200 scouts of the 18^th Legion departed the port city of Teloquian two years ago with orders to verify the rampant mammoth spider rumors. The nomadic tribe kalkurn supposedly rode these beasts into battle against rival nomadic tribes, and were on course to unify the tundra peoples once again.

Only 38 scouts and 44 zemtak returned this past week. With them travelled 300 survivors from the many tribes slaughtered by the kalkurn, mostly women and children.

“It’s far worse than the rumors claims,” Lieutenant Iwan Cyrus said in his report. “We heard they had 3,000 riders, but it’s no less than 50,000. Some mammoth spiders are roughly the size of a zemtak, but others are like that titan spider I heard about in southern Tendor. The size of a two-story house, the kalkurn had harnesses on the thing’s midsection, 10 nomads rode it into battle, firing arrows. And they aren’t lumbering beasts. One jumped 50 feet in the air and landed right in the middle of our formation, and when the rider died from the rough landing, the beast went berserk and started lashing out without thought. We need full mobilization; these things aren’t going to stop. Even if the Kalkurn Tribe doesn’t want to expand, though I’m sure they do, their mounts would force them. There’s barely any food in the tundra, and the number of mammoth spiders grows by the day. They’re going to expand, and expand, and eventually they’ll swarm into Great Tendor.”

Time is of the essence for dealing with this, and the legions stationed on Relgan can’t afford to sit around and wait for the Lord Protector to summon a new legion. They need to act decisively to handle this crisis or at least halt it until another legion can be sent.