Hordes Campaign
CAMPAIGN HISTORY
YEAR 1 - ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS
As the Cycle of the Phoenix opened, nations eyed their neighbours warily, probed, tested and put out diplomatic advances. A number of alliances quickly appeared.
Immediately, there was an attempt to grab the independent cities. Belvera fell to the Iron Dwarves & Mor-Lurpak to Nordheim. Acheron & Quorm clashed over Behli. Quorm & Djerbil together tried to take Khazi (their Holy City), but it proved to be tougher than they thought.
Two nations found themselves suddenly surrounded by enemies. One of these was the Wood Elves, who were invaded in turn by the Dragon Orcs, the Saurians and Hibernica. The Saurians gained an important foothold on the mainland. The Dragon Orcs took a severe hit from this when the army of the Necromancer appeared behind them, cutting off their retreat, and their army was annihilated. Thus it quickly became apparent that the Necromancer possessed the secret of being able to teleport to the stone circles.
The Red Orcs found themselves facing an alliance of Voy, Albion & Kregmire. They fell back, trying to preserve their army, and surrendered to Albion at the first opportunity.
The Centaurs invaded Djerbil, but were repulsed; they in turn threw back an invasion from Nordheim. Somehow, Acheron persuaded the Grey Dwarves to surrender two territories to him. No-one is quite sure how the High Priest of Acheron did this, but evil magic is strongly suspected.
So by the end of the first year, Albion was emerging as the nascent superpower.
YEAR 2 - THE CHILDREN OF THE PROPHET ARE INVINCIBLE
The second year was quieter; several nations had to recover from the losses of Year 1. Quorm’s long-running siege of Khazi finally paid off, and the Holy City was safely in the hands of the faithful. Less to the Caliph’s liking, the High Elves spurned his offer of alliance and launched an invasion of Quorm. Infuriated by this elvish perfidiousness, Quorm not only beat it off but counter-attacked into High Elf territory.
In the East, the Iron Dwarves drove the Saurians back into the sea. An undead army teleported into the stone circle
north of Voy and attacked into the Theocracy’s lands. Djerbil faced a two-pronged attack from Albion; their orc vassals attacked from the south while the Kingdom’s own army arrived by sea on a Kregmirian fleet. The invincible Emirate defeated both invaders.
YEAR 3 - THE GREAT GAME
An alliance between Djerbil & the Centaurs secured the Emirate’s northern border, leaving them free to turn their attention south. The invaders from Albion at Ras Dil were driven back into the sea, but renewed attacks from the Orcs resulted in the loss of Djerbil’s southern provinces. For the first time the Emir suffered a defeat in battle, but successfully defended his capitol from a combined Albion / Orc attack.
Meanwhile the Centaurs, in alliance with the White Dwarves, invaded Nordheim.
Albion broke off its alliance with Voy and it and its orcish allies launched attacks into the Theocracy. Faced with a militarily hopeless situation without the support of Albion, the Arch-Theocrat made the decision to preserve his nation’s existence by offering Albion his allegiance as a vassal. Voy then took advantage of the absence of the Necromancer (who has gone on a sea voyage to capture the Pirate Isles) to drive his undead minions out of its territory.
The Saurians tried again to invade the Iron Dwarves, but failed to gain a foothold on the mainland. The Dark Elves launched an attack on the Grey Dwarves and had some success, despite the intervention of the Pteor. Now under a new regime, the Grey Dwarves repudiated their deal with Acheron and tried to regain their cities, but Acheron now came to a deal with the Dark Elves and exchanged one of the cities for a Dark Elf city further west.
YEAR 4 - “ONE MORE SUCH VICTORY AND WE SHALL BE ENTIRELY UNDONE“
In Spring Djerbil once again defended its capitol from the Red Orcs, and had then to repulse a naval landing by Kregmire at Ras Dil. Although once again victorious, three years of war were starting to tell on the Emirate and the strength of its army was becoming depleted. A counterattack against the Orcs failed, although Quorm sent an army to its aid which inflicted a crushing defeat on the Orcs at Yasir. However the Emir came increasingly to feel that Djerbil could not survive another attack, and at the end of the year accepted a peace treaty with Albion & the Orcs which required acceptance of Albion as overlord.
Here follows the Chronicle of the Cycle of the Phoenix. Here you can follow the fate, over time, of each of the twenty nations in the campaign (the actual campaign scores are here).
The maps below show the political situation at the end of each year. The key is on the right. The initial political map is here, and the main map (which names each of the cities) is here.
Albion, however, had problems of its own. It sent an army into Voy to help defend its new vassal against another appearance of the Necromancer & his undead host. Two victories by the Allies managed to drive the Necromancer from Voy.
Nordheim maintained its borders against repeated attacks from the Centaurs to the south and the White Dwarves to the west. The Wood Elves were forced by an invasion of their capitol to accept the overlordship of the Iron Dwarves, but managed to preserve their army intact. However Hibernica made territorial inroads on them from the north, and the Dragon Orcs from the east.
The Grey Dwarves re-took all the territory they had ceded to Acheron with a series of victories over the Dark Elves. It was only in a pitch battle before the walls of the Dark Elf capitol that the dwarven juggernaut was halted.
YEAR 5 - THE SECRET OF THE STONES
Once again, an army mysteriously appeared from no-where at the stone circle north of Voy. But this time, it was an army from Acheron. The Sorceror-Priests of the Evil Empire had been hard at work researching these teleportation portals, and had mastered the secret of the stones. Their army struck south into Voy and established a base at Ryllion. At the same time Voy came under invasion from the west by an alliance of Quorm and the High Elves.
Perhaps in response to Acheron usurping his control of the stone circles, the Necromancer now lead his army into Acheron, capturing two cities. The Red Orcs attacked Quorm’s outposts east of the Great Desert. They took Yasir but the Holy City of Khazi proved impregnable to them.
With the Wood Elves now their vassal, the Iron Dwarves attacked east into the territory of the Dragon Orcs, but the Orcs successfully defended their lands. The Grey Dwarves eliminated Acheron’s last foothold in the east, and repelled a counter-attack by the Dark Elves. Renewed border clashes between Nordheim and the Centaurs were inconclusive.
The last independent city, Harn, fell to Hibernica.
