[tibbs]

Baalz said:
When first the peoples of Sauromatia were encountered, a chance encounter led to hostilities. They seemed a hardy folk, however, so it was decided to extend our hand in friendship. Their response, citing manifest destiny, regretfully informed us that the lands under our banner need be seized for the great plans of He Bi Kami as a massive group of archers descended on us lead by a monstrous great wyrm. Our mighty jaguar warriors were completely unprepared for the swarms of poisoned arrows, so under the tactical genius of our great prophet Tlahuixcalp, our forces melted into the jungles ahead of the force of cannibals, never engaging the great host, but never letting them keep possession of our lands for long. Stalling for time, as an alternative was developed to deal with the overwhelming archers.

Growing tired of the game of cat and mouse, the great wrym He Bi Kami learned the location of the Mictlan holy ziggurat and marched directly to our very capital. Sieging the citadel there, he obviously hoped to end our guerilla tactics by cutting off the head of our nation and assaulting the bloody god directly. As he was soon to find, however, the tricky part about jumping on a jaguar’s back is getting off.

The large groups of archers had been reinforced with a seething mass of noxious hydras, and heavy pikineer mercenaries guarded their formation to give them time to lay waste to our forces. Tlahuixcalp chose not to play that role, and issued orders to slay the mighty host to a man.

Leaving masses of slaves and foulspawn as arrow catchers in the front, the might of the Mictlan nation formed up in the rear. The Sauromatian archers must have grinned seeing the amount of wide open ground separating our armies, envisioning that the great range of their composite bows would give them ample opportunities to pepper us with death before we could engage them. Imagine their shock as the divine blessing of the bloody god was invoked, and several score of eagle warriors took to the air. Imagine their dismay as a dozen demonic beast bats joined the dive into their ranks. Imagine their horror as a large cabal of Mictlan priests tore the very fabric of the underworld and an uncountable mass of imps boiled forth to surround the army who was armed mostly with now useless bows. The tragedy of military discipline is such that even the archers which were not beset by our mass of flying troops continued to fire into our archers until they to had their turn to hold the attention of our holy slayers.

The majority of our losses came with the unfortunately unavoidable chasing of the routing hydras. Fortunately, as we had re-conquered all the surrounding territories, even those few who managed to escape (including the delusional wyrm who styles himself a god) must surely have died in the countryside.

Unfortunately our Great Wyrm, infected with swamp fever lead our army in an unwise and reckless manner, cutting off any available retreat for ourselves and trailblazing a path to the enemy capital. The realization that we were in a bad position came too late. We have paid the price. We are angry at our god. But he is our god, and we must obey his will. We will rebuild.

Sauromatia