NOTICE FROM DEPARTMENT OF ORGANIZATION HISTORY
The following file has been created for public consumption under Section 8 of Global Response Alliance by the Nine Shields for education of the masses on the Mekhanite threat, readers are encouraged to spread this information to their known contacts, especially if they are at Area A. All information given here has been cleared for declassification
— Dr. Jagdish Pradhan, HOD, Department of Organization History, Nine Shields
Note:- This event took place before the Unification campaign (1864-1866 SE1); thus, a lot of information has been gathered from highly dubious sources. In case you are a historian and have some information of credible origin to add, please feel free to edit and add your sources at the very end.
Battle of Wadi Ibrahim (1536 SE)
A representation of the battle; the Golden Horde has been shown as European knights for artistic reasons.
The Battle of Wadi Ibrahim was a conclusive victory of the Ottoman Caliphate under Sultan Ahmed I against the Golden Horde2. The victory was made possible with the help of the Dar Ul Islam faction of the Nine Shields of Ashoka. The battle ended the Horde activities in the Sahara Desert, including pillaging of caravan trains and villages as well as repopulation of affected areas in Northern Africa.
The battle was fought in the Upper Egyptian town of Wadi Ibrahim, which was used by Peter I Padapolous, Hectantorach of the Free Legion, and Lancers of Constantinople as bait for the Golden Horde. The Ottoman forces rounded up people from neighbouring places and placed them into the town as a ruse to the Horde, attracting over twenty thousand strong Horde who were then fought by the allied forces.
It is seen as one of the most pivotal battles in the history of the occult world till the Seventh Occult War, where both magical and mundane weapons were used against a non-human enemy. Following the Normalcy Charter3 being signed in 1869 SE, the town was destroyed by the Foundation, and most of the historical records available to the public were burnt, the rest being discredited by Foundation-backed academics as a hoax.
Background
Nine Shields of Ashoka: Dar Ul Islam Faction
The Nine Shields, formed around 314 BSE by Emperor Ashoka to fight paranormal threats, expanded from Vietnam to Maghreb by 1200 SE. However, after a series of paranormal events as well as battles against non-human threats and financial crises, the organisation faltered in the East, losing entire sites and legions; it depended upon going rough. By 1180 SE, Mayapur, the headquarters of the organisation, lost contact with the West. Meanwhile in the West, the Nine Shields got adequate funding from both the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates as well as the Eastern Roman Empire, building new sites.
With ties officially getting severed in 1291 SE, the western half of the organisation became independent, initially continuing its Indic practices, though within a decade, it dropped Ashoka from its name, becoming Durue Al'Iislam Altisea (Nine Shields of Islam). The organisation chose the Palace of Solomon in Jerusalem as its main headquarters, dropping Prakrit with Arabic as the official language.
By the 1520s, the organisation got heavily funded by the Ottoman Empire and given several privileges, including being allowed to induct people with magical abilities into its various Free Legions, including having a separate branch of Janissaries, which was made by boys from Christian and small pagan communities in the empire. Though after his ascendance, Ahmed I, not trusting the organisation, signed a decree, warning officials from asking any help from Jerusalem unless he gives the approval.
The Ottoman Caliphate:
After its conquest by Sultan Selim I in 1439 SE, Egypt became a province in the empire, the Nine Shields increasing the number of sites and forts in the region under patronage of the Ottomans. Sultan Ahmed I ascended in 1512 SE, having little trust in the Nine Shields, especially due to the organisation saving three thousand Eastern Romans during the 1375 SE siege, including the entire cavalry regiment of Constantine XI, which was inducted inside the organisation as a free legion, the Lancers of Constantinople, and shifted to Adriane Island in the Black Sea. Despite protests from the Sublime Porte, he reduced their funding and went on to build a Dervendjis unit to combat the paranormal threat.
Sahara Crisis
From 1527 SE, the trade caravans across the Northern Sahara desert started getting pillaged by an unknown party, survivors calling them the Golden Horde due to their golden armour paired with opaque visors. The Horde targeted the traders with reports of ‘acts of eating the bodies of the dead’, reaching back to Sublime Porte in Constantinople, reportedly disturbing the Sultan though not doing anything due to their preoccupation with Hapsburg. However, by 1531 SE, villages across the southern border Regency of Algiers slowly got depopulated with half eaten bodies left behind, causing disruption of historic trade routes and even halted hajj for many in the western edge of North Africa.
Two or three ortas of Janissaries were deployed from Greece to Algeria to combat this threat and build forts but all contact with them ceased within a year. The scouts later found most of them dead with marks of cannibalism. The news caused panic among the population in the coastline, leading to riots which exacerbated the situation.
In 1532 SE, Egyptian villages faced attacks from the Horde, Sultan Ahmed in response sending the Dervendjis unit to combat the Horde, culminating in a 23-day conflict near Luxor which resulted in Luxor being saved at the cost of the unit. With the Sublime Port unable to contain the threat and the Derbedjis turning out to be utterly incompetent, against the decree, local governors of the region sent a plea for help to Jerusalem; the Nine Shields, however, only sent an expeditionary unit there to gather intelligence about the Horde.
By 1535 SE, under pressure from his ministers, Ahmed I finally sent a plea of help to Jerusalem, paying 16 thousand Sultanis as payment. The Nine Shields only then started taking concrete action, sending free legions of Askaris, allied Bedouin cavalry and lancers of Constantinople into Algiers to relieve the Janissaries there, hunting small bands of the hoard down, taking the bodies in for study and reclaiming lost territories of the Sultanate in first two months.
However, initial success turned into catastrophic failures, with the Horde population suddenly increasing from the previously thought six hundred to eight thousand, leading to a general retreat. In June, the Berber scouts located a shrine south of the border of Algeris, leading to a massive cave system, hosting the hoard. Other openings of the cave were discovered as far as Morocco, the Nine shields taking over it. The organization called upon all Free Legions to Cairo, along with Ottoman Azab, Askaris and Janissary units to flush the Horde from the cave system by using Rubin smoke4, through all opening except for one, leading to a town in Upper Egypt named Wadi Ibrahim, being chosen to pitch the battle.
On 10 Falgun 1536, the operation was started with Rubin smoke being pumped into the cave system by Masters of the Wind5, any enemy combatant trying to rush out being destroyed by the soldiers. Meanwhile Wadi Ibrahim was entrenched with defences as the scouts confirmed the hoard rushing out of the cave near the town, numbering in several hundreds.
Battle:
Initial phase
On 15 Falgun 1536 SE, after spending days in confusion, the Golden Horde started marching towards Wadi Ibrahim, being counted to be a few hundred short of ten thousand. Many simply ran towards the town, some using horses, while few were reported to actually be running on all fours. The initial plan was to plant tents of civilians across the open desert area around Wadi Ibrahim to slow the horde down, taking them out as they attacked the civilians, but it was overruled by Peter in favour of Lancers taking over an abandoned mosque near the town, using it as a fort to bait the horde while cannons from the town would be fired on them. A magical portal was opened for reinforcements and supplies.
Muhmmad Ibn Musa.
By 11 AM, the first phase of the horde arrived, numbering seven hundred, attacking the fort. The Lancers used rifles and explosion spells against the horde while cannons fired from the town, annihilating the group in two hours. However, in an hour, three thousand arrived, besieging the mosque again. During this, another five thousand circumvented the structure and besieged the town, the city’s cannons and explosive-laced arrows of the basilica tearing them down.
At 3 PM, 2 ortas of Janissaries arrived to relieve the city, engaging with the horde. The Free Legion of Golem6. The legion is famous for its Golem vanguard made from steel and rocks, which arrived half an hour later, joining the fight in the city. Muhmmad Ibn Musa, the Turkish Wali of the town, organised the town militia to assist the defenders.
By the end of the day, the second group surrounding the town was pushed away while the first group encircling the mosque was annihilated by the Lancers with total casualties from the defenders side to be eight thousand approximately, with six thousands being from civilian militias.
Middle Phase:
During the last hours of the opening phase, the two ortas of Janissaries, totaling twenty six thousand soldiers, which were stationed seven kilometers south of Wadi Ibrahim as reinforcements were attacked by four thousand members of the Golden Hoard, joined by approximately three thousand who retreated from the town. Some reports suggest that the Horde’s war machine, as called by some European chronicles during the battle like Sir Talos as ‘Spider’ was first spotted here, it’s description being near to a tank with spider legs firing hot plasma. The Spider fired on the Janissaries, killing at least two thousand in the first blow with the plasma melting the sand beneath their feet.
One Janissary managed to break out of the bloodbath back to Wadi Ibrahim, warning of the attack as the Lancers in the Mosque noted ten thousand strong Horde moving towards them. Two thousand surrounded the mosque while rest marched towards Wadi Ibrahim, at this point completely surrounded by the Horde, with the ones from the south joining them with the Spider after annihilating the two Ortas.
A messenger was teleported to Jerusalem while the defenders prepared for the long siege. The civilian militias and the Janissaries manned the defence wall around the town, firing cannons and rudimentary explosives on the Horde. The Horde fire back with their plasma rifles and Spider firing on the walls, though only managing to heat the affected section of it up, only enough to seriously wound anyone standing on it.
Meanwhile, at the mosque, the 80 strong Lancers got up on the dome of the mosque, firing upon the surrounding Horde while Peter I Padapolus, according to the legion’s legend, climbed upon the Minaret of the mosque where the muezzin would call for prayers, holding the Chi Rho Banner of St Constantine XI7, urging the men to fight on.
First Breach:
On dawn of 16 Falgun, the first breach happened at one of the gates of Wadi Ibrahim, named after Ishmael. The gate of Ishmael was breached, leading to a massacre in the nearby residential zones before being pushed back by the defenders. At least eighty civilians were reported dead while thirty defenders fell due the Golden Horde.
During this, a group of Janissaries who were part of the defender force pushed forward, chasing them all the way back to the spider itself, attacking the machine with reports believing that they managed to disable it’s plasma cannon before being butchered by the hoard.
Second breach:
The second breach started during the ending of the first breach from the southern gate, leading to a part of city falling to the hoard. With more converging in, many defenders fell back to the small citadel where the portal to Jerusalem was opened. The hoard meanwhile spilled over the civilians, killing more than six hundred within the first hour. By second hour, the number tripled.
With the town nearing collapse, Jerusalem sent Free Legion of Khorasan and Moroccan auxiliaries through the portal to push the hoard back.
The apparition of the mosque and Lancer’s breakthrough:
By 3 PM, the mosque was on the verge of collapse with the Lancers out of arrows and nearly overwhelmed. While some sources tells of Lancers eventually breaking out of the mosque and making their way back to Wadi Ibrahim while the horde surrounding them moving towards the place where second breach happened, the scribe of the Free Legion reports on an apparent Marian apparition taking place at 3:23 PM, named as ‘Our Lady of Wadi Ibrahim’ which was followed by ‘her divine radiance melting the soulless creatures, and telling us to join the main force,’ before disappearing.8
Final phase:
By 7 PM, the horde had completly encircled the town with a brutal urban warfare taking place within the streets. The Lancers, having joined the defenders, took the fighting to the Horde, eventually pushing them back out. The war leaders met at the citadel, coming to an agreement on their situation being dire and reported it to Jerusalem. Though now with most of horde in one place, the tacticians of Nine Shields proposed a plan for a strike ritual, choosing an unknown deity for it. The details of the ritual is expunged but it lead to deity promising a destructive strike on the hoard by 9 PM, telling them to bring as many to the walls as possible.
The message was relayed to the defenders with Lancers volunteering for the mission, going out with a hundred Jannisaries to herd the attackers around the wall, leading to twenty Lancers and forty Janissary losses. By 9 PM, the defenders returned back inside the walls as the deity released fire on the hoard, burning nearly ninety percent of them to death, rest fleeing from the scene. The town’s walls also melted during this.
Aftermath:
Following the battle, the Nine shields sent several Free Legions to hunt the remaining Hoard down, with the last being executed two years later. The battle resulted in restoration of ties between the Sultanate and the Nine Shields with the old mosque rebuilt in honour of the organization.
Janissary patrols continued throughout North Africa for ten years before the Golden Hoard was declared neutralized. The few instances of the Golden Hoard were preserved in the Palace of Solomon for further studies.
The Sultan issued a celebration for the victory and minted Dinar coins showing a Janissary trampling on the Golden Hoard instance, several paintings being commissioned of the various scenes of the battle. The town itself was rebuilt and resettled with a victory mosque built, being locally called the ‘Town built on golden armour’.
Origin of the Hoard:
Due to lack of technological advances, the instances were first thought of as simply a kind of Golem created by an ancient civilization, believing the threat to be a residual force or a relic. However, excavations across the Maghreb in 1837 SE showing more inactive instances of the Hoard led to challenges to the hypothesis. An ancient Maghrebi tale pointed towards an hostile force like the Golden Hoard.
Following the Unification wars, the legends of Mek from Nalkan sources were connected to the Golden Hoard due to similarities in the tales, getting confirmed by the ‘Chronicles of the Daevas’ as the Khiraz, the undead soldiers of the Mekhanite Empire with leading theory being that they either were ones left behind during Amoni Ram’s wandering of Sahara for the one thousand years or after supposed disappearing of the city after Fall of Mamjul9.
Contemporary era:
The SCP Foundation destroyed Wadi Ibrahim, amnesticising the entire population and resettling them elsewhere in Egypt, nearly all records of the battle were erased from history, what remaining of it being discredited by Foundation backed historians as myth for next two decades to keep normalcy, though dissident groups including Serpent’s hand spreading information about the town through books and pamphlets as part of wider protest against the Normalcy charter, leading to crackdowns.
However with the rise of the Resurgent Mekhanite Empire and loss of Northern Egypt in 1892 SE, the information on the battle was declassified in hopes to boost morale of the Egyptian Rump State with Wadi Ibrahim rebuilt as the de facto capital of the state.
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