Shentu Wo: 2022 Power, 2,736 Followers
Kikai Senso: 8,998 Power, 85 Followers, Next Form Progress: 27%
Lin Sun: 0 Power, 50 Followers
Con Lai: 3308 Power, 1, 861 Followers
Caine: 2493 Power, 1,246 Followers

After the battle of Atlantis, things became a clusterfuck.

Jin Zhang replenished his crew with pirates as per Con Lai’s plan to have him go recruiting around. After the death of Rackham, Alday, and the eastern lord along with the chaos of the southern sector Atlantis was in for a bad time and many recognized it and jumped aboard the offer to join the Vua Cai navy.

The chaos of Atlantis was only made worse by the fact that Sahar, the last pirate lord and sole heir to both the heretic and the city, just resigned and flew off into the distance.

With the death of Rackham his power over all artifacts ceased and Naomi’s wings came back to her. However, all the dead paladin weapons suddenly stopped working and were just reclaimed as memorabilia.

The remnants of the Aetas start to fall apart fairly quickly, while they still had the organizational skills to prevent total chaos, the loss of their god was noticed by the Svargan former cultists. There was already rebellion going on against the Aetas occupation, but once this was noticed the rebellion increased dramatically.

Svarga is starting to became a bit crazy as hunters look for insurgents, natives rebel against the occupiers, paranoia of ones neighbor settles in, the Raja hasn’t been seen in weeks, the Vinasa and Indra cults have barricaded inside their temples and Rena is now being held under constant protection in the Raja’s palace or the dream realm after an assassination attempt shot her, thankfully Daisuke was able to get her to blood healers in time.

Fortunately for the march towards the Si Da front, the Aetas were entirely absent from Song’s war party and his death hasn’t hindered her any. Though it has made her depressed and cranky.

Aina is at least not too chaotic since the people there are generally nicer but a few of the black mages suddenly decided to just start eating people again now that the god telling them not to was gone.

The march in Jade is going fairly well as many people at least remember Song enough to not get in her way, atop of that some still remember her as a hero of the people due to her time as the imperial warlord that killed corrupt nobles.

Eventually, against Shenlong’s advice, Song Yi found the Si Da army and engaged them. The sequence of events and battles took over 5 months to play out and probably would have been a longer odyssey style event were not for the fact that there isn’t too much for the players to do at the moment so here you go, mass resolution.

Battle #1: A shiny brand new wasteland crater

Song Yi encountered the forces of Si Da just northwest of the Imperial Throne. The ensuing battle did not go well for her, Azazel seemed prepared and he managed to situate the engagements to what he wanted. Pairing Daezra against Anna, or Eleazor against Nergal. Constantly setting matchups to his favor and outmaneuvering the rather bold Song Yi with ease, resulting in the early deaths of Eleazor, Saba Kuu, and Kenji.

Yi’s first engagement with Fang resulted in such catastrophic destruction that both armies had to retreat thanks to the earthquakes, lava, and giant lines of destruction caused by both Yi and Fang’s swords. The entire area is now field of igneous rock with sharp dips into miniature canyons and rise into mountains that were clearly not there before, and still became a jagged mess as chunks were torn out of them.

The undead hordes fought the demons at first but as the Yi and Fang battle raged on even the undead horde retreated due to a lack of progress, since pursuit meant likely melting and being cut off from reinforcements anyways while approaching the enemy lines.

Denied her proper revenge Yi was pissed off for the next week.

Battle #2: The Bloody Victory

Two weeks later, two sub-groups had a skirmish closer to the coast. It mostly consisted of the Crimson Order and neither Song was there so the battle actually happened that time. Demons battled with undead, deathspeakers collided with fallen angels, and it was just spectacular.

This far from the main force, Kaja’s military strategy outmaneuvered the demons since Azazel wasn’t there to react in time to Kaja’s repositioning in the days leading up to the battle.  Daezra was defeated by Jericho but managed to retreat before being eaten by blood oozes. Noelle was killed by a giant demon with a lot of teeth. The Crimson order pushed forward around the flank after their victory to complete their original mission.

Battle #3: The Dark Song Event

The undead hordes collided with the demons a few times but eventually Asmodaeus got to Saldis and then that went to shit when she rejoined Si Da, enraged at Song Yi and Bahamut in particular upon learning about her previous life and the part where she killed Raji herself and everyone knew that was her daughter but did not tell her.

Now faced with both demons, undead armies, a dead Lin Sun, and being beaten by Song Fang again – Song Yi flipped out as far as anyone can tell. The effect was called the Dark Song event when she started summoning, manifesting, and infusing dark spirits all over the place. The result was a wave of twisted and sinister monstrosities colliding with the dead forces of Saldis and the corrupted demons of Azazel. Erelim and Salathiel died to the dark spirits.

Despite the numeric advantages of Si Da’s two big hordes, the spirit kill count is staggering since Song keeps messing with the terrain and dropping people into canyons. The ominous nature of her dark spirits helped by the ash in the sky that darkened the world once again as she continues to exploit volcanic powers to wipe away demonic and zombie hordes in rivers of fire. While the war didn’t end during the event, it was the most memorable battle as people far and wide thought the world was coming to an end as the undead, demonic, and dark spirits all collided on a day the sun blocked out.

Shen Rai was defeated by Song Yi’s new approach of “just fuck it, fuck all of it” but Fang was torn away from the battlefield by Azazel to prevent losing him to her rampage.

Battle #4: Holo Eka, Senshi, Jinko vs Jakaal, Siwang, Nergal

This matchup happened again but in full this time. A Jakaal team flanked Song’s forces from the south by surprise and along with the Siwang assassin decided to try and take out key commanders. Holo Eka caught the trail before they could strike and with the Senshi were able to engage in a less surprising matchup.

Ira MVP’s with 5 kills, Gaetan went into critical condition but the blood healers saved him from actually dying. The new high prophet of Heisi was defeated by Takeshi. In the end Ira the Song Forces were forced to retreat, the Senshi order losing half of its members to the Jakaal. While significant damage was done to the Siwang and Nergal forces, the Jakaal eventually overwhelmed.

Battle #5: Svargan Chaos

With the ongoing chaos in Svarga reaching a peak, it is hard to say if it is technically a battle or not. Svarga turned into a war zone as former members of god cults, liberation guerilla forces, and just straight dicks started to become even more violent in the wake of the Holo Eka hunting and the paranoia reaching its peak from the new breed of bounty hunters that the environment created. While there was no big clash of forces, the urban skirmishes became so common and violent that the food shortage stopped being a problem.

The remnants of the Tekno Jagara arsenal that still function have seen heavy use and this includes several bombs that have been released throughout the city. The Raja’s palace even came under attack twice, forcing security around him to be bolstered which in turn lessened it out in the chaos of the Svargan streets. After the death of Lin Sun the Aetas fell apart and Mazaki has gone missing while Velius was assassinated by insurgents. Aetas Black mages went rogue and just started finding people to consume, sparking more waves of panic and violence against both the Aetas and just the general populace as some even began to turn to black magic.

Large groups of super-violent criminals seek to take control of the city, some with plans to take up the offer by Shento and thus delving into black magic themselves. Others who detest these black mage tolerators and even one group achieving notoriety for its decision that the situation is so fucked that they’d rather just kill everyone and everything indiscriminately resulting in suicide attacks. Rena was moved back to Adelaide, the situation has been deemed a total collapse. Not long after she pulled out, the Raja was assassinated. So many groups claim credit that its hard to tell who actually did it.

Sanyar absconded with some of the palace treasures and gave a presentation on possessions to the sleeping lords on how human’s value art. They found it peculiar that since the human world cannot lucidly summon their dreams, they take to creating artwork to stare at and make their lives less drab. Sanyar has yet to figure out how they determine the value of art since some of this stuff was deemed super valuable by the appraisers of the Vua Cai, but look like someone just threw colors at them whereas super realistic paintings are merely considered “neat”. “The Purple One” has demanded an artist make two paintings of him, one of high value and one of ‘neat’ value. So far the confusion continues.

Battle #6: Fall of the Throne

In the aftermath Song’s forces had to flee and get further from the wild lands, this resulted in a retreat as far as the Imperial throne. The Jakaal, led by Shen Rai, pursued Ira and her team all the way there and they clashed in the city once again in an attempt to defend the palace. While the Imperial Lotus and its heroes were able to help, the Jade Emperor, 80% of the Lotus, and all but 24 Senshi were wiped out. Satoshi, Yoshikazu, Makaio and Tihalt all died in the battle at the palace. The remaining members fled the city and the Jakaal took many prisoners back to their pit.

Battle #7: Song Showdown

In an attempt to slow Song’s assault so the loss of her Senshi and many supporting units would allow Si Da to surround and kill her, Si Da’s forces retreated northward to draw her towards Fang. However, Azazel made a serious miscalculation when he assumed Song Yi was…well Song Yi.

Using civilians to deter her from launching a full attack with all of her abilities, he positioned it to make her suicide charge her last one while the forces coming from the south would push her further into their chosen field. She instead released the dark spirits again and murdered every living thing in the area, civilians included.

The battle came to an apex when she forced Fang to fight her, denying Azazel’s plan entirely and doing the one thing no one ever thought she’d do they were unable to get reinforcements to overwhelm her nor lure her as far north as they intended to by slowing her down with civilians. In the chaos, Ra was reaped by Kikai Senso. The cataclysmic battle resulted in Song Fang being dragged down into the earth by Yi. Her description was that she left him in a place where there is nothing but eternal molten fire, and after a century he’ll finally be out of power to regenerate. Removing the risk of them resurrecting him as well. Though we’re pretty sure she just wanted him to suffer.

This marked the end of the Hale’a crusade, they went home and left the two armies to continue their little fight now that Fang is presumably dead in a hundred years or so.

Meanwhile…

The year proceeding the Atlantis battle was a good year for the Vua Cai. Managing trade routes is much easier with the pirates of Atlantis have no leader to organize them and no super pirate king with ridiculously strong powers. Though the navy did start to become a bit overdoing it given that their major threat was diminished dramatically.

The Crimson Order came out of the war with Si Da fairly on top, while losses were suffered it was a good day for their publicity. Since they were to the east and did not actually encounter the Jakaal force their battle with the undead and the demons wasn’t too bad for the heavily armed and regimented military.

Ever since the death of Ra the curse on vampires has been lifted and at long last they can touch the sun again. Shento now has an issue of Vampires being completely out of control. The jungles population is diminishing too quickly now that the vampires have seemingly no weakness or ‘non hunting hours’.

The order of the spiked tree in Kagayakashi continue to build their glorious underground city even though it has nowhere to go in this cavern beneath Lo’cs workshop. Despite the loss of Yoshikazu and Satoshi, they’re doing pretty well and turn out to be some of the most pain in the ass things to kill. While even Takeshi suffered defeats and serious damage, his core was recovered and well…yeah just put him in a new one and off he goes. For disposable soldiers they’re turning out to be the most ridiculously difficult ones to kill.

Freyja has given up on Lin’s university project and become a little bit less…fun. She spends her time focusing on her own people and since she is now frequently incarnated she hasn’t bothered to find a new high prophet in some time.

Song Yi herself has become twisted by the Dark Song event, surrounded by pure nightmare fuel and some of the most malevolent spirits in the world. Her personal temple deep beneath the mountains in the ocean of fire has become so haunted by these spirits that any non-senshi mortal that attempts to enter it will almost certainly die to unseen forces within minutes. As evidenced by the servant who wandered towards the city then suddenly turned left and walked into lava. While she is still fairly herself, she seems to be losing her grip on her morality as more and more of her nation demands a darker streak from her. The era of the lawful stupid leader seems to be coming to a close, and while she hasn’t exactly turned evil she isn’t shy of using the evil spirits to accomplish things now. As an experiment she creates a second child, but unlike the first one this one is composed of the dark spirits.

Some remnants of the Aetas called her out for losing touch with her nobler side, but then they were eaten by black mages. Aetas black mages. Slowly but surely the illusion of civility and goodness slips from Hale’a Jeongsin, just as with Si Da. Even with attempts to contain black magic practice to the jungles and avoid the open practice, as the Aetas lose Lin Sun and all its remaining leaders were composed entirely of black mages the result was inevitable. Since no one really had any real grasp on Lin Sun’s eventual returns, those who were more composed tended to get eaten by the one who just went back to the Si Da habits. This notably included Kaisa, one of the most prolific murderers, even without her blessing she’s become fairly powerful just from consuming tons of people.

Svarga, a year later, has become almost like Atlantis. An anarchic super city filled with rogue murderers. The black mages have begun to win out and inevitably crushed the more orthodox gangs. Conveniently, it is actually now one of Shento’s colonies. As the gang that took over the major government center took up his offer. Inconveniently, they are savage murderers and just butcher anyone they capture to grow in their black magic. The food shortage has been solved though.

A few other colonies form something known as the blood highway, adhereing to Shento’s plans and jumping at his offer they wound up making a highway that leads from Hale’a to Svarga. So his cult is doing well for themselves.

The war abroad between Akhetaten and Thykenae is a much longer affair and it continues just like the war between Jade and Si Da. So far, Thykenae is losing once again though. Akhetaten may have a very small military but their heroes turn out to be some serious badasses….and rolled freakishly high at some key engagements.

A crazed  Aetas cultist managed to resurrect Lin Sun after a year by sacrificing Eret and Doi Cho Len with the ritual conducting help of Samedi. As a result, Doi Cho Len is now a hellish landscape with a permanent storm hovering above it. Problematically the storm seems to be growing larger, slowly, but growing none the less. It will be a century or three before it reaches the mainland though.

However, by this point the Aetas had long since crumbled, Lin Sun returns to find the cult all but disbanded and the city of Aina in ruins. What is left of the cult are merely the survivors of the Aetas black mages suddenly going with ‘lets just eat everyone’. He joins Kikai in the “we have no followers” club.

At the same time, a particularly bizarre phenomenon happened. Sensing the ritual, the Heretic suddenly turned from its meandering course and made towards the ritual with such intense speed it burst into flames and shattered, releasing the dragon inside of it in its full form. Almost no eastern nation missed the giant demonic dragon and the trail of fire it left in its wake as it sped towards Doi Cho Len.

It then proceeded to totally ignore the descended demigod Lin Sun, didn’t even seem to see him hiding behind the rock. With all the fondness of a dog who hadn’t seen its master in ages, the dragon and Eli flew off back towards the direction of Atlantis.

“Its ironic that Eret’s sacrifice means his other adoptive dad’s memories are intact as well isn’t it?” -Baron Samedi

Roster Updates!

While not technically a religious practitioner or follower, Nila Bhatt is often hanging out with the Holo Eka and can be convinced to hunt people down for a sum. She is the daughter of a Tekno Jagara engineer that happened to work with the Divya guns and wields freakishly effective handguns. With the early stages of the Svarga take over the food shortage meant not everyone was gauranteed food everyday if they just waited for the Vua Cai’s handouts. If you wanted to eat for sure you had to buy it, and the farmers started only accepting Halean currency since Divya was falling apart. Not content to wait for charity, Nila found the one open employment job available – Bounty Hunter. While technically this makes her part of the problem that devolved Svarga into absolute chaos, she is pretty good at what she does. Finding people she once called neighbors, shooting them, then coming back to Holo for money to buy food with. As Svarga got worse and worse she eventually bartered with Logan for a new home for her family. He sets them up back in Caine’s city to live comfortably, and then she’ll travel abroad to help with the hunt. So, she may not be a devout Caine worshipper, but she is technically a hunter under his employ at least. She has only recently started to delve into black magic since entering under the official employ of the Holo Eka, eating the hearts of her bounties to gain her powers. However, they have not yet manifested.

One of the pirates Jin recruited, she’s actually the one who was at the battle of Rackham and likely one of the most powerful. With black magic she can teleport, while she is limited to shorter distances then the super empowered djinn, she is still quite effective as she doesn’t seem to have a cooldown timer. While her fighting style clearly lacks formal training, she has taken her combat skills to a high level after so much pirating around the world.

Prior to joining Atlantis she fought and sailed for Divya. Eventually choosing to become a pirate for seemingly no particular reason at all other then it paid better. While she had a family at one point, she seems to have just broken up with them and ran off to do whatever she felt like. With the death of Rackham it was easy enough to convince her to join the Vua Cai with Jin’s sales pitch about the lucid dreaming benefits.

Shichiro is one of the new jinko warriors and happens to be part of that idea that got Rikuto built. Flying jinko! His flight is not only more stable then Rikuto’s but he is also more durable given that he is not as modular. In homage to the spiked tree, he’s really spiky. There isn’t a practical reason for it, its just Loc’s jinko assistant decided “lets try to make this one spikier” and no one was supervising him at the time.

Shichiro is a bit on the serious side, remnisent of Satoshi or Takeshi in personality instead of the more wild Yoshikazu or Rikuto. Though he does seem to resolve a lot of his problems by flying into them really fast.

One of the remaining Aetas who stayed loyal to the shell of the cause and one of Vris’ two personal assistants/apprentices. Lavet has the peculiar power to make everything around her dead quiet, to the point of driving people a little mad from the total lack of sound. She is a reasonable warrior, it turns out the ability to function in total silence is useful as most of your opponents do not have that ability, and you’d be surprised how often they need to hear.

For the most part, her primary function has been keeping the library quiet and untouched by the rest of the cult’s descent into anarchy. Vris uses her to keep her work space quiet when she doesn’t want to be distracted from her reading.

One of the few members of the Aetas who not only stayed true to the original tenants, but survived the others who did not. He has been holed up with Vris in the depths of the temple where it remains somewhat Aetas-y.

He has a perception aspect, and can actually see everything around himself at all times. He developed the habit of wearing the blindfold to hide his black magic eyes when out in public, and long after joining a world where black magic is allowed he decided to keep up with it. He actually does fairly well around Hale’a by pretending he is a mystic instead of a black mage.

He’s baaaaaaack. The Pirate King, The Dragon Pirate, The Godslayer, The God of Madness, The Sea’s Master, The Undying, and fifty more titles.  His arrival at Atlantis was met with immediate revitalization. The dying nation of pirates and anarchic murderers was falling apart since the death of Rackham.

Eli’s reappearence has rallied them so hard even members of the Aetas switched sides. Pirates from around the world heard he was back and sailed to Atlantis, the four lords were reinstated and Sahar returned to Atlantis. Hail to the king baby. Now he’s going to need a new crew…

Well…that happened. Vassago isn’t as powerful as Bahamut, Shenlong, or Ryujin and doesn’t seem anywhere near as intelligent. The story goes that Eli messed the dragon up so bad it became more like a domesticated animal rather then an intelligent creature like all other dragons. Either way, Vassago is capable of fighting gods and is so huge that an entire pirate crew can ride it. Its less comfortable then its form when it was trapped in Eli’s ship, but it still has plenty of surface area for riding.

But yeah Eli rides a dragon now. Way to go Aetas Fanboy.

The direct daughter of Rackham. Don’t get too excited though, her mom was raped so its not like it was that special. In the end though, Eliza took to piracy of her own accord, once she searched for her father to get revenge only to discover that she became a pirate just like him in her quest for revenge. By the time she found him she just wound up a member of the Atlanteans. However, she is more then happy to serve Eli, the true king of the pirates.

Fortunately she doesn’t have the same aspect as Rackham. She took after her mother’s aspect and is a hydromancer.

A former friend of Kaga Molum’s, one of the knights of Divus. Just like Kaga, he felt under appreciated within the empire and traveled the world pursuing his own fortune and name. Delving into black magic himself, its really the same story as Kaga Molum, just different end locations. Kaga eventually called the Crimson Order his home, and Swain eventually called Atlantis his own.

Swain has immense power as a black mage and is basically a tremendous cheater. Any wound that appears on him, appears on whoever inflicted it on him instead. He once took a cannon round and it killed the operator of the cannon on the other ship.

She may be related to Machera in some distant way as she has not only the same aspect but the same variation of it. Capable of creating slashes in the air at basically nowhere for any reason. She waves her hand, and 20 cuts appear somewhere and you really hope none of them are in you.

Aiko grew up in Taiyo Teikoku, and was formerly trained and educated as a member of the Shogunate. After Lengdon fought with Divya along the coast of Taiyo she became discontent  the way things worked in life. During the era of Rackham she acted mostly solo, not interested in the same things he was. She’s always been true to the Eli cause, kill the gods. Now that he’s back, so is she.

Some Scenes that were finished within a day, good enough.

Shentu Wo: 1104 Power, 1284Followers
Kikai Senso: 3,698 Power, 90 Followers, Next Form Progress: 24%
Lin Sun: 1605 Power, 984 Followers
Con Lai: 1847 Power, 1567 Followers
Caine: 1692 Power, 985 Followers

Issue 18

General:

The Northbound army deploys an advanced team composed of Makaio, Ira, Gaetas, Tihalt, Takeshi, Anna, and a variety of lesser known forces to intercept and distract any Jakaal from approaching the main army. While it can’t possibly stop the Jakaal hopefully it baits them from sending too much at the major force  for now, this is mostly to protect high value targets because the Jakaal are notorious for taking those out first.

Song Yi and hte main force continues its march and will be a little bit before it gets there.

Meanwhile, the Aetas sets sail for Atlantis as well. Despite the combined efforts of Eret, Maona, and Malgogi, two ships were lost to the Kraken. Eret points out these losses were unavoidable and this was as minimal as he could get them when trying to take down the biggest threat left in the ocean. Storms beset the fleet however, and the ocean is pretty much a dick whether there is a sea god or not behind it. The journey continues, but while Eret does know how to find Atlantis he also knows that it can move, a part of this voyage is just the effort of finding it, and even after defeating the Kraken they’ve a long ways to go. The battle left several ships damaged as well, and upon finding an island the Atlantis bound fleet decided to take some time to repair and regroup while waiting out the ocean storms. It didn’t take Eret long to realize something was up with the island though, because his foresight is being muddled with. The team debates taking time to explore it while ships repair and storms settle, or if they should try to avoid as much as possible in case of taking unwanted casualties long before even reaching Atlantis.

Back at Svarga things are relatively quiet, but its only been a short while. Velius has a bad feeling that its too quiet given the recent war and unlike when they occupied Bellary, they lack an Eret to single out the more problematic people ahead of time.

Shento:

For the most part plans begin getting done but this update only encompasses about a month’s worth of time at best. Applicants for the Shento colony program will take a bit longer just to get to where they are going but so far things are looking promising.

Alex is technically away for the time being undergoing training.

As a member of the advance team, Anna proves herself yet again by butchering five of the jakaal herself and patrols the forests with her ability to fly looking for more victims. She is currently the most successful hunter in the advanced team since the ability to fly lets her hunt over a large stretch of ground.

Lin Sun:

Vris takes over the Aetas management for the time being since its only temporary, this does slow her research though, but she’s always researching something anyways.

Con Lai:

As a status report, outside of Jin the navy is progressing well albeit not phenomenally so. It has yet to produce any heroes of note in its various clashes with the pirates besides Jin himself, so while it grows as according to plan it hasn’t showcased any up and coming talents yet.

While drafting the army has begun this particular update doesn’t pass enough time to see it even finish the basics of getting started up. There are uniforms to acquire, ranks to establish, men to drill, and so on.

Rena is doing so far okay at Svarga, most seem to like her and don’t find her particularly threatening. But they do know whose girlfriend she is, and more importantly the Aetas commander Velius happens to be one of her logistical experts. While the Aetas are needed otherwise she would be completely unprotected, they are definitely agitators just by their existence here.

Caine:

Gaetan and Nikos power blessed. This unlocks the next tier of Gaetan’s power and allows him to spawn multiple of his projections at a time and project projections from projections once per projection. Nikos’ abilities don’t gain particularly new wacky mechanics but his current set still experiences straight increases in effect.

The hunt for high value demon possessions and “relatively safe” is a conflicting concept. Even if just looking for a pen they once used. So they stick to hunting in the blood jungle for xp.

Ilo Hae does PR work.

Gaetan and Tihalt are part of the advance team in the northern Si Da march. Maona and Malgogi successfully survive battle with the kraken, so far at least.

Its a bit long

Shentu Wo: 3.295Power, 984Followers
Kikai Senso: 4,053Power, 50 Followers, Next Form Progress: 23%
Lin Sun: 1489Power, 968 Followers
Con Lai: 2548Power, 1484 Followers

Shento:

Hall of Heroes constructed
Kaeta project underway, incubating, breeding, etc.Well now you have a weird staff and the two tomes have been created

After the war Carmilla returned to ruling over Sarnai fairly smoothly. Not much going on there other then her apparent disgust at having had to actually march and fight but her pampering companions were quick to soothe her.

Anna returns to very little external recognition. Except for members of her own clan very few saw her out there in the night, and she is still her usual severe self. While Noelle is known as a hero, Anna returns to the dark depths beneath Sarnai after scoring at least double Noelle’s kill count. And Anna uses claws and teeth while Noelle has explosions at her disposal. Though perhaps this is for the best, as the forest spirits reclaim the bodies of the fallen they hide the evidence of the sheer brutality Anna exhibited in the battle.

As was mentioned earlier, Ailani kept sneaking out and worrying Su Shento to death since they are surrounded by a jungle full of cannibals, and Ailani is worth a lot if eaten. So when Shento decides its time for family field trips around the world she gets to meet all kinds of weird people.

Meanwhile, Kaja and Noelle are just chilling out now that things have died down a little bit and is helping the order to recover from its losses and preparing for more wars in the future. Alexandria returns at long last, and missing an arm. Su Shento fixed it pretty easily but the poor high prophet has been through a lot.

Jericho is the newest replacement, and obviously takes a lot more after Kaja then the others. Lots of armor, big sword, and plenty of fashion, Jericho has kinetic control over metal he is attuned to. While he can’t control all metal, he can attune to metal given some time to hang out with it, once he does so he can do weird things. His sword is notably designed to exploit this, with breakaway segments that can act as flying steel plates of death and hate.

Unlike Kaja, he’s actually fairly talkative and just refined as any of the other noble paladins. Taking over Hector’s estate he has taken on the fine and noble task of raising horses since it was already there for him to do and provides an easy hobby to get into since the framework is all set up.

Lin Sun:

Moses kind of already answered the sun thing so Vris is just gonna go back to translating stuff.

May want to rework university plans now that all airships in the world just fell over so the taxi service thing might be difficult. Also with the original intent of boosting PR it seems counterproductive to also involve the Viking territory just because Freyja knows history.

The search for a time aspect and a mystic shows up in the jungles of Koko Molum, sent south to join the Aetas by Shento. Mililani is a psychometric mystic, while she can commune with the spirits in general she also possesses the distinct ability to see the past of places or objects she comes into contact with by speaking with the spirits in it. Her power helps her to understand the spirits and the past they have seen, and she was quickly brought into the Aetas upper circle to join the team.

She is typically a calm individual, often wandering Aina and heeding the call of the spirits. Mililani is used to a solitary life as most mystics are, but thanks to Eret’s promotion she has been brought to the temple to work for the team’s upper echelons in person. Lately she is quiet and observant, always trying to get used to the new environment. Notably she holds proper reverence for the high prophet, but Eret still unsettles her. Even with his more violent outbursts reigned in, Eret is still not quite what you would expect from the Aetas. Thandar had always been a calm and restrained leader, Eret still takes after his pirates a lot.

Kahl was promoted from within the Aetas and has that power Shento thought was hilarious, summoning kittens. In truth Kahl can create constructs of his own energy and power, giving him near limitless potential dependent on his creativity. Ranging between swords, guns, bows, and tigers, Kahl seems to always have just the right tool for the job. However, as it is his own power incarnated it has very distinct limits in how long he can sustain it since it consumes energy rapidly without a physical makeup to support it. He can only clash swords for so long before the raw physical impacts take a toll, and projectile weapons always drain him extremely quickly since he sends his power afar and is unable to retrieve it when used in this manner.

Meanwhile: After the death of Thandar and Kinzoku, Eret did not take it well. He has been assembling a team and sending out letters to other national heroes, particularly from Divus, and seems to be plotting revenge on Rackham. While this might be all well and good, he has become visibly distraught and self destructive lately and if it were not for Rena’s power to influence his emotional state he probably would have gone full blown pirate again.

Kaisa, despite having no notable kills after the battle, has grown particularly arrogant with her abilities. Given her blessings though, it is somewhat understandable. She spends her time with Eret as he starts assembling a killteam of some sort, waiting for a chance to fight again. Velius is concerned about this however, she is becoming a bit war crazy. Originally he expected the realities of warfare to shake her excitement but instead it has only added to her excitement. Its not quite as bad as Shento’s aggressive followers, not even close, but as a developing Aetas hero with a whole lot of power he’s wary of what kind of trouble she might get into.

With Thandar’s passing Velius has become acting Grand Commander of the Aetas. While technically it went to Vris she declined and said she had too much shit to do. Velius demonstrates his capacity as a leader quite well, offsetting the peculiar nature of Eret’s recent behaviors and getting everything back underway. He has stopped traveling as he used to and now relies on his subordinates to do the job he once did, leaving him more time to linger around the capital.

Con Lai:

While there are a few outbreaks of various diseases none of them are extraordinarily severe and are often not terribly notable. In hunting around for them the most infectious of them has minor affects that healers can overcome and the most dangerous doesn’t really have severe outbreaks but due to repeatedly showing up through gateway cities one can assume it is related. However, as far as the pathology department goes nothing has made dream denizens sniffle.

Expanding food supply and harvesting winds up coming largely down to the work of mystics exploiting growth more then usual. Extending the range over which growth occurs but since Adelaide is primarily a centralized city this forces members of its population to live a bit further out for the time being to actually gather the food. It is expected in time that the density of it will return to the area around Adelaide after awhile but until then its population has to spread out a bit.

In other news, Rena continues to act as head of PR and with her recent increase in abilities she’s become effective at the task of keeping everyone a bit more orderly in the wake of the war and the shifty month or two that followed Song Yi’s knockout.

Saba Kuu and Milenkosi also return to the dream realm to do their usual lurking thing for awhile. They lead rather consistent lives at the least and when not directly doing anything tend to just repeat what they are currently used to.

Baridi on the other hand remains with Jin Zhang in his growing naval force. While uninvolved with the war to the east of the country the impact of the events have given it some trouble. With Ryujin dead and Rackham ascended the seas have become more dangerous since the pirates are growing bolder. Under the command of Rackham instead of Eli their goals start to shift from attacking gods and their churches to the more understandable loot and pillage. Pirate activities on the eastern half of the continent have become particularly bad and only large convoys that Jin and his ship are personally apart of have been able to really deal with. Taiyo and Divya both no longer have navies and the eastern seas have fallen into chaos because of it while the Jade Empire remains under attack as well.

In the wake of the conflict the damage to Halea is still being felt while food supplies run scarce and start to have an affect on the tower cities as a result. Aina and Freyja’s city is hit especially hard because the mushrooms were affected by the event along with the fact that the place is already a land of ice and snow, which hastened the food problem while the spiritual effects were broken.

Divya itself sees total collapse on the horizon, the mass evacuated civilian population had all moved to Svarga for safety but this has backfired after the death of Dyaus. While most have figured out they need to get moving and away from there, the destruction of transport and a lot of the more industrial designs means food will still be scarce for quite some time until things level back out. Despite Song Yi’s statement a lot of them refuse to give up the old ways and try to cultivate more Tek spirits. This has triggered another catastrophe as the spirits deal with it themselves instead of having Halea’s army do it.

Despite not being entirely responsible for it, Song Yi is still very much the scapegoat of the so called dark spirits that have started to appear and haunt the former Divya lands. These spirits are really nothing new and have always been around, but due to their recent prominence Song Yi is blamed for them anyways. Wherever they are being produced from, they are different from typical violent spirits from the wild because they can affect men while remaining incorporeal. How it actually works isn’t terribly understood but curses, madness, and possessions keep happening as the dark spirits keep doing their thing. Once they wandered the world considered to be rogue spirits, now they can be controlled by Song Yi, or at least the wild ones can be.

In more minor developments, with everyone looking into children and the death of Locust, Song Yi decided she wanted a kid of her own again, or at least a groomed prince of some sort. However, unlike her last pregnancy with Izumi, this time Song got one by simply willing the child into existence. Giving her own blood  and a fragment of her moon sword in a strange spiritual ritual she managed to cause a human to appear in the form of a 5 year old child. Her son is named Akuhiko Song, named after Akahito Izumi, and following the nations new naming structure of placing family name last. Hale’a advisors are more concerned about how she just created a person instantly, they feel she sorta glossed over the importance of however the hell she just did that.

Rackham’s new prophet, James Alday, has also taken over as the northern pirate lord of Atlantis. James shares the lackadaisical attitude of Rackham in most things he does but remains a proficient master of the high seas. Given the immortalizing coat by Rackham to make him a bitch to kill and also armed with the sword of Hayashi for a bit extra. He has no demonstrated black magic as far as anyone can tell he doesn’t care much for cannibalism and prefers his food prepared and cooked properly. He stands out for being a plain human that is able to command the entire northern Atlantis without anyone successfully mutinying against him for the post. His high prophet status seems to have given him a similar power to Rackham’s albeit less potent. He can’t perma steal items and pass it along, just use anything he’s holding.

The wannabe apprentice of the late Locust. Locust never really did bother to teach them much, but Makaio still followed the man around none the less. Makaio has a similar power to Locust’s albeit less potent. His body can break up into spirits to create a horde of them that can reshape back into Makaio. This peculiar power this offers him is that the spirits can move between the physical world and the spiritual one, effectively letting him teleport unseen by anyone other then the mystically attuned.

The new high prophet of Zaeed was found by way of Songstone tournament. Zaeed decided only the luckiest would be his new high prophet, then proceeded to grant luck to Nada once he saw her. Basically a repeat of the shenanigans that led to him finding Sabriya.

Shentu Wo: 2640 Power, 1284Followers
Kikai Senso: 2,960 Power, 80 Followers, Next Form Progress: 12%
Lin Sun: 314 Power, 1150 Followers
Con Lai: 1473 Power, 1459 Followers

Invasion Report:

Due to the nature of the surprise attack and the fact you sent everrryone, that was kind of a one sided massacre, producing 4 new hordes of undead, though two of the original set died in the attack so net gain of 2 hordes. Amazingly no heroes died and a large section of the fleet overhead has been captured by Eret and the gang. So far all is going well…too well.

In response the Divya armies have begun to remobilize and the main force has kept up its wildland destruction, though now moving northward towards Shahira. Intel isn’t sure what heroes are what to up as they’ve all suddenly disappeared from the public eye except for Vasistha who continues to lead the people alongside the Raja.

So far spies and intel networks have traced that Hasin Bava has moved towards Svarga but there are now 5 people claiming to be Grand Marshal Devadas around the country, and no one knows where the real one is. Eret has noticed that all 5 of them are shielded from his foresight and since they are the acting commanders of every Sanika legion, he can’t predict these particular troop movements.

Spies and dream network scanning only reveals that he’s still alive and out there but there is no certainty which one is actually him. So far they haven’t had to engage in combat directly so we can’t narrow it down to “whichever one has the power of Indra”

The Taiyo fleet is experiencing travel time, but southward they come with the power of the shogunate, their basic infantry have been left at home along with their other heroes but the ones on the map and the ones with cards are the ones coming south to participate.

No sign of Atlantis thus far.

Kikai Senso:

Lo’c has too much to do right now to try and create jinkonies and mounted weapons. He’ll get back to you on that.

Banner Created.

Shento:

Lin Sun:

Kaisa power blessed and now obnoxiously good at freezing things but also her cyrokineticism becomes more advanced allowing her to shape and manipulate the ice in weird ways such as creating animated weapons of ice. Granted the actual viability of those weapons is suspect but its still cool.

Vris runs temple

Chaaaaarge.

Con Lai:

Isis once again cannot figure out how Milenkosi works, and while they have confirmed his powers do work outside of the dream realm they still don’t quite know any way to reproduce it or if it even can be reproduced as it could be unique to him.

Door opened and all that, along with power altered to keep up with the statement that you had put doors in all the major Halea cities.

Ume Kon’s powers seem to be very similar to Saba Kuu’s just less team orientated and more enemy team orientated. That and he can turn into a cloud of smoke which happens to be capable of suffocating people, just like Saba Kuu except instead of ranged he floats himself toward his victims, granted the size of the cloud is equally limited in size.

With power blessing the range of targets that can be effected by his sleep powers increases as well as his effective control within the lucid dreams. Power blessing Rena turns her voice’s natural alluring effect into a sort of emotional hypnosis. Depending what tone she speaks in, she can be calming, alluring, enraging, depressing, etc though she is limited to the range at which she can actually be heard.

You continue to torture enemies who try to take a nap.

Several new champions for other factions have been added, so lets go over them.

The second most powerful man in the nation, second only to the Raja himself. Vasistha is the leader of the Tekno Jagara and high prophet of Dyaus Pita. He has the power of extreme technomancy. Similar to how Dyaus Pita turned the fleet into an avatar, Vasistha can alter technology to his purposes on the fly. The size of his arsenal is theoretically infinite as he invents new gadgets as he goes along, though typically he just wields raw destructive energy unless he finds himself needing a gizmo.

Tier 2

Vasistha’s bodyguard and apprentice in technomancy. With the same aspect powers granted to him by Dyaus, you can expect Kiann to be pretty much a miniature Vasistha. Though Kiann does not wield the explosive energies Vasistha does, he often find ways to make do with what he has. Don’t let his priest robes or scrawny frame fool you, he very suddenly turns into a fully armored Sanika when he is expecting a fight.

Tier 3

As the high prophet of such a powerful destroyer god, Lakshay’s power is pretty predictable. He blows things up. He doesn’t lead a terribly large army nor is he a good commander but when you can make whole platoons blow up, who needs skill?

Tier 3

One of the stranger endowed powers but fitting the Divya theme, Hasin can create weapons from the tek spirits in his arms. Manifesting their spirits into whatever form he wants, these weapons are as powerful as the spiritual blades the Senshi use but are far more diverse. Hasin is not a particularly powerful commander, but as a duelist he is exceptional and should be approached with caution.

Tier 1

An old fashioned man, using his thick body and thicker sword he travels around keeping to the old styles of combat instead of all these fancy energy and projectile weapons everyone else around him is using. Sanjiv leads a large army and is quite competent on the field both as a hero and a commander.

Tier 2

Nergal’s apprentice, assistant, or just minion. However you want to look at it, Maliken is a powerful servant of the demonic agenda. His powers aren’t well understood but its known he excels in subtle tactics and assault. Unlike Nergal however, Maliken wields a lot more overt powers and can cause larger scale demolition then the demon of secrets. It is suspected Maliken is sent to deconstruct buildings rather then make people disappear, he was the one that broke the Aetas temple but no one is sure how he did.

Tier ?

Erelim and Salathiel aren’t terribly different from each other and are technically brothers. Erelim is the older one if you were curious. They are actually some of the more powerful black mages of Si Da who Azazel decided would serve as his commanders and champions on the field. Neither are as talented as their master in leading demon hordes but they usually are told what to do ahead of time and instead serve as raw muscle. Both have the typical physique and regenerative abilities expected of high level black mages, and both have the powers of destruction, similar to Baal and Abaddon before them. They hold aspect blessings of Azazel, giving them ways to bolster the powers of their armies.

Tier 2

No one is sure who made such comically large katana for him, but he seems to wield them just fine. As the high prophet of Hachiman he is also one of the main commanding generals on the field. A master of both strategy and physical confrontation.

Tier 2

Despite his master going mad, Raijin is still alive and thus his high prophet has not lost their powers. As apprentice to Raijin, Hayashi is one of the most dangerous champions in the Taiyo pantheon. Similar to his master, Hayashi exhibits calm and thoughtful behavior, only resorting to violence if necessary and when necessary he ends it quickly.He is known to imitate his master’s favorite technique, becoming living lightning as his method of travel and repositioning in combat.

Tier 0

A challenge seeker, Arima is known to request duels with champions from around the world to test her mettle against them. Despite her hobby, she’s not terribly dangerous in single combat with her power to manipulate the wind around her. However, she is one of the best commanders in the Taiyo pantheon and is very knowledgeable in warfare.

Tier 4

Ryujin’s youngest champion, Ishimoto obviously has the power of hydromancy. His capabilities with such are fairly impressive,

Tier 3

The Heroic Tier List revisited

With all the changes, its time to revisit who is where so you have a bit more knowledge of the matchup potential. Remember, this is rough and based around them walking into each other unexpectedly. Sometimes they have other soldiers, larger armies, or are just more cunning and prepared.

Tier 0: Song Fang, Saint Naomi, Hayashi, Ryner

Tier 1: Saint Eleazor, Saint David, Locust, Thandar, Akasiya, Sahar Tahani, Kaja Molum, Takeshi, Hasin Bava, John Rackham

Tier 2: Ira, Shade, Milenkosi, Jakaal/Praeliator Master, Kulina, Hercules, Jin Zhang, Eret Daiheb, Anna Goethe, Yoshikazu, Hasina, Astrid, Vasistha, Sanjiv Buvey, Grand Marshal Devadas, Erelim, Salathiel, Hata Kokei, Orion

Tier 3: Baridi, Kinzoku, Dracula, Average Jakaal/Praeliator, Senshi Masters, Upper Templar, Lakshay Jayesh, Kiaan Darshiit, Kaisa, Lady Noelle, Lord Hector, Satoshi, Akiao, Saint Andrew, Saint Chloe, Saint Jacob, Ishimoto Tsuneyo, Eleni

Tier 4: An Lanh Tien, Carmilla, Average Senshi, Upper Lengdonian or Phoenix Clan, Sanika, Average Spartan, Average Templar, Velius, Mazaki, Rikuto, Sabriya Alhazz, Saint Caleb, Captain Raji, Arima Naoko, Halima

Tier 5: Siwang Assassin, Teijin Monk, Average Lengdonian or Phoenix clan, Rajput Soldier, Su Pinpua,Saba Kuu, Ume Kon, Alexandria, Daisuke, Gorou

Tier 6: Lo’c Thua, Sarnai, Teozix, Vris, Naberius, Gremory, Eret Daiheb, Su Shento, Rena, Malu Jio

Shento: Kaja learns his new powers shockingly fast and while he lacks the level of control or raw power that Dracula had, his creativity rivals Vlad’s. Having already developed several techniques to use the power offensively in combination with his own fighting style.

Hector begins the art of finding who is worthy to train as a proper knight. So far he’s crushed a lot of dreams with his callous observations in picking who is worthy. Though notably, he has accepted Alex.

Speaking of which, Alexandria has taken to following the paladins around and trying to learn from them during downtime. Since Carmilla is running the city that leaves her with a lot of free time when there are no messages to relay, and she wants to be able to defend herself if Anna tries to kill her. It iss unclear if Hector accepted her as a student because of her position as high prophet and his superior or if she has any degree of talent though.

The hunt for Ryner begins, but this update isn’t skipping all that much time so they’re currently traveling.

Carmilla begins spy network, fairly easily since people practically beg to make her happy. She’s slowly becoming more and more powerful with her social status and Alex has noticed that if it weren’t for Kaja and Hector, Carmilla would be dangerously close to being capable of a borderline mutiny. Granted, Carmilla has never shown any tendency to disobey the cult or any dissatisfaction but Alex is still scared of the vampires since she knew them as the apex predator of the jungle for awhile before she was selected to join the cult’s upper echelon, years of “hide from the night hunters” has left her a bit edgy around them.

That being said Alex is rapidly becoming politically powerful within the blood jungle as well, the paladins see her as the leader since they are holy warriors they serve the high prophet loyally. As Alex trains among them they are starting to become very familiar with her, similar to the way Song Yi rose to military prominence by training with the soldiers. Anna and the Tyrant clan are noticing how quickly they’ve stopped being a “faction” in blood politics, as its now just Carmilla and Alex. That being said, Carmilla seems to like Alex well enough anyways, so there is no infighting to worry about, but the stark differences between the vampire holdings in Sarnai and the Crimson Order are becoming a bit more apparent.

Lo’c is currently backed up on requests.

The orc chief think tank sort of depends on what you want them to do. Mystic work, maybe some fancy staff to symbolize spiritual leadership. Lead through strength? Axes are classic. Can never go wrong with a fancy helmet either, or even just a symbolic necklace.

The new policies input by Hector and Carmilla hand off a lot of resources to anyone inducted into the Crimson Order’s knights. This turns out to have pretty fast appeal and Kaja brings in an “old friend” once again. Turns out the man knows how to get some recruits in a hurry for war time. Carmilla starts investigating where the hell all these Divus accented, named, and obviously trained warriors are coming from.

Noelle is evidently familiar with Kaja and Hector as they all seem rather chummy. She is more like Hector then Kaja though, exhibiting traits of eloquence and clearly familiar with higher class etiquette. Carmilla is starting to get excited were not for the concern that these people all come from somewhere very specific and no one knows where right now.

Noelle’s power as a black mage is pyrokineticism. As with Hector, she is freakishly advanced in its usage very quickly able to find creative applications to enhance her destructive potential. Carmilla has put more effort into her investigation.

Lin Sun:

In an attempt to apologize to Thandar he punches you so hard you fly through a stone wall, obviously he used his telekinetics to make it hurt more. That was all he said on the matter. Freyja explained that’s how Ofrior forgives people sometimes, and she thought it was sweet how close you two were that he would give you such a traditional rite. That being said you’re aware he hit you WAY harder then you hit him.

The Milenkosi thing is actually a long and complicated affair. First off Eleni and the girls left because Thandar “escorted” them away as per Milenkosi’s advice. Milen pointed out Eleni may not be the prophet with her powerset anymore, but she still thrives on conflict and chaos. She was only here because she knew Eret was going to be a bit crazy and now she’ll be headed back to Atlantis where a power struggle will soon erupt. That girl has some weird issues. While Thandar was dealing with Eleni, Milen pinned Eret down and forced him to take a nap which triggered Eret to decompress all of his experiences as a pirate somehow and rendered him catatonic for awhile, recounting the various experiences to Milen such as Rackham killing his first girlfriend by hanging her from the mast, his pet bird being cooked by the crew when he wasn’t looking and then served to him as a prank, the first few times he had to kill people, the part where he might have been a little raped himself, and many attempts on his life in the middle of the night he barely survived. In the end his problems aren’t cured with a single nap though Milen introduced him to a nice young lady to help him asssimilate back into normal life. He’s now apparently dating Rena the Siren, whose powers turn out to be very effective in calming Eret down when he gets a bit high strung. However, Eret still retains some of his edge as he sets out to train the anti divya air team. Song Yi named him the captain of the air force since he’s the only one with an airship to use in the first place and Eret intends to join the war in full with his newly assembled team.

As a side note, he also encountered Jin Zhang while visiting the dream realm. They recognized each other and began a duel that lasted six hours before they both gave up and went to find something else to do. They are now drinking buddies apparently and are overly competitive at everything.

While he was in Sele’akala Eret unintentionally walked into Song Yi’s fist sixteen times and fell down a flight of stairs. Ira was lended to his sky crew, and he still needs dad’s permission to take Thandar and Kaisa with him.

Songstone proves a popular form of entertainment as it spreads around the nation. The first adventure pack DreamOn™ comes out later this month and the dev team is hanging out in the dream realm to collect artistic renderings.

Special blessed coat complete.

Con Lai:

Jin’s power leveled up is all the powers basically. The other two just get numeric increases.

Your attempt to hook up Jin and Sabriya results in a totally other thing happening. While they don’t exactly start dating they do start hanging out…and Jin is Eret’s new drinking buddy. The dream trio with no skills and all the skills has assembled.

Door opened.

Your new head of PR is dating Eret.

Kikai Senso:

The idea of modular wings turns out to be incompatible with current Jinko models and plans. So instead we made a new one!

The Rackham project was inspired to be super modular and capable of having basically batman’s utility belt. The idea is to just have lots and lots of tricks and gadgets in a single frame. Rikuto was chosen to wield it, it carries ranged armaments, melee weapons, Isis gave it the ability to shoot lightning, it has flamethrowers, grappling hooks, what is being called as the  “blast pack” which the Sanika use to create controlled explosions to propel themselves forward by force and then just let momentum take them somewhere. Rikuto also has a variety of ways to change out their armaments and special upgrades. While there aren’t many available yet it leaves room for improvement, but as a whole the frame suffers from its lack of dedication. The modularity means it has many more weak points and far less durability in its construction so it has to rely on its gadgets to overcome people before it gets into a straight up slug fest with something like a Takeshi for example.

Everyone else:

The altepetl forces wait about a days journey away from the Wild border as they ready to assault. Current war council plans pending more group convo:

Eret is going to be the first move they make, using the recon ship he stole as a way to sneak up on them and try to cripple an air fleet near the border and maybe steal more ships. Hopefully he’ll do enough damage in the first night that they’ll be weakened. The plan is for scout Senshi to spread out across the border in a hurry to find the weakest possible spots, they expect it to be near the border to Taiyo. The idea is they can’t have the entire border lined with defenses, somewhere there has to be enough space for a day’s trip into their territory from the edges. Hopefully, can get into their cities and start to attack them while skipping the border conflict entirely. While this makes retreat extremely difficult and is risky in that the army will be surrounded, Saldis’ forces will continue to swell the more people fall either friend or foe.

The basic idea is to get within their land so their long range super weapons and airship cannons can’t be fired without also hitting their own stuff, using their own cities as cover instead of the much flimsier trees of the forest. More planning to be done over conferences.

Also be sure to carefully specify which of your champs is involved in what and who is going to the war etc.