Siege!
You decide to take the murderers advice since he is, after all, excellent at killing people. You have two guards on him at all times and he accompanies you as you make he preparations. You have carpenters prepare and modify trebuchets for hurling corpses and as they work you go around the country side asking farmers to bring any dead animals they may have to the battle field to aid in the war effort. The corpses gained from this are not enough so you begin collecting old useless animals that no longer provide milk or do work. These animals are being sacrificed for a purpose so righteous you tell their owners that they are guaranteed a spot in heaven. Even with the bodies of all these farm animals building up and rotting, it is not enough. Regrettably, you have to use some bodies of dead soldiers and others who died from natural causes, but this is covered up. The human bodies are shoved in-between animal carcasses to hide them.
After the bodies are left out for a few days to "ripen" and the flies and maggots have taken to them and the stench becomes virtually unbearable you decide it is time to start the catapult. First rocks are tested to ensure that they are landing within the fortress and then the animals begin to get tossed. Flying through the sky tons of rotting flesh swarmed by flies reaches its target. Small pieces do not make it and litter the battlefield. This bombardment goes on for a few days until the stench of death saturates everything around. You then begin waiting. This strategy was not executed perfectly, and bits of rotting flesh left around the encampment begin to make the soldiers sick, you attempt to burn any leftovers but a plague spreads. Half of your army is lost to disease, and another quarter is weakened immensely. After a month you press an attack, not having seen any activity from the forest people hoping they have suffered a far worse fate.
Your army charges with a few siege towers and scales the walls. No arrows fly out to stop them and the fortress remains still. When your troops enter they see nothing, the fortress is deserted and smells of death. You enter the fortress with the remainder of your army and look around. Everything is deserted. The murder who followed close behind you asks if he has earned his freedom. You grant him a slip of paper and he leaves. The strange thing is there are no signs of forest people anywhere, no signs of corpses, and no signs of all the carrion your armies hurled over the walls. After an hour of searching the temple, the ground begins to shake. Fissures open up in the earth and from freshly dug catacombs underground soldiers begin to pour out. These are not the forest people, but abominations constructed from the flesh of the bodies you threw over the wall. It seems that the bodies were used as building materials for these demonic creatures.
These massive golems of flesh and bone begin grabbing your soldiers and adding them to their mass. The soldiers scream as they are torn to bits and added to the grisly carrion flesh of these golems. Arrows and swords do nothing as this army of fleshy beasts tears apart every last one of your soldiers. They for some reason leave you intact. You watch as they grow more powerful with each kill. When you are the last one left in the fortress you draw your sword, surrounded by these nightmarish constructs. Maggots wrap around them like a fluid armor and they take on a vaguely humanoid shape, though much larger. Some use sharpened bones as jaws, but they have no eyes. The largest of them, over twenty feet in length filled with the corpses of freshly killed soldiers grabs you. You swing your sword and attempt to decapitate it but a severed arm within its flesh grabs the sword and with unholy strength wrenches it from your grip then everything goes black .
When you awaken you immediately notice a horrible pain all over your body. You are paralyzed and cannot move at all when you look around you realize you have been made part of these fleshy nightmares, these abominations. With the armies of the church destroyed they move across the land consuming all of its inhabitants. When the last of the empire enters their fleshy mass they leave for the uncharted zone. Several years later, a group of forest people return to their original forest hope from the uncharted zone and start anew. The ruins of the once mighty Church Empire become overgrown by plants and weather away in the sands of time. The one true god is forgotten and the pagan spirits of nature reign supreme once again.
After the bodies are left out for a few days to "ripen" and the flies and maggots have taken to them and the stench becomes virtually unbearable you decide it is time to start the catapult. First rocks are tested to ensure that they are landing within the fortress and then the animals begin to get tossed. Flying through the sky tons of rotting flesh swarmed by flies reaches its target. Small pieces do not make it and litter the battlefield. This bombardment goes on for a few days until the stench of death saturates everything around. You then begin waiting. This strategy was not executed perfectly, and bits of rotting flesh left around the encampment begin to make the soldiers sick, you attempt to burn any leftovers but a plague spreads. Half of your army is lost to disease, and another quarter is weakened immensely. After a month you press an attack, not having seen any activity from the forest people hoping they have suffered a far worse fate.
Your army charges with a few siege towers and scales the walls. No arrows fly out to stop them and the fortress remains still. When your troops enter they see nothing, the fortress is deserted and smells of death. You enter the fortress with the remainder of your army and look around. Everything is deserted. The murder who followed close behind you asks if he has earned his freedom. You grant him a slip of paper and he leaves. The strange thing is there are no signs of forest people anywhere, no signs of corpses, and no signs of all the carrion your armies hurled over the walls. After an hour of searching the temple, the ground begins to shake. Fissures open up in the earth and from freshly dug catacombs underground soldiers begin to pour out. These are not the forest people, but abominations constructed from the flesh of the bodies you threw over the wall. It seems that the bodies were used as building materials for these demonic creatures.
These massive golems of flesh and bone begin grabbing your soldiers and adding them to their mass. The soldiers scream as they are torn to bits and added to the grisly carrion flesh of these golems. Arrows and swords do nothing as this army of fleshy beasts tears apart every last one of your soldiers. They for some reason leave you intact. You watch as they grow more powerful with each kill. When you are the last one left in the fortress you draw your sword, surrounded by these nightmarish constructs. Maggots wrap around them like a fluid armor and they take on a vaguely humanoid shape, though much larger. Some use sharpened bones as jaws, but they have no eyes. The largest of them, over twenty feet in length filled with the corpses of freshly killed soldiers grabs you. You swing your sword and attempt to decapitate it but a severed arm within its flesh grabs the sword and with unholy strength wrenches it from your grip then everything goes black .
When you awaken you immediately notice a horrible pain all over your body. You are paralyzed and cannot move at all when you look around you realize you have been made part of these fleshy nightmares, these abominations. With the armies of the church destroyed they move across the land consuming all of its inhabitants. When the last of the empire enters their fleshy mass they leave for the uncharted zone. Several years later, a group of forest people return to their original forest hope from the uncharted zone and start anew. The ruins of the once mighty Church Empire become overgrown by plants and weather away in the sands of time. The one true god is forgotten and the pagan spirits of nature reign supreme once again.
