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 Her powers have not been revoked, which lends credibility to the concept that she is correct and something fishy is afoot.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.