Flotilla of Shadows

[Vanidor]

The stockade had been eerily quiet for some time. The evening watch had taken their positions and the mid watch was easing into seats and taking their ease before heading to bed. Soldiers lazed about in the night hours, as they knew that the next day would most likely bring another of drizzle and evil humidity. General Wilhelm Dross stood just at the entrance to the command tent, leaning against a pole and smoking from a pipe. The sweet scent of the weed used curled around his head. Men smiled in his drection, their Commander offering an amiable wave back in return.

Then it happened. The first stirrings of earth and stone and water. A soft rumbling that came from underneath them. From around them. It seemed as if from within the wood that had been used to form the palisade walls themselves. Men quailed atop the bulwarks as they started to shiver. And the air was filled with the darkest of energies. Dross turned his head, then glanced downwards. Eyes narrowed at the sight of the spider that freed itself from entombment in the earth. Crawling over his boot and... and towards the tavern known as the Broken Dagger.

Men shouted more, as there seemed to be a thousand of the vermin rising from the ground. A few timbers shattered and broken apart sending splinters around and flaying men with the force. Some screamed, falling from the walls in a bloody ruin. Yet the spiders marched on. They did not halt, to worry at the flesh of men, nor to bite at them as they scurried past. As if they did not care that they died with each stomp or fall of body from the tower.

The tide continued for some time unabated, rushing around their position. Through it. Then, he saw them starting to rise into the sky. From their position he could see the gathering cloud of shadows. Then. To the right of their position. He saw the first spinning whirlwind of them. Seeing the little creatures tugged into the air by vortex's of power and energy. General Dross dropped his pipe, the heated weed within sparking a few of the insects that still scurred around his feet. Eyes shifted, his men were not abandoning the stockade, which was good, but they were afraid.

Dross yelled out a few orders, to sweep the area and prepare for an assault. He was no master of magical ways, but this would have been the perfect time to stage an attack upon the stockade. It's walls weakened by the move of spiders, timbers split from the rain of arachnids. The men, terrified from the sight of insects taking flight as they never should have been.

And, after a time, they started to abate. The flow of spiders coming to a slowing end. As if all of the creatures had been sucked up into the air and set to task of smothering the light from Myrken. Dross, finally composed himself, ordered a stand down. But the walls were to be maintained. No one would be sleeping this night as it was. Too afraid that the wash of spiders would over come them and wash them in a writihing morass... Dross was sure, that even though the tide had slowed... that it would not end as simply as this...

He would have to await the return of the Duke, and then plans would be made to find some way to combat this. Just as they were planning to combat the Horde when it decided to throw off it's lethargic manner... Thusly, then, the man who was General of Thessilane returned to his tent to plan through the mist of spiders.