House Tully - The Prince's Pass: April 157-February 158
The southern Reach in late summer was beautiful, or rather, it would have been, had the Tyrell armies not already marched through it, racing for the Marches, but as it was, the flowers that the Tyrell sigil represented were trampled flat, and the fields that gave House Meadows it's name were speckled with the muddy footprints of both horses and men. The castellan of Grassy Vale was kind enough when the Tully host had made camp outside the castle walls, but the food he handed out to the army had been gathered up hastily, and not all of it had been thoroughly checked. At midnight, Oscar had all but ran into Kermit's room, urgently shouting that disease had broken out in the camps, and he had spent the rest of the night quickly trying to recall the contaminated food. By dawn, two thousand men had succumbed, and a great deal of their personal food supplies had been contaminated. Before they got out of the Reach, another five thousand lay dead.
When they reached the Marches, Kermit decided to split up the army up. He would take eleven thousand men, as well as a majority of their rations, and head straight down the Prince's Pass, while Oscar would lead his force to Nightsong to restock. Once they were in Dorne, they would be far away from any new supplies. With the Ironborn raiders in the Sunset Sea, food could only rarely arrive to the taken Dornish coastal keeps, and though word had arrived that Daeron Targaryen had landed his personal host on Ghaston Grey, the Dornish prison island, it would be a long track through the Red mountains to get there.
Riders sent by separate armies to inform the other hosts of their movements were more and more frequent as Kermit's host moved into the Prince's Pass. A man in Baratheon livery came from the east, reporting that Corwen Baratheon had encircled Yronwood, home of the family of the same name, with six thousand men, and later, a rider from the west delivered news of the Tyrell's successful siege of the seat of House Dayne, Starfall, which rested just west of the Prince's Pass, on a stretch of coast called the Torrentine. A few months later, when his men had encircled Skyreach, the seat of House Fowler, a rider in Kermit's own red, blue, and silver livery rode from the north, informing him that Oscar's men had found a guard tower in the Red Mountains, called the Tower of Joy, and taken it, installing a garrison of fifty good bowmen to hold it, as well as a raven trained to fly to Skyreach should the Dornishmen attempt a sneak attack. If the riders' estimate was right, Oscar would be here in just a few days. The morale of Skyreach's defenders was waning, Kermit knew, but with both hosts back together, they would run out of food quickly. Already men had succumbed to malnourishment or the searing heat of the Red Mountains, or both, and of the eleven thousand men that had encircled Skyreach, only eight remained, and Oscar's host had taken similar casualties. If they could get to Yronwood, and the southwestern coast of the Sea of Dorne, food and fresh water could be supplied from Ghaston Grey, as well as King's Landing and Duskendale. Kermit would not leave Skyreach un-taken, however. Once Oscar's men arrived, he planned to use their superior numbers to force the walls and assault the castle.
The night before the attack, Kermit surveyed the castle through a brass far-eye, the narrow part of which cunningly slid into the thick part. It had become a popular sailor's tool in the Far East, particularly the Slaver Cities of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen. This tool, gifted to him on his five-and-fortieth nameday by Prince Viserys, the then-King's brother, had proved incredibly useful in his attack on the Prince's Pass thus far. Perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the entrance of the Prince's Pass, the walls stood forty feet high, if Kermit had to guess. Eight tall towers reached skyward, the blue hawk on silver of House Fowler fluttering from the top of all the towers but the tallest, which bore a great war banner, five feet across and ten feet high, bearing the sun and spear of House Martell. The gate was doubtlessly thick for such a strategically important castle, made out of the wood of the blood orange trees that the Dornishmen were so fond of. 'We'll need a ram for that.' thought Kermit. Though upon his host's arrival, the Dornish had burned all the wood that they could before being forced to retreat inside the castle, his outriders reported a handful of outlying natural citrus tree groves. Pulling himself back to the present, he looked back through the far-eye. 'They must know what's about to happen, there are double the sentries posted.', and indeed they must have. Guards now walked and stood in pairs where they had once been alone, and the torches were always lit. While this would make it harder for a preemptive strike in the night, it also allowed Kermit to better scope out the castle. He had long since memorized the guards' patterns, as well as the signs of a sally to come. They were not going to get a better opportunity than this in the foreseeable future, and they would soon need to make for the coast if they were not to starve.
And so, having considered all courses of action, at the crack of dawn, Kermit ordered the assault. Both his brother and Benjicot Blackwood had agreed that this was the most prudent course of action. Ladders and a ram were fashioned from citrus wood, and every Tully man, old and young, green boys and greybeards, prepared for their first battle of the war. The defenders, as Kermit had predicted, were prepared, but so was he. First came a solid shieldwall of Tully men-at-arms, their shields having been doused in the poisoned well water beforehand. Directly behind them were a line of archers. With practiced synchronization, the two groups moved and stopped together, slowly advancing towards the walls. Next came the ram, surrounded my men-at-arms, creating a shell around the ram with their shields. Following them were the ladders, each held by fifteen men on each side, their shields raised, and after them were a few more shieldwall lines, their archers firing as they went. The rest of the army laid in wait, waiting for the signal to attack.
The assault went well. The shieldwalls drew the Dornish fire, and the ram was able to get to the gate with minimal casualties to it's guard. A handful of the ladderbearers fell before they could reach the walls, most of the ladders reached their destination before the defenders could bring them down, and Kermit sounded the attack. Over ten thousand Tully spears, bows, swords, and axes stormed up the ridge, with Kermit himself at the head. He himself was the first man on the walls. Having been climbing with his sword hand and holding his shield above his head, as he neared the top, he suddenly switched, letting go of his shield and letting it hang by the straps while the now free hand clutched the ladder, and wrenching free his sword from it's scabbard with his other hand, drawing it back and thrusting it upward, feeling satisfaction when he felt it meet with a Dornishman's neck. Pulling it back and taking his victim with it, he heaved himself onto the battlements. He quickly brought up his blade to direct an incoming spearhead harmlessly into the floor, before gripping his shield and swinging it towards the offending Dornishman. The iron rim made contact with his opponent's face, sending him reeling. Kermit was quick to step forward and finish the job. Turning around to find his next assailant, Kermit was instead greeted with the sight of a seemingly endless stream of Tully men flooding the walls from the ladders. It was only a matter of time until the castle fell, now that the walls were almost taken. Calling for his men to follow him, he stepped over his dead opponent, heading for the gatehouse.
Kicking open the doors, the score of men in the chamber above the gates turned toward him, drawing their weapons and advancing. Then, though, the men behind him started streaming in, and the Dornishmen changed their plan. The twenty men were quickly dispersed, Kermit managing to kill three himself. It was only after the battle was done that Kermit noticed the boiling pots lined up against the wall, and the holes in wall over where the gate tunnel would be. Looking through one of the holes revealed perhaps two score men in the tunnel, desperately bracing themselves against the gate. He turned back to issue a command, but his men were way ahead of him. Putting on the heat-protective mittens of one of his fallen foes, Kermit grasped a pot of boiling oil in his hand, and carried it over to the hole in the wall. Looking to his men holding other pots, he nodded. "On three, men. One. Two. THREE!" On the final number, Kermit upended his pot through the hole, his men doing the same. Screams from below greeted him, and more boiling oil was brought and poured until the screams stopped. Stepping outside the gatehouse, Kermit bellowed an order to the ram to stop. Proceeding down into the now Tully-controlled courtyard, he ordered his strongest men to open the portcullis with the nearby winch, and then he and his followers entered the gatehouse from below, stepping over the seared corpses of his fallen foes. It did not take long for him and his men to remove the timbers from the gate, and he left them to open it up. After the last defenders had been subdued, he accepted the castellan's surrender in the great hall of Skyreach, before ordering him and all prisoners to be taken to the cells below, and for all prisoners to be identified, and, if a non-Dornish soldier willing to join their army, released. After ordering his commanders to select a hundred good men to stay as a garrison, he then surveyed his men. Less than ten thousand remained to him, but it was still a sizable force.
Still, though, they would have to do. There was no raven leading to the Riverlands in the castle, them having all been slaughtered when the castle's fall became apparent, so he couldn't have Lucas Lothston bring up his ten thousand men. It was a shame. Food was now flowing into Ghaston Grey and the conquered Dornish keeps quickly, and one of the land entrances to Dorne was completely under Westerosi control, the other almost so. It would've been an easy journey. It was no good thinking about could've been's and would've done's. Right now, there was a war to be fought, and Lord Kermit Tully intended to fight it at Yronwood.
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Hello all. I won't ramble on for as long this time. I realize that 5000 words in 2 and 1/3 days is probably too ambitious for someone with hardly any prior writing experience, so it'll probably be more along the lines of 2000-3000 in the future. Still, I really enjoyed writing this, and I can't wait for the next session. I'll definitely remember to take screenshots then, as well as notes, as I'm not entirely sure as to what happened myself. I keep forgetting names and locations and getting them mixed up. Sorry, but hopefully I can fix that in the next session. Have a good one!
The southern Reach in late summer was beautiful, or rather, it would have been, had the Tyrell armies not already marched through it, racing for the Marches, but as it was, the flowers that the Tyrell sigil represented were trampled flat, and the fields that gave House Meadows it's name were speckled with the muddy footprints of both horses and men. The castellan of Grassy Vale was kind enough when the Tully host had made camp outside the castle walls, but the food he handed out to the army had been gathered up hastily, and not all of it had been thoroughly checked. At midnight, Oscar had all but ran into Kermit's room, urgently shouting that disease had broken out in the camps, and he had spent the rest of the night quickly trying to recall the contaminated food. By dawn, two thousand men had succumbed, and a great deal of their personal food supplies had been contaminated. Before they got out of the Reach, another five thousand lay dead.
When they reached the Marches, Kermit decided to split up the army up. He would take eleven thousand men, as well as a majority of their rations, and head straight down the Prince's Pass, while Oscar would lead his force to Nightsong to restock. Once they were in Dorne, they would be far away from any new supplies. With the Ironborn raiders in the Sunset Sea, food could only rarely arrive to the taken Dornish coastal keeps, and though word had arrived that Daeron Targaryen had landed his personal host on Ghaston Grey, the Dornish prison island, it would be a long track through the Red mountains to get there.
Riders sent by separate armies to inform the other hosts of their movements were more and more frequent as Kermit's host moved into the Prince's Pass. A man in Baratheon livery came from the east, reporting that Corwen Baratheon had encircled Yronwood, home of the family of the same name, with six thousand men, and later, a rider from the west delivered news of the Tyrell's successful siege of the seat of House Dayne, Starfall, which rested just west of the Prince's Pass, on a stretch of coast called the Torrentine. A few months later, when his men had encircled Skyreach, the seat of House Fowler, a rider in Kermit's own red, blue, and silver livery rode from the north, informing him that Oscar's men had found a guard tower in the Red Mountains, called the Tower of Joy, and taken it, installing a garrison of fifty good bowmen to hold it, as well as a raven trained to fly to Skyreach should the Dornishmen attempt a sneak attack. If the riders' estimate was right, Oscar would be here in just a few days. The morale of Skyreach's defenders was waning, Kermit knew, but with both hosts back together, they would run out of food quickly. Already men had succumbed to malnourishment or the searing heat of the Red Mountains, or both, and of the eleven thousand men that had encircled Skyreach, only eight remained, and Oscar's host had taken similar casualties. If they could get to Yronwood, and the southwestern coast of the Sea of Dorne, food and fresh water could be supplied from Ghaston Grey, as well as King's Landing and Duskendale. Kermit would not leave Skyreach un-taken, however. Once Oscar's men arrived, he planned to use their superior numbers to force the walls and assault the castle.
The night before the attack, Kermit surveyed the castle through a brass far-eye, the narrow part of which cunningly slid into the thick part. It had become a popular sailor's tool in the Far East, particularly the Slaver Cities of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen. This tool, gifted to him on his five-and-fortieth nameday by Prince Viserys, the then-King's brother, had proved incredibly useful in his attack on the Prince's Pass thus far. Perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the entrance of the Prince's Pass, the walls stood forty feet high, if Kermit had to guess. Eight tall towers reached skyward, the blue hawk on silver of House Fowler fluttering from the top of all the towers but the tallest, which bore a great war banner, five feet across and ten feet high, bearing the sun and spear of House Martell. The gate was doubtlessly thick for such a strategically important castle, made out of the wood of the blood orange trees that the Dornishmen were so fond of. 'We'll need a ram for that.' thought Kermit. Though upon his host's arrival, the Dornish had burned all the wood that they could before being forced to retreat inside the castle, his outriders reported a handful of outlying natural citrus tree groves. Pulling himself back to the present, he looked back through the far-eye. 'They must know what's about to happen, there are double the sentries posted.', and indeed they must have. Guards now walked and stood in pairs where they had once been alone, and the torches were always lit. While this would make it harder for a preemptive strike in the night, it also allowed Kermit to better scope out the castle. He had long since memorized the guards' patterns, as well as the signs of a sally to come. They were not going to get a better opportunity than this in the foreseeable future, and they would soon need to make for the coast if they were not to starve.
And so, having considered all courses of action, at the crack of dawn, Kermit ordered the assault. Both his brother and Benjicot Blackwood had agreed that this was the most prudent course of action. Ladders and a ram were fashioned from citrus wood, and every Tully man, old and young, green boys and greybeards, prepared for their first battle of the war. The defenders, as Kermit had predicted, were prepared, but so was he. First came a solid shieldwall of Tully men-at-arms, their shields having been doused in the poisoned well water beforehand. Directly behind them were a line of archers. With practiced synchronization, the two groups moved and stopped together, slowly advancing towards the walls. Next came the ram, surrounded my men-at-arms, creating a shell around the ram with their shields. Following them were the ladders, each held by fifteen men on each side, their shields raised, and after them were a few more shieldwall lines, their archers firing as they went. The rest of the army laid in wait, waiting for the signal to attack.
The assault went well. The shieldwalls drew the Dornish fire, and the ram was able to get to the gate with minimal casualties to it's guard. A handful of the ladderbearers fell before they could reach the walls, most of the ladders reached their destination before the defenders could bring them down, and Kermit sounded the attack. Over ten thousand Tully spears, bows, swords, and axes stormed up the ridge, with Kermit himself at the head. He himself was the first man on the walls. Having been climbing with his sword hand and holding his shield above his head, as he neared the top, he suddenly switched, letting go of his shield and letting it hang by the straps while the now free hand clutched the ladder, and wrenching free his sword from it's scabbard with his other hand, drawing it back and thrusting it upward, feeling satisfaction when he felt it meet with a Dornishman's neck. Pulling it back and taking his victim with it, he heaved himself onto the battlements. He quickly brought up his blade to direct an incoming spearhead harmlessly into the floor, before gripping his shield and swinging it towards the offending Dornishman. The iron rim made contact with his opponent's face, sending him reeling. Kermit was quick to step forward and finish the job. Turning around to find his next assailant, Kermit was instead greeted with the sight of a seemingly endless stream of Tully men flooding the walls from the ladders. It was only a matter of time until the castle fell, now that the walls were almost taken. Calling for his men to follow him, he stepped over his dead opponent, heading for the gatehouse.
Kicking open the doors, the score of men in the chamber above the gates turned toward him, drawing their weapons and advancing. Then, though, the men behind him started streaming in, and the Dornishmen changed their plan. The twenty men were quickly dispersed, Kermit managing to kill three himself. It was only after the battle was done that Kermit noticed the boiling pots lined up against the wall, and the holes in wall over where the gate tunnel would be. Looking through one of the holes revealed perhaps two score men in the tunnel, desperately bracing themselves against the gate. He turned back to issue a command, but his men were way ahead of him. Putting on the heat-protective mittens of one of his fallen foes, Kermit grasped a pot of boiling oil in his hand, and carried it over to the hole in the wall. Looking to his men holding other pots, he nodded. "On three, men. One. Two. THREE!" On the final number, Kermit upended his pot through the hole, his men doing the same. Screams from below greeted him, and more boiling oil was brought and poured until the screams stopped. Stepping outside the gatehouse, Kermit bellowed an order to the ram to stop. Proceeding down into the now Tully-controlled courtyard, he ordered his strongest men to open the portcullis with the nearby winch, and then he and his followers entered the gatehouse from below, stepping over the seared corpses of his fallen foes. It did not take long for him and his men to remove the timbers from the gate, and he left them to open it up. After the last defenders had been subdued, he accepted the castellan's surrender in the great hall of Skyreach, before ordering him and all prisoners to be taken to the cells below, and for all prisoners to be identified, and, if a non-Dornish soldier willing to join their army, released. After ordering his commanders to select a hundred good men to stay as a garrison, he then surveyed his men. Less than ten thousand remained to him, but it was still a sizable force.
Still, though, they would have to do. There was no raven leading to the Riverlands in the castle, them having all been slaughtered when the castle's fall became apparent, so he couldn't have Lucas Lothston bring up his ten thousand men. It was a shame. Food was now flowing into Ghaston Grey and the conquered Dornish keeps quickly, and one of the land entrances to Dorne was completely under Westerosi control, the other almost so. It would've been an easy journey. It was no good thinking about could've been's and would've done's. Right now, there was a war to be fought, and Lord Kermit Tully intended to fight it at Yronwood.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hello all. I won't ramble on for as long this time. I realize that 5000 words in 2 and 1/3 days is probably too ambitious for someone with hardly any prior writing experience, so it'll probably be more along the lines of 2000-3000 in the future. Still, I really enjoyed writing this, and I can't wait for the next session. I'll definitely remember to take screenshots then, as well as notes, as I'm not entirely sure as to what happened myself. I keep forgetting names and locations and getting them mixed up. Sorry, but hopefully I can fix that in the next session. Have a good one!
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