Night of the Blood Moon

Night of the Blood Moon
Basic Information
Type	Battle
Location	Loudwater, Delimbiyr Vale
Date	1369 DR
Duration	Three nights
History
Cause	Blood moon omen
Outcome	Victory for Malarites
Combatants
Defenders of Loudwater
Malarite lycanthropes
Commanders
Kalahar Twohands, Harazos Thelbrimm, Stedd Rein

The Night of the Blood Moon was the name given to a bloody assault by Malarite lycanthropes on the city of Loudwater in the Delimbiyr Vale in the Year of the Gauntlet, 1369 DR.

History

Causes

As the Beastlord Malar opposed the Lady of the Forest Mielikki and her dream for the Delimbiyr Crescent, so too did his faithful despise her chosen—the Green Regents and their Scions. Believing their ways to be weak and soft, the largely lycanthropic Malarites terrorized the Delimbiyr Vale and attacked the Green Regents whenever they got the chance. From their lair deep in the High Forest called the Thicket, they mostly just assaulted small villages and remote farmsteads.

However, the rising of a blood-red moon on one warm autumn night in 1369 DR was seen by the Malarites as an omen from the Beastlord, one calling them to unleash their bloodlust on the city of Loudwater, the hated home of the Green Regents. But this was terribly well timed. Loudwater's elderly High Lord, Nanathlor Greysword, lay on his deathbed and its two gauntlets were both out of the city it was their duty to protect. The influential citizen Deldron Rein had gone to Daggerford to meet his returning son Stedd Rein, taking with him the Red Boar Trading Coster's sizeable guard. And finally even the then Green Regent, Galaer Grasswave, and the Scions were engaged in certain vital rituals on Standing Stone Hill to repair the city's magical wards. Loudwater was left hopelessly vulnerable.

Battle

On the first and second nights, the Malarite lycanthropes surged out of High Forest and set upon Loudwater and the surrounding homesteads. They broke into homes and forced out the cowering folk, and engaged in frenzied hunting and slaughter.

Atop Standing Stone Hill, Galaer could not halt nor pause the rituals for wards that might yet protect Loudwater. He was forced to divide both his attention and his forces, keeping half the available Scions to defend the hill and sending the other half to defend the folk of Loudwater. They fought bravely, and died bravely, with more than three-quarters of the Scions falling to the lycanthropes in two nights of fighting. Still, they were successful, preventing interruption of the ritual and saving many folk from Malarite depredations.

Finally, help arrived, as first the Gauntlets Kalahar Twohands and Harazos Thelbrimm returned to Loudwater, followed by Stedd Rein, recent graduate of Athkatla's College of War, at the head of half the Red Boar guard. A magical communication had alerted Deldron about the attack, and he sent Stedd ahead with his forces. Twohands and Thelbrimm regrouped the Scions and focused them on the defense of Standing Stone Hill, and then divided the city into quadrants for defense by their own armies, the Red Boar guard, and the elven house guards. Stedd opened the Red Boar's stores and equipped his forces with nearly forty alchemical silver weapons.

On the third night, the Malarites came again, more ordered and more disciplined, and no less savage than before. This time, they targeted Standing Stone Hill and the Green Regent's ritual. It stood within the elven quadrant, and while some of the elven house guard battled bravely in its defense, too many of them tarried and even departed their forces to protect their own estates.

Learning of the threat to Glaer Grasswave, the Scions, and the ritual, Stedd Rein rallied his Red Boar forces and charged desperately through the Malarites to reach Standing Stone Hill at the edge of the city. It was a valiant effort, but too far and too hard to be successful. Stedd and his forces discovered only a scant few surviving Scions and, outside the northeastern earthen ramparts of the city, the head of Glaer Grasswave mounted on a stake.

Aftermath

Thereafter, the moon returned to its regular hue and the Malarites melted back into the woods, a retreat that seemed to the folk of Loudwater to be as senseless as their attack.

In the days after, the dead of Loudwater were cremated on funeral pyres, filling the city with their smoke and stink. Glaer's ritual was mostly completed, though exactly which parts was unknown; the scholars, wizards, and clerics of the Velti'Enorethal were still trying ascertain this three years later.

For his courage and leadership and actions that saved many lives, Stedd Rein earned praise and accolades. It also improved the Rein name, erasing the earlier memory of his sister Jesym Rein's treachery and earning them the support of the Beutaleen'dal elven house, whose new matriarch Ovendal Beutaleen'dal had been saved by Stedd on that third night. Stedd Rein would be the favorite to become a Scion himself and even the next Green Regent on Shieldmeet in the Year of Wild Magic, 1372 DR.