999YK Summer: Nymm

The vast wilds of Xen'Drik contain many concealed places and wonders. Giantish ruins are most common — the ruined city of Threnal is merely one of the largest and most grand, but the ruins of smaller settlements are scattered throughout the interior, the remains of an empire that lasted 40,000 years. That empire was strong until the war against the Quori, when the giants unleased the most powerful of the magic taught to them by dragons to shift the alignment of the plains themselves. The backlash on Eberron itself destroyed whole continents, wrecking the giants' own empire in the process — though doubtless saving Eberron by preventing the Quori from crossing from their native plane.

Their slaves, the elves — except for the Sulatar — took advantage of the weakened state of the empire to rebel. Desperate to prevent their civilization from falling, the giants turned once again to their terrible magics. But the dragons would not stand for Eberron being near destroyed just to save the giants: they turned on their former pupils and destroyed the giants' empire, preventing a greater destruction. Some dragons remained in Xen'Drik to oversee the desolation, to ensure that the giants were truly unable to rebuild.

Nymm

Hammerhead Clan: Banner 3 scouts a barren tile. Banner 1 tries to scout the way to besiege the main Orc army, but rolls a scouting event — and rolls two sixes: a dragon lair. And they roll a 4 on the test to wake up the dragons, triggering a Dragonrage.

I roll D6+1=4+1=5 dragons. The way this works in ME is that the dragons do an essentially random walk over the map, placing one dragon in each tile until you run out of dragons. These tiles all then make a test which will result in most of them get burned to the ground.

Dwarves cannot resist a good cave. The Hammerhead scouts had orders to scout a path to the White Fang capital Lagakh Mor, but an order to scout is one that can be interpreted broadly, and the duegar surveyors chose to investigate the unusual cave in the foothills of the Dragon's Maw mountains. The unnattural cold should have warned them that something was afoot, but the duergar were far from home and sensed that there might be something of value of they went deeper. They were rewarded with the sight of a vast underground chamber, icy and misty — but it was already too late, as the magical wards had been activated and the dragons were already stirring within.

Aussircaex and Aussiroth, white dragons that had lain in slumber here for most of 40,000 years, were awakened. The scouts were just the first to perish. The dragons, feeling it necessary to see what was going on in the surrounding area and wanting to intimidate the neighbourhood, flew forth and attacked surrounding settlements. They scoured the surrounding area, destroying two fortresses that they passed. The duergar army encamped nearby was of little interest to them, though — the dwarves are possess only clerical magic, and were clearly not settled there — so the dragons contented themselves with a demonstration of power by flying through the camp and slaying a hundred or so soldiers with blasts of freezing ice, before flying away to the peaks of the Dragon's Maw mountains.

Well, that was pretty bad for the duergar, but it could have been worse — if I had rolled a 5 or 6 instead of a 4 on attacking the tile with their armies in, the armies would have been destroyed by the dragons — which would have upset the whole campaign.

A dragonrage covers the land west of the Dragon's Maw mountains. The fortress just taken by the duergar, and the neighbouring independent fortress, are razed, and the duergar armies take some losses, but the White Fang orcs get escape the destruction.

Meanwhile, banner 2 moves south towards the Sulatar, exploring a barren tile. Banner 4 tries to continue scouting, but the scouts are ambushed by bandits and never return. Banner 8 continues to move south, in case it needs to back up either the operations in the centre or west.

With banners 5 & 7, I made a concious choice not to head for Stormreach. Doing so, given the messy state of affairs with the Sulatar banner 3 already operating down south, might force the Storm Lords to call off their invasion against the Sulatar; and that would bring another near 3000pts of troops into action close to the border — better to let the humans and Sulatar fight it out between them. So instead banner 5 just continues grabbing villages, hoping to weaken the Storm Lords for an attack next year.

White Fang Tribe: Banner 1 scouts out the approaching banner 6, and the news is bad: it's larger than they expected; larger than banner 3 can defend. Darn. The right play is to move banner 2 into the capital to defend it, but they fail their scouting roll! Double darn. So banner 3 moves into the capital instead, but it is going to be smashed by the duergar next turn provided the dice do not betray them.

Storm Lords: Banners 4 and 5 converge, blocking their path for the Sulatar towards Stormreach with a larger force. No scouting mishaps here, fortunately. Banner 3 stays in place to defend the cities here.

Banners 1 & 2 move in to besiege the Sulatar capital in Searing Heights; on the way, their scouts manage to recover some supplies that the Sulatar thought were burned, enabling them to bring more food to the siege. That gives them a good chance of winning. (They rolled a scouting event when trying to retake a village; they rolled found supplies, and rolled a 6 on a D6 for how much was found.)

The Storm Lords know the relative strengths here: 2807pts Storm Lords vs 2325 Sulatar. Direct attack is therefore not going to work early on; instead, they spend Nymm bombarding the city with siege engines — but they roll a 1, gaining no advantage.

Sulatar: Besieged banners 1 & 2 are stuck in the capital defending, and use up precious baggage. With the Hammerheads probing the Storm Lords in the centre of the map, we know that their banner 4 will not be heading towards the siege now; so banner 3 turns north, taking and burning another human village.

End of Nymm.

The southern part of the map burns — it's a warzone, with 7 settlements razed now. The Storm Lords are losing territory everywhere, but have a chance to knock out the Sulatar with the siege of their capital. Meanwhile, the White Fang are in deep trouble and may lose their capital next month.