Battle of the Eckl-Skaald

The Battle of the Eckl-Skaald was the first major conflict in Eieber's Long March and considered to be among the most impossible victories in the history of the campaign. The exact facts are often seen as exaggerated, but the basic narrative is as follows: Eieber's army made careful use of terrain to maneuver into attack distance, then Eieber himself scaled the tower, killed the Arch magus, and shattered the Sigil Stone. His army attacked, and without a leader or the ability to use Chain Attack, the tower fell to Eieber's forces in a battle which lasted just fourteen hours. Many of the captured mages then swore fealty to Eieber and the ranks of his army swelled.

Background

After the initial breakout from Ataya and the disasterous winter campaign in Weagal, Eieber set his sights on liberating the Agras Plain from the countless waring nation states.

The exact location of the Eckl-Skaald Mage Tower has been lost to time. The only clue as to its location is a line in surviving copies of Eieber's Honorarium stating "The tower commanded the region to the west of the Three Baras. Since a large network of towers based out of Water's Grasp commanded the entire Lake Bara region, it seems likely Eckl-Skaald was located closer to the High Mountains range on the border of Water's territory.

The Battle

The account of the battle which survives on Eieber's Honorarium tells the tale of how the small, under-equipped army use the natural ridges and hillocks of the terrain, including craling one by one through a streambed, in order to get into a fighting position very close to the tower. Knowing they had already been encircled by the tower's own army and that the fight the following morning would mean victory or death, Eieber struck out on his own.

Under cover of a moonless night, he reached the base of the tower unseen and free-climbed the outside. An hour before dawn, while the mages prepared Tower Magic for the ensuing battle, Eieber reached the top level of the tower and crawled over the battlement. He drew his sword, charged the Arch Magus, and in one fell swoop ran him through and shattered the Sigil Stone. He then returned to the battlement and used the first rays of the sun on Echbalder's polished blade to signal to his army that it was time to attack. The battle lasted some fourteen hours, but they were able to quell the tower's army and capture hundreds of mages.

Aftermath

Having taken and held the tower, most of the mages and soldiers swore fealty to Eieber, as was common practice for a defeated force during the era. Eieber killed only the Arch Magus and Magi of the tower, as well as the various house nobles who ruled over the city surrounding Eckl-Skaald. Eieber then opened the coffers of the tower and families, and had their wealth shared out equally between his own army, the newly acquired soldiers and mages, and the people of the city. As his last act, rather than leave a garrison behind, he set up a new democratic system of government where upon a poor cabbage farmer was supposedly elected to lead the city.

Differing Accounts

The generally accepted version of events first arrived sometime around the late Golden Age and actually came from an unlicensed biography of Eieber. It was then republished in later editions of his Honorarium and became the widely accepted version of events.

And earlier narrative, surviving in secondary and sometimes teriary sources, tells the same basic sequence of events but includes a slightly different take. Key elements are as follows:

• Eieber never originally planned to scale the tower, he believed the strength of his army alone would be enough to defeat the enemy.
• It was only on that final night that he became convinced he must take the tower out of the equation.
• Because of a mis-understanding of tower tactics, Eieber is said to have fervently believed that if he himself killed the Arch Magus, the tower and its army would immediately switch sides. This motivated his climb, and not the well-meaning attempt to shatter the sigil stone.

A minor element is in the killing of the Arch Magus, as historians generally accept that he did not "run the man through and shatter the sigil stone with a single thrust of his blade", but generally agree he probably stabbed the magus and then shattered the stone with a blow. But most historians agree these facts are of little importance to the over-all narrative.

Magical Imbuement Dispute

According to Eieber, he ran the mage through in the midst of preparing a spell, and as such absorbed all of that man's magical energy as well as siphoning a huge amount of power from the active spell-form. Eieber later said this ignited his spark and made him the powerful battlemage he later became. This is one of the most hotly argued issues of the battle, let alone Eieber's entire life.

Eieber's own accounts claim he could not do magic before that day. This is itself heavily disputed as he was Atayan by birth, and the proportion of mages in the population was said to be very high. It would be unusual for any Atayan, let alone a military man, to lack at least some magical ability. However no accounts exist o him performing magic before the battle of Eckl-Skaald.

Regardless of Eieber's previous abilities, most mages insist it is physically impossible to quote "Gain magic through stabbing".

Eieber was, however, observed to become a very powerful sorcerer over the course of his campaign, and gained even greater ability upon becoming Pendragon.