On the ground, the Valdir and Azilath have been destroyed by Kanika and her Tarrasque. The Tarrasque is now moving on towards Kar’Soluth territories. Orbital observation confirms it still possesses the abilities it once had in life. Firing upon it is more likely to harm the attacker than the target as it has the ability to reflect magic and shows no sign of damage from physical attacks. After the death of Azilath and the Valdir swarm, we lost track of Kanika and where she might be going next.

In Beldobaan our forces managed to defeat Azarov. However, the fighting took a turn for the worse when Sakhessa was brought in via portal along with her “Golden Legion”. Our troops augmented with Nelta technology are doing better, but Solian shields do nothing to stop their weapons. Even with the augmented shields prepared for this situation, her army are all undead golems covered in rather advanced super heavy armor similar to the EX soldiers. Our forces have been pushed to the base they took earlier in the fighting near one of the entrances to Beldobaan since Azarov, Reika, and Sakhessa keep posing significant problems in erratic positions around the battlefield. The 4th mech, madhammer, and 9th that were fighting with Sarghess are now fighting with Sakhessa’s forces while Sarghess left via portal once again to Jaal’Darya territory to combat our forces there once again.

Sarghess returned to Jaal’Darya when we tried to send the 8th back there. Though this time Decaelys is with them. We’re not sure what happened to them, but we’ve lost all contact with the 8th. Given what we know of Decaelys’ abilities, it is possible they’re still alive but in an isolated dimension. It’s also possible they’re all dead.

The fighting on the Cradle has seen further loss of control over the ship for the Voidforged due to Deinuu’s presence. With the Iron Cradle abandoning several sections to get rid of Deinuu, its firepower has diminished significantly. We still possess fleet superiority but we calculate that advantage will soon fade as Agallias continues to take ships down from the planet’s surface. However, Madhammer is still fighting in the detached sections of the Cradle. They have a general majority over the pirate boarders but the ship is so large that it is being fought in small skirmishes. Right now their priority has become preventing the escape of Deinuu or Nila so they do not get back to the rest of the Cradle.

Eleazor actually did better than even Chevalier against the cradle’s boarders but still fell victim to Nila.

The 5th mech cavalry made it to the borders of Sarghess territory and have been attacking Sarghess cities though progress is slow and half of their forces have been lost to Agallias so far.

Vasia was on standby for dealing with the RABE s hip once the Nomads had taken it but Director Tyne’s orders were for them to re-enter the fleet battle with it to see what chaos might result from it. So she’s still just on standby.

Sakhessa appeared at Beldobaan. Vairatoa and Selah are both dead. We thought Eerihild was dead, but after four hours of being dead she got back up somehow.

In contacting the Shetou leadership, they’re in a sort of state of shock upon seeing the return of the Tarrasque and how it managed to wipe out the Valdir swarm which was threatening to overtake the whole planet. Currently their hail mary is to stall for time before Kanika officially controls Sol and retreating Auni Kuu to a classified location to hopefully learn enough about necrocarnum before the war is over to deal with both the Tarrasque and Kanika. Though in the meantime they aren’t sure what to do about the other Phantoms. Everyone is stretched well past their limits. It would have taken a full fleet and army just to stop Agallias and he’s just destroying entire armies and ships with no one focusing on him at all because there are too many other problems happening at the same time. Keeping in mind this entire combined assault between the Federation, Shetou, and to some extent Valdir, was all just to target effectively one phantom, Yasrena. Then the rest began to attack and Kanika’s war is now beginning.

Alnae is gone, the Demon Kingdom don’t want a war with the Hassani and neither do the Abyssals. Now the shades patron god is Yasrena, Necrosi is largely either uninvolved or siding with whatever Sakhessa wants. While the Fae are hanging around Jamalia they aren’t exactly interested in joining a system-wide war on Thenica. Jydoq is fighting Kar’Soluth but they aren’t exactly organized against the phantoms and will probably abandon the fight as soon as they get their own planet under control. The vampire clans are largely being pushed towards siding with the Hassani because of the attack on Beldobaan and that includes the Desoir and De’Rex families. We were winning against Kar’Soluth, who represents one of the biggest power bases of the Phantoms. Shetou is aware that they either need to get everyone together or they need to kill Kanika and hope the power vacuum causes an internal collapse once Sakhessa and Asmodan start a schism.

In short, we’re outgunned by an order of magnitude. All of this fighting thus far has just been Yasrena’s assets with a showing from Faelyn who is middle management under Kanika.  So Shetou’s plan is to scramble desperately for time to deal with each of the phantom menaces one after the other, but they admit its not a good plan. They are also currently trying to convince the Demon Kingdom and Abyssals to come help on the basis that once Kanika becomes the Empress of Zonaricht-Sol they can’t rely on Alnae and Shetou, which are already both fucked, to keep the balance of things anymore. They have made some efforts trying to get Valdir fully involved and to recall Indal but they’re not having much luck on that front. The Silnian civil war is far bigger than the solian war.

In related news, Yasrena reports that Valencia was contacted by Laesaaria though that it didn’t go the way they had hoped. Despite Valencia’s notorious war-deciding economic dominance over Sol, it sort of lacks punch when dealing with a titan just shooting ships out of orbit. It’s not like he needs money to do that. Atop of that, it is likely that Valencia has already figured out that as the galactic awareness of Sol expands, Sakhessa is going to be the one to be friends with.

So that’s what Shetou is up to. We’ve been setting up the necessary equipment to move Eden out of her comfy spot, though its a bit of work overall. Things are going smoothly on that front though.

We built a new Jamalia. The elves are still scattered all over Enohas and so are the Fae that originally came through when we first opened the portal but hopefully they get the message soon. Before the forest becomes a fae forest.

Oh that reminds me, the Elementals haven’t shown up to Thenica yet but Mahuea pointed out that the Tarrasque is an issue just as it was back in the olden days. Because it reflects magical damage, if one of the Archons show up there is a chance that thing causes them to blow themselves up. Historically the creature just slept a lot and the best course of action was to leave it alone. Also in case you were curious, it was finally killed in the Era of the Purge from being poisoned in its sleep by the old Heroes Guild. That might not work against a lich variation though. Mahuea currently suspects that necrocarnum methods should be able to put it down but the problem is that means engaging the Tarrasque in melee combat and it is often near Kanika who is liable to defeat any other necrocarnate. He said he wants to send some agents to the far side of the galaxy to inquire about the Lakaaj and any other galactic incarnum based civilizations or life forms but needs a ship for said agents from us because he doesn’t have shipyards or a regularly functioning economy to buy things with.

The Nomads have successfully taken the RABE ship from the Iron Cradle after a chaotic and daring assault on the ship section. While the plan may have been to fly it of and cause some trouble in the fleet battle, they instead towed it out and used it as a flail. Probably should have been more specific. Though they report part of the problem is they can’t control it at all. It doesn’t use traditional Sol computer systems and psi crystals. It is an exerlus ship and likely is not intended to be piloted by an organic. We would need a special machine to interface with it that we could interface with to pilot it. Current suspicions are that only an exerlus or selona cyborg can control it, since we know that Nila has become one as well. Might be a way for the voidforged to do something with it but in the middle of a war is not the time to push buttons and see if we can safely get it to accelerate or turn left.

However, this was all possible likely because Nila and Deinuu weren’t there to defend the ship, neither were most of the boarding pirates and forces. The fight back on the Cradle is also still getting wildly out of hand.

As for Kennae, not so much with the murder padawans. He teaches a lot of restraint. Honestly the best tracker in the federation to find this assassin is…well the people we already have on it. We have made some progress in finding one of it again, but that encounter once again did not go well but did verify that there are multiple. Whether or not they behave independently or as a part of a whole is still unknown.

The fighting on Jydoq isn’t helping though as a lot of traditional security is down anyways from other issues. It is also hard to qualify suspicious behavior when everyone is trying to murder each other at the same time. At least the fighting here is going favorably for the Federation, most Kar’Soluth forces are diverted to Thenica. The open conflict Madhammer is engaged in is going largely unresponded to here on Jydoq. Though from the sounds of these reports, Thenica is not going nearly as well.

As for the plagues on the flotilla, they are largely contained to individual ships though those ships are effectively lost. We can’t send anyone into or out of them at the moment and the inhabitants are not doing well. Though given how many ships make up the flotilla, this is a relatively minor problem compared to what is happening in Moncayo and Zenaka where millions are dying.Though we will still need to either find some way to handle these plagues or just drop the ships into a star. We can wait for everyone aboard to die of the plague first though if it eases everyone’s collective consciences though.

Kaja points out he fought in the last 3 apocalypses and “ya’ll need to get your shit together”. Back in his day all he had was a dragonborn and a kobold with a grenade launcher. And they had to share that kobold. So he’s still retired.

As for the ongoing plagues, it appears the Hassani are very invested in preventing VSEC from taking the Jaal’Darya capital. Whether or not it even has the answers we need is unknown. We do know that they are sneaking through the portals disguised as ‘not Jaal’Darya’ members and we have intercepted a good few but there are lot of them. It is also likely that several locations were previously infiltrated before the war even began just to keep an eye on us. While meaningful medical advances have been made to slow or even vaccinate some of the plagues, every time we do another one just pops up. It isn’t a single crafted super disease, its dozens of different ones that all use different methods. In order to stop them in its entirety we need some way to find all of Jaal’Darya’s agents, which might come from taking their capital and leadership for interrogation. Even with Eden’s help curing some of them, more just keep appearing.

Chevalier fought valiantly but as it turns out, this Nila bitch is really dangerous. She took him down and Deinuu got Sacha. Adrienne kidnapped you and forced you to abandon ship through the portal to Jamalia. We’d have gone to Adelaide but Governor Laura over there has turned them all off. We discovered one very important thing, the Mummy Rot affects warforged. Since it infects mana itself, which is how it travels through mediums other than biological fluids and coughs, it can infect a voidforged as well. Including you and me. We don’t know if Chevalier and Sacha’s cores can be recovered, along with Vanessa and Sylvaine’s. Until the ship is secure its best we not be in the warpath of that giant mummy that is punching everyone.

Problem two, the rot can infect the ship itself. Which is why we had to evacuate rather than rely on things such as doors and airlocks to keep it contained. The Iron Cradle is experiencing mass system failures in areas where Deinuu attacked, sort of similar to as if they lost power. I’m told by Lancaster’s robot illusory projection assistant that this power can be diverted to the mummy who owns the rot. Which might be how he’s becoming harder and harder to stop in those hallways.

The crew forcefully ejected the chunks of the ship that are infected and containing pirates for now to buy time but now they’re sitting in orbit around Thenica in multiple pieces while being actively fired upon by opposing fleets. We still maintain fleet superiority in orbit but things are falling apart on the ground and most problematically, Agallias is just taking ships out of space over and over again. There also isn’t much to do with this naval position since the major battle is either underground in Beldobaan or is a giant monster of myth and legend that is immune to even the largest guns we have.