The Martyring of Mord Mothhark

Mord Mothhark, the former infantry commander of the Sathian Levies, was the final commander from the old Sathian Empire left alive. He had killed Barbarians in the thousands, held the line for the Empire and seen the fall of Sathoth at the hand of the Raveners, all relatively unchanged. He was told by the Emperor himself to hold off the latest wave of the Tentacled Brutes. Though he eventually lost the battle, he would permanently etch himself into the public consciousness with the greatest detonation of Kelsummian Combustion ever.

Summary

The most popular telling of the legend begins with the Emperor sending Mothhark to the border fortress called Redhedge. Redhedge had been built to hold the line against the Raveners and set up for the scorched Earth policy with the largest cache of Kelsummian Combustion ever manufactured. Now the size of the cache has been exaggerated, keeping the title of "largest" anything is incredibly important for maintaining the epicness of the legend. That said, it can't be exaggerated all that much. It then continues to describe the patching up of the walls, training, exercise, boring stuff. While that was going on, the Ravener Horde accumulated under a Command Nub. Command Nubs are the organizational force that moves the Hordes around and keeps them from wandering in all directions. They are as close to an actual commander they have, sometimes even using actual tactics. Finally, the actual fighting began. The Raveners surrounded Redhedge and charged the walls. The attack failed, the Horde began to adapt, and Redhedge dug in for a siege. Raveners sometimes bring along special strains for use as sappers. This is important later. The Raveners used massive slingshots to hurl each other over the walls and began to dig tunnels. Eventually, after the slingshots just resulted in them splattering along the walls, the Raveners introduced their massive carrier-rams to Redhedge's walls. Carrier-rams are living beasts with horns on their chins and massive mouths that hold other Raveners. These monsters lept up onto the walls, peppered by arrows and spears from the defenders, and unloaded their cargo. Fighting on the walls was brief, the Raveners butchered the archers and javelin throwers. But rather than let their fallen brothers be turned into abominations, the infantry formed up four men abreast on the walls in shield wall formation and began to retake the fortress. Most Ravener strains are about the height of a human, the modifications are smaller, but the shock troopers that took the walls had tentacles two to five Murtocks in length, able to outreach all but the modern Kelsummian Pikeman's signature weapon. In the face of these twisting tendrils, the robust shields of the Infantry held strong, and the spears and hand axes made short work of the bulky, charge dependent brutes as soon as the got into range. They relied on their mass and building up speed on a charge to be effective, they couldn't hold up in a line battle like the infantry. This counterattack routed the advance of the Walking Heresies before any real foothold could be gained, and is one of the only successful attrition skirmishes fought against the Raveners ever because they could not recover the bodies of either their or the human's, dead. They could not make more Raveners. Definitive Victory for the day. Mothhark himself awarded medals to all the survivors and began to plan for a counterattack. He planned to push straight to the Command Nub in the middle of the night. But this was not to be. There was another assault coming. The special sapper Heresies were breaking through the ground beneath the feet of the awarding ground, the Ravener Infantry poured in. Mothhark wasn't going to take this lying down, he grabbed his crossbow and shot the first Ravener to come through that gap, he then grabbed a shield and an ax and strode right into the fight. He was Seventy-Six at the time. This actually worked, he and a few select soldiers that were actually armed held off the Walking Heresies at the choke point by killing the big one at the head of the line and blocking the hole. The infantry armed up and pushed out. The were eventually driven back within the walls by the better armored Raveners. Months of camping, assaults, and back and forth infantry battles wore the defenders down, and in the final days of the siege the Raveners mounted an assault to push through the battered survivors. From the horde's perspective, this battle was a disaster! They had failed to gain any new bodies from dead defenders, or even reclaim their dead comrades, the attrition was taking their toll. They needed to hurry this along. The launched an all out assault to finish the siege. Mothhark had stocked the fortress Redhedge for a final stand, the largest cache of Kelsummian Combustion ever. Exact measurements of the cache have been lost to time, but it was big. The idea behind it was to burn the bodies of the dead before the Heresies could make them into their slaves. A suicide pact was signed between all the men that should the line fold, they shall all burn. The weary soldiers finally collapsed under the claws and tentacles of the horde, and Mothhark himself struck the match he had been dreading to for seven months, lit the fuse, grabbed his crossbow and ax and waded into the fray. He held them back as he saw the fuse burn away, before it finally exploded! The massive wave of fire immolated the entire horde, the flames catching onto the individual Raveners and spreading throughout the mass of bodies, causing a fireball the size of a city, burning away the horde and ending the invasion at the cost of Mothhark and his soldiers. The last of Sathoth, burned away in their one last act of heroic spite!

Cultural Reception

The legend, evidenced by the title of "Martyring" implies it is seen by the Empire of Kelsumm as a heroic act. Mothhark himself is nearly a saint, his men all dead heroes in the cause of killing those tentacled monstrosities and reclaiming old Sathoth. This sentiment is shared by most of the world, except Taldefans, who see him as a fool who wouldn't run from a fight he couldn't win, and the Raveners presumably. They probably see him as the face of what resistance against them has become, seeing as so many have followed Mothhark into suicidal glory and fire.

Date of First Recording

1110 U.V.

Date of Setting

1107 U.V.

Related Organizations