[Baalz]

Arcoscephale’s two-front war rages on. The Vanheim generals have proven every bit as tough and resourceful as the vans themselves. Counter, parry, feint, our dance goes on in a desperate struggle of well matched adversaries. After crushing their original army I knew it would be scant time before a fresh wave of Vanheim aggression crested our shores. Though the Arcoscephale great communion was able to slay the majority of Van power, a huge flock of black hawks continue to hold our home citadel, and our mage’s lacking in physical strength are unable to bring the walls down, we suspect stealthy vans are sneaking in to bolster the defense. As we sieged our own home, and watched the Vanheim reinforcements march closer, Man continued to nibble away at our borders completely unopposed. Despite our desperate press against Vanheim, I just could not allow our kingdom to be eroded in this fashion, so while I held the bulk of our power close at hand, I commissioned secondary and tertiary armies to press back along our more distant borders. Our tertiary armies consisted of small squads which pushed south into the land of the apes, to attempt and assist our Caelum friends in bringing civilization to the savages, while hopefully replacing some of the territories lost in our prolonged war. Our secondary army marched north, to deal some long overdue retribution to the armies of Man.

Seeing that much of Man’s strength was composed of powerful, but weak willed elephants, much of the secondary army was composed of astral mages, defended by hoplite phalanxes. As the armies of Man lined up on the battlefield, their powerful longbowmen began to fire from close proximity to their elephant corps, in an effort to soften us up before the elephants finished us off. As their first volley hung in the air, they realized their peril as many of the elephants turned towards the unprotected archers with freshly murderous intent. It was a red rout, with the majority of Arcoscephale casualties being the tragic result of having too few communion slaves to effectively share the strain of all the mind enslaving. Happily, the second engagement with Man went even better, as more communion slaves were sent forth, and now Man’s elephants march back into their territory under new masters. Our army grows with every encounter, though a deluge of seeking arrows fall upon us, presumably Man’s desperate attempt to slow the vengeance which advances to reclaim Arcoscephale land. Happily, our army consists of enough mages that this is no more than a nuisance, our priestesses heal the afflictions of those that survive, and the few that die are replaced quickly.

Meanwhile, our primary forces continue to match stroke for stroke with Vanheim. Seeing that the siege was not progressing, and operating under the strategy of not remaining where our enemy knew us to be we marched to intercept a largish Vanheim army before they could combine with others to overwhelm us, leaving a token force of mercenaries to maintain the siege. This worked even better than anticipated, as our decoy mercenaries were set upon by great eagles equipped with medallions of vengeance, obviously hoping to decimate our communion. Instead, they decimated our militia mercenaries in an all out kamikaze raid. There were no great eagle survivors. One province over, our main army slew and enslaved the bulk of a Vanheim army seiging another of our castles, sadly at substantial loss of life as the Vanheim general has adjusted his tactics to much more effectively target our mages. Powerful troll and dwarvish earth mages create earthquakes and shower us with clouds of blades, deadly to our lightly armored mages. We will need to push into Vanheim land before these strategies are able to be expanded. Thankfully, our god personally leads this army, thus victory is assured.