Battle of Crowyuga Castle

Prelude

It has been two weeks since Weasel and his friends entered the Northern Forests via the Great Plains, and they have already unified its tribes against Tate as well as having gotten the Wendigo problem under control. Now, only one obstacle stands in their path: the Tatian fort Crowyuga Castle. Built years ago to control the tribes in the region, Crowyuga Castle is located on a hill on the southeastern shore of Lake Deeron, surrounded by shorter wooded hills on its landward side. It has massive wooden walls completely enclosing it, with one gate facing the lake for ships and one gate facing the land for supplies. Tate has left Dr. Setzer, the mad scientist responsible for the events on Atlantea, in charge of defending the fort. Dr. Setzer has built three new robots: the Thornbot, Ebbytron, and Skoubot, each far stronger than the Lawbot Weasel and his friends destroyed back on Atlantea. These new robots have been tasked with serving as Setzer's generals, and Weasel and his friends have fought them inconclusively several times during the two weeks they spent in these woods. Not only does Setzer have several thousand weaker robots stationed in the fort ready for battle, the fort also has a colossal garrison of 350,000 Tatian Legionaires, along with 90 Walkers and 5 destroyers. In an attempt to trick the defenders, Weasel had a captured android reprogrammed to think that it is a local villager giving information to the Tatians. He then sent this android to Crowyuga Castle to warn the garrison of an impending naval attack from Lake Deeron. As a result, the Tatians moved shifted most of their defenses away from the landward side of the fort and towards the outer wall facing the lake. The android snuck back to Weasel's camp while the Tatians were sleeping and told him the mission was a success. Weasel then quickly sent scouts out into the woods surrounding the fort to look for any traps or other hidden defenses. When they reported back to Weasel, they said that they saw platforms in the trees used by snipers, but they luckily left before they could be seen. Weasel decided to wait until the next night before sending a group of a few hundred Turkeyquois Warriors into the woods to dismantle the traps and take out the snipers. This was done with relative ease, and the Turkeyquois suffered less than a hundred casualties. Due to the suppressors on the snipers' guns, there was not enough noise to wake up the people inside the fort. The dead Turkeyquois were simply cremated in a giant funeral pyre back at the camp while the remaining Turkeyquois climbed onto the platforms and stole the snipers' uniforms to make it appear as if nothing happened. The next day, Weasel sent word to the Deeron that he wanted them to attack the fort immediately with their fleet of 500 war canoes. Meanwhile, Weasel told the bulk of his forces, the ground troops, that they would attack the fort from the land as soon as the Deeron engaged Crowyuga Castle's defenders from the lake. Dr. Setzer, still under the impression that he was facing a minor naval raid rather than a siege on all sides, kept up his order of maximum emphasis on the lakeshore rather than the woods. Sure enough, a fleet of five hundred Deeron war canoes appeared on the horizon the next day.

Battle

The fleet of 500 was much larger than anything Dr. Setzer had been anticipating, and he asked his snipers in the woods to join the lakeshore defense. However, unbeknownst to him, his snipers in the woods had been killed two nights before and replaced by disguised Turkeyquois warriors, who simply killed the troops sent to relay the order. By this time, the naval battle was in full swing, with the 500 war canoes engaging the 5 colossal destroyers sent out from Crowyuga Castle. While the canoes were managing to take out some of the destroyers' crew, their arrows and sling pellets were simply too weak to do any damage to the massive steel hulls of the destroyers. The destroyers, on the other hand, were using shells and other explosives to take out war canoes like fish in a barrel. Meanwhile, the ground troops were emerging from the woods in numbers of over 180,000. It was then that Dr. Setzer began to think something was up since his "snipers" were not firing at the invaders and the naval attack and land attack seemed to be coordinated. While the garrison was disembarking from their destroyers and heading from the lakeshore to the landward gate, Weasel's troops were already rolling their siege towers up to the walls. Back on the lake, some of the Deeron managed to take control of a destroyer, using it to attack and sink 2 more destroyers. With only 2 remaining destroyers, the war canoes were under less fire and managed to build a ladder onto another destroyer, capturing it as well. The one remaining destroyer then sped through some of the war canoes left vacant by the ships' captures and fled battle. The two captured destroyers then blasted through the lakeward side of the wall. The Deeron on board those two ships, as well as the ones still on war canoes, quickly went through this hole in the wall, disembarked, and began running amok all over the castle. Meanwhile, the disguised Turkeyquois on the sniper platforms in the woods joined in on the action, unleashing a hail of arrows on the Tatian garrison that was beginning to emerge from the fort. Inside the courtyard, the Deeron ran into some real difficulty when the walkers were deployed, as they could kill large amounts of troops in a short amount of time and the Deeron had no way of penetrating their armor. The explosive weapons on the walkers cost the Deeron and their Chipmunkee allies heavy casualties. However, they simply retreated back to their captured destroyers and used the weapons on those to destroy the walkers. With the walkers gone, the Deeron re-emerged from their destroyers and attacked the rear of the Tatian garrison, the front of which had its hand full dealing with the ground troops. Trapped in their own fortress with no escape, the 80,000 or so remaining Tatian Legionnaires quickly surrendered and were taken prisoner. Meanwhile, Weasel and his friends had broken into the castle proper and were fighting off Setzer's robots. After a long battle with the Thornbot, Ebbytron, and Skoubot, Weasel and his friends found Dr. Setzer himself, who was completely cornered with no means of escape. He fought valiantly with the contraptions on his wheelchair but was quickly overwhelmed and killed.

Aftermath

This battle destroyed any chance the Tatians ever had of successfully defending their home planet, and is regarded by historians as the "nail in the coffin" that began the downward spiral that culminated in the Tatians' final capitulation in the Battles of the Arctic. Half of the Tatians' remaining legionnaires were killed or captured during the encounter, and they lost a third of their remaining navy as well. However, Walkers still continued to be produced in the Taiga and Arctic until the very end. With complete control of the Northern Forests, Weasel and his friends would go on to sail across Lake Deeron to Deeron Territory, from where they would climb over the Great Northern Hills to Mooseachusett Territory, from where they would sail across the Northern Channel and throw down the gauntlet in the lands of the Hawkaida. Crowyuga Castle itself would be used by the forest tribes as a fort to defend the area from any future attack. After hearing of this defeat, Tate himself would continue his slide into insanity, eventually causing the warlords Santa Muerte and Lane to slip through his grasp.