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Siege of Overlook by Didier Graffet

Siege of Overlook by Didier Graffet.

The Siege of Overlook was the final battle of the Shadowmaster wars. It was fought between Croaker of the Black Company (the appointed Liberator of the armies of Taglios) against Longshadow, the last of the Shadowmasters, during She Is the Darkness.

She Is the Darkness[]

Background[]

After suffering a heavy defeat at the Battle of Charandaprash, Longshadow was besieged in his fortress Overlook by Croaker and his Taglian armies. The siege lasted several days. The Company and the Taglians had to fight the cornered enemy Shadowlanders; trained shadows sent by the last surviving shadowweavers; mobs of feral shadows emerging from the shadowgate; and the harsh winter.

Maps of the interior of Overlook were supplied by Murgen, who spied inside the structure as a disembodied spirit, as well as another set of charts compiled by Lady's first men on the inside.

Battle[]

The first breach of Longshadow's defense was achieved by Lady's soldiers. A group of them entered the fortress through its network of scaffolding and managed to hold their position inside. A few days later, those men were relieved when a narrow tunnel was made under the wall using Lady's shadow-killing fireball projectors by her Nar generals Sindawe, Isi, and Ochiba and hundreds of their men. They split into 3 main groups with separate objectives:

  1. Isi and his men attacked the apartment of the Howler. While 50 of them distracted the Howler with fireball projector fire, 5 others destroyed the Howler's 2 main flying carpets. The Howler took the opportunity to steal the first, incomplete volume of the Books of the Dead from the Daughter of Night during this attack.
  2. Ochiba and his men attacked Overlook's garrison, taking it entirely by surprise. He killed a large number of noncombatants in an assault described by Murgen as merciless.
  3. Sindawe was commanding officer on the ground of the overall invasion of Overlook. Other objectives included the capture of the rooms inhabited by groups of shadowweavers; the capture of the Daughter of Night; and an assault on Longshadow's tower.

At the time Lady's forces were executing this decisive assault, Longshadow was betrayed by his allies the Howler and Narayan Singh and was attacked by Soulcatcher in his chamber. During a chaotic confrontation, the goddess-like entity Kina appeared in physical form to protect Narayan's ward, the Daughter of Night. In a separate betrayal, the Prahbrindrah Drah turned against the Black Company for his own political purposes. The Black Company leadership determined correctly that the wildcard Soulcatcher was the driving force behind these events.

Eventually the Black Company conquered Overlook and captured many high-value prisoners: Longshadow, Narayan Singh, the Howler, and the Prahbrindrah Drah. But Soulcatcher abducted the Daughter of Night – the child of Croaker and Lady – and escaped with her before she could finally be reunited with her biological parents.

Aftermath[]

The siege would be followed months later by Croaker's ill-fated crossing into the Shadowgate, and the beginning of the 15-year-long period known in the Company's history as the Captivity.

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