The Eviction

One of most difficult problems facing the Loyalist Thaumatic Army Council in planning to conduct an assault on the Fortress of Ocroven was the question of how to bring their forces over the open Orothonian Ocean without alerting the defenders and as quickly and decisively as possible. Fortunately, the military planners had given a great deal of thought to the matter and when it suddenly became necessary, they had a plan.     The forces were split between a number of warships that had been prepared over several years, not at Oroth, as might have been expected, but in Yendle where they were disguised as merchant vessels and outfitted in secret. Two airships were made available by sympathisers and the combined force set sail at dusk, cloaked under magical clouds of pseudo fog emitted from the airships. The visible obscurity was only a fraction of the arcane energy that went into a range of stealth spells, but the Loyalist Thaumatic Army Council also counted on a number of distractions in other parts of the world and considered Prince Rygarde would be too absorbed in his own plans to understand theirs. As a consequence the invasion force arrived at the Fortress of Ocroven undetected until very late and had the advantage of surprise.

The Fortress of Ocroven was an enormous baroque construction occupying the entirety of the small island on which it had been built. It was made from olivine, quartz, granite, brass and strangely coloured glasses and its interior consisted of a confusing maze of twisting corridors and spiral staircases linking great halls and vaults. The invaders had three specific targets. The Fate Snowflake was the most important room, where the Fate Stones were arrayed and where Prince Rygarde was working with them on his scheme to fully assimilate Magicians' End within the Limit Lands. The Gate room was another area of concern, where intermittent links to the Prince Rygarde's native realm potentially allowed him to reinforce the fortress. Then there was the Throne Room itself where he was known to conduct operations.

Bright sunshine, blue skies and a hot day greeted the combatants as the artificial concealment of the travelling fog was swept away in a few moments when the invading forces crossed the perimeter of the fortress sea ring in the early morning. Once they had broken into the building, the remainder of the conflict was conducted inside it, in shadowy halls under the stained light of coloured glass windows.

"Century A" of the Owlblood Specials was in the vanguard of the attack and made the first assault to open the way into the Fortress of Ocroven as they disembarked from the leading ship. They were accompanied by a small group of specialist arcane shielders who augmented the magically boosted physical shields carried by the soldiers. This force faced the "Stop and Die", the patrolling tribe of Limiters charged with defending the perimeter of the fortress.   Enough confusion was sown in this first phase of the battle to begin a second and more targeted assault, when "Century B", the most highly trained unit of the Owlblood Specials sought to take control over the Fate Snowflake, identified by their commanders as being a critical goal of the assault, with the aim of reclaiming the Fate Stones. Mages from Ralsimoor, supplied by the Institute of Magical Analytics and who were considered the most expert in the lore of the Fate Stones, accompanied them to try to defuse any protective spells Prince Rygarde may have used to ward the stones. They reached the inner hallways without serious opposition, cutting through the "Stop and Die" until they encountered a tribe of Limiters known as the "Fast Breeder Reactors", a rapid reaction force sent by the prince to bolster the defence.   Kindall Skolbraken accompanied Century "C" which headed directly for the Throne Room to confront Prince Rygarde. They encountered him as he emerged to lead his troops, with a personal bodyguard of thirty Limiters from the "Hydron Colliders" tribe.     When the combatants reached the Fate Snowflake, the mages immediately saw that only five of the six settings for the Fate Stones were occupied. The place where they had expected to see Glim's Laugh was empty. Glim had, had the last laugh and thereafter the jewel became known as the stone that stole itself. Fortunately this meant Prince Rygarde was unable to enact the spell he had been preparing. But the imprisoned Fate Stones could not be cut free. The conflict boiled up to the Throne Room and the Great Gate with the defenders pushed back at every turn. Finally, in desperation, Prince Rygarde cast a melding spell designed to destroy the Fate Stones. Three mages from Ralsimoor returned arcane fire with fire. There was a cataclysmic explosion, in the aftermath of which Prince Rygarde and his few remaining defenders, fled through the Great Gate. The Fate Stones could not be found. It was feared they had been destroyed but they were certainly missing. However, something new emerged from the ruins of the Fate Snowflake, as the Great Gate was torn apart. It was the Shard of Ocroven, a mysterious solid ember fused out of the magical energies that had erupted in the Fortress. And thus, though it had caused much destruction, the battle created something too, even if no one understood quite what it was.

Prince Rygarde's retreat left the field to the forces of the Loyalist Thaumatic Army Council who systematically razed the Fortress of Ocroven to the ground.   The cataclysmic collapse of the Fate Focus, which had bound the Fate Stones, ripped them from their places in Prince Rygarde's carefully engineered arcane hexagonal geometry, preventing the permanent opening of the gateway to the Limit Lands but also casting the Fate Stones into a maelstrom of chaotic time in which they were lost, originally it was feared forever, although in the long run this turned out not to be the case.

The battle ended the rule of the Limit Protectorate and cast Prince Rygarde out of the realm of Magicians' End, restoring native born rulers to their positions of power and rejecting the dangerous incursion from the Limit Lands which had threatened to take the realm out of the set of evolutions and turn it into an archetype.

The arcane energies of the battle and the collapse of the Fate Snowflake, created the Shard of Ocroven, a mysterious fragment with weird properties that were not properly understood until many centuries had passed. But the Shard of Ocroven would have a famously important role to play in the eventual rise of the Jewelled Queendoms.