The tale of bitter blood

welcome, I will tell you here what the cause of this bloody war was...
Feel free to add anything you want...

Far away a thunder was roaring, the sun was going down and the sky was turning red and gold. Telcontar shivered as the cold wind blew underneath his weathered cloak. He was standing on a hilltop,seeming alone, his eyes fixed on dark lines raising from the horizon."Smoke... Those greenskins seem to have had some fun... We'd better hurry up before this accursed storm catches up with us. We're leaving!" Immediatly a band of elves emerged from the surrounding woods.
"we'll try to get them by night! Gurth an Glamhoth!'"he cried and he strode forward.

Parravon


Louis de Bordeleaux felt slightly uneasy as all eyes of the court turned towards him.
"Orcs, you say. How many did you say?" Duke Cassayon slowly said. Louis could not remember him ever mentioning their numbers but answered anyway. "Hundreds m'lord, might even be thousands. A 3 day's march from Parravon. " he said. The duke looked thoughtfully as if the though of hundreds of orcs made him very tired. "Hmmm, hundreds of orcs raiding the lands..." he murmured.
"The villages ask for aid, the greenskins are now raiding and pillaging their farms and homes. We need to act quickly m'lord." One of the surrounding nobles said. Immediatly one of the others stepped forward: "We can not risk open war, the forces of Parravon alone can not resist the raiding of thousands of orcs. There are more foul creatures crossing the land than orcs alone. The number of those vile beastman has increased enormous, and there are wisperings of more nameless horrors these days. There are even tales of elves raiding our villages. These are very dark days indeed if even our elven neighbours have betrayed us."
"Still we can not wait and let them cross these lands withouth punishment!" another one cried. A murmuring rose from the hall.
"It is true, it is my task as Duke to keep this country free from enemies, we will fight!". said Duke Cassayon.
Louis, felt sick, he'd seen the horde and he didn't want to be reminded to it.
"But sir, these orcs are far too numerous!" Louis said, "the only way to make it out alive is to stay in the fortress"
"A siege is not a knight's battle!" The duke of Parravon answered furiously. He raised himself from his seat, so everyone immediatly
stopped their quarreling. "A knight needs a lance, a sword and the thundering of hooves!" Louis cursed underneath his breath, this old loon was getting them all killed. He knew it...
"Summon the knights, call the man-at-arms, sharpen the swords! Saddle the steeds!",The duke cried,"Tomorrow we ride!"

Athel Loren, near the Northen Sentinels

It was dawn, the sun was just rising above the horizon and you could see the light shining through the leaves of the forest.
It was a magnificent sight. like every morning in his life as a waywatcher , Shadowstep enjoyed this sight and felt inner peace. "for this ", he thought " i would protect the forest all my life". With that thought he grabbed his bow and dagger and climbed out of the tree where he had slept that night, said a thanks to the spirits of that tree and left. Like every day he traveled, not a single day at the same spot, always looking for new places or... intruders. Right now he was on a mission. He remembered the previous encounter with his hated foes: Beastmen. Only the thought alone made him angry. "Beastmen" he murmered to himself, "filthy stuped creatures who want to corrupt the world for their gods, chaos". His hate grew stronger when he remembered that Beastmen killed his associate Kyarno, an elvish boy of 12 years old, in training to become a waywatcher. Hate and also shame that he, master waywatcher, The Shadowstep had let his student get killed by those beasts. After the battle he had sworn to avenge him. He had predicted an other battle actually, normally it was to let the boy see how a waywatcher fought. It was a sort of art, stalking your victims without letting them know that you're there, next picking a target one by one, the ones outside the group are the easiest to have a shot on, and then when there are just a few of them left, strike the leader. Ah confusion, that's the best, then they are like sheep without a shepard to lead them. Then you could just appear from the shadows and strike them and again dissapear in the shadows. Even more confusion and then finally death. Yes.. that was the battle he had predicted. But that foolish boy hadn't listened, he just attacked without precision, without stealth. Shadowstep sighed. Luckily they hadn't seen him, but they were cautious, it wasn't smart to attack now, to attack a herd of maybe 20 beastmen when they were cautious. No, Shadowstep had retreated and had sworn to avenge Kyarno. When the time was right, they would all suffer, that he was sure off. .

The Shadowstep

Louis de Bordeleaux was lying inside his tent and heard the rain falling on his tent. Everything outside was dark except from some torches burning between the tents to give some light to the guardians. No matter how hard he tried, he just could not fall asleep. He was bored and sick of this place. He didn't want to be here in the encampment but he was one of the kings messengers and he had to stay with the duke. He cursed the old man when he though of this. For 6 days they had been fighting now, the king had launched an attack on the hordes of orcs, but it didn't seem to do a damn thing,for every orc they had killed, 2 others appeared. They had been driven back with large losses and had been chased by a monstrous amount of orcs. Luckily the king had managed to rally his troops and to make a stand behind a ford at the river. Now they had made their encampment near the river and had managed to hold their ground against the infinite invasions of the greenskins, but it wouldn't last very long. The casualties were big and the amount of orcs was even bigger. There was no save moments anymore, they even had been attacked by a band of elves, like he'd never seen before. When he was young he'd seen his father talking with sea-elves from but these were not like them, while sea-elves were bright and and beautifull, these had something sinister about them, some morbid kind of beauty. He'd even heard tales of the forest elves who lived near the lands of Bretonnia, but they lived like beasts they said, and they never showed themselves. No, the forest elves didn't resemble with the kind he'd met... At that moment he heard someone entering his tent, a guards entered and said:"The duke summons you, Louis, you have to come immediatly!"
He grabbed his sword and went away...


Louis entered the tent of Duke Cassayon and saw the duke and his sergeants standing around the table. They were discussing battle plans. "You summoned me ,sir?" Louis asked. "Indeed, I did. I need your help, for you were the one who reported the invasion of the greenskins and we don't know how the army did move, so could you tell us were you did see them last time?" The Duke said.
"Hmmm, that should be, here I think." He said ,pointing towards some little village that still stood the moment he'd left it, but now probably didn't.
"Hmmm that does mean they won't go that direction", one of the knights said," They will not find any resources there, so will probably move North -or westwards." Another one replied:" We should send some reinforcements to the cities there."
"we can not, we have taken large casualties and we can not leave the way to Parravon undefended." a third said.
Soon all the sergeants were loudly discussing their battle plans...
"What should we do then? What if they split up? We can't even handle half their army."
"A knight can surely take out 5 orcs" :Louis heard one of them say.
"But sadly enough, they are with a lot more than that .You have seen the hordes they outnumber us by far..."
"We need to send word to the king, he will send help!"
"The royal army won't reach us in time! When they're here they'll find ashes and bones on a dark battlefield.
It takes more than a week to travel from here to the royal court, days to summon an army that could deal with this horde of orcs and then again more than a week towards us."
"Then wath should we do? wait here for death?"
"We should send word to the forest elves, they're our allies after all..."
"Nice allies we have, every messenger we sends towards them is found back with an arrow in his eye or does dissapear completly."
"They a lot closer though than the royal court."
"And what about the dwarfs? They hate orcs, they'll problably send some of their kin to battle at our side, or at least against the greenskins."
"We can not rely on strangers for the defence of our country"
"We have no choise, we need to, and their lands are also threatened by the orcs. they will answer!"
At that moment the sound of battle horns rang through the encampment, followed by the sound of clinging metal and the chaos of battle. "We're under attack!" Everyone in position!" Louis heard someone cry outside the tent.
"Common, men, take up arms." The sergeant who looked most important to Louis said.
"But we still need to take a desicion, we hold our ground like this, we need help",one of the sergeants replied, "What should, we do m'lord?"
All eyes turned towards the old lord of Parravon, nobody said a word, and for a moment all seemed quiet inside the tent.
Louis had noticed the duke had said almost nothing while the discussion was going on, he'd only listened, but now it was up to him to make the right desision.
He looked troubled and weary to Louis, after all he'd been leading the army from the moment they had departed, with no moment of rest. The Duke slowly raised himself from his seat and raised his voice.
"we'll call for aid!" , he said, "Send word to our Asrai and our Dawi allies. We can't fight this war alone!"