The Southern Bramble Incident

A brief, one month conflict between the Dwarves of Dumgarth and the Grippli of the Southern Brambles.

The Conflict

Prelude

On Snowflurry of 2783, a Dwarven hunting party of 20 entered the Southern Brambles. Their hunting expedition begun with destroying a big cat. Unfortunately, the big cat was also the quarry of a group of Grippli, 14 in number, who claimed ownership of the animal. Each side made the claim that they were the first to injure the beast. After a brief time conversing, the two sides could not accept one side of the story as verifiably true, and they began to fight.

Deployment

The fight was, at first, between the 20 Dwarves and 14 Grippli. After their brief interaction, the two tribes met with larger armies; 500 Dwarves to 300 Grippli. Thankfully, at this interaction, the Dwarven leader Minfilia and the Grippli leader Tough One were also deployed.

Battlefield

The group battled within the Southern Brambles, a terrifying forest environment that holds many different dangerous creatures. The battle was mostly in clearings between the more dense elements of the forest. The Grippli performed warfare designed to slowly weaken the Dwarves' morale, and thus some encounters did take place in dense forest where the Grippli's ability to climb put them at a large advantage.

Conditions

As standard in the Southern Brambles, the conditions were quite humid. The air thick with mist, it could occasionally be hard for the Dwarves to see deep into the forest. The wild animals of the Brambles kept their distance from the battle, leaving the dwarves to slowly huff their way through the Brambles. However, there were almost double the number of dwarves as there were Grippli, and the number advantage kept them from ever losing enough moral to fully retreat.

The Engagement

The first instance of the battle was a brutal duel between the small factions. Nearly half of both sides – 9 Dwarves and 7 Grippli – were killed in the initial engagement. The battle was direct.

Angered, both sides retreated to their ancestral homes, the Dwarves taking a full week to return to Dumgarth. It would take another two weeks for the Dwarves to return to the Southern Brambles with their army of 500. The defending Grippli army, with 300 troops, waited for their arrival.

In a turn of good fortune, only 3 dwarves and 1 grippli died during the Dwarven war march. The Grippli utilized toxins that would slow and sicken the dwarves, without causing casualties. They also stayed to the higher regions of the Brambles, out of the range of dwarven weaponry. This allowed them to slow the march and allow the Dwarves to cool.

By the time the army reached the Grippli encampment, Minfilia the Dwarf and the Grippli known as "Tough One" met and conversed. The Grippli provided the dwarves with rare materials in recompense for the deaths of their brethren, and the Dwarves formed a very temporary ceasefire.

While short, this encounter put the Grippli tribe – exceptionally small on the field of politics at the time – to the forefront of the public consciousness. The Elves and Humans alike were impressed with the Tough One's ability to safely disarm the Dwarven bomb that was approaching. Very rarely did such a small tribe keep casualty numbers on both sides that low without intensive intimidation tactics.

Conflict Type

Battle

Start Date

2783

Ending Date

2783