Cliffside

The Battle of Cliffside

Added here: 31 May 2014

Friday, early morning, 30 May 2014

"¡Dios mio!" swears the Baruch Garrison Scout. "¡Obtuvieron Cliffside!" (My god! They got Cliffside! (BB's NE Tower)).

El Baruch Comandante presses his lips together in frustration. Then snaps out of it. "Alright -- we're taking it back. Hahah! The tower is paper and has no supplies. On me! Throw these Deso bastards out of our Borderland!"

The attack with rams on the gate fails in the face of arrow cart, ballista and catapult fire.

"Under the bridge! orders El Comandante. "Catapults! Melt that side wall!"

Five minutes later, three catapults lie broken, victims of arrow cart fire, direct fire from the wall defenders and the Deso melee team on the ground.

El Comandante refuses to give up. "No es un problema -- ¡Treb ... abre fuego!" (Not a problem -- Treb ... open fire!")

The trebuchet, positioned on top of the Garrison's northeast supply shack, begins lobbing fiery rocks that strike the south wall of Cliffside Tower. Baruch soldiers cheer and dance, knowing that the Deso defenders in the tower have no way to counter such an attack -- except by taking Garrison itself -- and they haven't got the numbers for it. Baruch already considers Cliffside theirs again, so certain is Deso's defeat, now that Baruch is trebbing.

The treb punches a hole in the wall sooner than expected. El Comandante frowns. Strange, he thinks. They didn't even try to repair it, even though they have Astralholme (NE Camp) ... no matter ... onward!

"Into the breach, Amigos! Throw them out of our tower!"

A few minutes later, all "amigos" are either dead or thrown out of "their" tower.

El Comandante can't believe it. He stares at the tower, bug-eyed, unable to process the simple fact that Deso still holds it. A tower that Baruch breached with a treb, fair and square! Obviously, he thinks, there is some mistake.

Again, the Deso defenders make no move to repair the tower wall. So again, El Comandante orders his force into the breach. And again, they die or retreat in the face of Deso's defense.

"¡No es posible!" is the cry that comes from more than one Baruch attacker.

So they attack again. And are butchered again.

"Alright!" yells El Comandante. "Enough of this crap! Everyone to me! Now tell me -- what the fuck is going on?!"

Many agitated voices try to talk to him at once, so it takes some time to sift through it all, but in the end, El Comandante pulls the following intelligence out of the babbling of his soldiers:

There are two guild groups in the tower, wearing tags of [BS] and [CS].
Their numbers are about 15. (Initially, his soldiers swore it was "30 or 50" -- it took El Comandante a bit of cross-examination to get them down to "15").
They have a cat, two ballistas and maybe five ACs ... hard to say exactly, because they keep building new ones to replace the broken ones.
There's no supply in the tower. But they keep portaling in/out of the tower to/from Astralholme camp, so they must have supply -- and yet they're putting none of into repairing the wall. Why the hell aren't they repairing the wall?!

"Alright, enough!" he says. "Change of plan. Main group distracts them at the tower. Snipe group gets Astralholme!"

It takes three tries before the Baruch Snipe Team succeeds.

El Comandante builds a treb on the camp's heights. "Now, take out their siege! Fire!"

It goes well for Baruch ... until some Deso defenders arrive, destroy the treb and recapture the camp.

El Comandante orders another breach attack. He knows the moment is ripe -- the defenders have less siege now. This time, his attackers make it to the tower's supply hut -- before the defenders cut them down in hand-to-hand combat.

He regroups and charges again -- three more times. On the third try, his attackers get all the way to the hill outside the Lord's Room ... and die there.

"Comandante!" goes the frantic call from a Baruch scout in the north. "Deso has taken Godsword!" (North Camp).

El Comandante goes red with rage and fumes to himself. So that is how they keep up supply! It's just not fair! It's not right! We did everything we were supposed to do. As soon as we started trebbing, they should have seen how hopeless it was and left the tower. And then we breached and they still don't leave. And we run our zerg in again and again and they do ... not ... leave ...! It's intolerable!

He's about to order another assault when the Garrison scout reports. "Treb fire incoming!" And not one, but two fiery rocks crash against Garri's eastern wall.

The air erupts with exclamations from shocked Baruchies. "¡Estamos jodidos!" (We're fucked!)

"Dammit it all to...! Shit! Back to Garri, everyone! Repair that wall"!

And that is what Baruch does for the rest of the battle, except for a few half-hearted charges from smaller groups of their fighters who still can't believe it's possible that so few enemy can hold a tower so long with a gaping hole in the wall and then -- most insulting of all -- conduct an offensive action against Garrison!

And with the entire Baruch Blob focused in this one spot, Deso commanders elsewhere have free rein to do as they please -- like capturing Baruch's keep on Eternal.

And now, with EB done, that Deso zerg, led by its two night commanders, arrives on the field. A short time later, they run the Deso flag up Baruch Garrison's flagpole.

And at Baruch's Cliffside Tower, the Head Badger and the Senior Candy Shopper turn to each other and smile. Baruch blood covers them both until it literally drips off them. Their weapons are stuck to their hands by blood and gore. They reek of blood and sweat and death.

And they feel wonderful.

To understand how BS & CS managed this feat, have another look at the Battle Manual for the Defense of Northeast Tower.