Battle of the Farrow Ridges
The Battle of the Farrow Ridges was a battle fought between a group of about forty mire-pearlers, funded by Quove Lentis and led by Merton Hoist, and the various inhabitants of the Farrow Ridges. The mire-pearlers wanted to exploit the region’s rich resources and enslave the inhabitants, while the inhabitants of the Farrow Ridges fought to prevent that from happening. The battle was fought over a period of a few weeks during the events of Doombringer around the year 619 ᴇ.ʏ. It was similar to the Battle of Farrow Lake, fought in Weird New Worlds, and, just like that battle, it ended in victory for the inhabitants of the Farrow Ridges, although at great cost.
Course of the Battle
Before the Mission to Hive
The Battle of the Farrow Ridges began when the mire-pearlers arrived in the area in their ship, the Doombringer. The Doombringer moored at Gart Ironside’s sky-platform and used its phraxcannon to completely destroy Fifth Lake Village. All of the inhabitants of the Farrow Ridges, except for the white trogs, who refused to enter the battle unless the mire-pearlers entered their caverns, met in a council of war at Blatch and Celestia Helmstoft’s tree-cabin to decide what to do. It was decided that Cade Quarter, Thorne Lammergyre, and Gart Ironside would journey to Hive to buy phraxmuskets for the battle effort while everyone else would remain behind to resist the mire-pearlers.
During the Mission to Hive
While Cade, Thorne, and Gart were away on their mission, the others engaged in numerous skirmishes with the mire-pearlers at the Five Falls. They tried to stop the mire-pearlers from establishing phraxmines at the Five Falls, but the Doombringer’s phraxcannon, combined with the mire-pearlers numerous phraxsloops, stopped them each time. The warriors of the Hammerhead Nations suffered many casualties, and all but three of the webfoot goblins of Fifth Lake Village were killed.
After the Mission to Hive
After Cade, Thorne, and Gart returned from their mission, the battle came to a swift conclusion. They had failed to bring back phraxmuskets, so another council of war came together in the Helmstoft tree-cabin to discuss what to do. While they were deciding, the mire-pearlers attacked the tree-cabin in phraxsloops. They took Blatch, Thorne, Gart, Phineal Glyfphith and the two other surviving webfoots, Baahl, and Celestia captive and destroyed the cabin. After this, the only defenders left free were Cade, Tug, and Chert and the hammerhead goblins. Each had to do a different task as part of their final, desperate plan to defeat the mire-pearlers.
Cade scaled the Five Falls to sabotage the phraxmines. He nearly succeeded, but had failed and was about to be shot when the white trogs intervened and killed the mire-pearler he had been fighting. The mire-pearlers had entered the white trogs’ domain, so they intervened as they said they would. Meanwhile, Chert and the hammerhead coated themselves in mud and walked out into the open on the Levels while intentionally trailing tilder blood behind them. When the mire-pearlers swooped down in their phraxsloops to take the hammerheads as slaves, a cascade of logworms emerged out of the Western Woods, following the tilder-blood trail, and devoured all of the mire-pearlers. The hammerheads were safe because they lay still on the ground when the logworms came, so the logworms couldn’t see them, and their odour was masked by the mud, so the logworms couldn’t smell them. At the same time, Tug climbed the mooring chain up to the Doombringer. Cade arrived a few moments before him in the dead mire-pearler’s phraxsloop that he had commandeered. Cade was about to be killed by Merton Hoist, but when Tug arrived he used his raw strength to crush Merton Hoist, the last mire-pearler left, to death, saving Cade and ending the Battle of the Farrow Ridges.
Aftermath of the Battle
Immediately following the battle’s conclusion, all of the captives who had been taken by the mire-pearlers during the battle were freed from the Doombringer’s hold. They were unharmed. All of the slaves taken in earlier attacks in other areas were freed as well, and they decided to build a new life for themselves in the Farrow Ridges. The Doombringer was deliberately crashed on the shores of Farrow Lake. The Farrow Lakers dismantled it for materials for new buildings, and for stormphrax. However, signs of the battle’s negative effects remained too. Many inhabitants of the Farrow Ridges had been killed, Fifth Lake Village and the Helmstoft tree-cabin had been destroyed, and the phraxcannon had left holes in the surrounding forest that would take years to regrow.