Borderlands+Campaign

__**War in the Siege Lands**__

A little background. You have all been working with each other for just over a year, in the employ of one of the many warlords operating in and around the Siege Lands. You have primarily been used for special operations missions, though on occasion you have been sent in to bolster a faltering attack or to help defend an important position. Your commander, General Mazurin, has been trying for the last few months to take a strong line of forts along a daunting rise of stone called Shieldwall Ridge. You have grown accustomed to each other, both in combat and out, and everyone thinks everyone else is just peachy.

General Mazurin employs a number of other specialists, two of which, the Bloodhammers and the Fire Gods, are spec ops groups like yours. The Fire Gods, so named because their emblem is a burning figure standing high atop a mountain, are hard-drinking and prone to knifing each other and anyone else nearby when they get too far in their cups, but otherwise are good company and dependable companions. You are not, however, on good terms with the Bloodhammers. Nothing has ever been said, no challenges issued, duels or brawls fought, but there is a clear antipathy between your group and theirs. General Mazurin realizes this, and usually keeps you apart, though occasionally you are forced to work together. In such cases, in spite of the thorough professionalism and support they have displayed, you could not help feeling that they would have gladly stuck knives in your backs had it been safe to do so.

The area of the Siege Lands in which you are operating is not far from the southern coast, within a landscape long scarred by war. Fortunately, the army you serve is protected on its left flank by the range of low mountains known as the Brownbacks, and on its right by an allied force under General Drotha. Both Drotha and Mazurin are said to be financed by the Empire of Shibboleth Nur, but you do not know the truth of the matter.

The Siege Lands themselves, and the surrounding areas for many miles, are best described as a place of constant war. Sieges, pitched battles, covert operations, trenchworks, corpses, war-ravaged fortress towns, scarred castles, mercenaries, and entire armies are to be found in profusion. There is no aspect of the Siege Lands, from the ascendant Utok Siegebreaker's Fortress of the Unbroken to the limist of the Outer Marches that is not occupied with all out war. Mining operations, supply depots, smithies, resupply along the southern coasts, occasional dirigibles for those that can afford them and the protection they require, and all the rest support the efforts of hundreds of warlords.

Why are they fighting? Why do they come here? What do they hope to gain? The answers vary. Some seek to bloody their armies in this ultimate training ground before taking them to other lands and other wars. Some come seeking some of the finest mercenaries, troops, and commanders to be hired anywhere in Andavar. Others have been here for generations or centuries, holding fiefdoms locked in constant battle, their kingdoms, principalities, free cities, baronies, or single keeps perpetually engaged in all that war demands, fostering an enduring soldier culture. Others have come to take these fortresses and the well-known mineral resources each enjoys, still mined by the strange race known as the Murplin who labor far beneath the wars, apparently oblivious of any notions of wealth, mining for reasons that remain inscrutable. It was this vast minearl wealth, in metals and gems, that led to the first wars fought over these lands and the establishing of strongholds to protect the mining operations beneath. It is said that their are a million million miles of tunnels beneath the Siege Lands and that in some, empty now of their mineral treasure, battles rage.

Yet others still have come to the Siege Lands in order to take the Inner Ring, that series of layered defensive fortresses and fieldworks, vast and mighty and yet unconquered, that protect the approach to the jewel in the crown, the Fortress of the Unbroken, bastion of Utok Siegebreaker himself. It is said that from the fortress's highest tower, Utok watches the war across his lands, the individual battles, the individual soldiers, and on a great map table plots the progress with an approving eye. Whether he will take a hand against the forces arrayed against him, or continue to leave the Ring's defenses to his subordinate commanders as he has done for so long, remains to be seen. But the ceaseless war waged against he, the incarnation of war itself, is proof of the lure of immortality. For there is more than one way to ascend and for many it is foolish to search for hidden fragments of divine magic, when one that is known can be taken. He who brings down the Fortress of the Unbroken and slays its master will do just that. So far, the world waits on the outcome, and Utok remains.

Below are various sieges presently under way or recently completed. NOTE:Not all of the battles in the siege lands, perhaps not even most, are sieges. They just tend to be the most conclusive.