Underdark, North-Underdark Tunnel transit pass, Gerson's Ten-Li fortress-city.
While the defensive battle above at Minas Tirith turned the Endless Wilderness into a scorched wasteland, the fighting in this small fortress-city—built by Zelandia while ostensibly obeying but secretly defying the Shadow Queen's orders, covertly laying the groundwork for the North-Underdark Tunnel—presented a situation utterly unlike the surface's glorious war of head-on clashes.
Perhaps ever since these Drow had been banished underground by the Elven Main God Corellon, they had gradually forgotten both the combat style with which the dark elves had once swept across half the continent, storming cities and seizing lands like wildfire, and their former glory.
What they excelled at now was roaming, infiltration, and assassination!
Had there not been an advance warning from Dishana, the Jadiel Matriarch, no one in this fortress-city would likely have escaped disaster when this sudden tide of assassins struck.
Yet even with the warning beforehand, when Gerson's roamers launched their first wave, Zelandia's defenders in this Ten-Li fortress-city still suffered devastating losses.
This war beneath the earth, one that had yet to draw much notice, had almost from its very outset plunged directly into the most bizarre, sinister, icy, and brutal kind of street-by-street blade combat!
After so many years of contact, the Drow knew all too well how devastating Zelandia's alchemical firearms were against massed armies. Naturally, they avoided that weakness and adopted the infiltration tactics at which they excelled most.
The fortress-city defenders' artillery positions completely lost their intended purpose. In such circumstances, the legion composed of Zelandia's Sixth and Seventh Dragonbound Knight Regiments and thirty thousand Hogg Mining miners fought these treacherous Drow to the death for a full fifteen days through mottled streets, dark sewers, and the long North-Underdark Tunnel.
After exhausting the food and water they carried, many