A Song of Ice and Magic
Teaser Battle Between Tundra Guild and Deep Benders
What follows ia not Summoner Wars canon. It is a fictionalized account of a battle between the Tundra Guild and the Deep Benders, based upon portions of a number of playtest games that the author has been part of. Enjoy!
The swirl of frost and hail danced above the dwarf’s head and swept upward as another foggy breath escaped his lips. The frost melted as soon as it touched his fiery red locks, but he paid it no heed. Glowering over the ramparts of his ice fortress, he called down to his marshals to prepare their troops for battles. The foul band of psychomancy-wielding geomancers approached under cover of dark – those cowards.
Leaping over the ramparts, Hogar landed deftly on the snowy ground and called forth a particularly robust summoning wall to aid his troops. He snarled to see his opponent pull up a similar fortification, and did not hesitate to send his well-disciplined troops into the fray. These pathetic spellcasters cannot match the mettle of his hearty orcs and dwarfs!
His cloaked counterpart was not pleased to see the ease with which his troops were dispatched, but knew that their true potential had yet to be unlocked. With a blast from his stone, a stout priestess and snarling dragon of the deep both seemed to grow in stature and prowess. Flooded with their newly boosted energy, the troops surged back into the fray to fell their attackers, while tremors through the ground from a skilled geomancer crushed a distant foe. A geopathic command from its master caused the bloodthirsty dragon to attack again, slaying the magical construct with which it was locked in mortal combat.
Hogar viewed the situation with the cold fury that his orcish comrades had taught him. He set his gaze upon a fresh marauder and brought forth an ancient rune to shield the orc from harm with a stout ring of ice. A nearby scribe read an inscription of knowledge, and Hogar felt ancient masteries flow through him anew. The marauder’s runemetal axe gleamed with new life of its own, and soon a geomancer who thought he was safe lay spread out across the red-soaked snow. The hooded summoner responded by calling forth a lithe sorceress to try and fell the lethal orc, but her mighty spells harmlessly slid off the icy shield.
Hogar saw the threat posed by this newcomer, and called forth a champion of his own. Mighty Raldag, a competent combatant in his own right, was well regarded for the aggression he could instill in nearby troops through his runic knowledge. The marauder’s runemetal was honed to a ferocious precision as the sorceress cried out in pain. Near death, she fell back and then redistributed the energy from a cowering geopath into a sturdy priestess who could come shield her and mend her wounds.
Hogar pressed his advantage, but the deep dwarf priestess proved hearty enough to stall their advances. She survived the cold bite of runemetal, heroically shattered the ice shield of the belligerent marauder, and let her sorceress mistress deliver the coup de grace.
Hogar decided a new tactic was required. He called forth the crafty tinkerer Vognar to help build a new offensive line. With more of a constructive bent than his engineer brethren, Vognar marched into battle and soon had crafted a fresh ice golem in the front lines by means of a stroke of luck. The icy creature attacked a nearby geomancer, but was soon rebutted by a glowering gorgon that appeared from thin air near the hooded summoner. Its death stare was not to be taken lightly.
The hooded summoner, feeling magically drained from the continued skirmish, reclaimed the energies with which he had boosted his various troops, and prepared to unleash a fresh champion of his own. Soon a mysterious and mythical creature appeared on the battlefield, an enigma with massive talons and a surreal presence. The creature locked eyes with the hooded summoner, and with great effort the summoner felt his energies being conserved and replenished while the din of battle fell away from his ears.
Hogar swore to see his enemy recovering his energies, and redoubled the offensive. He knew the key to victory lay in the ice golems that Vognar had built for him on the front lines, and sought to reinforce them with ice shields and a rune of heroism to increase the ferocity of his assault. The runic transformation made the golems swell with the energies of the stone, and Hogar knew he could now keep them alive longer. Lifting his stone aloft, a mighty hailstorm swept across the battlefield, rejuvenating his golems while battering the various walls scattered across the battlefield. Satisfied, Hogar used his stone to draw a rune that sapped the mysterious gryphon’s powers and then pressed the attack.
The hooded figure saw that the tide of the battle was quickly spreading away from him; he would have to act quickly to have a chance of surviving. While he would have preferred the inevitable victory offered by his mysterious gryphon or the massive combat enhancements his distant lieutenant Keodel offered, the nullifying hex of that accursed dwarf had put affording either one firmly out of reach. Relying instead on subterfuge and seeing an opportunity, the hooded figure spent the last of his efforts to spawn a swift deep dragon, unlock its true potential, and have it bound across the battlefield to assassinate the dwarf. A geopathic command from the beast’s master, and Hogar found himself bleeding heavily from the ambush.
Hogar was not pleased at this latest development. He placed a magical shackle on the offending deep dragon, thinking that it would be the only way to hide from the swift beast. He then called forth, at last, the ferocious Zuggdin from one of his obliging ice golems. Using the powers of the Master Rune and his own arcane knowledge, he gave his faithful friend the gifts of heroism and power. Imbued with unparalleled martial prowess, the rune smith moved to slay the hooded geomancer once and for all. Drawing upon the arcane for even greater savagery, luck was not on his side. His mighty blow fell with but a fraction of the power it might have, and the geomancer stood yet.
Endrich looked upon this mighty dwarf in sheer terror, understanding how near to death he had just come. While he knew that with a bit more magic he could blast away the runes that made the dwarf such a devastating foe, his doom would surely come regardless. He saw another path, and channeled all of his focus into the feat. Soon he had teleported to where to his shackled dragon had been, and stood face to face with the stoic dwarf. With a blast of geomancy and the heavy landing of an axe, the battle drew to a sudden close. Scarlet flowers bloomed across the fresh snow.
