Fifth Incursion

Military: War

When the Capital city of the Western Princes fell, the Kindom fracured and its rulers scattered. Following a series of quick sieges, the invading forces returned to Tildarra to pressure the defenders even further.   With the capital city of Tidarra in unprecedented peril, the danger was too great to be ignored, and so all the previously quarreling Dukes would come together once again to fight for ther survival...

The war was unlike anything the nobles of Tildarra had seen before. For the first time ever, they were not fighting their long standing neighbours, or foreign nobility from one of the other Kingdoms. Now, their enemy was unknown, their origin seemed almost mystical, and to many of the Border Lords, these invaders were a constant threat, that could spring up from the forests of Balios at any time, with unpredictable numbers.   Their tactics seemed cowardly to the noble lords, used to a more traditional confrontation between armies. Ambushes were not unheard of during wars in Tildarra, but one could attempt to prepare for such events by truly knowing your enemies and where they should be coming from. It did not help that, while these raiders moved in an seemingly independent fashion, their armies would suddenly turn around and reposition themselves in order to flank an unsuspecting enemy alongside each other. All but the dimmest commanders could agree that they seemed to be acting together, under an unified leadership, but there were no guesses as to which group was in charge.   Little by little, the enemy forces came closer to the city of Tildarra only to be repelles when the foreign Battalions of the Western Princes came together to aid the besieged Dukes, and yet, once they retreated, they simply divide and sweep around to hit one city or another, perhaps stalling their grand offensive to raid for supplies. The goal of these manouvers seemed unpredictable, and the Southern Lords would assume that the raids were not a distraction, but maybe their final goal. Some would even speculate that the foreigners did not believe that they could take the Capital, and that they knew the whole Kingdom would come together were the city to be any real threat.   These predictions would, however, come to be proven tragically wrong. During the end of Balenbok, 509 AoA, the Kingdom of the Princes were faced with a sudden onslaught of enemy forces, emerging from deep inside the forests of Balios. Their defenses were strong, and had already been reinforce after the start of the incursion, but after two years of war in Tildarra, many of their rescources had already been diverted to aid their troops outside their own territory. They did not expect the enemy to have such a large number of troops laying in waiting, as no prior invasion by troops of men had ever employed so many soldiers before.   Once the troops sent by the Western Princes returned home in an desperate attempt to rescue their own homeland, the situation in Tildarra became increasingly dire. Until then, the fights had been inconclusive, with the invading forces limiting themselves to raids over farmland and underprotected baronies. Now, however, the defenders found themselves lacking an unified response, and individual duchies were left to fend for themselves against multiple organized invading armies, since neighbouring lords feared an ambush if they dared to send their men away.