B.T.V. -- Session 07 Epilogue: Dragons Attacked

A contested battle



Dagnyr was back in combat and happy to be there. The Delve could still recall the desperate fight for survival on the Moon of Warren that, of all the Olo Feradir and others who had ended up on that hell-hole, only he had survived. The current fight wasn’t going well for his side, but the Olo Feradir were accustomed to being thrown into lost causes.


The field was contested by two sides, each of then divided into small groups of warriors. On his side, led by his friend and comrade Axewing from Logresse and Asher Zi, whatever he might be. Apparently he was a native of Axildusk, while Dagnyr had found himself summoned to this world only recently.


The other side was made up of armoured infantry, from what he overheard mostly Dragons with some Dzur thrown into the mix. Too tall for proper Veer, he thought. They’d look better cut down to size, but he had to admit they were skilled soldiers.


His side had trained warriors, though they were almost entirely new to actual battlefield conditions. The Dragons and Dzur, though, were proper soldiers, able to act as a unit on the battleground without any obvious central command. And they were quick, which didn’t surprise Dagnyr, but made trying to manoeuver his forces that much more difficult.


They fought in meadows interspersed among woods, with only a few structures.


Axewing had instructed him to seize the Shrine of Arrows atop Iehadam’s Ridge, which stood above the surrounding land. The shrine was held by three Dragon units, perhaps 18 or 20 soldiers in total, and they had the advantage of holding the high ground.


Dagnyr took control of two units of Leonaedes tribesmen and made a direct assault on the lowest Dragon unit on the slope, with two more behind it. Arruth, leader of the Leonaedes, protected his right side on the high side with two more units.


Dagnyr hadn’t wanted his units to have time to think before they attacked. They were repulsed after inflicting a few injuries on the defenders, and sustaining somewhat more on their own, but they’d had their first taste of battle. Dagnyr was forced back about 30 feet but, to their credit, the Tribesman quickly collected themselves.

However, the three Dragon units around the Shrine pulled inside its structure as an ad hoc fortification, and Dagnyr didn’t know his troops well enough to ask them to assault that, so he pulled back toward Axewing’s Leonaedes units. Accompanied by Asher, Axewing had moved to block three more Dragon units from marching up the road and taking Dagnyr’s and Arruth’s units from behind.


As the Dragon units on the road move to engage with Axewing’s forces, Dagnyr and Arruth move to protect Axewing’s right flank.


Axewing’s units, having surrounded one unit on the south side of the road and two on the north, surrounds them. Axewing and his forces then overrun the Dragons, leaving a few bodies on the ground from each side, with the survivors in flight and disorganized.







Meanwhile, the Dragon units and a Dzur unit in the area of Walethyn’s Farm, in the centre of the battleground, begin to chew up their Brunya opponents, dismantling one unit after another.


Other Leonaedes and Brunya units to the east wait, some in concealment, as reserves.


Zi flies to the Leonaedes units in the woods to the east of the farm, taking command but keeping them in concealment as Dragons push a Brunya unit toward them. Zi wants the pursuers to get too far from their support at the farmhouse before falling on them, but just short of where he wanted them, the Brunya stalled their pursuers, and a Dragon unit moved up next to the Leonaedes, forcing him to engage.


His units manage to fight off the Dragons, but Zi disliked the way his side’s units are dissolving. Even though outright fatalities are few, some of the Tribesman are running for their lives and, more disturbingly, limping away nursing grievous wounds. After consultation with Axewing, Zi makes psychic contact with Finndo of Amber, asking for help. After some confusions over whether Leonaedes is an individual or a tribe, the contact is broken, and Zi is uncertain whether aid is on its way. He takes to the air on Um’Pecka, who had reported an approaching skyship, something that had been worrying Asher. He checks in with Axewing, who asks him to identify the ship, and so he flies that way, feeling somewhat guilty as Umm soars over the meatgrinder below. He wasn’t so high as to be unable to hear the battle cries, and the screams of the injured.








Without warning, a new pair of units appear in the middle of the battleground, obliterating a Dragon unit. With Axewing further to the east, Dagnyr approaches them, and meets their leader, Omniveer, who says they are from Amber, and knights of the Order of the Unicorn.

Dagnyr offers some intelligence about the battle, but the knight seems dismissive and, having units of his own to look after, the Delve withdraws.


Axewing, meanwhile, is adroitly maneuvering his side’s units, and enjoying some success at tearing are the Dragons that face him.








Flying to the southeast, Zi comes to the skyship, an impressive vessel cruising its way toward the battle. He immediately identifies it as belonging to the Royal Dragon family of e’N’varr of Banners, and starts to fly back to Axewing to report that. However, before he can, Umm spots movement in a section of woods below them, and they make a low pass. The drake says he believes the newcomers are men, and Zi enters the woods on foot to greet them, and learned they come from Amber. This group of knights is led by Deverane, who declares, “We are here to fight.” Zi instructs him to start moving his warriors toward the battleground. Deverane suggests he accompanies Zi in what’s bound to be a coming attack on the skyship, and Asher agrees to pick him up again on the way back, since Umm can carry two passengers, even one as heavily armoured at the knight.


Zi flies to Axewing, and they decided that they and their flaying companions, along with Deverane and Cabillion would accompany them to the skyship.


Asher then flies to Dagnyr to inform him he must assume command of the battle, and the Delve gives answer after two Dragon units are attacked and scattered, and two more who attempt to attack Leonaedes units devastated.









Shortly after that, though, Dagnyr is momentarily deflated by the elimination by Dragons and Dzur units acting in unison of one of the newcomer Amber units. However, he’d buoyed soon after by the hope the knight who had been so patronizing might have been in that group. “Knowing my luck, he wasn’t,” he complained to himself.


In a series of engagements that follow, Tribesmen units are surrounded by a series of opposing Dragons. In some cases, the Dragons are forced back, and in others the Tribesmen must give way, but all his units remain intact, to his relief.









Axewing, on Defiant and with Cabillion, an assassin, aboard, approaches the skyship. Cabillion scrambles into the sails and rigging, and then Axewing lands at the rear of the ship, on a flat deck that seems intended for such purposes. After dismounting, he instructs Defiant to damage the sails of the ship, to slow its progress. Defiant takes off as Umm lands, and Zi and Deverane set feet onto the deck. Zi tells Umm to patrols around the ship, in case he or one of his comrades is pushed or falls overboard and needs to be rescued.


Asher follows Axewing into a large cabin, some 50 feet wide by 60 long, near the aft. Axewing is immediately attacked by a knife-wielding Orca sailor, but the attack misses its target. Axewing impales the sailor in the collar bone with the spike of his mighty axe, sending the enemy to one knee, clutching his wound. The immortal then draws the blade of the axe across the highest area of his chest, opening an artery that finishes him, the knife falling from his dead hand.


Then Zi hears the zing of an arrow going by him as he’s just inside the door, and looks across the room. He sees a female archer looking at her bow with disgust, and starts toward her. When he gets close, she gives him a welcoming look and he looks about to ensure no one is behind him. Quick as a cat, she spins back through the doorframe and to one side.


Axewing, meanwhile, having come across a rack of a dozen crossbows, begins methodically cutting their strings. Asher cannot help but approve.


Zi then steps through the doorway to find himself in what appears to be the captain’s cabin. Behind the desk is a wheeled chair, oddly enough for a ship of any kind. Glancing to one side, he sees the archer, who holds her bow with arrow nocked, though not immediately threatening him. To the other, he sees a pistolero holding his firearm pointed toward Zi, the barrel resting on a forearm for greater accuracy.


“He’s here!” the woman says, in what seems a welcoming tone. He assumes she’s playing with him. What is it with Draegeran women who try to kill him and, having failed, seem to take a shine to him?


From outside the cabin, Zi had heard three voices from within just before he entered, and inquiries about the seemingly absent one.


Sensing an attack coming, Asher throws a Claw at the pistolero, determining him to be the most immediate threat. He hits the Draegeran in the shoulder of his gun arm, biting deeply but seemingly hitting nothing critical, for the pistolero pulls the trigger.


What follows is a fizzle of fire and a gasp of smoke from the weapon, and the Draegeran coughs. Zi uses the opportunity to recall the blade, which snicks home into its place on his right pauldron.


The archer, meanwhile, gives another look of disgust to the pistolero.


“I would be the third,” said a Draegeran man who suddenly appears behind the desk, as if by decanting, but Zi has to wonder if he was just hiding under furniture.


“I am the First Mate,” the handsome newcomer continued. “The Captain isn’t available.”


Again, Zi suspected this “First Mate” was the Captain, but decided to play along. Asher asks the ship’s intention, and the First Mate answers, “We attack Dulisse.”


Asked why, the First Mate answer, as if by rote, “There are Shahasans living there, and they must be dealt with.”


Typical racist dogma, Zi thought. Don’t offer actual evidence of offences, just platitudes. Asher asks who their orders come from, and the First Mate answers from the Captain, who in turn takes his orders from Peloi.


Zi is relieved to know he and Axewing haven’t attacked the wrong ship.


Asher, explaining he doesn’t want to kill Draegerans unless he has to, seeks promises the ship will end its attack and no longer pursue hostile action against Tribesman. The First Mate is reluctant.


Axewing, having completed his vandalism of the crossbows—Zi thought he should find a nice bottle of wine as a reward for his comrade—the ship suddenly rolled to its port side, and Asher landed adroitly on his feet on what had been a wall.


Axewing, however, lands on a window which unsurprisingly shattering under his weight, sends the immortal plummeting toward the ground below. He summons Defiant, and the Gryphon rescues him.


Zi, though, sees that while the pistolero is unconscious, the archer has landed like a cat on the wall—bulkhead, Asher corrected himself—and was watching him.


They bandy words, and Zi thinks at first that the archer is being playful by referring to him as a slave and herself as his mistress. Then, uneasily, he begins to wonder if she has a firm perception on reality. She seems almost to live in another world.

Then she points out the window and mentions the ship is about to crash. Zi has no time to act. If he threw himself out the window now, he’d be killed by the fall to the ground. He hoped it was a very sturdy ship.









Axewing, flying above the plunging ship, remarks to Defiant, “It seems we have dealt a blow to Peloi, then.”


The ship breaks in two as it crashes, digging deep furrows into the soil as it ground to a halt. The masts snap loudly as they strike trees.


Defiant then points out that Zi is still within the wreckage, to Axewing’s astonishment. “Quickly, let us go below.”


“I am descending in a majestic fashion,” Defiant replied, but soon enough they are on the ground.


“We must look to the survivors,” Axewing declares.


“I don’t see anyone smeared here,” Defiant answers airily.


Axewing finds the ship surprisingly intact as he hastily searches the debris, finding his way to the remains of the cabin, pulling apart wreckage and steadying overhead debris with his propped axe.


He finds the pistolero’s body, and then hears the distinctive cry of knell birds, that come to the dead.


Asher is groggy and, while he hears Axewing calling for him, is unable to collect himself enough to speak. The immortal, though, hears a voice answer him.


“What do you want?” a female voice inquires. “Who’s Asher?”


“Who speaks?” Axewing demands.


“It is I, the woman near you. There’s an opening or something. I can see light.”


The light is from a spell that Axewing had decanted to illuminate the wreckage inside the cabin. He keeps digging, uncovered at first a pair of feet clad in boots similar to those he had seen the archer wearing.


Moving his way up, pulling bits and pieces off the woman, he finds Zi’s head pillowed on her chest. He calls again, and this time Asher awakens fully and, to his surprise, feeling largely untouched by injury.


“Remind me of the part of the plan where we crash the ship with me still in it,” he said drolly. Axewing didn’t laugh, but the woman rewarded him with a chuckle.


Zi, pulled to his feet and brushing dust off his armour and again astonished to find only a few scratches, glanced at the woman. One leg was twisted oddly under her, and he was concerned she was injured.


He wanted to rescue her, but Axewing pulled him from the cabin. Given the disparity in their relative strengths, Asher decided he’d rather not have any post-crash injuries and went along. Axewing then strode away to find Umm.


“Asher is safe,” he says when he locates the drake not far away. “He is fine.”


Axewing continues on his actual mission, and eventually finds Cabillion amidst fallen sails and rigging, a knife in each hand and each in the eye of two dead Draegerans on either side of him.


Axewing puts the knives back in sheaths worn by Cabillion, then, even though the assassin has sustained only minor injuries, heals him, concerned for an old friend. Cabillion, having awakened, suddenly starts and, glancing here and there, cries, “Where is my cloak?”


He runs off, searching for the cloak he had left in the crow’s next. It was a loan from Defiant, and Cabillion seemed in genuine fear of the gryphon’s response.









Zi, re-entering the wrecked cabin, finds the archer.


“You have returned to me, slave,” she states matter-of-factly. Zi clears the rest of the debris from around her, then looked to her injured leg, determining her right knee has been severely dislocated. His martial art gives him the gift of the Healing Hand, but he’s no experience in fixing such a dislocation, and worries about causing more injury to her. He straightens her leg, and she screams for a few seconds before regaining her odd composure. He heals her as best he can, then gathers bits and pieces to splint her leg, then helps her as she hops across the wreckage to the open air. He notices nasty scars on her chin line and chest.


Axewing returns and insists they must go back to the battlefield, which is sensible enough, Asher agrees. He promises the woman that, should he survive, he will return and take her to a physicker to properly set her knee.

They then fly back to their units they had left behind and Axewing, surveying the scene from the air, seems pleased with the disposition of the allied forces. They descend again into the maelstrom of battle.

Transcribed by R.Perry