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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 1835297" data-attributes="member: 99">Over the next few days, the pile of dispatches on Gracchus’ desk grew almost faster than he could read them.  Certainly faster than he could absorb them.  And the picture they painted was grim.The day after his meeting with Marius Flavius, scattered tales of Orcish skirmishers in the southwestern coastal mountains began to crop up.  And there were tales of dragons darkening the sky, no doubt these were the “Wyverns” that his contact in the Imperial War College had briefed him on.So far, every indication was that the invasion would be far to the west where it would take the longest for the Legions, pulled off duty at the Sythian border, to reach the attacking army.  It was too risky at this point to send any of the Legions stationed in Emor south to try and intercept them.  If they committed those troops too soon then they might find themselves south of the mountains with the Orcish army threatening the Capital itself.  And those Legions were largely ceremonial in any event, few of the men ever having seen any combat.Then, overnight, two key bridges across the Arno River, those at Pistorae and Carcioli were destroyed with magic.  That would mean that the troops headed west from the Sythian border would have to divert to smaller towns and use bridges and ferries that were never designed to move so many men.  This would delay them by at least a couple of days.  Who was responsible for this act of sabotage was anybody’s guess so far, but Gracchus felt that it might have been done by agents of the Banites secreted among the population.  Perhaps at the behest of the wife of his rival Senator.Word of the actual advance of the Orcs started to come in the following day.  Scouts reported that they were advancing rapidly but on a very narrow front, headed into the unpopulated areas of the central valley.  So far, no major engagements had been fought against them as they had avoided the larger towns that contained auxiliaries.  The only real negative impact that could thus far be perceived was that the refugees who had been fleeing northwards into the Salerian Pass were now turning back south in fear of being caught in the open.In the north, word came that two of the six Legions that were part of the foolish invasion of the Northlands had boarded ships and were headed south across the Crescent Sea under heavy guard.  A third Legion might have been brought but the lessons of the Slave War were well remembered and cargo space was sacrificed for fighting power to some extent.  These ships would remain higher in the water should they have to fight or run.By nightfall, the Emperor had ordered the Emorian Guard deployed in the fortifications south of the city.  He feared that the Orcs might be attempting a rapid advance to Saleria and could then turn northwards and come toward Emor.  But most of his generals indicated that if this were their goal they would likely have cut through the lower mountain passes further west and kept their distance from the border troops.By breakfast the next day, dire news arrived:  The flying column that had been surging across the central valley was not the primary body of troops comprising the Orcish Army.  In the pre-dawn hours, two separate groups of ships deposited troops both east and west of the city of Hadria.  Approximately a third of them advanced on the city and put it under siege while the remainder struck off into the countryside in raiding parties.Throughout the day these parties took captives from the surrounding farming communities.  In addition, many of the refugees who had turned back south from Saleria were caught up by these raiders and taken captive as well.  By nightfall, the Orcs had hundreds in the pens they set up north of Hadria.  And still the forces of Emor had not engaged in any major battles against them.On the next day, the flying column suddenly doubled back to the southwest.  The main invasion force near Hadria swept to the west and caught several hundred more refugees in a tightening net between themselves and the flying column.  These new prisoners were herded back to Hadria.  At first it appeared that the Orcs were behaving in a relatively civilized manner compared to what was expected.  But when a group of Imperial War Wizards flew over to attempt a magical strike against them, they could see that they had interspersed the prisoners with their own troops, making the use of magic all but impossible without causing large numbers of civilian casualties.  As darkness fell, the Orcs had further increased the throng of captives in their pens, now numbering in the thousands.Then, sometime in the night, they launched an all out assault on Hadria.  In the early going the Auxiliaries inflicted more casualties than expected on the Orcish invaders.  But the War Wizards were again hampered by fighting within the city where so many of their own people kept them from unleashing the largest of their destructive magics.  By dawn, the Auxiliary troops were defeated and the War Wizards were forced to evacuate.The first Imperial city had fallen and her Legions were still nowhere close to the battle.</blockquote>

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