Castellan’s scout saw the movement. “My lord! The Warlord flees!”
And in the desolate badlands, two enemies shared water for the first time—and the last—before returning to their separate wars, each knowing that the real enemy had never worn armor or silk.
Castellan smashed his gauntlet on the table. “He fights like a serpent. Bite the tail, and he spits venom in your face.” Sir Roderick returned with news: Zhao was building a Mangonel —a traction catapult lighter than the Crusader’s trebuchet, but faster. Worse, the Warlord had tapped an underground spring. His rice was regrowing.
He ordered the bombs loaded onto pack mules. His plan: circle south, blow the Crusader’s keep walls, and kill Castellan in his own great hall. stronghold crusader 2 vs warlords
In the desolate badlands where the River Jordan’s ghost once flowed, two lords prepared for annihilation. On one side, the iron-wrought keep of , a veteran of the first Crusader wars. On the other, the bamboo-and-jade fortress of Sun Tzu’s heir , Warlord Zhao, whose ancestors had never lost a siege in the Celestial Kingdoms.
But Lord Castellan had not survived twenty years in the Holy Land by luck. He gave one order:
Zhao, however, had anticipated. His read the ground’s tremor. Before the tunnel reached the wall, he ordered his Drunken Monk unit to pour boiling rice wine down iron pipes sunk into the earth. The steam scalded the Tunnelers blind. Two died screaming. The rest crawled back to Castellan’s lines, faces blistered. Day Seven: The Oasis Beckons Now both lords were bleeding. Castellan had lost his quarry speed. Zhao had lost his eastern rice paddy. The oasis lay between them—a crescent of blue water and a broken slave market. Whoever seized it by blood moon (three nights hence) would claim the sultan’s prize: a shipment of Greek Fire for the Crusader or Thunder Crash Bombs for the Warlord. Castellan’s scout saw the movement
But in the burning wreckage, Warlord Zhao crawled from under a dead horse, his face black with soot. He had one Thunder Crash Bomb left, clutched to his chest like a child.
From hidden cisterns, liquid fire poured down the inner walls. The Monkey Warriors shrieked. Two died in the moat. The rest retreated. Zhao’s assault broke. Zhao knew he could not take the keep. But he did not need to. The oasis was neutral ground. If he reached it first, the sultan’s gift would let him burn the Crusader’s towers from a mile away.
He did not charge the keep. He went to the oasis, alone. Castellan smashed his gauntlet on the table
But as he turned back, he saw smoke rising from his own fortress. Castellan’s flag flew from the bamboo tower.
So he did the unthinkable. He abandoned his own fortress.
They had been summoned here by a mad sultan’s riddle: “Whoever holds the Oasis of Broken Chains by the next blood moon may carve a new kingdom from the ruins of the old.” Lord Castellan did not believe in elegance. He believed in quarries. Within hours, his serfs had stripped a hillside bare. His keep rose square, grey, and brutal—a fist of stone thrust into the sand. Three stockpiles groaned with bread, ale, and iron-tipped arrows. On the walls, crossbowmen stood like stone saints, silent and patient. His economy was a blunt instrument: more wood → more pitch → more fire. He assigned a knight —Sir Roderick, scarred and devout—to ride the eastern ridge and deny Zhao any iron.
The sultan had played them for fools.