No one told Iomedae anything about the situation with the second army because the second army has been gloriously conquering its way back across Moltuna province and everything's been going remarkably well, unless you're skeptical that the dwarfhold they're relying on soon reaching is still intact or paying a great deal of attention to how their lines of retreat have been sewn up behind them. It is a problem. It is half a political problem, because the general of the second army has lots of friends in Oppara. It is not a problem Iomedae could do anything about.

Here, have his belt, he can put on a new one. And have a new headband. And have two rings, a cloak, bracers, enchanted robes, other enchanted robes, the fancy shirt that makes you ungrappleable, gloves, an amulet, this bag of pearls, a hat that makes you look like a human so you don't alert the enemy, this bracelet, a mithril buckler...

(His anteroom has really been filling up with magic items.)

Arazni is not fond of Oppara. She saved it from the Tarrasque once but that does not require her to feel any endearment for a place. Aroden likes it, but on matters of taste they often find themselves in disagreement. 

She will grant them this: she's a wizard and likes magic items and they're doing great on that front on very short notice. 

He had, emotionally, written the second army off a month ago, which just goes to show that despair is a sin and one should trust the gods.

Well-equipped human-looking wizard. It's impossible to tell how outlandishly well-equipped, because she's Mind Blanked. "I expect to be able to return with good news for the meeting with the Emperor that your subordinates are arranging," she says to the Dishypatos, and gestures for the people who'll be joining her at the front to come take her hand for the Teleport.

The dishypatos is absolutely not one of those, he needs a pause to inhale after replacing his Greater Belt of Endurance with a regular one. "I trust that you will," he says. "May all the righteous gods bless your work." Also he will personally summon them a trumpet archon for backup and have the righteous gods bless their work via Greater Mass Spell Immunity and Bestow Grace of the Champion, the last of which will be useless on the Knight-Commander but he did prepare the spells, for some reason.

("Them" now includes a fairly senior priest of Aroden,  if not as senior as the dishypatos, who has been rounded up very very fast, plus three more junior people, all of whom are getting Greater Mass Spell Immunity and Bestow Grace of the Champion on general purposes.)

Being immune to fear does not usually matter to Arnisant - it's not as if one has feelings on the battlefield anyway - but it does, actually, make it easier to have thoughts that are complete sentences in the presence of a god. There is no chance that was Aroden's intended use of it so he'll be on the lookout for things to smite.

That's six people and a trumpet archon, which is not a problem for Arazni whose teleports can take sixteen.

With every passing second there is the chance the enemy is alerted that the Church in Oppara is up to something. 

Arazni casts an antimagic field that allows conjurations (so she can Teleport and take the trumpet archon along) and transmutations (so she can continue to resemble a human) and abjurations (to keep her Mind Blank in case he has an artifact scry, and to keep the Sanctuary she just had cast on her).

Teleport. 

It may come as a surprise to the majority of sensible, informed observers, but it actually happens that, while General Ieronim Albu of the Second Army may be a glory hound who got his appointment through political connections, and a gambler, and under about six Suggestion spells at all times, he is actually not an idiot. You don't have to be Arnisant to notice that the war is going badly. Tar-Baphon has demanded the destruction of the Lake Encarthan fleet and the whole of Imperial territory north of the Menador Mountains, and he can demand it because he's got most of it already. Canorate was one of the two anchors of their line of defense, and when Korholm fell it was obvious to anyone paying attention that Canorate wouldn't last and the Third Army would be cut off and annihilated.

Under these circumstances, you need to start taking risks. The fangwood tangles the enemy's wagons and packhorses just as much as it does Taldor's, and to get past it the orcish supply lines need to go through two points. One is Tamran, through which anything coming from Tar-Baphon's eastern territories (the vast majority of his nation) needs to pass, and one is Dajonir, upriver from Tamran. Both of these are major supply depots, where goods are constantly being loaded and unloaded between wagons and boats, and if both fall, the orcish army pillaging its way across Moltuna and outright besieging Canorate - the majority of Tar-Baphon's forces, just ask anyone - will be cut off and forced to retreat.

Taking Dajonir is obviously stupid. Just to get there you need to take Tamran with a naval assault, take it fast before the enemy notices because boarding ships while under attack is famously impossible, and then you have to march and sail upriver through a forest under enemy control, in fact in the middle of enemy-controlled territory, even though the Taldane army relies on cavalry and the orcs have hardly even heard of it, to attack an enemy-controlled fortress with only the supplies you can steal from the enemy. Even if you somehow win every battle to get to Dajonir, where do you go from there, cut off and trapped in the middle of hostile territory?

But they're out of plans that win the war that aren't stupid. And this (General Ieronim is persuaded) isn't quite as stupid as it looks. It has the perpetual advantage of the unexpected, to start with (the enemy won't see it coming), but that's not enough to make it good. They can't resupply, no, but the whole trip is by river, and riverboats can haul a lot of cargo... and just who already has enough riverboats in Tamran to supply a major army? Why, Tar-Baphon. Take Tamran using our naval superiority on Lake Encarthan (orcs and corpses are both very bad with ships), transport the entire living population and all the loot back home, minus what we need to eat, sail upriver through the Fangwood that the enemy doesn't control because nobody can control a forest, and then there's only a single battle at Dajonir. "And then what?" Why, and then we march west to the dwarfhold of Dar Garihm. The dwarves don't like necromancers any more than we do and have been our allies against Tar-Baphon practically since the war started, and Ieronim speaks excellent dwarven. With access to the major dwarven cities of western Moltuna, we can resupply, hold on, and work with the dwarves to strike against Tar-Baphon and his orcish allies.

It's not a stupid plan, if you happen to believe the right set of facts.

And, in the opinion of General Ieronim Alba, it has just about worked. General Ieronim had three goals, in this campaign. Take Tamran, take Dajonir, get to safety. He's done both of the first two. Tamran fell to his army, and he didn't think he could hold it but he could evacuate it, bar a rear-guard, and burn everything that would be of use to Tar-Baphon on the way out. There was a battle at Dajonir and it was hard-fought with his back to the river and Tamran already recaptured behind him, but he pulled it off.

There's an orcish army coming for him. He's not stupid. The orcs are already rushing up from southern Moltuna to do everything they can to stop his army from linking up with the dwarves, and the orcs have their own scouts, birds just like his wizards' familiars and incorporeal undead at night and all the horrors an archmage's imagination can concoct - but Tar-Baphon can't be everywhere. And as the Second Army leaves its night's fortifications and packs up to journey further into the low-lying foothills east of the Mindspin Mountains on foot and riverboat, the sun of dawn illuminating their work, he thinks he's actually going to get away with it.

That's when a woman Teleports into the commander's tent with six allies plus a trumpet archon, for one impossibility, while to all appearances in an antimagic field, for another impossibility, and if anyone has the reasonable instinctive reaction of trying to stab her they will find this is a third impossibility. (Unless they are very experienced in resisting powerful magic, in which case it'll merely seem like a very bad idea for purely mundane reasons, and also glance off her magical shields unless they're really good at stabbing people.)

General Ieronim Alba is no longer under six suggestions, and neither is anyone else nearby.

Two men crumple immediately to the ground once in the antimagic field, the entities that had possessed them having been temporarily suppressed. One clutches his head; the other vomits.

"They have been enslaved these last two months," the woman says. "The scouts have been turned and are lying; Dar Garihm fell years ago, and this was a trap all along.The enemy will attack as soon as he realizes that the bluff has expired."

General Arnisant is here for some reason! He looks not quite clear on that reason himself but his facial expression is expressive in the direction of 'she's not kidding, Alba'.

Also a very confused lady paladin. And some observers and a seventh circle priest from Oppara. And a trumpet archon.

"What in Aroden's name -" he roars, drawing his sword and then... not attacking her, for some reason.

(There is confusion outside the command tent!)

"I am not your enemy but you are under attack. Ready your men." She is dispelling the compulsions and possessions while she speaks; that'll keep even once they're out of her antimagic field. 

"Alba - we got a message from Aroden." He assumes Arazni has a reason for not identifying herself. "The army's in urgent danger."

Arazni needs three more minutes without the true hypothesis being whispered to Tar-Baphon, is what she needs. She turns and departs the command tent, firing Dispels off as she goes. Look at that, that man over there is actually dead, what a thing to not have noticed. Look at that, that one's suddenly gone ghost-white and is scrambling to flee. 

"Arrest him!" Ieronim isn't a wizard but he can spot a few common spells. When someone goes ghost-white after being dispelled, that is a very bad sign. 

"- Arnisant, what did I say to you the first time we met in Oppara?"

"That you recommended the red wine." How is Arazni deciding which people to - right, because she's a god.

He nods briskly and goes out of the tent to start yelling at his men to form up for battle, aides trailing behind him. Apparently half his officers were possessed, and so suddenly their seconds are going to be taking over much faster than expected.

No one has given Iomedae any orders or any explanation of what is going on so she's going to trail the general in Paladin's Sacrifice range and wait for trouble.

Not long now. She could have stopped all of Tar-Baphon's scouts and messengers from alerting him that the army's preparing for battle, but not without using Time Stops she does not want him to guess his enemies have, and not without making him wonder how in the world they had adequate intelligence. So any second now the fact of the battle preparations will be reported, and then the assault will begin in earnest.

She drops the antimagic field. Casts Greater Invisibility.

Aroden's Magic Army, to make every allied weapon for half a mile around into an extraordinarily powerful magic weapon. Haste, the good Haste that makes you wildly faster than normal Haste. Holy Aura, which she can do at will as she flies over the army. 

Below her, the horns sound and the army starts boiling like an anthill. The general is issuing orders - there's an attack coming - and soldiers pull on their lamellar coats, fasten helmets on their heads, archers string bows and grab quivers of arrows, cavalrymen pull their mail shirts on as their horses stand by for Mage Armor, formations shaking out as the infantry forms up around their standards, the heavy infantry with their great oval shields that bear the Eye or the lion or their own battalion's standards and their long stabbing spears whose shafts will shatter in the battle and their axes and knives that (Aroden willing) won't, the light bowmen with their simple wooden bows and the crossbowmen (the finest at siege archery, not much on the field) winding up their weapons, cavalrymen with their deadly bows of horn and killing lances and long straight swords, the hippogriff knights whose duty it is to slay dragons and all the mercenaries from Iobara and the west and the ten thousand allies of the Empire - the horsemen of the great steppe that taught Taldor archery and the dwarves with their long double-headed axes and great deadly glaives and the Kellid axemen now with axes of city-forged steel and scale coats of city-forged steel and the young elves older than any man with their darkwood bows and their magic older than Aroden's and desert nomads from Qadira who crossed the Sultan and would rather be north of the border - 

- and at the heart of the camp General Alba alerting officers who were thinking of themselves as second-in-commands and informing them that their superior officers were possessed by evil wizards and ghosts but most of the work of rallying is done by sergeants far too unimportant for any necromancer to impersonate - Alba offers horses to Iomedae and Arnisant, for his own bodyguard is forming up around him, knights drawn from his own holdings as every Taldane general has to keep him safe from his own subordinates as he is from the foe with swords and bows at the ready, trained by him and paid in their own prospects in the war -

Rank upon rank, the soldiers of Taldor form up for battle. There's no enemy they can see, but after the way they feasted when they took Dajonir, most of them trust their commander when he says there is one.

And below them, the low, low mist that covers the distant hills comes rolling in.

The commander of Tar-Baphon's forces in northern Moltuna province is a seventh circle lich who spent centuries contentedly ruling a small fiefdom in northern Ustalav, a few decades interrupted in that rule by some scheming mortals, a few decades after that in the vicious pursuit of revenge on them, their descendants, everyone who'd ever talked to them or their descendants, and everyone who objected to this, and then a few more centuries contentedly ruling again.

Then Tar-Baphon arose, and recognized his eternal right to the lands that he had long ruled, with it understood that Tar-Baphon was the Emperor of all of Avistan. So now he's here fighting a war for Tar-Baphon, and fighting it very competently, with the constraint that they are supposed to let the mortals believe they are winning. The Second Army has been induced into their risky plan, led deep into enemy territory, and thoroughly infiltrated. When he gets the word, he'll mop them up with vanishingly few survivors. It has involved no genius, just relentless patient execution. 




The first strike is a horrifying and incomprehensible monstrosity, plunging from the sky at the army's conveniently gathered leadership, inspiring utter terror in the hearts of all who witness it -

(Him, in the form of a gryphon, with a spell of his own devising cast upon it that creates eight twisted and horrific mirror images around it)