Battle of Silverstone

The Battle of Silverstone was an invasion of Silverstone in the year 2959 by forces from the Far Realm.

Before the battle

After the wizard Tephra came into the service of the Far Realm entity known as Allabar, she recognized the threat that Silverstone posed to her plan to bring her master into Syra and began planning the city's destruction. Scavenging the ruins of Estorium, she managed to salvage a number of magical constructs, which she then repaired and augmented using the corrupting magics of the Far Realm. After making a pact with the demon lord Orcus, she then further modified these constructs with abyssal and necromantic magics. Tephra then staged a number of small attacks on villages and towns throughout the region, drawing many of Silverstone's defenders out to protect them and leaving the city's forces significantly reduced.

A sudden assault

The battle began very suddenly in the midafternoon on the 7th of Nachtur, when a massive column of blue fire erupted out of the plain a mile south of the city. A dozen or so floating monoliths emerged from the flames and fired powerful blasts of magic at the Lower City, leveling most of it in a matter of minutes. These blasts left torrents of blue fire that raised the dead into undeath, and twisted many of the survivors into aberrant horrors. The initial attack was followed up by the appearance of an army of foulspawn and undead, which swarmed into the city and quickly overwhelmed its defenders.

Despite the initial success of the assault, the city guard rallied from within the Middle and Upper Cities. The Challengers of the Unspeakable in particular were instrumental in scouting into the ruins of the Lower City to bring back early information about their enemy. In addition, they had previously found documents within Tephra's stronghold in the Fortress at World's End that suggested a number of exploitable weaknesses in the monoliths' construction. After repelling the initial attack and holding the line at the Midlight Gate, Commander Thoras organized a massive counterattack on the monoliths, dividing the city's defenders into several strike forces that succeeded in bringing them down. While this broke the initial assault on the city, more aberrations soon began emerging from the column of fire and regrouping.

The next day, Thoras led the bulk of the city's defenders against the aberrations' renewed assault, drawing them off while the Challengers of the Unspeakable led a team of wizards to attempt to penetrate the column. Utilizing a ritual scroll they had also found in Tephra's study, they called upon Orcus's power to protect them against the flames and entered the column, where they discovered an absolutely enormous aberration emerging from the ground itself. After destroying the creature's heart, its body withered into that of the former god Boccob, who had been captured, tortured, and ultimately transformed by Tephra to spearhead the attack on Silverstone. At Boccob's request the half-orc Harthur used his axe, Farbane, to kill him before he transformed back into the creature, dispelling the column of fire and ending the attack.

Aftermath

During a banquet honoring the Challengers for their part in saving the city, the sorceress Theriana appeared with a band of drow to settle a grudge; though the drow were slain, they managed to kill the councilmen from the Alchemist and Mages' guilds.

Though the damage to the Middle City was severe, and the Lower City was all but obliterated, the survivors wasted no time beginning the repairs. A statue of the Challengers of the Unspeakable was also erected in the Lower City as part of a memorial to those who perished in the battle.

Many of those who came in contact with the corrupting blue fire used by the monoliths were warped or transformed by it, resulting in strange and varied mutations. It remains to be seen what the long-term effects of this affliction will be.