Early February, 1361 DR, Eveningstar Town, Arabel Restoration Army camp, headquarters.
Lady Milmantle Rhaur stood high on a hillside.
From there, she could gaze at distant Arabel City through the telescopes made by the mages of Waterdeep.
Once the pearl of northern Cormyr, her city was now occupied by a vast horde of filthy, dark, green Orks. Their torches illuminated Arabel's outline, as countless as the stars in the sky.
Lady Laeral had recalled the day Arabel fell countless times: an endless green tide had swallowed her city. The desolate, clamorous, chaotic drumbeats of the Orks' One-Eyed God would have gotten anyone playing them dismissed from a military band, but the Orks did not care. Like a plague upon the earth, like a disorderly tide of destruction, they had engulfed her army.
The Ork Ancestral Spirits of Great Ork Khan Tugin had wielded unstoppable power. Nothing could stand in their way. She had done everything she could, using all her strength and all her wisdom, but she had still failed to stop the Orks.
The Ork army had rampaged through Arabel like a flood, crushing the last human resistance. Bloodthirsty Ork Fangbeasts had roared as they sought to destroy everything. Armies of giants and monsters had smashed through Lady Laeral's last guards, and the Ork legions had reveled amid the ancient city's ruins.
She had watched with her own eyes as ecstatic Orks stormed the sacred inn her goddess had left behind during the Time of Troubles, looted it bare, then set it ablaze. The holy site where Tymora, Lady Luck, had lived for so long had been reduced to ruins.
Now she had returned, bringing her army with her.
Drawing her gaze back, Lady Laeral looked at her forces, the army in which she had placed such high hopes.