Timberwatch

Timberwatch was a fief in the northwestern Alshari Wilderlands that became the site of the pitched battle that broke the first great gurvani invasion. The Battle of Timberwatch saw combined human forces, with Minalan serving as warmage, defeat the gurvani horde in a hard-fought engagement after a summer-long campaign that had also seen fighting at Tudry. Minalan used cunning applications of common magics — including a devastating blindness spell and a conjured fiery giant — to overcome a superior force, and correctly deduced that the Dead God was using the magic stones (eserethas) of the Wilderlands to spread despair among the human population.

After the battle, the surviving gurvani legions fled north; had the humans not prevailed, the horde would have marched on Wilderhall. On the field, Tyndal and Rondal were knighted, and Minalan himself was raised to knighthood, later addressed as "Sir Minalan." Serving under Minalan there were auxiliaries including the Nirodi Free Mounted Archers under Captain Rogo Redshaft. Riding away from the battlefield afterward, Minalan and his apprentices rescued a party of Alka Alon besieged by gurvani and trolls in eastern Alshar, earning the gratitude — and a tripled witchstone — of the Alka Ithalia. The victory drew admiring notice even among the Karshak Alon and other kindreds, marking Minalan as a warrior of note.