Prelude
For over a millennium, the Aurean Dominate battled with the much smaller and weaker Kingdom of Arturia over the Exarchate of Amorica, an Aurean territory on the Planet Arturia and the last remnant of what was once the Aurean Exarchate of Arturia, which covered all of Planet Arturia. While the Aurean Dominate on paper still laid claim to the Exarchate of Arturia, by 11 BR, the only part of that territory the Aurean Dominate actually controlled was Amorica. Although the Kingdom of Arturia was always far smaller and weaker than the Aurean Dominate, it was always able to exploit Aurean internal divisions, the rugged terrain of the Arturian Alps along the border, and the military and political genius of Arturian leadership under the immortal demigod couple King Arturius and Queen Bowdig to keep the Aureans in check. However, all of the Kingdom of Arturia's attempts over the centuries to chase the Aureans off the planet completely by retaking Amorica failed miserably.
However, it had been some time since there was much fighting around the mountain forts that marked the border, and there was increasing sentiment on Aurea that their claims to their old Exarchate of Arturia were not actionable outside Amorica. In 11 BR, King Arturius decided to travel to the Planet Aurea to enter into peace negotiations with the Aurean Dominus (head of state) Gavicus XXIX. While Gavicus accepted the request to allow Arturius onto the planet for peace negotiations, the Aurean Dominate was still transitioning out of a centuries-long period of strict isolationism, and inviting a foreign leader, especially one they were at war with, to the Aurean heartland was a bridge too far for much of the Aurean Senate. While Arturius and his entourage were graciously hosted in Olinthaseia and the Aurean Capital of Astras for three weeks under the illusion that peace terms were still in debate, Gavicus's and Arturius's peace terms were soundly defeated by the Aurean Senate, and Gavicus was strongarmed by the body into launching a surprise invasion of the Kingdom of Arturia from Amorica to reassert Aurean dominance.
While Arturius and his entourage were being tended to by Gavicus's servants in what they thought was a vacation in Astras, Gavicus sailed to Amorica, gathered the two field armies stationed there, and halfheartedly launched a surprise attack on the Arturian border forts. To even the Aureans' surprise, the border forts, which had been undergarrisoned for years, fell rapidly to the invasion force, often uncontested. While Gavicus, who did not even want to invade Arturia in the first place, planned on stopping there and using the forts as leverage for better terms in future negotiations, the Aurean Senate had put Andreas Pavlou, a conservative firebrand and one of Gavicus's biggest political rivals, under his command to keep an eye on him. Pavlou wanted to push all the way north to the Arturian Capital of Caerbannog, capture it, and then force the Arturians back under Aurean rule. Lacking the political capital to resist, Gavicus was forced to acquiesce to Pavlou's plan. After emerging on the Arturian side of the mountains, Gavicus's force rapidly moved northeast toward the Arturian Capital of Caerbannog, only around 800 miles north of the border. Around halfway there, Gavicus encountered and routed an Arturian force, mostly composed of troops from the Duchies of Westershire and Seaxe, at the Battle of Lorient. The survivors fled to Caerbannog, where they joined up with the city's garrison and began preparing its defenses, under the leadership of Queen Bowdig.
Only learning of the invasion when he read about the Battle of Lorient in an Aurean newspaper, Arturius and his entourage snuck back to their docked ship at Olinthaseia and frantically sailed back to Arturia, landing at Falmouth, around 200 miles northeast of Caerbannog. While the Dukes of Westershire, the Cowlands, and Skellig had been called up almost as soon as the invasion took place, it took until shortly after Arturius arrived for them to get their forces ready and another two weeks to get them all to Falmouth, by which time Gavicus had already arrived outside Caerbannog and begun to lay siege to the city. Marching south at a breakneck pace, Arturius and his army managed to reach Caerbannog only five days after they had all linked up in Falmouth, taking Gavicus by surprise, as he was not expecting Arturius to arrive so early.
As Gavicus had been supplying his army during the siege by foraging through the surrounding countryside, the presence of an enemy army with cavalry meant he could no longer do that, and as a result he had to break off the siege until Arturius was dealt with. However, he also knew that despite outnumbering Arturius almost two to one, with just over 81,000 troops to Arturius's 50,000, Caerbannog was a heavily fortified city and any attempt to simply assault it would be a slaughter. While Arturius was triumphantly entering the city of Caerbannog and reinvigorating Arturian morale, Gavicus got to work setting up fortifications on the hilly ground south of the city, hoping Arturius would smash his army against the fortifications trying to dislodge Gavicus from the area, leaving him free to resume the siege.
Seeing that Gavicus was fortifying high ground with superior numbers, Arturius knew that he had to attack soon or Gavicus would become impossible to remove. He also knew that he couldn't just cut Gavicus's supply lines and wait for him to starve because the Aurean Dominate had far superior logistics to his own in the form of a rail network they recently had built by foreign contractors and they would soon bring reinforcements while he had none. Despite having lifted Gavicus's siege for now, Arturius knew the situation was still dire and realized the only way to defeat Gavicus here was speed.
Arturius gambled everything on a plan in which he would launch a diversionary attack on Gavicus's right, which was anchored on a deep cut where the High Road, the main access point to the city from the east, lay, and was where the fortifications were closest to complete. He hoped this would cause Gavicus to divert troops from his weaker left to defend his right, allowing for Arturius to throw his main force at Gavicus's left and roll up his flank. Arturius would then use his cavalry to ambush and smash Gavicus's, which while generally higher quality than Arturius's, was out-of-position foraging and scouting in the wheatfields southwest of the city. Once this was accomplished, the cavalry would wheel around and smash Gavicus in the rear, completing the trap.
Gavicus's left was commanded by Lucius Gallus Pastor, a trusted Legate from Zebusylvania who was a strong political ally of his and who had proven himself at many battles in the past, particularly helping save Astras from a combined Haxamanian-Tangolian siege. Pavlou commanded his center, and Gaius Caesonius Theodosius, his Magister Militum who had served him well in the Tifinagh Campaign against the Haxamanians, commanded his right. As usual, the vast majority of the Aurean force was made up of Aurean Legionnaires, the trademark, extremely disciplined and versatile heavy infantry that had become synonymous with the Aurean Dominate for millennia. To be exact, the Aureans had 63,360 Legionnaires reporting for duty on the field at the beginning of the battle. As always, the legionnaires wore lamellar armor, carried kite shields, and fought with rapiers. Behind the legionnaires' lines were smaller numbers of Aurean crossbowmen, armed with repeating crossbows known for their rapid rate of fire, as well as some Amorican longbowmen. The longbow was a weapon almost exclusively used by Arturian peoples and one that the Aureans only gained access to through Amorica. It was one of the few non-gunpowder projectile weapons in the galaxy strong enough to damage or pierce plate armor, in exchange for having a very slow rate of fire and requiring lifelong training to operate. Combined, the Aureans had around 10,000 bowmen, half of which had repeating crossbows and the other half shot longbows. Their cavalry force, commanded by Marcus Septimius Massgaba, the Exarch of Tifinagh, was fairly small in proportion to their army, with only around 5,000 heavy cavalry composed of fully armored cataphracts and heavily-but-not-as-armored elite escort troops called Victores; and 2,500 light Imazi cavalry, renowned across the galaxy for their speed and harassing tactics, Massgaba brought over from Tifinagh. Sorely missing were the Tangolian horse archers and light cavalry the Aureans normally fought with, as they were currently busy helping put down a revolt in Tangolia Province.
Arturius's left was commanded by Pompeia Khan, one of his Knights of the Square Table he had found did well in military situations. Ironically enough, Khan was of Aurean background herself, only ending up on Arturia and in Arturius's care by way of dumb luck and a shipping accident. She had been given low-level commands before, helping Arturius mop up a Froudling revolt at the Battle of Dun Scaith, but this would be her first real test. She would be leading a combined force of around 10,000 heavy infantry. Around 5,000 of these were Froudling infantry, a hodgepodge of different creatures of all shapes and sizes ranging from Spriggans to Red Caps to Goblins to Ogres, generally wearing a mix of mail and plate armor and armed with various weapons ranged from swords to halberds. The other 5,000 were Arturian Knights, the elite warriors of Arturian nobility, generally wearing mail hauberks, helmets vaguely resembling older Aurean styles, and armed with an arming sword in one hand and a round wooden shield with a central iron boss in the other. Arturius's main force on his right was around double the size of Khan's, mostly led by Arturius's Dukes. The largest of these, the Cowlanders, made up around half the size of this force, numbering 10,000. The Cowlanders were the premier heavy infantry force the Kingdom of Arturia had to offer, composed of the strongest warriors the foggy, green mountains of the Cowlands had to offer. They were almost always six if not seven feet tall, wearing iron helmets with distinctive visors, mail hauberks, and trademark tartan cloaks. Most famously, they were armed with gigantic claymore swords. They were commanded by Seoirse MacClellan, the Duke of the Cowlands. Also on Arturius's right were around 5,000 Froudling infantry, essentially identical to the ones under Khan's command, led here by Llewelyn Ap Sion, the Duke of Westershire. The third and final unit on Arturius's right were the Skellig Kerns, lighter infantry from the emerald isle of Skellig. The Kerns generally wore padded gambeson and maybe a mail hauberk if they were lucky, alongside iron helmets. They almost always fought with polearms, usually pikes or halberds. These were led by Peadar Mulcahy, the Duke of Skellig. Finally, the Arturian cavalry numbered around 10,000 and were led by the mysterious Michael Jones, an occultist from the deep woods of Skellig who had helped Arturius deal with a whole host of problems ranging from Froudling revolts to dragons, always doing so on horseback. Around half of these were Hobelars, light cavalry mostly from Skellig who rode small unarmored hobby horses and wore only gambeson and sometimes mail for armor, with a bascinet-style helmet. They would generally fight with Arturian cavalry swords, essentially identical to the spatha cavalry sword the Aureans used until a century or so ago. Another 3,500 were Froudling cavalry, which were generally similar to Hobelars in arms and armament, only with the type of horse varying wildly by the species of Froudling riding it. The remaining 1,500, the only real heavy cavalry the Arturians had, were mounted knights, essentially identical to the Arturian Knights Khan was leading into battle, except mounted on large horses in full barding. The last force Arturius had were his 500 royal guards, easily the most heavily armed and armored force present on either side. Each wore a barrel-shaped iron great helm that protected the head and entire face save for eye slits and tiny breathing holes, was covered head-to-toe in mail and gambeson, and was armed with a larger, two-handed version of the arming sword.
Battle
The battle itself began very suddenly when Arturius opened three of the southern gates to Caerbannog and his army streamed out and formed up in their planned positions as quickly as possible. The battle began at around 7 AM on June 28th 11 BR, with Jones's cavalry spreading itself out in a thin and wide but still united line and charging at Massgaba's out-of-position horsemen in the wheatfields just south of the city. Massgaba was able to get his cataphracts and Victores into wedge formations before being overrun, and these were able to blunt the impact of Jones's charge and even poke holes in his line in places, which were then exploited by Massgaba's Imazi cavalry, which found these gaps in the Arturian cavalry line to be perfect avenues for their usual hit-and-run harassment tactics, peppering the Arturians with javelins as they went. However, Jones managed to solve this problem by having having his Froudling cavalry and mounted knights turn around, move behind his own line, and stop the Aurean cavalry after they broke through. However, he had to work hard to prevent his Hobelars, which had taken quite the beating, from routing, instead redirecting them back around to crash into the Aurean cavalry's rear. Faced with encirclement, the Aurean cavalry appeared to rout to the southwest. However, this was planned by Massgaba as a feigned retreat, and just as the Hobelars raced out of position to run them down, the Aurean cavalry, in one massive wedge formation led by the cataphracts and Victores, wheeled around and nearly annihilated them. Only Jones personally leading a flanking maneuver by the mounted knights and Froudling cavalry was able to save them, at the cost of Jones himself being wounded in the leg. The day for the Arturians in the wheatfields would only be won when Massgaba was slashed by a Hobelar's sword, with many in his ranks believing him dead and routing to the south and west. He was only saved from capture when a fleeing Imazi horseman picked him up off the battlefield and put him on the back of his horse hoping to bring him back to the Aurean garrison at the nearby town of Frome to be sent home for burial. Only after the Aurean cavalry had been routed did they discover their cavalry commander was alive, but in urgent need of medical attention. Jones's Hobelars pursued the Aurean cavalry south across open fields and later hills as they fled, inflicting even heavier casualties by harassing their rear and picking off stragglers. At around noon, they set up camp at a site a couple miles southwest of the Aurean left to await further orders.
Attacking at around the same time as Jones entered the field, Khan led her force southeast into the fortified Aurean right, taking heavy fire from the Aureans' crossbowmen and longbowmen, which were often firing from hastily constructed wooden watchtowers. However, the Aureans' arrows were not as effective as they had hoped, as only the longbowmen could do much damage to the armor Khan's heavy infantry were wearing. While the crossbowmen hit more targets due to their high rate of fire, many of their arrows either bounced off completely or only inflicted minor wounds. While the Amorican longbowmen the Aureans had with them were doing some damage, there were too few stationed in that area to make much of a difference, with most stationed on Gavicus's left and center, closer to the city where he thought an attack would be more likely. On the other hand, all the archers the Arturians had brought to the battlefield were longbowmen, who despite their slower rate of fire, were doing far more damage with every volley, providing covering fire for Khan's heavy infantry to gradually overrun the fortifications, capturing all the watchtowers that had been completed. Using these watchtowers as firing platforms for their archers, who provided covering fire, Khan's infantry were able to gradually assault and take the five wood-and-earthwork redoubts that guarded Gavicus's right flank. While Theodosius managed to impede Khan's advance at first, getting the legionnaires into a testudo formation to minimize casualties from arrowfire and inflicting heavy casualties while repulsing an Aurean assault on the first redoubt, he was struck in the head by a sword hilt during the battle and spent the rest of it concussed and delirious. With Theodosius temporarily out of the picture, Khan took advantage of the chaos to assault each of the remaining redoubts simultaneously while Theodosius's subordinates bickered over who should have substituted for him, taking them all. Khan's attempt to exploit this breakthrough further and roll up Gavicus's center from the right flank was thwarted when Pavlou blunted her offensive there with a surprise infantry charge, backed by a full detachment of Amorican longbowmen. This inflicted heavy casualties on Khan's soldiers, forcing her to retreat back to the redoubts. Despite the Arturians capturing the fortifications on the Aurean right, this attack technically failed in its goal, since Gavicus did not pull troops from his left to reinforce his right. Instead, many of the troops from his center, which did not otherwise see much action on the first day of battle, were sent to assist his weaker left against the larger onslaught led by MacClellan, Mulcahy, and Ap Sion.
Meanwhile on Gavicus's left, the Arturians advanced much further south than Gavicus thought they would before they turned right and marched up the hill into his positions. Instead of attacking his left head-on, they went around the fortifications at its end, similar to but lesser in number, less complete, and weaker than the ones on his right. However, the archers perched on these fortifications were far more effective than the ones on Gavicus's right, as much of the Arturian force on this side of the battlefield were light infantry who lacked heavy armor and were far more vulnerable to crossbow bolts. Additionally, more of the archers here were Amorican longbowmen, allowing them to do serious damage to even heavy infantry. Gavicus's left was guarded by three redoubts and several watchtowers manned by crossbowmen and longbowmen. Realizing at around midday that his cavalry had routed that of the Aureans and was encamped not far from the Aurean left, Arturius ordered Jones to join the fray. The first redoubt fell after around an hour and a half of hand-to-hand fighting, but the second proved a tougher nut for the Arturians to crack, due to it being at the top of a very steep hill that was hard for the arrows of the Arturian longbowmen to reach, Pastor personally leading a dogged defense, and Pastor receiving reinforcements from Pavlou in the center, who hadn't done much fighting that day. Here, the Arturians suffered what would be their heaviest casualties of the battle, with the Amorican longbowmen making mincemeat of their lightly armed Kerns and Hobelars, with one of Jones's ill-fated charges effectively destroying the latter unit as a fighting force. Left with no other options, Arturius concentrated almost all of his manpower on the Aurean left into a three-pronged assault on the position, with MacClellan attacking from the west, Mulcahy from the north, and Jones from the south. Ap Sion and Arturius took great risk by leading a frontal assault on the Aurean center to prevent Pavlou from further reinforcing the Aurean left, with Arturius personally leading the attack alongside his royal guards. Unknown to Arturius, this happened to coincide perfectly with Pavlou's charge repelling Khan's attempt to roll up the Aurean right, allowing him to make significant headway, as the redoubts protecting it were almost unguarded. Once Arturius's attack seized the first redoubt of the four guarding his center, Gavicus realized that this position was untenable and had his army retreat to the fallback position he had prepared on the higher hills further to the south, surrounding his camp. Pastor mounted a successful rearguard action, briefly holding back the whole Arturian right as the Aureans retreated to higher ground. This came at significant cost to the Aureans, however, as one of their Legates, Tiberius Axius Aper, was killed by a Cowlander in the process.
That night, Gavicus had his troops get to work making sure the fortifications on their new position were up to repelling Arturian attacks, while the Arturians made their plans for the next day. Zoe Laskaris, one of the Legates who had been under Theodosius's command that day, was chosen to temporarily replace him while he recovered from his injury. Gavicus's new line would be far more compact than the one he had the previous day, mostly lining the crest of a north-facing ridge known as Snowdon Ridge, with the leftmost and rightmost parts of the line bent inward to protect against any Arturian assault up the more gently sloping back corners of the ridge. In an attempt to throw off whatever strategy the Arturians were planning, Gavicus swapped the components of his army around the next day, putting Pavlou and the previous day's center on his left, Laskaris and the previous day's right on his center, and Pastor and the previous day's left on his right. While the Aurean defenses appeared quite strong at first glance, this was deceiving as they were built overnight by tired troops, resulting in them being built on the actual crest of the ridge and not the military crest commanding the slopes, resulting in any attacking Arturians being essentially shielded from Aurean arrowfire until they were almost at the top. Arturius's attack plan for the second day largely mirrored that of the first day, with Khan attacking the Arturian right, which to the Arturians' knowledge, she had weakened the previous day, while the larger force under MacClellan, Ap Sion, and Mulcahy attacked the Aurean left again. Jones's cavalry would ride behind the southwest corner of the ridge and attack the rear of the Aurean left up the more gently sloping terrain. A direct attack against the Aurean center was ruled out altogether because the terrain was so steep there that a frontal assault there would effectively be suicide.
The second day went poorly for the Arturians at first, with Khan, thinking she would be attacking what was Theodosius's weakened and leaderless force from the previous day, found herself up against Pastor, whose forces were still very much in fighting shape. Despite the fortifications being placed incorrectly on the ridge limiting the Aurean archers' utility, strong infantry countercharges by Pastor pushed Khan back with heavy losses. However, troops from Laskaris in the center and Pavlou on the left were called in to help Pastor push Khan back, and as a result, the combined force of MacClellan, Ap Sion, Mulcahy, Jones, and Arturius were able to exploit this to squeeze the Aurean left from the south, west, and north simultaneously despite inferior numbers. By noon, the fortifications on the Aurean left had been overrun, the Arturians rolled up the Aureans' flank, and Gavicus's army began to abandon their camp and rout down the roads to the south. Only a brave rearguard action at Gavicus's camp, led by Gavicus himself along with Laskaris, prevented a complete disaster.
Aftermath
With Arturius routing a numerically superior Aurean invasion force just outside his capital city's walls, Arturian morale soared. Meanwhile, Gavicus, who did not even want to invade Arturia in the first place, used the defeat as an excuse to return south of the border to Amorica. While the Aurean Senate offered to reinforce him, a situation in which Arturius would have likely been doomed, Gavicus refused after Jones's cavalry destroyed his siege equipment during their pursuit of his army, saying that rapidly taking the Arturian capital to win the war quickly was no longer an option and that any further action would result in a long, bloody affair that would distract the Aurean Dominate from its current conflict with the Haxamanian Empire, which was around equal to the Aureans in strength. Arturius offered to negotiate a long-term peace treaty with Gavicus again, this time in Amorica's capital of Venta (known as Caerwent to the Arturians). Gavicus agreed, and this time the Aurean Senate, content that the negotiations were occurring off-planet this time and looking to avoid a long war with the Kingdom of Arturia, allowed them to take place, much to the chagrin of Aurean conservatives. Pavlou in particular was incensed by this decision, calling it "a betrayal of all the Aurean soldiers who gave their lives in the hills of Caerbannog and forests of Lorient" in his newspaper, The Free Aurean, also playing up his actions against Khan on the first day and slandering Gavicus as an incompetent peacenik who lost the battle on purpose to prove a point. Massgaba would eventually recover from his near-fatal wound and would then return to command, but lost so much blood it resulted in brain damage that would give him a lifelong speech impediment. Massgaba would blame Pavlou for helping force Gavicus to go along with the invasion in the first place, and his entire family would harbor a lifelong hatred of the man.
Just over two months later, on September 7, 11 BR, the Treaty of Caerwent was signed by King Arturius and Gavicus XXIX, formally recognizing Arturian independence (even though it had been de facto independent for millennia at this point), ending hostilities between the two nations, and allowing trade between them as well. Amorica would remain in Aurean hands, although one of the conditions of the treaty was that Amorica would be upgraded from an Exarchate to full Provincial status within the next two decades, which would give the locals more of a say in their own governance. Thus, thousands of years of on-and-off fighting between the Aurean Dominate and Kingdom of Arturia had come to an end, and the two nations would even find themselves allied in a decade during the Tatian War against the evil galactic warlord Tate, the bloodiest conflict the galaxy would ever see. Another person present at this battle who would further help bring Aurea and Arturia together would be Pompeia Khan, who through a long and convoluted chain of events, would see herself return to Aurea and be elected Aurean Domina following Gavicus's eventual death.