Announcement: The Badger Lord is coming

[Gen. Volkov]

It was early in the morning, just before dawn, Volkov sat in his tent, drinking tea and pretending to read a book. In reality, he was musing on how young and alive he felt, for the first time it was years. He was back in the field again, commanding troops in battle, fighting against enemies great and small. It was wonderful. Out in the encampment around him, he could here vermin of all types talking and laughing, while the checked their gear and readied themselves for battle. Today was the day, the day they would finally destroy the meager forces wolf bite had scraped together. They had been fighting for days, but wolf bite just kept slipping away. That ended today though, today Volkov would lead his mighty armies and finish the war that wolf bite had foolishly declared on him. The battle-scarred general grinned at the thought.

A messenger burst into his tent.

Volkov looked up, "What is it?" he snapped at the trembling stoat. Everyone knew Volkov didn't like to have his reading time interrupted.

The messenger managed to stammer out, "A-a-a-a message for you sir. From wolf bite. He wants peace."

Volkov growled, low in his throat, and snatched the message from the messenger. The stoat, fearing for his life, fled from the tent. Volkov opened the message, unable to keep from tearing the paper of the message with his claws, he was practically vibrating with anger.

"The sheer effrontery of this, this, weasel-licker to ask for peace after all that has transpired," Volkov muttered to himself. Then he finally got the message open, and began reading. His eyes widened, and he went pale in the candlelight.

"Well, this does change things," he said, again muttering to himself. Then he poked his head outside his tent, and told the young wolf standing guard to summon the other warlords of Woof. When they arrived, he put the letter down on the table in the center of his tent, on top of the map of the battlefield they had been examining last night.

"There will be no assault on wolf bite today," Volkov said quietly. Firetooth began to sputter an objection, but Volkov cut him off. "No, it seems we have an uninvited guest coming to our lands. wolf bite has asked for peace, and I have agreed. We can't afford to be distracted when the Badger Lord arrives. Recall the the troops, we must go back to the keep and begin making new plans. We need to give him a very warm reception indeed."

[Juska]

Where is the badger?

[Firetooth]

Firetooth waded through the piles of bodies underfoot, occasionally prodding one of the wretched corpses before him with his spear to check for life. The ground was wet but warm, slick with blood as well as damp. The sky was grey, and the day was dead as the vermin around him.

"Hmm. Very good!" Firetooth growled. "Everyone!" he snarled. "I need our men to assemble back at camp. Ragtooth, Crookedclaw and Fargut? Assemble a score of men each, and keep picking through the bodies. If any beast is still breathing...you remedy that." He gestured towards in the direction of the camp. "The rest of you, move out!"

As his ears were bombarded with a chorus of subservient voices, the great Wildca stalked towards camp. The air was cold, and he wrapped his cloak tightly around him as he strode. He winced, feeling a sharp pain in his side. Leaning on his spear for support, he continued stubbornly onwards towards the camp.

What a battle it had been. Leading his forces from the cover of the nearby woodland, Firetooth's vanguard had lured the enemy forces under the command of honour right into his trap. As bitter fightingwaged on, Firetooth's forces had flanked the melee on both sides, whilst vermin fighting for Shadow the Stoat had hit the beasts of Honor from the rear. One-on-one fighting had descended into a bloodbath, as the encircled, terrified enemies of Woof fought for their lives.

Firetooth winced again, holding the wound in his side as he limped onwards. Wolf Bite, he inwardly snarled. Right as Firetooth's own retinue had almost reached the great Wolf himself, he had managed to break through the encirclement and flee. Firetooth had even crossed blades with the Wolf, before a loyal lieutenant of Honour skewered him through the side with his spear. In the confusion, Wolf Bite had escaped, along with many of his men, whilst Shadw and his forces chased them in hot pursuit.

"I will catch that sanctimonious, senile old dog!" Firetooth snarled, as he finally reached camp and collapsed by the fire side. A scrawny weasel immediately ran up to him and started tending his wound, whilst an unfamiliar face in his camp approached - a pristine and silky pine marten, untainted by the mark of war.

"Firetooth?" the marten greeted him, flourishing his fine navy cloak to reveal the signage of Woof. "I am Apollo, the Viscount of Kirkbridge. I come bearing two messages."

"Apollo?" Firetooth responded, surprise crossing his face. "You look familiar tho-argh!" Firetooth let out a sharp cry of pain, before pushing the weasel medic away. "No more!" he snarled, despite the weasel's protestations. "Attend to my men! I'm fine." As the weasel scurried away, Firetooth turned back to Apollo. "My apologies. What message do you bring to your leader?"

Apollo gave a quizzical look upon hearing Firetooth was leader of Woof, but nevertheless spoke with an even and clean edge to his voice. "this may come as a surprise to you, Lord Firetooth, but the woof council has sent me and my forces to help you withdraw immediately from the lands of Wolf Bite...and end all hostilies."

Firetooth sprang to his paws, with a hot fire in his eyes. "What?! he snarled, stepping forward so that he was looking directly down into the marten's eyes. "Withdraw?! We have that miserable old dog on the run. I would have finished him myself, had his attack dogs not saved him." He paused, trying to regain some semblance of calm as his nostrils flared. "Give me one reason! Just one!"

"Certainly," Apollo replied without a hint of fear in his voice, as he passed a broken saber hilt to the wildcat.

"What is th-" Firetooth murmured, stopping as he swept away some grime and saw but two letters.

"The Long Patrol" Apollo somberly said. "The Badger Lord is coming!"

[Uiblis]

[Soon a giant emperor will appear in game which can only be beaten and raided should all the game work together.]

Soon a giant emperor will appear

Soon

lol

[wolf bite]

Poor windy has been in his blacksmith shop forging for weeks to build it.


Wolf Bite

[wolf bite]

Back at the Admin Castle all the Admins have been hard at work all week. Some have been organizing food and money storage as others have been training armies. "The Badger is coming!", keeps playing in their ears. In rushed Gen. Volkov, in his best outfit with the flowing cape and his round rimmed classes down to the tip of his nose. After him and wolf bite exchanged a stern look, than a nod, he approached the planning table.

"My scouts bring news from about The Badger," the General has a worried look and continued, "his main force is still marking straight toward our town, which we knew. But ... be intends to flank us!"

"This is direr news.", said Shael as she glanced up from reading her fan mail.

"It is indeed," said the General "He sent 4 armies to flank us."

"And they are all named 'Frank'?" Asked a bewildered Holby.

"But maybe not a bad thing," said Shadow as he pulled out his abacus and did some fast calculations. "The Badger is gigantic, but if he is spreading into 4 other armies, then taking those out will lower his forces."

"Which one is named 'Frank?'" asks Holby.

"Hummm, then we will need to concentrate on his minions first to reduce the size of The Badger" said the thoughtful General.

wolf bite boldly steps forward and pulls out his double broadswords and starts flipping them around in a skilled way then with all drama stabs them both deep into the wooden floor. "Then death to the advancing armies. I will jump on the back of the biggest one and slice at its neck until dead!" With that the wolf stomps toward the exit.

Shael does a loud (cough) to get his attention, "Then maybe you should remove your swords from my freshly waxed floors and take them with you?"

The wolf freezes realizing his mistake, slowly turns, and without meeting eyes with anyone slowly walks back to pull his swords from the floor. He slowly heads for the door and once around the corner his footsteps indicated he was running to make up for lost time.

The General continues, "My spies inside The Badger army tell me they will camp just outside of town for a few days, then suddenly storm us. We will not have advanced notice until he is here."

"About how much more time to get ready do you think we have?" Asked windy.

"My intel says about a week." Said the General.

Shael asks, "Should someone tell wolf bite to come back in here because there is nothing to fight yet?"

Shadow turns back to his abacus with a smirk, "He should figure it out when he gets to the front gates and does not find anything to stab at."

"I am still not understanding who 'Frank' is." Said Holby.

[The badger will show up without advance notice in about a week. There will be 4 other armies which fighting them will weaken the Badger.]


Wolf Bite
(Admin Duties)

[Firetooth]

Firetooth paced back and forth in his tent, a wild gleam in his eyes. It had been weeks since the announcement of the Badger Lord's arrival, yet there was still no sign of him. Empty goblets were strewn across Firetooth's chambers, and his belongings were flung across the floor.

"Wolf Bite!" Firetooth snarled, kicking a bundle of scrolls across that floor. "That cowardly old bone-bag is still out there! Convenient how this Long Patrol conspiracy came right before we were about to finish him..." Firetooth stopped pacing and slouched into a brittle wooden chair, looking over the war table in his tent. "Warlords across the land are scared senseless of this badger, but I'm not even sure he's real!"

"The badger is real, brother."

Firetooth snapped his head back to see Sharptooth had entered the tent, fully-armoured and with a glint in his eyes. "My scouts beyond the Northlands sent word this morning. They passed through an outpost, razed to the ground. The beasts bodies bore the marks of Long Patrol sabres."

"Ever heard of knocking?" Firetooth shot back.

"I wasn't aware that tents had wooden doors," Sharptooth drily replied. "But I travelled a long way, and not simply to shatter your delusions of security."

"Oh, be silent, brother!" Firetooth hissed. "I have a scar the size of your face down my side from that last battle. Countless of our vermin lie dead. Weeks of production were wasted." He paused, as if he reconsidering. "Woof are strong right now, true, but I will not fight that Badger with so-called Honour at my side, only to see them turn on us as soon as we bring him down!"

Sharptooth slowly approached Firetooth, then put his paw on his shoulder. "You are right to fear the Wolf as you fear the Badger...but this is a time of opportunity."

Firetooth's eyes lit up. "Opportunity?"

"Opportunity," Sharptooth repeated. "For weeks now, every warlord from the bottom of Southsward to the heights of the Northlands has been focused on preparing for war, on massing armies, on gathering resources." He moved a paw to the war table, pushing the armies of Honour outwards as he continued "but they haven't been expecting a covert strike. So much focus is on the border patrols spotting some huge army, that they have lost sight of the more subtle and insidious modes of war."

Firetooth rose to his feet, looking directly into Sharptooth's eyes. "Just last week, my spies reported back on Wolf Bite's assets. The grizzled old dog had over $140 billion dollars already, just a fortnight after the battle of the Crookedstone Peaks!"

"$170 billion" Sharptooth replied, passing Firetooth a scroll from his cloak. "This intel is fresh from today. I have my finest agents, dispersed across strategic points on the Wolf's border. At my word, they will strike and strike hard. They will not manage to push through his borders, but...." he slowly pushed the pieces on the board to one corner of Wolf Bite's demense, as he continued "...they will draw attention to certain areas. They will distract and confuse, and in that confusion, that chaos, there comes the possibility for...enterprise."

Sharptooth leaned closer to the board, then brushed aside Wolf Bite's entire army with a swift swipe of his paw. "Opportunity."

A sinister grin lit up Firetooth's face. "Give the order, brother. I have some...financial restructuring, to attend to." With those words, Firetooth slung a cloak around his shoulders, picked up a sword, and strode out the tent .

The limp was gone.
---
Firetooth let out a mighty roar as he cut down another one of Wolf Bite's beasts, nearly slipping in blood as he staggered across the stony floor of the Honour Capital.

"This wasn't supposed to happen!" he snarled, blocking an axe blow from a stoat as he then ducked the morningstar of a rat. Dozens of beasts were flooding towards Firetooth and his elite team of operatives, climbing over the corpses of those that had fallen before them.

As he paced back, the voice of an ermine lieutenant called from the back. "We're blocked here too, Lord Firetooth!"

Firetooth snarled as he knocked the four beasts before him over with a sweep of his tail, before throwing two of his men in front of his as he pushed back into his own line. "There's a third way out here! Firetooth growled. His men were still lugging huge bags of gold, embezzled from the treasury of Honour.

"There's no way we get this gold back with us!" the ermine yelled.

Firetooth let out an angry snarl, grabbing the ermine closer and looking him in the eye. "If we can't steal it, we dispose of it!" he yelled, pointing out a nearby window with his paw. "That river there? The current is strong and deadly, and leads straight into the Hollow Sea!" Firetooth released the ermine, and continued to strafe down the corridor. "We fight our way out of here and dump it there. Wolf Bite has no navy and few vermin outside his capital - his money was all he had."

As the ermine followed with the surviving few men, dragging bags of gold behind them, a grin of insane glee crossed the wildcat's face. "He'll never get it back!"

[wolf bite]

wolf bite calmly sends a bill to the woof clan for the second violation of the peace treaty.

Firetooth's "victory" party is interrupted with an order from the Woof Executive Board to immediately appear before them.


Wolf Bite

[Firetooth]

I AM the Woof executive board!

[Gen. Volkov]

I AM the Woof executive board!

Nope, you are not longer part of Woof. I've enjoyed working with you in the past, and probably will work with you again in the future, but you are just a bit too bloodthirsty to stay in my clan in RTR.

Wolf bite, I apologize for this. Firetooth appears to have gone rogue. I have kicked him from the clan, do with him what you will. I'll RP it out later, if you want, but for now, please accept my apologies, and know that this was not a sanctioned action by Woof. (If Shadow's utter confusion didn't give you that idea already) The Bark clan is no longer associated with Woof either.

[Durza]

Has the timeline for the badger lord been pushed back or are we just building suspense now?

[wolf bite]

Tick Tock .....


Wolf Bite
(Admin Duties)