Just before the battle of Mireni, the war council was quite dissatisfied with the slow pace of the war. Sure, it was better to be cautious to avoid putting at risk the main army, but the enemy economy had to be taken down. That’s why the war had to be extended behind the enemy lines.

In order to achieve this goal, several Vanjarls were tasked to drop on enemy provinces and deny their control from the enemy. Thanks to the Cloud Trapeze spell, they could fly over enemy territory and attack unexpected places far away. Given proper equipment, particularly Vine Shields, , enemy province defenses did not stand a chance. (The Vine shield is a powerful magic item that spreads vines around it and entangle any enemy getting too close, preventing them from reaching and attacking the wielder in close combat).

The raid war would be going on for most of the remaining campaign. Taking provinces, losing them back, counter-attacking … One of the most favoured tactic was, when a pretty large enemy force of spectral soldiers took back a province, to counter-attack them with a cloud trapezing Vanjarl. Indeed, thanks to their Vine Shield and the powers given from the bless of Lord Kall, a single Vanjarl was enough to destroy the whole enemy force. And, the enemy was usually surprised by the Vanjarl coming from nowhere and forced to put up a fight they’d have rather avoided. Several forces of 30 to 50 enemy spectral warriors were taken down this way during the whole war.

Also, thanks to the ability of the Vanir people to blend into shadows, the Vanjarls engaged into enemy territory could easily avoid any kind of direct counter-attack, often disappearing completely for a month to reappear somewhere else the next one.

Facing these losses, the enemy tried to counter the Vanjarls with Melias   equipped with Stars of  Thraldom . With this, they were trying to kill the expensive Vanjarls with their own elite warriors, tasked to do their job in the cheapest way. As soon as these appeared, the raiding tactics changed to avoid them and a mercenary company was hired to hunt them down. Rozul Raptors made a fantastic job to hunt down and kill the Melias for more than half a year … until the enemy offered them more gold and sent them on a suicide mission.

Also, thanks to a breakthough in the Conjuration magic school, the Hangadrotts the most skilled in Death magic were now able to summon Wraith Lords. These were spirits of ancient warlords called back from the dead to serve Lord Kall. And these spirits were not only very skilled warriors and generals, but they also had a deep knowledge of Death magic, allowing them to use it for good results on a battlefield. Their favorite tactic was to create a Soul Vortex around them to drain the life from their enemies while cutting them down with their powerful Bane blades. Another tactic often used with high success was to temporarily give life to numerous skeleton warriors  and send them to fight the enemy.

But the Wraith lords had another quality that made them invaluable. Indeed, the mage summoning them would bind their soul to the land where it was summoned. Usually a grave, or a crypt was used … and by doing that, it was like giving them immortality, as even if they were killed in a battle, the soul would go back to its binding place and reform a new body. Thanks to that, the lords could be sent into dangerous missions without too much fear of losing them, as this loss would be only temporary.

Due to these new threats, the enemy tried new tactics . Calling upon the forces of the Earth, they called some huge Earth elementals to assassinate Helheim’s commanders. Sensing the presence of a powerful being, the creatures came straight out of the earth to engulf their target. A very powerful and effective tactic against most human mages. However, their attempts against the Wraith lords failed as they were really too powerful to fear these masses of rocks. But, when Therodos started to target the main armies of Helheim, the battle mages and commanders started to be threatened in their life. So, given the monsters could only attack beings they could sense, meaning beings with their feets right on the ground, orders were given to craft even more rings of Levitation  to protect the most important leaders in a war party. Indeed, floating above the ground all the time, they could never be found by the rocky beasts and were completly safe … Also, emphasis had been made on Bottles of Living water , giving a Water elemental as a bodyguard to the leaders unprotected by rings of levitation. All in all, despite some small successes, the enemy assassination campaign was mostly a failure …

So, in the end, with this never ending raid war, the enemy slowly lost a large part of his gold economy as well as quite a number of gems, and all these resources strenghtened even more the ones of Helheim.