building-sized warboars were broken on the jagged rocks below.
The battle afterwards was fierce, but the humans fought as only men who had accepted death could and the goblins were hampered by their hope to survive. The greenskins broke and scattered, fleeing both east and west. To the west, they went back to their status quo. To the east, the partisans of Alcedene met them with a wall of spears and slings, slaughtering or capturing all of them. At the end of the day, half of the massive hoard lay dead, numbering two hundred and fifty thousand goblinoids. Ten percent of the Executive Council’s forces walked home.
Outcome
The incident lost the Demiurgery a great amount of respect, and was dubbed the Doomed Crusade when it was mentioned in hushed tones. Bishop Vander XIII was disgraced, the other bishops voted to defrock him, and they then rose up and defenestrated him from the High Tower, leaving the remains at the base until the following winter, when he rose up as a wight and was slain by the Palatine by orders from the bishops.
Aftermath
The Doomed Crusade is the large historical event for everyone who lived through it. Even those who did not answer the call to arms buried their family and friends.
Conflict Type
Military Campaign
Battlefield Type
Land
Start Date
25th of Latewinter, 986
Ending Date
16th of Midwinter 987
Conflict Result
Neither side was unified, or in a position to push on with the conflict.
Location
Belligerents
Crusaders
Hrothklo's Horde
Strength
~200,000
~500,000
Casualties
~180,000
~300,000
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