Background: It has been one year since Rhys has been slain by Weasel. Spjot Ragnarsson, another of Tate's associates, has assembled a massive mercenary army called the Legion of Conquest and landed on Aurea near Salva in Izwes. The Aurean Military, which was overconfident after its victory over Rhys, rapidly suffered multiple defeats. The Aurean Military had learned nothing from Rhys's invasion and had stuck with the old semi-feudal structure of giving each Aurean province its own set of armies to use to deal with threats instead of having a central force.
BATTLE 1: THE BATTLE OF KHUYE
Prelude: Upon landing near Salva in Izwes, Spjot intentionally picked a landing site in a very sparsely populated area of mountains near the city. This served the dual purpose of both avoiding detection by Izwes's armies and allowing his massive force, much of which came from the freezing tundra world of Ryu 108, a chance to more smoothly transition into Izwes's tropical climate by starting the long march in a cooler mountainous region. As a result, the army was able to make decent time marching down the mountains, until they reached the city of Salva at the foothills of the mountain range. With the city's walls in disrepair and being taken completely by surprise, the city's garrison surrendered without a fight. Stopping briefly to resupply in the city, Spjot's army moved on south towards the city of Maputo.
However, the garrison at Salva, before surrendering, managed to get rhampho messages out to both the Izwes Government in Mbabane and the Aurean Government in Astras, informing them of the invasion, their surrender, and the truly massive size of the Legion of Conquest. Immediately, all armies on Aurea were instructed to mobilize and prepare themselves for deployment at a moment's notice. Izwes's two armies were immediately transferred to Mbabane and Tobayale, tasked with waiting there to intercept Spjot's army before they could reach Mbabane. In anticipation of Spjot's onslaught, the city of Maputo was evacuated. By the week's end, Maputo had fallen to the Legion of Conquest with no resistance.
After spending about a day in Maputo resting and resupplying, Spjot again took his massive army south, making a direct beeline for Mbabane, the Izwes capital. He thought that surely the great Aureans that defeated Rhys would be waiting somewhere near the city to draw him into battle. However, Spjot was able to trek for four days across the open savannah with not even a trace of resistance. Surely the capital of an entire province would have an army standing between him and the gates. What Spjot did not know was that the two armies from Izwes had used skilled scouts to follow Spjot's massive army south, and were able to predict their path of travel through a valley near the town of Khuye. On each side of the valley, each of the armies dug in and prepared to ambush Spjot as his army entered the trap.
However, before he entered the valley, Spjot's scouts, Ulfs from Ryu 108 who were very skilled at scouting, were able to figure out the Aureans' plan and report this back to Spjot without being spotted by the Aureans they were spying on. While Spjot had been expecting Aurean resistance to materialize at some point or another, this plan to ambush him in the valley spooked him, as his already slow war mammoths were moving even slower than usual due to overheating in the tropical climate, and this would leave some of his most valuable assets open to mass destruction by Aurean archers.
Opening Moves: Spjot decided that the only way he would be able turn this ambush into a victory would be to set up a diversion. He sent around 5,000 men and 3 mammoths into the valley. However, they would not all enter the valley at once, instead traversing the valley in a slow trickle. This, Spjot hoped, would fool the Aurean Armies on the high ground positions flanking the valley on each side into thinking that this was the entirety of his army. While the two Aurean Armies left their high ground positions to ensnare Spjot's force between them, Spjot would send the rest of his army, which he had split in two, to take each of these positions from behind and turn the tide on the Aureans.
Kuzi and Mapoza, the Aurean commanders of each army, on the other hand, were completely unaware that Spjot even knew of their ambush, and thought they had the element of surprise completely on their side. As a result, they each put their heavy infantry in the front and cavalry in their rear, hoping to crush Spjot based purely on surprise and weight of numbers.
The Battle: As soon as they saw the first of the war mammoths trudge into view, Kuzi and Mapoza ordered general attacks from each of their sides of the valley. While Kuzi and Mapoza thought that simply the surprise of their ambush would drive Spjot's army into panic and disorder, the force in the valley simply backtracked in an orderly fashion. As this happened, Spjot and his 37 other war mammoths, with his army behind them, appeared on the now undefended sides of the valley and then proceeded to barrel directly down the hill, to the Aureans' absolute shock.
The mammoths, combined with the element of surprise now on Spjot's side, turned the Aurean lines to jelly. Not only did this happen, but the smell of the mammoths spooked the Aurean zebra cavalry who were unused to the odor, causing them to panic and sometimes even crash into their own troops. Only the Aurean deinonychus riders were able to put up some form of resistance to the mammoths, managing to even take down a couple by using their claws to latch onto them en masse.
Once the Aurean lines were more chaos than actual lines, Spjot's army began a general attack. The Aureans, packed so closely together they could not wield their swords effectively, were slaughtered en masse. During this portion of the fighting, General Mapoza of the Aurean East Izwes Army was killed by a stampeding mammoth. Kuzi and a few hundred men to escaped the battlefield to the south through a gap in Spjot's lines, but as soon as Spjot realized this, he ordered his cavalry, who hadn't done much at this point, to wheel around to the south to complete the encirclement and prevent any further escapes.
With the exhausted Aureans on the southern flank completely unable to stand up to Spjot's cavalry charge and the Aureans in the other parts of the battle being packed together like sardines, the 35,000 Aureans who were still alive and present at that point surrendered and were taken prisoner. The Legion of Conquest had suffered only light casualties, losing 1,500 men and 3 war mammoths. Most of the Legion of Conquest's casualties were from Spjot's diversionary force that was attacked by the Aureans at the beginning of the battle.
Aftermath: After the battle, Kuzi and the men that escaped with him (almost all of whom were on zebras) rushed to the town of Khuye, from which they sent a rhampho message to Mbabane informing Izwes's government of their defeat and instructing them to prepare for a siege. With both armies of Izwes defeated, the only hope for the province was for the siege to fail, as no other Aurean province's troops could hope to make it to Mbabane in time to intercept Spjot before he reached the city. However, Kuzi did not evade capture for long, as Spjot's army entered Khuye the following day to rest and resupply, and Kuzi was captured in the process.
BATTLE 2: THE SIEGE OF MBABANE