In the chaos of battle, with outright clashes finally beginning on all sides of the hill, many things went unnoticed. Damsy Callat slipped into a War Shaman's costume, and no one questioned that she was part of the Brotherhood forces. Aemilio Valaar arrived amid the Galidraani forces, preparing to join the assault, and the Mawites above - locked in combat - did not see the swelling of the NIO ranks. Jester Squadron streaked over the battlefield, firing indiscriminately into both sides struggling over the excavation hill, and the marauders assumed it was NIO air support with poor targeting data.
After all, random killing by a third party made no tactical sense.
The rocks and sands of the rugged hill and the barren plain around it turned to glass as the bombers unleashed their payloads... glass that soon cracked beneath booted feet as Mawites and Unbelievers charged one another, battling fiercely for every meter of Korriban's unhallowed ground. They soon found that ground to be infested with a foe unfriendly to both sides: the strange Umbaran tanks that wriggled and writhed in the dirt, bursting forth to crush and blast whatever they beheld. The confusion these emergences generated was actually a boon to the Maw, despite their losses.
They made the mountain paths even more treacherous to the enemy.
In the end, however, these attacks - these last gasps of vengeance, born of bitterness and rage - would do little to sway the tide of battle. They could kill and maim and wreak havoc, but so long as they targeted both sides at random, they were more of a final, hateful
flailing of the vanquished Sith than an attack with any real chance of controlling the battlefield. Perhaps that was all their master desired, to make
everyone bleed, even if it accomplished no greater purpose in the end. Their time was limited in any case; they would soon be whittled away by air support and antitank weapons.
Meanwhile the battle, the
real battle, raged on all sides of the hill.
-------------------------------------
Northeast: The Petrite Front
Khazzak the Twisted, War Shaman of the Maw, gazed down the northeastern slopes of the excavation as the enemy approached. The Petrite troopers, rank after rank of crimson-armored soldiers moving in disciplined formation, did not concern him in the slightest. On Csilla and half a dozen other worlds, the Brotherhood had proven that their brute strength and savagery was far more powerful than discipline or training in close quarters; the enemy was marching into the place where the Maw had the greatest advantage. When hand to hand fighting broke out, they would break these toy soldiers.
The Exalted and their leader were another matter.
Khazzak knew well the power of that weapon they bore, that "lightsaber" that had led the way in great crusades across the galaxy for thousands of years. He had been born on an isolated world at the galaxy's very edge, to a primitive people with bloodthirsty gods - the lone survivors of an ancient colony disaster, degenerated into savage, cannibalistic tribes over the millennia. Khazzak had risen to become a spiritual leader among them, skilled at interpreting the will of the Dark Ones... and at wielding their sorcery, to heal or to harm. But when that Jedi explorer had come...
The saber-wielder had offered them peace, but when the Dark Ones rejected him and the tribe turned on him, he had fought off fifty warriors before they had brought him down. That was how Khazzak had become Twisted, his back broken when the mage-knight had flung him against a tree. But his sorcery had been strong, and he had walked again despite his hunched spine and scarred flesh. He had taken the Jedi's ship and followed the omens, until they brought him to the Brotherhood of the Maw and their dark crusade. But even now, despite his victory, he feared the power of saber-wielders.
Against so many of them, even the Tarar would fall.
The scavenger warbands showed no fear, however. Dug into their rocky foxholes all along the side of the hill, their positions reinforced with rusted metal spikes forged from pilfered junk, they aimed their heavy weapons and opened fire. The hillside lit up blue, and the air shimmered with heat, as dozens and dozens of plasma rifles opened fire. These were weapons that could sear through heavy armor with ease, melting durasteel to slag... with even more unpleasant effects on the flesh beneath. The enemy would have to advance uphill, through this withering barrage, to close with them.
But the Exalted and their general had abilities beyond those of ordinary soldiers. Their sorcery bolstered the armor of the Petrite troops, enabling them to survive more of the armor-piercing barrage than they otherwise would have. In turn, the War Shamans lashed out with their greatest power: Force Fear. Khazzak and his fellows raised their twisted totems, built of grotesquely joined flesh and bone; Khazzak's own was made of a fused spinal column topped with a still-fleshed hand, which writhed its dead fingers in time with his chanting. Terror and uncertainty swept across the battlefield.
That same effect only emboldened the Mawite forces.
With this power unleashed, the War Shamans prepared to meet the Exalted in battle. They wore no armor, unlike their dark metal-clad foes; the runes carved into their skin, given life by their Dark Side powers, would serve to protect them, even against lightsaber blows - at least, the first few. Their totems were force-imbued staves and spears, and many bore dread blades, halfway between a sword and a lightsaber. But these were their secondary weapons; they would first lash out with curses, lightning, and constriction, trademark Dark Force attacks. Still, Khazzak feared they might be outmatched.
Until the Rhandites arrived
behind the enemy. The shaman smiled.
As the choking, blinding cloud of sand swept across the valley and the lower slopes of the hill, slowing the enemy advance and making communication and spotting difficult, the Tarar Warbands kept up their relentless plasma barrage. Khazzak stood among them, chanting dark praises, ready to charge the first Exalted who dared advance through the storm. They were still outnumbered, but the enemy was caught between two forces now, and likely disoriented by the Rhandite sorcery. There was a chance to hold the line here, so long as the saber-wielders did not break their lines...
-------------------------------------
South: The Galidraani Front
Fre'shaa Vokk revved her swoop's engine again, already bored. It hardly seemed far that the warbands up north had already made contact with the enemy while her deathgang - and their Kagan-Jin rivals - were still holding position. The NIO was being cautious, as usual, and while it made good strategic sense and conserved their valuable vehicles, it frustrated Fre'shaa to no end.
"Come on," she growled, tapping the butt of her power lance against her swoop's handlebars.
"Make a move, you sleemos. You're too clever for your own good. Just put up and fight already." Irritating mother-karkers.
The gang leader could see the vanguard vehicles of the armored detachment moving around the base of the hill, huge debris-clearing prows attached to the front of each AFV so that they could clear the rugged terrain and allow the troops behind them a swift and clean advance. It was clever, and would help to negate the defensive advantage that the rocky hill provided the Mawites... but watching the accursed things go back and forth without mounting their attack yet was driving Fre'shaa to distraction. The enemy was circling all around the southern outcrop, and here she was, doing nothing.
So she resolved to change that.
"Alright, you huttspawn," she yelled at her riders,
"listen up. We're not going to let these NIO pretty boys ride all around OUR hill unopposed. Get your anti-armor grenades ready, and get your ass in the seat. I want quick, probing attacks only. Get up above 'em on the ridge, hit 'em with grenades and launchers, and then withdraw as soon as you start to come under fire. Don't you fething dare pursue if they start to withraw."
"Any man out of position gets gutted by me."
The gangers let out a whoop as Fre'shaa kicked her swoop into gear, skimming out over the rocky trail and heading for the edge of the ridge. The thirty of them unclipped grenades from their belts and bandoliers, or unslung light rocket launchers, and took aim as they approached the enemy scouting positions. As soon as any foe came into range they let fly, laughing and hollering as their payloads flew down at the Galidraani, before kicking their swoops in the opposite direction and racing back to the cover of the ledge. It'd do at least
some damage... and keep the unruly gangers entertained.
They did not know that Kryll, the Vinesworn, would follow...
-------------------------------------
The Hilltop
At the edge of the excavation, The Mongrel waited.
He could see a lone figure picking his way across the sands, a man in a fine uniform, an officer he remembered well: Aron Gowrie, his features as fine as The Mongrel's were mangled, a warrior as refined and skilled as his foe was savage and brutal. The marauder warleader paced and paced, spinning his blade, stretching his muscles. In his last battle, against Gowrie's mentor, he had been unable to break the old general's defense. Every attack had been countered, every pass defeated. Despite his rage and ferocity and battlefield prowess, his blade had never touched Barran's skin.
Would his protege be equally skilled? Would The Mongrel, this time fresh and uninjured rather than tired and bruised, be a better match for Galidraani skill? Would the blade he had brought, a heavy, broad, well-forged warblade rather than a borrowed marauder sword, make the difference in this contest of bloody skill? The veteran raider had no idea... but everything in him
screamed for the chance to find out. Gowrie and Barran had treated him as an equal, a worthy foe rather than a mad barbarian, and that only made him burn all the more to prove himself the superior fighter.
"Clear a path," The Mongrel ordered, and Mawite warriors parted like the sea as Gowrie approached. There would be no interruption in their duel, no interference by any of the mad raiders who held the hill. Behind the warleader, the fearsome Cirihut Warriors solemnly beat their power maces against their palms and chests, the
thump - slap - thump - slap of the weapons against flesh forming a sinister drumbeat. Though they waited in reserve, ready to intervene should any of the three Mawite fronts falter, they were also there for another purpose: to bear mute witness to the coming clash.
"Come on, Gowrie," The Mongrel hissed.
"It's time."
Pietro Demici
| AC | GA | NIO
Marlon Sularen
| MAW | SITH
