The Battle of Weissbruck

The Imperial Army sent to apprehend Count Ivan Drazkharov found itself attacked outside its camp at the town of Weissbruck. Prince Karl himself quickly assembled his troops to lead the army in a counter attack.

As the morning fog cleared, the full scope of the treachery unfolded; emerging from the mists, Holwingen soldiers marched side by side with creeping ghouls, slavering wolves, fell monsters and bat-winged terrors from darkest nightmare, and everywhere flew the crimson banner of House Drazkharov.

The Prince’s artillery hammered the foe, rockets and shot pounding the enemy lines as the air choked with smoke and fire. But the horrific beasts that Ivan had summoned marched on to tear into the Imperial lines. The Count himself proved to be a ravening beast, a clawed terror against whom none could stand. Only the courageous charge of the Prince and his Household Cavalry could check the undead advance, smashing into the vanguard and through to break the back of Ivan’s army. Yet the Count himself escaped the field to return to the Krähefort.

With the artillery train destroyed and his army exhausted Prince Karl was forced to withdraw back to the safety of the town, unable to give chase.

When news of the battle reached Sigmarheim the Drazkharovs at the Imperial Court had already disappeared, presumably having fled north. The Emperor declared Ivan and his family outlaws and enemies of the Empire. No emissary was sent from the north to sue for terms or explain the incident at Weissbruck. The only news from the north would be increasingly frequent reports of undead forces massing across Holwingen and Mallenstein. Following the religious persecutions of the Puritan Movement, the Priesthood of Morr could no longer defend the crypts and graveyards of those dark lands and the necromancers roamed unchecked.

As the Emperor calls his banners in the south in defence of the realm, in the north the dead rise up to march to war. The Drazkharov Rebellion has begun.