The Border Wars

Craglim Reach had five hundred cavalry and fifteen hundred infantry at the beginning of the campaign. Herigmark entered the fray with two hundred archers, fifty cavalry, and five hundred infantry.

On Earrach 21, 955 OTO Craglim pushed into Herigmark, taking the towns within five miles of the border with their cavalry. The infantry moved in to secure the towns and set up fortifications to hold the land they now controlled. They established a sundown curfew upon the citizens and took a census so they knew how large the towns were in order to send the information back to the palace for taxation purposes.

Craglim Reach chose to attack in the spring and summer when the weather conditions were the most favourable for combat. That wasn't quite the case in the end. That year the spring rains hit hard and late, making the ground a quagmire for the advancing troops. The terrain also played a greater roll in the combat.

When the two opposing forces met the Herigmark troops did not "fight fairly" according to Craglim Reaches' military. The initial engagement was cavalry to cavalry, Herigmark withdrew immediately to recalculate their tactics for facing a force that vastly outnumbered them.

The second engagement was two weeks later. The Herigmark troops were well established when the Craglim Reach troops encountered them. It was in a narrow pass with sheer cliffs on either side. The infantry were out in the front lines as the enemy cavalry thundered down on them. At the last possible moment the infantry dropped their weapons and shields to pick up fifteen to twenty foot long pikes which were anchored into the stone of the ground. Craglim Reach's cavalry were impaled on the pikes killing two hundred fifty units. The rest of the cavalry circled back and retreated.

When the Craglim Reach infantry advanced, the hidden Herigmark archers waited until they were in the center of the pass which had been soaked in preparation for this battle. At the signal of a sounding horn they let loose a volley of flaming arrows from the top of the cliffs, setting the land ablaze. With the Craglim Reach infantry trapped in the flames, the archers let loose flight after flight of arrows into pass. This tactic devastated the infantry and caused moral to plummet for the Craglim Reach forces.

For the next three months the Herigmark and Craglim Reach forces fought back and forth for control of land and towns while being inundated with rain limiting the abilities of the archers. Whenever the skies cleared the archers were able to take down cavalry and infantry who were quagmired in the resulting mud.

The final stand of the Craglim Reach military came down to a three month siege of the town of Haven's Hearth. The citizens had four months to prepare and had built an underground tunnel system to get beyond the fortifications put up by the Craglim Reach occupiers. The also showed the HIA how to get into the town. Knowing how the Craglim Reach troops ran things in the city, citizens would wait until after the headcount was complete each night some would sneak out to gather food for their families. The food caches they had would stay hidden in the tunnels.

In the end, the town was razed by its own citizens on their way out through the tunnels.

The overall outcome of the aggression by Craglim Reach was they lost badly. The towns which were briefly taken over struggled that winter due to their crops being trampled and their livestock butchered to feed the invading troops. The markian king sent supplies and recompensated the them for their troubles. He also set up military bases near all the borders to prevent a repeat of the invasion.

Near the end of the war the Herigmark Intelligence Agency or the HIA was created by the king of Herigmark to gather intelligence about the other nations before there can be another war.

With the ending of the Border War and the creation of the HIA there has been a lasting peace within Herigmark.