The Lurchip finally made it to the mithril mines. It had been a long, hard march through the hippus territory, with constant harrassing attacks from the hippus horsemen. But the fireballing might of the golemic army (and their willingness to avoid torching all the hippus towns in their path, avoiding them if they could) seem to have made many of the hippus willing to let them go through and do their own thing. While not pleasing to the hippus leaders, there wasn't anything in position that they could use to prevent the Lurchip march. There were no guarantees that would remain for long though.
Settling down, the lurchip smash their way into one of the mithril mines, rapidly erecting massive defenses with their golems working night and day. Golems were stationed all along the walls, with the royal guard in key positions overseeing the defenses. Slingers also took their places, and a constant outward watch was maintained. Meinwhile, within the fort, the entrances to the mithril mine were enlarged and reinforced, to allow for the most rapid extraction of the precious ore. Then armies of golems, under the supervision of adepts and wizards proceeded to start extracting the mithril. It would go much faster without the need for the miners to rest, and there was a lot of metal needed for the mithril golem.
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Meinwhile, back in the lurchip lands, the cities were beset by the horde of dovollio rampaging over the borders. The great cities with their massive stone walls (and the walls raised by adepts proficient in earth magic), made them near impregnable fortresses against the dovollio raids. The territory around them however wasn't faring nearly so well. However, the call to war had had some unexpected benifits. While many citizens worked on pouring out iron golems and gargoyles to defend their cities, a former clockmaker had come up with an ingeneous way to make a golem out of spells and parts from his clocks. Then new golem (named a Clockwork golem of course... lurchip are well known for their highly descriptive naming system...
) had immensely faster reflexes than the iron golems, and was a miracle of engineering. On the other hand, it wasn't quite as... sturdy, as the much renouned iron golem, but a few were put into production to test against the dovollio.
On a different note, there had been experiments with a new material called gunpowder. While very promising in the field of mining (if it ever could be controlled that is), its application for warfare was much more dismal. Simple rain made it moist and unable to fire, while even when dry it had a tendancy to explode in the users face, usually with significant force. Many golems had been destroyed testing this. For now, it had been discarded as an idea to put further research into, as it was also discovered that an elemental mage would have a ball working against them. Not only did water make it not work, but fire and lightning would prematurely ignite it, turning it into a far greater hazard to the user than to a properly equipped opponent. Oh... and golems were NOT well suited to using this material, and no dwarf would be foolish enough to be caught dead near one of these things - if they were, they soon WOULD be dead.
Lastly, a few dwarven druids had been seen smashing dovollio that had come near whatever they were guarding (or just protecting themselves, who knows). They had however refused to speak with the lurchip leaders, feeling that they were too involved in the world of politics to listen to the world of nature. Aka, unless the lurchip stopped being such a bunch of goody twoshoes, they would have nothing to do with the lurchip leadership.
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The city of Tia'Ran had turned into a central staging point for the lurchip home defense. Partly due to the presense of the royal guard, defending the city from sorry assasins and their ilk, who had been plaguing other lurchip cities, and partly due to the importance of the mithril golem, refugees from all over had gathered at the city. And with the influx of refugees, there was also an influx of golems. Lots and Lots of golems. While not as large a force as had been sent down to capture the mithril, it was the second largest army in the Lurchip nation, only topped by the capital defenses itself (and the offensive army of course). In an effort to protect his adopted nation, Barnaxus gathered a large force of iron golems, adepts, mages, priests, obsolete wood golems (but still fireball capable), and the new clockwork golems. Then, while still leaving a large force to defend the city, he took his army out and proceeded to smash the dovollio raiding parties. Mud golems followed behind to rebuild the wreck that the dovollio hordes left, and most importantly, repair the roads for rapid reinforcement. Careful overuse of fireballs smashed the smaller dovollio parties, and eventually, they were forced to organize their raiders into a cohesive force to defend against the counter-attack.
The ragtag mix of dovollio forces faced the steady lurchip army across the field of battle. The dovollio outnumbered the lurchip easily, but the lurchip magic began to change that quickly enough. Shamans and mages behind the dovollio lines began casting countermagics, and the mages soon ended up in a magical duel that left them unable to deal with the regular forces. Hosts of the Erenhjar met pit beasts in combat, maelstroms met maelstroms, outbursts of chaos were met by application of law. The lurchip army still had one major advantage though, and they showed it when the dovollio warriors started charging at them. With the dovollio in full charge, the lurchip golems all summoned fireballs and cast them at the charging horde. Massive explosions of fire scattered and slew many of the hulking raiders, but many more charged right through. The massive barbarians ran straight at the lurchip lines and met them with a titanic clash. While each iron golem was significnatly stronger than a beastman, or even a battlemaster, there were 3 dovollio for every golem, and hacking away with their axes and clubs soon began to whittle away at the lurchip lines. So barnaxus sent forth the new clockwork golems.
A clockwork golem is a giant machine - standing 15 feet tall, with massive arms, and visible gears everywhere, it is an intimidating sight. And it moves FAR faster than one would expect from a construction of that size. The clockwork golems sped forward increadiably fast, and began clubbing all around them with their massive hands. The golems all charged the righthand side of the field, and the dovollio were driven back before these giant monstrosities. Slowly, but with gathering momentum, the lurchip forces began driving up the dovollio lines, smashing through them. Brave as the dovollio were, they couldn't stand up before these mechanical monstrosities, and soon they were put to flight. As soon as the barbarians were out of range to possibly attack again, the Lurchip adepts went to work repairing all the golems. Even though many had fallen, few were beyond the adepts skill to reconstruct. Uneasy at leaving the city less well defended for so long though, rather than feebly attempting to chase down and kill the many dovollio survivors, Barnaxus turned the army back to Tia'Ran. Minor raids could be dealt with individually, but there would be no more major ones for a time.