Shento:

Overall the attack was a success and Svarga was retaken, though the place is even more of a wasteland then before. Kaja even managed to almost kill Krovkom with his apparent super strength driving them to retreat from the city for now. Though Elvira murdered Jericho before the retreat was sounded and a lot of vampires died as the enemy seemed conveniently well armed for dealing with them. Emilia supposes the ones who swapped sides told Krovkom’s forces the entire rundown of how to kill vampires. Anna was almost killed but managed to retreat before being burned to death.

Meanwhile CTU is getting into the thick of it back on the home front. The entire nation still proves very easy to infiltrate, while invasion is near impossible due to the wild spirits simply walking in and taking a look around is very simple. The conspiracy grows deeper as Nergal’s involvement is detected. What actually worries Emilia most isn’t that they found evidence that Nergal is messing with you guys, but that she hasn’t found any kind of evidence that Asmodaeus is involved. No one knows what Asmodaeus has been up to for the last year, and that’s terrifying.

Also despite holding Svarga, Azazel’s forces are still on approach so should probably figure out what to do about that one.

Con Lai:

The hunt for Nergal is on, though the slight problem is most of the snake cultists seem to have no idea of Nergal’s involvement with them at all. So even when interrogated by An Lahn they have nothing relevant to demon involvement. While progress against the cult itself isn’t going too badly, it is not directly associated with Nergal and his involvement is without their knowledge. However, some progress is made in finding out more about Nergal’s secret legion. In particular, while the actual spy hasn’t been found, certain events indicate someone in the nation definitely works for Nergal. Which we’ll cover after next paragraph.

The plan to kill and replace Moses goes well enough, Ishikama is very good at his job. The replacement was chosen by Ishikama since Naomi had no one she trusted to do the job, all was going swimmingly for the first three weeks and then the new false prophet was publicly called out on being a fraud. Actually it went exactly like Naomi’s first plan, and after some persuasive arguments said prophet was killed by the High Inquisitor in open combat. Instating a new high prophet once again and making Divus as a whole somewhat uncertain.

On the upside, all this hunting for Nergal managed to root out the truth that Nergal figured out the plan and did it faster so we do know he is behind it. On the downside, it is almost certain he found out the plan and hijacked it because of someone in Hale’a telling him what was up. Coincidentally at the same time he overtook the high prophet, Naomi came under attack by Si Da agents including Moraxus. Fortunately Moraxus was slain despite his efforts, Naomi is recovering from the fight but already on the move towards Divus.

Technically the niece of Ishikama, she is a member of the Hanzo clan and as such is one of those sneaky assassin types. Unlike Ishikama’s style of being ignored, she often works by exploiting her allure. She is notably well spoken and is talented at posing as a noble, though this would be hard to do in anywhere except Taiyo given her clear ethnicity.

She has actually performed relatively few missions as the Hanzo clan kept her at home most of the time unless it was absolutely necessary to utilize her since Taiyo isn’t particularly fond of sending women to murder other people. She is proficient at assassination but she is otherwise more of a house noble.

One of the former pirate raiders, she is a black mage from Thykenae with the rare destruction aspect. Her particular version of it allows her to cause existing damage to continually increase if she can touch the object or person. For example, a ship with a crack in the hull might find the crack keeps growing until the whole ship breaks apart. This makes her highly effective at property destruction and murdering people with tough regenerative powers.

She’s really only here because the paycheck was pretty neat and Rackham was dead at the time she was asked. Plus the ship and crew she was given also kept her around. In short, she’s not a particularly altruistic individual but as long as you keep her paid and supplied she’ll kill people for you.

Roster Update

With the Divus and Nergal issues I decided to throw in the bosses of the major branches.

Somewhat obvious, the king of Divus. He’s a bit older now days but back in his youth he has been on many adventures, there could be many volumes published on his many tales.

In the modern day he tends to just hang out in the capital as running around and getting into wars is a bit tough on the old guy, unlike black mages he doesn’t remain in fighting shape well into his 80’s or anything. He wields Excalibur, the most powerful artifact anyone has ever heard of, so even if he’s old that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

One of the round table knights and the son of founding member Lancelot. Galahad was so worthy a knight that at one point he managed to ascend to heaven itself while still alive, and he received the powers and blessings attributed normally to paladins. He would go on to become the leader of the templars and now is basically in charge of the military. He is considered the greatest hero in all of Divus for his many adventures and his intense code of honor. He holds the aspect powers of phyisque and his weapon has the force aspect similar to Kaja or Velius.

Leader of the inquisitors, Orujov is an intense man who has been able to reduce grown men into whimpering children with just his gaze alone. His artifact weapon has the ability to teleport him up to a range of about twenty five miles. It isn’t spectacularly impressive but it works well for his batman methodology of hunting down people and being spooky. In all he isn’t terribly scary in combat compared to some of the black mage champions despite his skill, but within Divus he is still a major figure.

New-new leader of the Divus church. We have intel that strongly suggests this is actually an agent of Si Da and was definitely put into power by the actions of Nergal.

So far he’s a pretty nice old guy and is just settling into his position as far as anyone can tell. Figuring out the ins and outs of ruling the church with the assistance of those around him.

Shentu Wo: 3429 Power, 2,716 Followers
Kikai Senso: 9,910Power, 350 Followers, Next Form Progress: 28%
Lin Sun: 1,040Power, 875 Followers
Con Lai: 2431 Power, 3, 821 Followers
Caine: 5064 Power, 1,785 Followers

The Snake cult has been heavily damaged in Akhetaten with the Vua Cai taking over operations. While Sheridan was a good information hunter it was largely because of his power as a glamor vampire. The shinobi house of Hanzo led by Jin is far more effective in this clandestine war spanning multiple nations. Several of their movements have been discovered and with the help of Emilia we figured out just how deep they have infiltrated Hale’a Jeongsin already.

Now for the bad news, its a pretty deep web and they struck once again. Adelaide ports are burning, Abel is dead, Rena is dead, Ilo Hae is dead, and there were several other prominent assassinations carried out within a single mass orchestrated day. Vris was also a target of an attack but Johnathan Zhi prevented it with his fancy perception powers. Lo’c was also a target of assassination but that one was thwarted by the fact that Lo’c apparently didn’t realize he’d been poisoned and suffered no effects. The only reason anyone even noticed was because Roku caught the assassin due to an entirely unrelated investigation. However, the Jinko want Lo’c moved to Kagayakashi and locked up tight before they go after him again. Also concerning, several Jinko project chassis’ were stolen and have not been recovered.

On an amusing note, they also tried to gain an alliance with the pirates to further their agenda of just total chaos. It seemed the perfect alliance, until they apparently forgot that unlike Rackham – Eli does not tolerate their religious beliefs and killed them. Since their plan is to release a god from its imprisonment, they’re on the Atlantean shit list now too.

The Moses project was actually pretty easy for Ishikama Hanzo. Despite this being the biggest hit on the entire list, even factoring in the snake boys, Hanzo accomplished it without any problems at all and sent Moses to meet An Lahn Tien. Who also managed to easily extract the conspiracy from Moses to confirm what Naomi believed, he can’t speak to Jehova at all. No one can. However, Jehovah can still grant blessings and Moses can control who they go to. However, there is no way to indicate who to revoke them from as the way he tells which ones should receive it is by presenting the individual before the altar and making some gestures that Jehovah seems to have figured out as “please bless this dude”. Though the level of Jehovah’s involvement is questionable, if he really comprehends why they want the blessings or what they’re used for is up for debate.

However, the spy network cannot find any further conspirators actually in on it other then two cardinals. It turns out each time a new high prophet is chosen they are let in on whats going on, if they weren’t already one of the two, and given a lot of reasons to keep it going. In fact, the illusion that Moses does speak to Jehovah has a lot of major benefits in keeping away a lot of scary things like the snake cult or more bold demonic moves as well as deeper corruption within the ruling powers and church. Reports also indicate many will join her side purely to uproot the church and shake up the established order, usually in a way that will benefit them more then staying in their current living situation. Given the close proximity of the church to the ruling powers, it is expected most higher ranked nobles will side with the church whereas lower ranked ones might go with Naomi except for those who are truly faithful to the church as Moses has portrayed it.

While we’re at it Naomi also feels it might be super important to actually tell people what Excalibur does in case that impacts people’s planning. It is, obviously, the most famous and powerful weapon in the known world but the stories of what it does changes dramatically between sightings and tales. The truth is, it learns the power of any other weapon that comes within its vicinity and permanently gains the abilities of that weapon at its own power level, since it is the most powerful artifact weapon in the world that usually means its more powerful then whatever it stole the ability from.

Meanwhile to the east, Drakon has taken over Svarga. Everyone in it has either been enslaved by Krovkom or murdered. A large part of the problem came from within, traitors sold out information on its defenses and assisted in sabotaging them as well which made it easy for the striders to completely overpower those who remained loyal. However, despite now holding the city Krovkom seems to leave the temple of Brahma alone. Innokenti passed word on from Shenlong that if anyone messed with that temple he would personally incarnate and kill them. They haven’t actually learned what the gates are according to our spies. Shenlong has been careful not to tell them about it and instead spoke more of the sacredness of Brahma.

Moraxus of Si Da managed to encounter and kill the Strider of Nazarious Galina, though for the most part Si Da has opted to leave Nazarious’ legion alone now. The Jade empire is already damaged enough and it is defensively focused as it cannot really attack the Jakaal remnant now that the Pit is destroyed. Instead, Si Da “Invaded” Shahira. Turns out Shahira doesn’t give enough of a shit though and so they’ve been allowed to just pass through along the sands to avoid the wild lands that Song Yi has turned against them. They seem to be moving around the Jade Empire and the now powerful colonies of Nazarius to try and get to Svarga. Since Nazarius does not really know or care about the importance of Svarga he isn’t really trying to stop them and instead focusing on expanding his new empire. He seems to be colonizing the Lengdon mountains specifically, someone had to pin Song Yi down to stop her from going to attack them.

Shento:

On the upside Emilia is pretty good at homeland security and already found 18 traitorous individuals within the nation. On the downside this means she found out your nation is pretty much infiltrated on every level. Vua Cai movements are sold to Atlanteans, Si Da champions live in the jungles to kill off or recruit your best up and comers, Svarga is basically just a mess all around, doomsayers report to Drakon from within the Aetas, this goes on and on. This is primarily because not necessarily all these things are actual enemy spies, just citizens who will sell information about you guys to others. Song Yi has always led her nation with an open nature, as you may recall she held government meetings in the gardens that all of Yaosai could attend. This has made it exceptionally easy for anyone else to find out whatever they wanted about you, and is a large factor in how the cult of Apophis assassinated so many people so quickly.

Speaking of which – three more high ranking vampires, including Abel, were also recently assassinated during the more fledging stages of Emilia’s agency. Kaja predicts they’re trying to piss you off enough to get a reaction that could devolve into further chaos.

We also found out the snake cult tried to contact Atlantis for assistance in spreading their anarchic dream. They apparently forgot that just because Eli spreads chaos doesn’t mean he’ll tolerate their religious beliefs. So that delegate team died.

Sheridan has largely sounded a full retreat from Akhetaten as ordered, this snake cult shit is getting out of hand and the Vua Cai seem to be taking over this show under the command of Jin Zhang with the shinobi house of Hanzo.

Unfortunately, Hayate can find no orcs with the actual talent to become blademasters. Only Kekoa has the violent nature needed to be a full blown warrior. He could train some anyways though, just no gaurantee they’ll be comparable to a paladin or vampire.

While the plan to intercept the tyrants and send them home went fairly well, they aren’t happy about it. After the night of the assassinations in which Abel died, several of them went rogue again. Many are now hunting the snakes without supervision and some even act on behalf of Atlantis now. With so many tyrant vampires leaving the  nation, the Feral Scion seems to have also disappeared. Later in the year he would reappear with an entire clan of ferals again, now flying the banner of Krovkom.

A long and lengthy network of tunnels runs under Divya with the help of Bahamut though no action is currently being taken. However, a lot of Templars are sitting around your place in Hale’a along with Akhetaten and Altepetl ready to march on Krovkom as was arranged for previously.

Alex maintains power in the vacuum Carmilla left through pure force. With the Crimson Order loyal, she was able to use them to overwhelming threaten anyone who tried to cross her. While things are still overall a  mess, she’s not doing too bad at damage control. Emilia has her under heavy guard, she is likely to be the next target of the Cult of Apophis if they don’t take you leaving Akhetaten as surrender at least.

Lin Sun:

Despite the assassination attempt Vris doesn’t seem all that phased. Even when the would-be assassin was caught just minutes before trying to kill her she didn’t look up from her project and just mumbled something about them dealing with it. So she’s handling it well.

Con Lai:

With Sheridan pulling out of Akhetaten, its now the Vua Cai’s show in dealing with the snake cult. Fortunately, you have a bunch of ninjas. Unfortunately, just as Shento discovered, they retaliate pretty hard. The Vua Cai in general have never really dealt with this kind of sneaky cult and one of the main ports in Adelaide was set on fire, while the perpetrators were found and killed, thus identified, it didn’t stop the damaging effects very well. While it wasn’t the whole place and only two or three ships burned, all were visiting merchants and not members of your own fleet. This has been a major blow to PR and the port’s commerce. Fortunately the monopoly on the river of dreams makes it hard for them to get too worried just yet at least. But Jin and the gang report that this is just starting. While they uprooted another cult base of operations, several members of his team were assassinated over the last few months as well. Malati was killed when she found Maliken himself, and then promptly lost that fight.

Rena was assassinated by the snake cult as well, which definitely didn’t help the PR problem of the burning ships. Jin’s Report indicates that Nergal’s apprentice Maliken was directly responsible for the entire night of murders throughout Hale’a. Though he has been unable to actually find Maliken, he also has discerned the cult of Apophis is not entirely aware he is working with them and helping them along. Granted, exposing that proves to be near impossible given the skillset of Nergal’s forces.

Submarine progress: They can make it go under water, but not come back up. Lo’c still hasn’t worked out how to do that second part, at least its easy to retrieve the prototype from the dock.

As for the drakon spying, the most notable weakness they find could be exploited is the Dragon Master’s individual greed as they try to build their wealth to gain status and power. They theorize the more reasonable masters could be negotiated with and bribed if the wealth was sufficiently appealing. They also found out that while it isn’t obvious back home to you guys, by the talks of dragons here it is clear this very weakness is being exploited by Mammon and that is how Krovkom suddenly appeared and decided to take over Svarga very specifically even if he didn’t know the wasteland of a city’s significance.

Kikai:

The Jinko want Lo’c kept safe at Kagayakashi. Lo’c says thats silly and doesn’t want to be locked up in a dungeon for his own security. Roku’s entire strike team is now just hovering around Lo’cs general vicinity on full paranoid guard until a more official order is handed out for dealing with the subject.

Caine:

The nation takes a major blow as Ilo Hae is somehow assassinated. As the primary PR figure, the loss was rather prominent and has sparked outrage. Without orders several of the hunters are now dispersing across the nation looking for snake cultists out of a mix of revenge and paranoia.

Stories of Lore 21

Shentu Wo: 3118 Power, 2,846 Followers
Kikai Senso: 9,665 Power, 285 Followers, Next Form Progress: 28%
Lin Sun: 835 Power, 878 Followers
Con Lai: 3987 Power, 4, 152 Followers
Caine: 4627 Power, 1,803 Followers

Naomi captured!

And then things became more complicated instantaneously. She can’t be cured because she isn’t being driven insane, she was simply given information regarding the likelihood that Moses can’t actually speak to Jehovah. Problem is that information was given to her by Eli, while several factors point to this likely being the truth Eli could have just killed either her or moses during his attack if he had felt like it. He clearly wants this fight to happen. Its also likely that the snake cult of chaos would love it too, and of course Si Da would just adore it if Naomi sent Divus into a civil war. Also if we went to war with them because of this, we probably wouldn’t get their support against the Drakon anymore until Naomi won (assuming she does win).

Such a war benefits a lot of the enemies, but would also deal terrible damage to the western alliance against the Drakon or Si Da as Divus has the largest standing army. However, Naomi brings up a solid point. If Moses is manipulating the nation for his own agenda, what agenda is it? Jehovah is the most powerful of the gods and is the sole guardian of the western gate, leaving a corrupt order in control of all that could result in some things going terribly wrong terribly fast. Her powers have not been revoked, which lends credibility to the concept that she is correct and something fishy is afoot.

To the first person who says “lets just deal with this after we deal with this other problem”. Song Yi points out there is no shortage of problems. Ignore this for convenience now and we might as well commit to it forever because there are more Drakon coming, Si Da is still alive, and she’s willing to bet her palace that the instant you solve any of those problems more problems will show up. If not just showing up anyways.

In other revelations, Ryner was not prepped for the spirits to fight Drakon. They had no idea the Drakon even existed as was revealed when Song queried them about it. They were preparing for what appears to be a Divus civil war which could be catastrophic and destabilize the entire west. However, Song has also learned which spirits prepared Ryner to be their agent of war. Hei Lang was the primary spirit that moved Lhin Thu and Ryner to prepare for something big and was definitely the one that sent Ryner to the Jakaal for his own amusement. So this just adds onto the pile of “this is definitely something all the bad guys want to happen”.

Meanwhile back at Akhetaten, the war with the snake cult continues in the shadows. Corruption in the government revealed and dealt with thanks to the work of our meddling heroes.

In their investigations they crossed paths with Nitetis, no major members died on either side of the battle and Nitetis retreated thus sacrificing the hideout the team discovered. Even when the cult set fire to it during their escape to try and erase as much evidence as possible, Jin’s elemental spirit blade sort of fixed that before it got too out of control and some objects and plans were recovered which led to further investigation.

One of the weirder discoveries is their current attempt to do everything they possibly can with Lamia to make her have children and see if they can somehow bestow her mutation onto others as they like the snake thing, and she is strong enough to fight black mages which Nitetis cannot comfortably do.

While almost all encounters are a battle of mysteries and social manipulations lately, it just keeps going deeper. The cult turns out to be almost as old as the nation itself, it has never been completely wiped out just set back in its goals and thwarted.

Then they retaliated. Carmilla was killed right in her own home. No one knows how they managed to do it but she was definitely burned to death. The spirits were able to track down the assassin, but they had already committed suicide to avoid being captured.

Given her public importance her sudden death was impossible to hide, and the vampires became pissed off. Without waiting for orders the entire Tyrant clan has suddenly left Hale’a for Akhetaten despite Sheridan’s advice about that being a bad idea. He’d much rather have Anna since they can’t poison her or anything, but she didn’t like Carmilla in the first place. More then that though, Akhetaten doesn’t want the entire tyrant clan coming over there looking for revenge on a cult who blends in with civilians, on the verge of this whole Moses vs Naomi thing this could cause the political situation to become a lot more complicated. Alexandria is a little depressed her favored mentor died and the

Shento:

Spying on the Drakon has yielded the basics of them being terrifying but also that they regularly run military drills and act highly defensively just like Nazarius does while trying to deal with the Jakaal. They are expecting the savages of the land to fight with guerilla tactics since thats pretty much all the Jakaal do. Also one spy observes the champion of Krovkom, Elvira, to be organizing a special team of striders but for one purpose he can’t discern.

The alliance call works out pretty well because Krovkom is threatening Svarga, the city with a gate. The templars and some of Akhetaten’s military agreed to come help out on this one. Though its a long trip. Altepetl agreed to go as well but they’re extremely weak lately after the Saldis conversion and their support will be minimal.

Obviously as the general section covered, Carmilla was killed by some snake cultist.

Perhaps a more unconventional paladin, she earned the rank through capability but isn’t of the heavily armored variety. She was already a trained warrior before entering the order and is actually not associated with the original gang of knights you’ve recruited…despite also coming from Divus. Seriously what is it with you and Divus people, is it like your fetish or…?

Emilia is more of the rogue type and specializes in urban operations and improvised solutions. While Kaja and Jericho are clearly battlefield knights, Emilia is more of the type you keep with you when you don’t want to be super obvious about it. Despite that she is an adept commander as are all paladins and has her own team composed of heavy infantry, calvalry, and more “scouts” like herself. This team is not as large as the full blown armies that Kaja has, but because of its variety she is good at adapting to the needs of the objective. What she does really well is fight in conditions where a typical commander would not have enough intel to comfortably operate since she herself is capable of operating as a scout and implying information.

Her black magic aspect is the moon, which really operates very similarly to any other light aspect but just colored differently. She shoots lasers. Her upper level of destructive potential can wipe out a house, but that will effectively be all she does for that fight. She prefers smaller bursts to use as a ranged tool, hence the lack of ranged weapon on her person despite being a scout/ranger/rogue who typically tend to have a bow or crossbow (stereotypically at least).

Personality wise she’s very relaxed and somewhat arrogant in her own capability. Often taking on things that might get out of hand, while her unique talent is to properly read a situation while lacking information that can also be her downfall if she guesses a key detail wrong. She is also unnecessarily cruel at times, the combination of her arrogance and mean streak often leaves her playing with her prey like a cat just for her own entertainment. She actually was one of the people who taught Alex while Alex was with the paladins training, since her methods lend well to Alex’s powers.

Lin Sun:

Well the basic summary of Oydis is that her bow is death aspected and she’s somewhat of a viking hunter. She’s super nice about the game of telephone in attempt to talk to her though. She’s actually a commander more so then a combatant though.

Ranks and artifacts are awkwardly shuffled around for maximum efficiency, though it is awkward to demote and strip someone of an artifact just because a new person showed up at the academy.

Kaisa is super powerful ice mage again with the blessing and coat.

The university mostly focuses on general education with a few specialist classes. As most people in the world are not multi-lingual and a lot of them are outright illiterate basic education is a major function and draw of the place. Higher education with the specialists currently is based on history, a few explore the concepts of magic and aspects in a basic course but those seeking to really delve into those must travel to learn from the cults of Shento or Isis.

You go for a walk around Hale’a. All is going fine until one day you wake up with a massive hangover in some golden palace. You can’t remember anything that happened the day before and you are forced to join Zaeed in a series of wild shenanigans to uncover the mystery of your night out.

Con Lai:

All that Naomi stuff from the general section.

Meanwhile your clever spies in Drakon continue to nap for intel delivery. The latest they have discovered about Drakon is that the nation isn’t actually united in its attempt to colonize the newly discovered land to the west. Each master is acting of its own accord in a bid for power, the lords typically don’t see a need to go as they already have power. While the nation is technically one united empire, colonization are currently private investments and ventures. Which is why the dragon masters back home aren’t exactly working in sync with each other. However, Vechnost is sending a team of “ambassadors” to meet Shenlong, its all the talk of the town as they try to learn more about the mysterious storm dragon of the new land.

River of dreams

Rena is a pretty popular governor. Even though people are sometimes iffy on the woman leadership thing in this world (since you and Song are gods it is still a bit abnormal) Rena is like, super awesome. And cheats given what her ability is.

Hanzo suggests that his particular house of Shinobi may be beset off dealing with the snake cult in Akhetaten, that would fall into their specialty after all. Though, with the current political situation looking risky, depends what future plans are. Though he will easily accept a blessing, one more tool in his arsenal after all.

Caine:

Well with some good timing on Nila’s part the hunting team did manage to take down Naomi, who didn’t seem to realize the bullets had sleep poison since she clearly intended to just tank it. Milenkosi performed the old snatch and grab to take her to the dream prison before anything else could go wrong. But that left your team to contend with a mysterious ally of hers. After half the environment was destroyed, Milenkosi came back to calm Ryner down before he ended up murdering some of the hunters.  An issue which came up since none of your followers had ever seen him before today.

Meanwhile the continuous adventures of Ilo Hae prove to be going alright, though she points out as a nation there is a lack of direction. While they do okay on their own hunting, staying alive, or just joining other teams in targeting various assets, some people are feeling a little out of place when in war time they have no passionate target to hunt. She advises beginning the hunt for the Kraken soon, or dragons, something to give them a sense of vigor. Even if doing so means probably a lot of them will die though.

Kikai Senso:

The robots almost left without everyone else to go fight dragons but eventually were stopped. They’re always eager for more death and war. So while waiting, all hail the spiky tree.

Revealed to be the high prophet of Apophis among the snake cult people. Serbes is exceptionally intelligent and could rival Nergal’s demons in their craft. He is incredibly elusive despite making grand appearances for his cult at secretive meetings and is now known to be the orchestrator behind dozens of diabolical plots.

With his powers as a high prophet he can cause chaotic and random effects that sometimes make no sense at all. What makes it particularly dangerous is that he seems to know what his power just did while everyone else is still trying to figure it out, giving him a tactical advantage.

A champion of Apophis, also a mystic. With the powers of a champion blessing she can materialize spirits like Sarnai, Locust, and Makaio could. The kicker is that all her spirits are venomous ethereal snakes reminiscent of the way Locust wielded his spirit swarm.

She is typically one of the major figurehead warriors and rarely appears as her particular job is more overt then the operations of the cult. However, if backed into a corner the cult will rely on her more dramatic abilities to protect them.

Technically his profession is assassin. Kaesch is capable of creating snakes and then commanding them. A feature he uses to kill people in the night since most homes are not snake proof when the snake is genuinely attempting to get in. In direct combat he can just throw snakes at people, not too scary compared to black mages but still fairly dangerous as one bite can be fatal.

A major figurehead for the cult, Lamia is originally a Thykenian that was brought into it after the takeover. Her lower body is that of a snake’s, and they found her like this before she was even a member of the cult. Turns out Thykenae already has some snakey people with Medusa and Lamia.

She was one of the many mistress’ of Zeus and when Hera took revenge by taking all her children away Lamia went mad with grief and started to eat the children of others. Eventually this unlocked her black mage aspect and she became all snakey. As with all morphed aspects, her physical strength and abilities are very high. Now blessed by Apophis her morphed physique is even stronger. She is also an oracle though doesn’t have overt uses for that like Nitetis does.

With Saldis’ recent return to Si Da after so long, the demon Samyaza has entered into her service and become her champion. As a demonic deathspeaker she has a pet undead dragon from that earlier attempt to attack Sthan Thi directly and wields ethereal death magic along her new bone army. As a major demon she has superior strength and physical capabilities as well.

Another hidden strider within the Jade Empire that Innokenti found. His weapon is blessed by Shenlong and is deceptive. It looks like a decorated log, its actually a giant cannon. Similar to the hellfire cannon’s on the Heretic, it fires magic not projectiles so there is no traditional barrel or anything. It happens to feature mostly electrical influences, such is the element of Shenlong.

Chin Hui is actually a really great guy though, he is more concerned with protecting his home then fighting on the offense. He is described as “jolly” by most.

One of the striders from the blood dragon’s domain. Elvira is wickedly powerful and holds rank similar to that of Dmitry, she’s the chosen personal champion of Krovkom. Along with the strider physique, she notably possesses the powers of hemomancy and is as refined in the art as Dracula was. No one other then Shento himself is going to match her skill or raw power in the art as it currently stands.

Her personality can be summed up as “evil bitch” and she loyally serves Krovkom. Judging by the fact he likes her, it can be assumed he will also be just as aggressive and cruel as her once he decides it is time to act.

Shentu Wo: 3064 Power, 3,136 Followers
Kikai Senso: 9,468 Power, 235 Followers, Next Form Progress: 28%
Lin Sun: 780 Power, 750 Followers
Con Lai: 5477 Power, 3, 858 Followers
Caine: 4307 Power, 1,761 Followers

General:

Eli attacked Solium (the Divus Capital) in the middle of the day. After his visit Naomi went insane and tried to kill Moses. She collapsed the entire grand cathedral and her fight with the other paladins wrecked a city block, but she was stopped by the other paladins though managed to get away. Eli’s appearance was surprisingly brief but the city has fallen into chaos as a result. Moses issued a statement that Eli is to be blamed for this, and Naomi will be remembered for what she did when she was truly herself. That being said, if Eli somehow controls her in a way that he cannot heal (as he already tried) then she has to be killed. She is one of the most dangerous people in Divus and now she’s serving Atlantis as far as they can tell.

Meanwhile back in Akhetaten’s expanded territory, the rebellious acts of terrorism continue. However, Akhetaten have engaged them in a dangerous game of espionage and uncovered Maliken’s influence. However, that didn’t mean much as knowing he’s here has only made the situation escalate in paranoia. No one knows what his power actually is yet, but being the chosen heir of Nergal can’t mean anything good.

The new dragon cult of Drakon that follows Shenlong have established a new high prophet of Shenlong since his own died when the Jakaal razed the Imperial Throne. That’ll be in the roster update, but taking on a strider high prophet has strengthened his ties to the Imperiya even if still unofficial since he hasn’t sworn loyalty to Vechnost yet, and the strider was found in his own country by Innokenti for him.

Si Da and the Drakon continue to clash, Drakon easily pushes the demon armies back but have regular losses against the heroes of Si Da. Van Djao outright snapped a dragon’s neck with his bare hands and has left some gruesome stories behind that make Drakon a little wary of just charging into Si Da’s home territory. Though for the most part, Si Da is back in its own borders.

The conflict turned out to be a valuable source of information about Van Djao though, people with high regeneration seem to survive his gaze. Dmitry was able to fully withstand it and keep fighting but was overpowered by Van Djao’s raw strength and combat skill. Due to how long Dmitry stood up to Van Djao it sparked interest and the Jade Empire started asking questions that agents of Carmilla and Con Lai’s realm managed to deduce information on. Spies report that Dmitry is actually not very high on the totem pole of striders as he merely works as a replaceable champion for Nazarius. The ones that work directly for lords like Innokenti are reportedly vastly more powerful then Dmitry.

Fortunately all that Drakon stuff is mostly focused on Si Da, but with Si Da retreating into its own land Drakon has acquire time to regroup and strategize further colonization efforts.

Meanwhile, across the wasteland of Taiyo and Divya, other Dragon Masters seem to be setting up their own little colony outposts that are unassociated with Nazarius. Since Taiyo was evacuating and Divya was destroyed there isn’t that much resistance but Svarga is currently under threat by Krovkom who demands submission to him. A small group of vampires seemed to have joined him although they were rogue already so its not a significant loss.

The spy network reports that Krovkom, like Nazarius, serves a dragon lord of similar aspect. These dragon lords are still back at the Drakon mainland watching over their own respective kingdoms while the young masters travel to the new world in search of their own fortunes. Though Krovkom has definitely come to see about this whole beacon thing the blood aspects can all sense.

Meanwhile Altepetl has become just a little more integrated into Hale’a and vice versa. Though under Song Yi’s “don’t you dare” gaze they put down the dark magic they’ve been exploring since not only did Saldis leave but it just keeps making all kinds of other problems. Isis’ explains her phase in exploring it didn’t go well and that they should probably stop before they get too deep like she did and unlike her, a god of magic, its likely they wouldn’t be able to escape once the powers behind it started getting greedy.

In all things are actually going pretty well for you guys with consideration to the last few clusterfucks you got into. I mean sure shit is happening all over the world but locally things are pretty sweet right now.

Also roster updates!

Replacing Naomi, Saint Joan immediately became Paladin #1. She was originally a member of the templars as one of the high commanders but with the sudden emergency to replace Naomi she was given the blessings of a paladin and relieved of her command in the templars. Her weapon blessing lets her bring the wrath of heaven to wherever she wants. She can summon angels anywhere at any time. Though it specifically has to be angels, other paladins and templars don’t appear to work and she doesn’t seem to be able to send them back home quickly. Though they are authentic, she can summon Anahita or Uriel for example.

Her aspect blessing lets her act in similar fashion to a war flag’s banner. But the power of it is determined by the number of people present not her own abilities. Convenient that she can summon people.

I suspect no one remembers her story from Doi Cho Len so here we go. Her grandfather was a Lengdonian who did not complete the traditional rite of climbing the mountain alone and instead emigrated far to the west in shame and settled down in Akhetaten. His son would later go on to the west and settle down in Divus where he met Tena’s mother.

Tena herself wasn’t of noble enough birth to get much attention in Divus and chose to travel back east to Doi Cho Len when the revelations of the black pantheon happened. She has the genetics of  Lengdonian though her family is two generations removed from the culture. However, at the age of thirty two she made it to the top of Yaosai by herself just to claim that she passed the ancient Lengdonian ritual. Sure Lengdon was already dead at this point, but she did it because she could. Later she’d go hang out with Lin Sun. She’s one of those who are greatly inspired by Song Yi but she liked the whole Aetas preservation creed thing and Song Yi is kind of inaccessible now days. So she’s Aetas now.

Her black magic aspect is war and she has the power to become part of the field of battle. Because of this she can not only perceive anything anyone under her command can, but she can give people the will to act how she wants them to without having to even talk to them. She is a dangerous commander with this power of mass perception and command during battle and as the former Vithanyalai professor of war she knows how to exploit this to its fullest. However, she is generally an educator and hasn’t been sent to actual war in a very long time. She is the sole survivor of Doi Cho Len’s destruction because her ability let her see it happening and avoid the things that killed everyone else around her.

Yeah her entry is long as she’s one of the first characters and has a full page in the pdf about her.

I suppose we might as well actually acknowledge him now then. Sheridan is one of Carmilla’s spies and travels the world extracting information and seducing everything in his path on accident. The Glamor vampires are almost all made by Carmilla and she tends to pick the good looking sort to get close to, Sheridan was a pretty obvious choice for her.

Like all glamor vampires he can hypnotically control people who look directly into his eyes if he can hold their focus. He isn’t as powerful as Carmilla who can control everyone around her, but its effective for intel gathering. He also has the strength, regeneration, and speed you would expect of a vampire even of the glamor line.

He’s back, with Raijin’s cult in a mess thanks to his time away and Ryujin dead Ishimoto was adopted by Raijin to be the new high prophet. With the sword of Hayashi that the Aetas returned, Ishimoto now has the exact same powers that Hayashi did, even if he isn’t as good at performing the trick yet or exploiting the electrical powers to its fullest yet.

New high prophet for Zaeed. We all know how he picked her and why he picked her and what her abilities are now. Moving right along.

Freyja found a new friend. She’s a viking type obviously, and she has the power of a death aspect bow. Unlike Astrid, Oydis is not a black mage and only has the aspect abilities from Freyja’s blessing. So she’s a bit weak in comparison to others. She’s super friendly though.

His great great grandpa was a famous warrior and ever since then everyone in the family line has been exceptional in the field of battle. Innokenti’s discovery that they have a dragon aspect family line explains that.

Anyone who recognizes his family name trembles in fear at the mere mention of him, and though he is a young warrior who simply travels the land, his skills exceed hardened veterans. With the help of Krovkom, Lu’s full potential was realized. Blessed by Shenlong, Lu Tao is a strider of the storm. He can control lightning, wind, and rain in equal measure. While not as powerful as Fujin or Raijin in their specific areas, Lu Tao has never needed super powers to destroy his enemies before. So now its just a bonus at this point.

Someone left Kikai, Lo’c, and Isis alone for too long and mad science occurred at the whim of Kikai’s latest desires. Umetsu is the only jinko of its kind and its chassis cannot be replicated, but its metal body is self repairing as if it were flesh. Granted it takes awhile sometimes, also its core is only a vessel unlike the typical Jinko.

This may have been too successful, no one’s entirely sure if it can be killed. However, it is a little sluggish and the wielder of this power seems a bit iffy sometimes but hey, science bitches.

Likely more to come later on, still working out some more for various groups. Hopefully I finish the stories of lore for next update too.

Shento:

Snake cult tabs: Joseph Sheridan has gotten in so deep he’s found influences by Asmodaeus and Nergal at play. This revelation has been more of a hindrance then anything else, because now Joseph is engaged in a murderous game of espionage with the demons. THE GAME IS AFOOT!

Anna’s attempts to harass the Drakon don’t go well. Mostly because no one else competent enough is with her. The other Goethe’s aren’t as strong as her and the striders number in the hundreds. With their recent defensive position setting in after encountering both the Jakaal and Atlanteans there aren’t very many opportunities to pick off stragglers. Mostly because the types who straggle already met the Jakaal and gave Vo Kim his reputation. Ever since then they’ve been in much tighter formation around their outposts and move in larger numbers, as well as on dragons.

The anti dragon volley ballista design is easy enough to come up with just by handing it off to the RFC department. The problem comes in production. With Con Lai’s submarine project, the Jinko production, the building of Kagayakashi, and Isis’ mad science with electricity the city of Lo’c is already overworked. Making huge amounts of these anti dragon weapons would take a massive amount of manpower and material that just isn’t available beyond the prototype that was made unless other projects are canceled (as they’re already all slowing each other down).

The investigative team ends up enlisting the help of Baron Samedi from El Dorado to come and see about this dark storm over Doi Cho Len. This team didn’t take long to immediately find bad news. The storm and rains are concealing more Drakon forces and an outpost, they don’t seem to mind the storm at all and if anything are studying it themselves. There is a port on the eastern side that was invisible due to the storm until a closer look was taken, but this is the actual primary landing point of the Drakon. The Jade colony is simply for those who are interested in Shenlong as a new master and Nazarius’ forces. Samedi’s investigation of the storm itself proves it to be what you would expect, some bad juju. Its dark magic and even Fujin can’t affect it, the storm just won’t go away and he’s not sure if its a dragon or something else, but there’s something in there that no one on the scout team is willing to look deeper into. Samedi says Eli might not be the only thing that came with Lin Sun.

The inquisitors aren’t doing well, sometimes they settle things well enough but two of their teams have been eaten by the jungle’s residents after being called to solve some problem that apparently the people resolved on their own. And the winners of that resolution ate the inquisitors too.

Lin Sun:

The hunt for a knowledge aspect is taking longer then expected, the aspect is a little rare as most people who have it just get eaten by people with more combat Savvy ones. Results pending next week’s update roll.

It turns out with your power set you can actually learn interesting things from Raijin because his style exploits that he’s lightning fast. You have ways to apply such techniques yourself.

Kaisa’s vacation is actually spent in Shahira instead of the blood jungles. With the ability to summon ice in the desert, she’s very popular there and seems to take amusement in that.

The Thyme Flamer flame is under construction as demanded. It actually is taking longer then expected because your underground city is suspended from the ceiling and Song Yi is off doing something else not terraforming so a bunch of guys with chisels have to spend some time on this one.

Con Lai:

Spy Report: Problem with building the door is the slaves aren’t really trusted with construction stuff, mostly because they’re weak and flimsy compared to striders and take forever to build anything, but because dream doors have to be rather sturdy its hard to get the stuff together for this without arousing suspicion. Work in progress is also finding a location for it.

After some inquisitive questions they’ve determined that Drakon are pretty familiar with spirits, Dragon Shaman’s went to the Jade Empire to confirm the existence of Shenlong who in their nation has become known as the spirit dragon and sparked a revolution of mysticism within their culture as more go to see the invisible dragon in the sky. They are not particularly used to acknowledging smaller spirits though, the ones in trees, bugs, and rocks for example. While they can work with larger more powerful ones, they lack Halea’s mystical ability in mass acknowledgement of smaller spirits. That kind of intricate mysticism often requires a lifetime of dedication since communication with non-verbal spirits is difficult and mostly based around empathy on both sides.

As for how striders recognize each other, they seem to all innately just be able to tell. Dragons can sense other dragons it appears. This is why even colossal dragon lords can tell a strider from a regular human even though they’re the size of ants to him. Similar to how Tyrant Vampires can detect and find any other vampire bloodline.

The submarines have been under constant development, and with the last mad science breakthrough of Isis progress is going along. However, the process is still slow given the sheer volume of tech work people want from Lo’c all the time.

Jin and Malati’s journey to Akhetaten to team up with Sheridan has gotten him involved in a very peculiar sort of adventure. While its out of the normal gimmick for the naval experts, Malati’s power is useful in this regard and Jin himself is of course a master spy.

Rena reports a noticeable increase in powerbase and followers after all this dragon crap happened. The dream PR campaign hits pretty hard when a pilgrimage via boat leads to a dream realm where you don’t get eaten by dragons.

Caine:

Yes you can make a shield on your arm, but its not terribly effective as its still your arm. So it kind of hurts still.

In regards to Otoroshi’s remain, Divus offers to let you have it if you bring them Naomi. At this point they’ll accept alive or dead, whatever happened to her she is a phenomenal danger to just about everyone if she becomes another of Eli’s prophets.

The adventures of the Snake Cult hunters isn’t terribly great for trophy gathering. At least not yet. However, Nila seems to excel at this kind of work in particular. Being a bounty hunter from Svarga, she’s quite effective at hunting down people and ultimately eliminating them. She has the sanctions from Akhetaten to do so as well given that the snake cult is kind of a problem.

The issue with the Artemis elite recruitment program thus far is there aren’t many naval people in the hunting nation. There are some notable sea monster hunters but they don’t quite number enough to crew a ship this large or the supporting fleet you have planned since Con Lai has absorbed a huge amount of the naval interests in the nation. Its functional enough to sail but not fully staffed quite yet nor is the crew fully trained.