Last time, on Gnomeregan Far Fielder…
The Far Fielders had been gathering research and information from the scrapyard in Tiragarde for the last week. Although it was slow going, they’d manage to discern a few more clues and had also decoded the old journal that was left behind by one of the deceased preceding Gnome explorers. This, fortunately, shed some more light on the mystery as a whole. Planning ahead for the worst, the Far Fielders deployed a minefield around the ridge of the scrapyard and added forward Alarm-O-Bots as an early-warning detection net. Although the Far Fielders had managed to recover the package earlier, it was likely a preliminary report had been sent and that meant the Reliquary would show their face sooner or later.
That possibility became a reality last night when one of the forward Alarm-O-Bots sounded an intruder alert and then promptly went silent. The Reliquary scouts that had arrived promptly blundered into the minefield, and two were killed outright before the others withdrew temporarily. The Far Fielders barely got more than a few minutes of time to plan their strategy before the main detachment- eleven additional troopers and two sappers- arrived. The entire situation quickly turned to complete chaos.
While the Reliquary sappers frantically worked at clearing the minefield, the Far Fielders began using guerrilla attacks to hinder their efforts and try to draw the Reliquary troopers either into the minefield along the ridge, or down into the scrapyard proper where unaligned mechanical nightmares would attack the Reliquary just as assuredly as they’d attack the Far Fielders. The Blood Elf commander, however, was able to reign in his troops before they’d made a disastrous mistake, and instead focused their efforts on clearing the minefield up along the ridge with a growing urgency. Although they had originally no doubt meant to raid the scrapyard, the priority had clearly shifted- even at the cost of some of their own lives.
During the skirmishing, the Far Fielders had spotted, at precisely twenty-one-hundred-hours, an object emerging from behind the mountain range to the immediate south. As the minutes ticked by, the lone scout who had range on the object finally reported in a confirmation: a Horde gunship with artillery pieces and range on the scrapyard was obviously waiting for a signal from the ground troops.
Thinking quickly in the growing chaos, two of the Far Fielders volunteered for what was likely a suicide mission. The newest Far Fielder and teleportation specialist mage was able to teleport them onto the top deck of the gunship, and as soon as they arrived, all hell broke loose. Suddenly in a fight for their lives, the two Far Fielders fought tooth and nail to make their way below deck into the direction of the engine room. Facing countless soldiers, they lobbed one of their last two bombs behind themselves to give each other a few more seconds as they barrelled forward without regard for their own wellbeing.
Down below, the Horde troopers had managed to finally breach the minefield. Meeting them on the other side was a single Gnome warrior and a tandel of Alarm-O-Bots that had been refitted with chainsaws. Screaming bloody murder and incoherent frenzied taunts (ex., “Blood for the blood god!”), the fighting was brutal and vicious. Although the detachment of soldiers met their end there, the Gnome warrior and murderbots fell as well.
The remaining Far Fielders on the ground further back had managed to skirt around the Reliquary troops, and with a well-placed arrow, assassinated the enemy commander finally. His death, however, brought about the wrath of the last of the Reliquary troops, and only with some quick tag-teaming were they able to barely stem the tide. The cost was high, though: one of the rear scouts had nearby been cut clear across the middle by an Orc axe, and the other hadn’t been able to stop one of the troopers from frantically going through their dead commander’s belongings. Apparently knowing that his death was near, the trooper produced a flare gun, aimed high, and loosed an arcing red flare that shot into the sky.
The gunship was a flurry of activity even more than before, as the artillery pieces were recalibrated and homed at the ground from where the flare had come from. Just as the cannons began to thunder, the gunship shook violently and listed heavily to one side. The Far Fielders below, against all odds, had managed to breach the engine room and detonate the fuel supply. The artillery shots went wide, striking the scrapyard itself and the mountain. Resigned to their fate with little hope of reaching their teleport entry point, the Far Fielders below could at least rest knowing that their comrades on the ground wouldn’t fall victim to the deadly barrage.
The Far Fielder mage on the ground, however, wasn’t content to leave things be. Throwing personal safety to the wind and using the full extent of her mana, she strained to tear open a portal below the listing gunship in an effort to blindly retrieve her comrades. The effort was, perhaps, a little too successful: not only did she manage to retrieve their unconscious bodies, but she also retrieved a large chunk of the gunship bulkhead, with promptly landed on her now-somewhat-more-knocked-out companions.
When the smoke cleared, nearly all of the Far Fielders were bloodied or heavily wounded. One was in critical condition, and only two of them had managed to make it out of the encounter in somewhat decent shape. As they began to ferry their wounded comrades back to the Boralus medical facility, Boralus gryphon rider interceptors- drawn by the artillery display earlier- streaked across the sky in the direction of the limping gunship to finish it off. Although the operation was a rough success, it would no doubt be some time before the Far Fielders would see this kind of action again.