Month: June 2013

Thelbane City Attacked!

While the rumours and speculations regarding the death of Merlin were still hot on the presses, bugles sounded and the flag of Victor Roberts, first born son of Princess Dara Helgram, was run up the flagpoles, and Bleys’ army began it’s advance on Thelbane.

Moving on two fronts, Forces marched out from both Jesby and Sawall lands, and the citizens of Thelbane City began to barricade their homes and close their businesses. Some of those who could flee were gone in an instant, and others chose to stay and defend what they could of their property as war came for the second time in recent years to their doorsteps.

By the time Bleys’ army had reached the city, there was already an unexpected surprise awaiting them. In the last minutes before they drew up to the walls, the Citadel gates were flung wide, and the massed armies of House Hendrake marched out in close order, led by Field Marshall Duchess Lintra Hendrake herself. The Hendrake forces moved quickly with a decisive plan, and soon had divided into smaller units that occupied the cardinal points, then smaller again until the city had a full and complete garrison of Hendrakes at all points.

Then bugles sounded once more, and it became clear that Mandor was not content to have his allies sit and wait for Bleys to advance. The armies sallied forth and the plains outside Thelbane city and alongside the Abyss rang with the clash of steel on scales and the cries of the wounded and the dying.

Meanwhile news came from the backfield that further rearguard attacks had been launched by Hendrake forces directly against the Jesby and Sawall Houses that Bleys had left staffed by those of his army that could not move fast enough to keep up with his blitzkrieg attack on Thelbane city.

Thus ended the Thelbane civil war. The fates of all of the individual members of the former Merlin coalition are not yet clear, but the day was without doubt won by Lintra Hendrake and her allies. “They knew what they were facing. I had told them that the Earl of Walsingham had brokered my negotiations with King Mandor” said Lintra in a short interview with TNN contract reporter Kate Adie. “They had the option of time for the diplomats to talk. They decided to try and throw a fast ball instead. They must have forgotten that the Earl can open Trump gates in his sleep.”