Epic in the Babkhan Style

[Emir of Raspur]

The Baron Ardashir Khan Osmani spent the month after the securing of Elwynn from his predecessor deeply involved in the wholesale clearance of the landed smallholders from the lands which he had designated as afforested, that is to say designated as his own to the exclusion of all others. The forests were his exclusive hunting preserve and recreational areas, making up now the greater portion of his domain, and this was the publicly acknowledged reason for their existence. Much more important than this however was the fact that they gave the Baron pre-emptive control over land – the most precious resource of an agrarian society. The afforested lands of Elwynn were much more than a baronial playground however; forestland was a source of easy revenue and could be farmed out to the highest bidder. Additionally, venison and other forest products were now at the Baron’s disposal – whether as concessions to loyal members of his retinue or to be sold as cash commodities.There was however a complication that threatened to unhinge matters. The vast majority of the interior of Elwynn was not forest at all – it was farmland. Between the two rivers of Elwynn laid any number of villages, hamlets and homesteads, for in truth no one had ever bothered to conduct a census or audit in those parts. Nonetheless those peasants who had been previously weaned on the most generous democracy and automatic presumption of all their rights to life and property now faced forcible eviction onto reservations as condemned criminals or even death merely for owning land that the new upstart Baron wanted. Small wonder then that the vast majority of the population rose up in revolt before the second week of the Baron’s reign was past.Little did the peasants realise that in rallying to the defence of their traditional liberties they had given the Baron the excuse he needed to implement his cruellest repression. In that land that had been afforested, the Baron had assigned himself the prerogative to apply his will in as arbitrary a way as he saw fit, not in accordance to the model of English Common Law that he had established in the Magistracy, a narrow belt of land along the East and West Elwynn rivers up to the border with the Shirekeep. This enabled his officers to deal severely with poachers, as they had already started too which was in itself a contributing factor to the revolt, it also allowed the Baron and his henchmen to take drastic action against any outlaws lurking in the forests. Soon news of murdered foresters and knights reached the Baron and his retinue. Ardashir, at the stroke of a pen, took the god given opportunity to outlaw the entire population he wished to evict. Such it was that the butchery began.When the farmers began to beat their ploughshares into swords and when the herdsmen turned their rifles away from the wolves that preyed on their flocks and instead trained them on the villains in the Baron’s employ it appeared as if Ardashir was going to be swept from Shireroth within a matter of days. Indeed as far as the natives were concerned it was as though the knights and squires who had so recently and so arrogantly rode in amongst them had disappeared.Presumptuously the leading representatives of the peasantry came together, along with such elves as had not been wise enough to migrate to Delvenus with the late Duchess, at the ancient highland castle known as Fort Francis, therein they did elect one Etienne Marcel as their Provost and leader. In the meantime a rumour had become widespread among the rebels that the Baron himself had fled abroad and that his short but insanely cruel regime was over.Elated, Provost Marcel sent envoys to the Duke of Hyperboria with news of the Baron’s overthrow together with a request that he be recognised as Baron of Elwynn. This was a double mistake. The Elves had pledged their support to the rebellion in the hope of restoring the Duchy and their own cultural hegemony – the recognition of the Duke Siskind’s overlordship was anathema to them and so it was that they, in disgust, threw down their weapons and sought swift passage out of the country. Those creatures were never seen or heard off in Elwynn again. The second, and still more grievous, error was the presumption that the Duke was supportive of the rebel cause and restoration of the status quo as it was before Ardashir’s arrival. In truth however the Duke’s chief concern was to ensure that his frozen home islands never ever came under the thumb of the Elwynnesse again. On that level it was natural that he would prefer an absentee Babkhan vassal than any sort of Elwynnesse patriot complete with grass root support and the suspicion of separatist tendencies. Moreover, always keen to present the semblance of fealty required of him, Baron Osmani had made out a large tribute of gold and precious (or at least semi-precious) stones and sent it on too Thule with notice that Duke Siskind had been made a member of the prestigious, or so it was said, Order of the Dead Stag. Suitably impressed by the Baron’s offerings the Duke permitted the rebel Provost’s envoy to freeze to death in the snow outside his palace – for in truth the Duke was not quite the scrupulously ethical individual everyone had him marked down as.While, unbeknownst to Marcel, the Provost’s representative in Thule slowly succumbed to the ravages of hypothermia a curious lethargy and complacent spirit set in amongst the rebels. They seemed content to wait at Fort Francis for the Duke’s confirmation of the Provost’s coup, which off course never came. The Provost, most curiously, made no effort to secure the apparatus and mechanisms of governance in the Barony and thus the inevitable slide into anarchy began. Bored, unpaid, landless and hungry, the dispossessed proletariat element in the Provost’s rebel army drifted away from the main host at Fort Francis and began to make their living by extorting from travellers on the highways and by generally laying the countryside waste. Even on occasions their numbers swelled to such an extent that they could put entire towns to the sack. Their fury was directed against all those who since time immemorial had been settled in their estates.Eventually these brigands began to gather together. While still lacking a coherent agenda they still had plenty of fury, something they desired to sate to the extent that the criminal bands began to cooperate. With no other discussion they set off at once, with no weapons but knives and iron shod sticks, to the house of a certain prominent citizen; a grain merchant who had made his fortune in Shirekeep. They broke into it and killed him, his wife and children, and then set the place on fire.Next they went to a strong villa where they did much worse, for they found an actor who had recently starred in a production of Mogbeth down river in the Barony of Lunaris. They took this darling of the stage and put him on a split and roasted him in front of his wife and children; after ten or a dozen of them had raped the lady, they tried to force her to eat some of her dead husband; then they killed her and the children and set the place on fire.They did the same to several other good houses and the number of these brigands grew to at least six thousand. At that moment the great and infamous Great Company was formed, whose leaders were for the most part Elwynnesse but there were some Treesians and Yardistanis amongst them. Drawing many of the rebels and criminal deviants to them they marched through Elwynn and took the city of Eliria together with many towns and castles. They liberated the Eliria Penal Reservation and those dregs who had been exiled in there broke loose and rampaged across the countryside extorting payments from castles, towns and cities in exchange for so-called protection; nor could anyone live safely in that region unless he enjoyed their goodwill.In all this time the Baron had not been idle. Instead he had been quietly ensuring that the Magistracy, which enjoyed more lenient government under a Babkhan knight known as Sir Majeed, and the other two penal reservations, which endured the utmost repression under the Baron’s Wardens, stayed quietly loyal to his cause. Indeed he did slip abroad during the upheavals but it was not to permanent exile but merely across the waters to those garrisoned strongpoints in Treesia that are known as Babkhan Prinitica to collect an army from the local Atebeg Rashid Araslani. A year passed and Provost Marcel finally despaired of receiving confirmation from the Duke and had given up hope of ever hearing from his envoy, his most beloved cousin, ever again. At the same time he saw how weak his position had become now that the Great Company was plundering Elwynn. The Provost sent letters to Sir Majeed requesting his aid against the rebels. In return the Provost rashly promised independence for the Magistracy, a promise that was not his to make.

[Emir of Raspur]

In no time at all the letter to Sir Majeed found its way into the hands of the Baron who was over-wintering at Fabon with the somewhat beleaguered Babkhan garrison there. Received well by the Atebeg on his state yacht/gunboat anchored at Failte the Baron had been sent on up the coast with a commission to Fabon having been told he could collect an army there. The Baron was however not so much disappointed as utterly alarmed at what he found when he arrived. The majority of the 8,000 Babkhan soldiers, often drawn from the boozing establishments of Lighthouse and the malarial swamps of Kumarastan, were the worst in all the Imperial Army. Being untrained, ill equipped, and poorly led. Some had only recently been issued with modern assault rifles and did not understand how to use them properly. There were soldiers from all parts of the ShahanshahÂ’s Commonwealth, speaking twelve different languages, following different faiths, including an alarming minority of adherents to Treesian Unorthodoxy and led by officers from Kamalshahr who had in some instances not seen their units prior to embarkation at Susa. More alarming still were the native levies of the AtebegÂ’s Rifle Regiment (5th Battalion) whose distinguishing features were a complete lack of rifles and a discipline problem so acute that their commanding Babkhan officers dared not issue the Treesian conscripts with anything more dangerous and pointy sticks, and even these had to be returned to the armoury at night lest the Treesians made use of the darkness to poke their officers to death and open the gates. Moreover they were ill prepared for the unseasonable weather as the Imperial Army Quartermaster was locked in a dispute with the Atebeg of Prinitica over who was responsible for the provisioning of the garrisons in the Northern Hemisphere. The question was fast becoming academic anyway, the Treeisan besiegers had constructed a trebuchet that lobed a not insignificant fifty-pounds of primed explosive into the city at regular intervals during the day. The only artillery piece available to the Babkhans north of Lighthouse, a rocket launcher known affectionately as NouradinÂ’s Catapult, was out of commission owing to the exhaustion of all stockpiles of liquid oxygen rocket propellant available. Tragically, attempts at manufacturing ersatz rocket fuel from industrial alcohol and extract of sugar beet had resulted in a great fire that had consumed half the city. It was recorded as being a bitter disappointment to both the Babkhan garrison and the Ard-BaronÂ’s men besieging the city that the Great Cathedral of Treesian Unorthodoxy had not been consumed by the conflagration, the turbulent priests were once more in revolt against both the Atebeg and the Ard-Baron. Accordingly most of Fabon had been reduced to smouldering rubble and the city walls were well on their way to joining most of the city levelled in the dust. Morale was alarmingly low all round and a mutinous spirit was abroad in both the troops and the native population. The Baron, his retinue and the commanding officers of the garrison were united in their desire to escape their thoroughly miserable situation.So it came to pass that the letter revealing the Provosts appalling weakness was received as a godsend by the Babkhans. A conference was called and unanimously the Babkhan officers agreed to desert their posts in Fabon and sail for Elwynn at the earliest opportunity.There remained one problem however, the lack of a fleet to transport the 8,000 men to Elwynn.