Entry 309 – The Gates of Victory
[…] Then there they stood, before the seat of power of the irathy kingdom.
A grotesque bloom of twisted architecture, all pulsing with power itself as the irath coveted nothing more.
Its gates, if they could be called such, were a courtesy, serving no purpose other than aesthetics.
This was where Endrith, the wizard king of Irath, had settled down to create his kingdom.
Many tales and notions in history claim that his power far exceeded that of Vellichor, the Dread Mage, but as the two of them had never clashed before, those claims were just fanciful thinking.
But on that day, it was proven who the better mage was.
Most of the war campaign was marching across Irath land itself, and even then, the army opposing the Irath had lost a quarter of their forces. […]
Entry 310 – The Flesh Golems
[…] When the army stood before the Irath palace, there was the second defense of the Irath.
Not soldiers, mind you, but close enough.
They were not alive, truly.
They were called many things over the years, though some modern texts prefer the term "aberrant golems," twisted beings of sinew, bone, and sorcery.
They stood taller than two men, shaped like mockeries of the human form.
Some had no faces at all, only slick, stretched skin over fused bone.
Magic did little.
Spells turned aside or simply fizzled.
It is and was known that the irath tried many things to gain resistance to magic of all kinds, and these golems partially attained that goal; it was later theorized that they were partially anchored to other planes, which explained their resistance to conventional enchantment, though never proven.
Steel did not fare much better.
Blades sunk deep into their flesh, but they did not bleed. The golems simply did not stop moving. Arrows were met with the same fate. Fire worked, but only if sustained.
The fighting was brutal, up-close, and unending.
Entire squads of veterans were reduced to pieces in minutes.
The battle for the outer gate lasted four days. By the end, they had cleared only the first approach. Tens of thousands dead.
And they had not yet stepped foot inside. […]