Shentu Wo: 3747 Power, 2,586 Followers
Kikai Senso: 14,822 Power, 210 Followers, Next Form Progress: 52%
Lin Sun: 1,245 Power, 628 Followers
Con Lai: 2,675 Power, 2, 621 Followers
A quickie since I was too lazy to write about battles, Stories of Lore 22
General:
Eventually Svarga managed to repel its invaders even if at heavy cost. Though in the end it became a confusing mess. Once again with strange synchronization they managed to destroy dream doors at the cross roads, Svarga, the University, blood jungles, and the snake cult took out one in Adelaide. The first one, not the river of dreams one. While rebuilding most of these isn’t really all that hard, it happened while most of the armed forces were at Svarga including western allies that had been sent to help as per the alliance.
First the bad news in Akhetaten. Every god there incarnated very suddenly and during the battle of Svarga it was hard to discern why. It turned out an army from Si Da came from the north to assault the capital, two hours into the seemingly easy battle the cult of Apophis all surfaced out of their hiding holes and made a sudden assault on the prison of Apophis. This is what prompted every god in Akhetaten to incarnate at once.In the end, Apophis was not released while Akhetaten continued their running tradition of RNG superiority. They managed to repel the invasion with some effort but the nation is in a bit of chaos as many snake cultists just disappeared after Neith started shooting at them and decided not to charge to their deaths.
Back in Divus it got really bad as Asmodaeus himself finally reappeared alongside Nergal, Mammon, and Heisi Siwang. Granted no one knew it was them until way after the events occurred. Orujov was assassinated and somehow this polarized everyone immediately. People either blamed the angels or blamed Naomi and just tore into each other. Then to make matters worse, Eli showed up. Though oddly enough Eli didn’t do much, his pirates just pillaged while others fought and Vassago burned down a few outlying cities for fun. If anything it actually seemed they weren’t here to invade and go god slaying, but here on a recruitment drive of “do you want to die fighting for one of two uncertain teams or live at sea with all the loot of your neighbors?”
In the end Arthur sided with the church and the angels, but Galahad sided with Naomi. The remnants of the inquisition have instead gone rogue entirely. The ensuing battle actually was at least 10x more epic then the battle of Svarga. Naomi battled with Uriel, Ryner fought Anahita, David battled with Gabriel. The sky itself seemed to explode over Divus as the full might of the most powerful nation engulfed itself.The battle is still ongoing a week later, angels patrol the nation and occassionally get into skirmishes with the templars or paladins.
Saint Caleb was killed by Galahad, and Jacob died to Naomi. Anahita was killed by Ryner. Saint Andrew was killed by Arthur and Naomi has sustained severe injuries from her encounter with Uriel. At this point the big earthquakes we felt turned out to be Bahamut ending a few disputes and snake shenanigans as well as creating a way for his people to retreat underground into the underworld Song Yi had once urged them to make.
Meanwhile the Jade Empire storm turned out to be Shenlong vs Drakon. Some of the masters didn’t believe that Shenlong really existed and decided to try their luck so they could declare Nazarius crazy. Well they weren’t smart enough to make Shenlong scared to act like Azazel, so that is a surprising amount of dead dragon masters. This also has resulted in Shenlong getting a lot of recruits now that they believe he is real.
Shahira started to begin a mass gathering of all its many estranged people. Enough shit went down that for the first time in about a thousand years or so they decided to stop being nomadic and all get their shit together because this is getting out of hand. Culminating in Dahika Al-Mazah, Ifrit has finally chosen prophets and champions of his own to lead his nation. This also resulted in Zaeed leaving Hale’a to go back home to Shahira, as he decided his people needed him more then you guys did as Ifrit has no pantheon but himself so far. This does bode well for an alliance with Shahira as opposed to their usual neutrality though, and you are neighbors with them as it were.
He left some people in charge of his city for now and left Song Yi as its ruler while he went to go rebuild in Shahira. Since Song Yi lost her capital in the battle with Divya this works out pretty easily, even if she’s uncomfortable with all the gold and expensive stuff around that place.
In other developments, it seems the Vua Cai took initiative once the involvement of Asmodaeus was uncovered in the west. Sacrificing some of their will hidden spies within Si Da, they managed to reveal to the Black Pantheon the same thing you guys learned awhile back that caused this split. Aphrodite’s reaction was basically “I knew it!” as she was originally a Song fangirl.
Amaterasu was overcome with grief as she realized what had happened. She originally went to the former land of Taiyo to see if she could somehow find forgiveness for everything she’d accidentally done. And then she met a Baron Samedi who was in the area conducting field research. After a long discussion with him she went back to Sthan Thi, and then dark magicked the shit out of the capital while no one was looking. The entire capital is engulfed in another dark magic storm of tremendous size as she did the exact same ritual that brought back Lin Sun. Seeking repentance for her own stupidity in trying to lead a nation while being so out of touch and feeling responsible for everything the demons have been doing she sacrificed herself to bring her sister back, hoping she could do more good then her. Since Ryujin is dead, Izumi’s curse is gone and she is capable of ascending into a full god again but she’s in a demigod state right now. Obviously Izumi went back to Song Yi’s side after getting over her sister’s sacrifice.
So to summarize, everybody is fucked up. Sthan Thi has finally fallen, the Si Da forces are a bit disorganized with all the war stuff going on. Drakon masters picked a fight with Shenlong and lost but survivors converted to the church of giant storm dragon thing. Akhetaten is okay for the most part but recovering from their own battle. Divus is still an active warzone. Si Da might actually be about to fall leaving Lucifer and the demons forced to go find a new nation to hang out with. After Azazel sacrificed mass villages to bait Ryner, the war against Shenlong and Song Yi, and this most recent stunt, they’re running out of resources.
Shento:
Unfortunately Intel operations in Divus were unable to do much. Divus proves the hardest nation to operate in as they are extremely volatile towards black mages, and as a result they were unable to prevent the death of Orujov despite having a feeling it was coming. Since Orujov was the high inquisitor, they were almost incapable of getting close to him as the inquisitors are known to be the most relentless in their hunt for black mages.
After the battle with Krovkom the church of Sanguinism is actually in pretty good shape when you consider the rest of the world. Svarga is not quite lost but its not really worth that much as its just a wasteland of rubble and the few die hards that still live there and the blood jungle wasn’t really subject to much attack even if a lot of vampires have died now. Kaja may be dead but the order is still around. Anna is the new ruler of the duchy and considered the queen of all vampires since the only one left with the strength to oppose her has no interest and is running around in Divus.
Some people are studying growing coffee now as well. It turns out to grow pretty well here though needs to be near the borders where it isn’t too wet but just wet enough.
After the death of Abel, Nelo has become the new leader of the Tyrant bloodline and through a series of exploits in the game of blood thrones has taken over managing the duchy. We mention the word managing because the actual ruler is now Anna Von Goethe. With Ryner living in a form of self imposed exile Anna is the most powerful vampire by a wide margin now and basically glared at people until they just gave her Carmilla’s old position.
He is more adept then Alex at politics but we’re far enough down the dracula line that he isn’t very physically powerful and isn’t quite as good as Carmilla so the game of blood thrones continues. He has the protection of Anna in exchange for doing the boring work for her, and her being the official ruler makes him far less targetable since she could just replace him with a new assistant. The general political situation with that has been getting a little weird.
With Anna taking over the duchy, Alex has been with the Crimson Order for the most part since their relationship is a little bit questionable and Anna got the position by declaring it was hers. So far no one has stopped her, on the upside it is highly unlikely she’ll be assassinated.
In non-war and death related news, Ailani and her siblings appear to have a gang of some sort in the jungle. With Ailani’s abilities she has an easy time finding recruits. At fourteen years old she has a small team of black mages that serve as her escort with guest star Hei Song showing up from time to time. Su Shento seems a bit concerned that Ailani just wanders the jungles so nonchalantly but she does have about ten other empowered black mages and Kekoa following her around so she’s not in much danger.
Lin Sun:
Saddles are made, this is one of the easier tech things to get made at least. Riding Kaeta actually turns out to be surprisingly easy as they were somewhat made for that. Vris and Hayate can easily control them, the issue is actually that they are kind of skittish. They’ll fly someone around, but if they approach predators or hit each other in mock battle the Kaeta kind of run away.
The spiders are alright though given the portal to the trade port of Adelaide there is no such thing as excess. Easy to sell and all.
After the battle of ninjas in the heart of Ui’Akini eventually things were sorted out when Freyja finally arrived to help out. Though many professors are dead and a chunk of the library was burned before it could be put out. What stands out is that they didn’t target very many military assets nor cult specific things. They directly went after those who could teach along with artifacts and books. They definitely put a lot of effort into getting to Vris but they didn’t seem to have Intel on what the hell Zhi’s power was because they fell for it repeatedly. Two of Vris’ children were murdered along with her husband, though she seems to barely notice with all the other crap going on. She has two surviving children, and its clear she was definitely a priority target for the attack on the university.
However, not every assassin was ever found. An unknown number must have retreated upon figuring out that getting to Vris wasn’t happening, no one really knows where they went and the university is just decorated with corpses now.
Con Lai:
The war with the snake cult continues with its back and forth. With Jin almost being killed on three occassions but managing to pull through with a bit of luck. He got involved in the battle of Akhetaten on accident because it was just so huge that he had to. This wound up compromising some of the stealth he had built up and now the Snake Cult seems far more wary of his presence along with general discomfort across Akhetaten given that Jin and Mariah are black mages even if the rest of their shinobi buddies are not.
The quest for internal spies continues to go on, though nothing exciting as a big name has been found yet.
Naomi for the most part will take any military support if it comes to a throwdown between her and the angels of heaven. Though other then that she really just wants to find Jeb and kill him.
The shinobi were unable to capture Jebediah. This is because he is under extremely heavy guard and the public are not allowed to see him since Naomi is very aggressively hunting him. The primary issue is actually finding him at all.
The attack on Adelaide itself seemed more like a suicide attack. Several snake cultists were eventually found and killed but not before causing massive damage to the docks, ships, and warehouses. Dismantling as much of the Vua Cai’s trade network or faith in it as possible. Military ships seem to have escaped being targeted so the navy is still around at least.