“Modern warfare is characterized by the distribution of forces to limit the damage of explosions. Low-level sieges are the opposite of that. Area of effect attacks are limited. Defenders and attackers are clustered together to give the maximum combat power. Casualties are accepted and the focus is on removing each side’s ability to damage large areas. The side that wins that race usually wins the siege.”

  Forum Post on Siege Combat in NEMO

  Year 1, Month 1, Day 16, 07:00

  The dawn brought the defenders no relief. The growing light of the morning filtered through a cage of magical energy. The weapons of the monster armies glittered in the light of the sun as they organized an assault from all directions. Tens of thousands of foes moved with precision under the blowing horns and banners raised high.

  Mark messaged Torgon, “Should we spread out the ballistae and cannons to every wall or concentrate our fire?”

  Torgon sent him a reply, “I see the giants massing to the East. Take your artillery brigade there. You’ll be most useful against the really big monsters.”

  The leadership team shuffled their deployments around, readying for the largest assault yet. Sir Malik pulled his knights back to the town center. The guards who had their levels reduced massed there along with the baron. They would be a last stand force or a rally force if by some miracle the suppression field went down.

  The artillery brigade set up on the eastern wall and waited on the army of giants, ogres and orcs to close in. Curious Kate shivered at the sight of all the monsters. She was very small, and they were very large. Her instinct was to hide away but she stood bravely next to an unbothered Steve. Steve idly munched on an oat bar that Chef Bridges made for the guild.

  Kate looked up to Steve and asked, “Will it be ok? There are so many monsters.”

  Steve considered the hordes then shrugged, “I’ve been outnumbered like this before fighting under Torgon’s command.”

  Kate relaxed. “That makes me feel better. How did you manage to defeat so many enemies at once?”

  Steve remained curiously silent.

  “You did win right?” Kate asked.

  Steve avoided looking at her and continued staring at the sea of foes.

  The implication of his silence settled over Kate, leading her to utter a phrase she had never before spoken in the eight years of her life. “Oh, shit.”

  Four sharp blasts sounded from the horns of the monster army, signaling the start of their coordinated assault on Miller’s Crossing. Each gate faced a force that was more than ten thousand strong. The siege engines of the enemy continued to batter at the walls, providing cover for the advance. Dirk watched from his position on the northern section of the walls. Dirk took water from his inventory and drank it greedily. The cool water relaxed him and allowed him to take advantage of the little time he had left before the two sides engaged in mortal combat. He and the players under his command waited for the foes to come within range.

  Dirk squinted his eyes, noticing shapes moving down the river. “Boats!” he yelled. Each boat held crates and a single goblin. Dirk’s eyes widened as he thought of the only possible reason to attack in that manner. “Squad one, engage all the boats on your side of the river with fire arrows. Aim for the crates. Squad two, take your side of the river. Don’t let any of those craft make it to the booms.”

  Large floating booms sealed the city from forces trying to attack via the river. Dirk’s archers began firing arrows at the incoming small craft. The first arrow to hit a craft exploded, then a massive sympathetic explosion blew the craft to smithereens. The formations of orcs and goblins began pushing forward using the boats as a distraction. They concentrated their own arrow fire on the defenders nearest to the river. The goblins began steering their boats to the middle of the river, but the ripple of explosions shattered most of the craft even before they were hit.

  Bodies of monsters stacked up near the walls. They used mantlets to provide cover for the digging of trenches. Dirk had his archers liberally fire any area of effect attack they had at clusters of enemies. The northern push had stalled, and it was a battle of attrition now.

  Meanwhile, the giants pushed hard against the eastern gate of the city. Mark had the siege engines arrayed on the walls and took the giants under fire as soon as they were within range. The ballistae fire provoked the giants into a charge that outpaced their supporting troops. Wolf riders carrying short bows left the safety of the forest to support the giant assault.

  Over a dozen giants fell before they could respond to the attacks on them, but when they were in range, they hurled massive boulders that began to clear the walls of the portable ballistae. Five or six rocks would hit a single siege engine at once, smashing it and driving the operators from the wall. The wolf riders used their weapons to attack the crews of the weapons, slowing the rate of fire against the giants.

  The two sides were locked into a deadly race. Would the giants smash the ballistae before they died or would the rapidly advancing legions of goblins and orcs arrive in time to give the giants more cover. Casualties mounted on the defending side. Players were forced to respawn in their homes and guild bases, waiting three long hours to rejoin the fight. Bodies of the dead piled high outside the walls, providing gruesome cover for the attackers.

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  Risk of Injury’s artillery forces had dwindled to a dozen ballistae when Mark ordered them stored away and to use personal weapons only. The giants moved their attacks to the towers at that point. Less than thirty giants remained, but they were the monster equivalent of a close-range catapult. The city defenses kept firing even as they lost their durability. People frantically attempted to keep them repaired but there were too many giants. Soon, towers began to crumble to the ground one by one.

  The southern and western gates witnessed the emergence of large siege towers pulled by ogres. Gnolls, bugbears and other humanoid monsters pushed ahead to engage the defenders. Torgon stood on the wall, rapidly firing arrows into clusters of enemies while Ovarrix arranged the mana cannons to fire on the incoming towers.

  The monsters facing them were tougher than the massed goblins and orcs on the other fronts, but they were less disciplined. Torgon located individual monsters and pushed though double shots until they fell. Any group that tried to attack the mana cannons were taken under fire from area of effect shots from the bows. Sizzling acid pools appeared and remained a hazard long after the arrows that created them were gone.

  One siege engine attempted to roll across the acid pools and soon found the bottom of it collapsing, toppling it into another and knocking them both to the ground. The ogres would abandon any tower that became stuck and moved to help the teams pulling the remaining towers. The attack on the western wall petered out with their siege towers being used as stationary defensive works by teams of orcs that left the forest to occupy them.

  A fresh wave of siege towers rolled out in the south. More troops poured in to sweep the walls and Torgon made the decision to pull the mana cannons and send them to the city center. They burned through their special ammunition to thin out the enemy but there were still more than a dozen towers rapidly approaching the wall.

  He nodded to Allestor, “You’re up, things are about to get interesting.”

  The first tower reached the wall, a wooden ramp impacting the parapets. Orc warriors rushed onto the walls, swinging their swords at the archers. Allestor led dozens of melee fighters into a brutal short-range engagement. He charged straight into the clusters of enemies, using sweeping strikes to push them back. They killed orcs until they reached the tower, close enough for them to toss vials of oil onto it. It was quickly ignited by fire bolts and blazed away, forcing the monsters still inside the tower to abandon it.

  Allestor moved his group to the next tower along the wall. He ducked under the swing of the closest orc before stabbing him and pushing him towards the players fighting with him. His team had an unusually high number of children. The children spent hours learning how to use their swords with Allestor as their teacher. They were eager to get in and fight, taking their brashness and bravado from their leader. Their savage joy surprised the orcs, causing them to falter when the wave of deceptively small but powerful players crashed into them.

  Torgon fired arrow after arrow, working to sweep the walls clear of monsters. He paused as an urgent message reached him. Mark sent word that the giants had destroyed all the defensive towers on the east side and then split into two groups. One group was rotating north to engage each tower in that direction while the other group was hauling a massive ramp towards the city wall.

  “Ovarrix, do we have any reserves to help out the eastern gate?” Torgon asked.

  “We can spare maybe another hundred. Every section is engaged. They’re bringing battering rams up on the west now. I’ve been directing respawns back to their walls as soon as they return.” Ovarrix paused to look over his information before continuing, “Every player that dies has been instruction to craft for their three hours to bring as many extra potions and special ammunition as they can. We’re pouring rivers of resources into the fight.”

  Torgon leaned over the wall to appraise the situation and was forced to duck back to avoid incoming arrows. “They’re running low on troops. They still have their people in the forest to cover the ritual sites, but we should be able to break them here. They’re completely committed. Pass the word, use all the special ammunition, the grenades and anything else that can slow them down. Have the people who can craft area of effect weapons head to the guild base to work on more, just in case things go sideways.”

  The defenders of Miller’s Crossing redoubled their efforts, holding nothing back. The walls of the city took a savage thrashing and the defensive towers crumbled one by one. The trenches near the base of the walls filled with pools of blood from the slain monsters. Tens of thousands of corpses ringed the walls as no quarter was asked for or given.

  Torgon found himself forced to use item repair kits on his bow several times. He had to heal his fingers as they wore down and bled on his bowstrings from the continuous fire. Their plan was working. The monster numbers were thinning as night approached. Players rotated in as they came off respawn and the city still held.

  The shifting tendrils of color from the ritual began to writhe. Streaks of red and brown began to mix into the purple and green aurora. A chill filled the air and a growing sense of unease swept across the defenders. Ethereal forms began to flit around the battlefield, intangible presences that ate away at the resolve of the players and guards manning the walls.

  A figure, wreathed in the purple and black waves of mana approached the western gate. It was tall, nearly twelve feet in high, clad in robes that obscured everything about the figure. It raised its arms, skeletal hands visible as they clutched a staff that pulsed with an otherworldly wrongness. The movement left tiny rips in the fabric of reality as the world itself rejected the existence of the staff.

  A streak of blackest darkness crashed down from the sky in utter silence. It ripped the defenders from the wall and killed them instantly with no sound. Another followed, a storm of dark bolts scouring the wall clean. The figure pointed its staff at the gate and more of the bolts crashed into it, shattering it and breaching the walls of the city.

  Hyperia clutched Torgon’s arm, “That’s freaking negative lightning. I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s horrifying. That must be some powerful kind of undead.”

  “Was it the skeletal hands that gave it away?” Allestor quipped.

  The figure took the staff in its hands, overflowing with energy, then brought it down upon its knee, shattering it. A sphere of perfect nothingness consumed the staff and the undead before exploding outwards in waves of negative energy. Every living thing inside the city and within 500 yards of its walls collapsed in agony and emptied the contents of their stomachs onto the ground.

  The nausea passed, letting everyone stagger to their feet. Torgon quickly moved to the walls and watched as the few remaining monsters regained their own footing. There was more movement. Far more movement than there could possibly be. “Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.” Torgon stepped back from the wall and barked out orders to everyone. “Take everything outside the walls that moves under fire, barricade the western gate. We hold or we die.”

  All around Miller’s Crossing, the dead began to rise.