Crisis Cycles

And the war rages on, with terrifying surprises. The first was the fact that the dwarves of Gildrak and Rotpah, with the aid of the ghouls and Khallow Deep Ships, found an alternate path to the moon through the Deep Red. The Secret Army of spies of the Vrond has managed to warn the Ground Army of the Moon about these kinds of dastardly diggings, but they weren't ready for the dwarves setting up Prefab Fortresses in matters of hours: the Ground Army who had orders to pour through any open portals, were stalled. The dwarven defenses were perfect, unassailable, and worth every penny that was poured in them. Ghouls were bringing their giant worms through their portal, ready to unleash them on the moon...

Karkosa, Sogosha and Shangal was completely devastated by the falling debris. Their armies all had to retreat to put out the fires of the burning jungle.

As Aculadray was travelling in his shiny new mech, along with his expensive Face Force, a shining green beam of light appeared, and the great ghost Arthuryay arrived, pointing at him, and revealing how he has betrayed all Orckind by blowing up the space elevator, to get a bargaining chip with the Vrond. And worst of all: he cheated at the Wrestleball game! And with a mighty cleave, Aculadray's mech was split in two, and Aculadray fled the scene. Arthuyay took control, in the name of the listeners, and soon arrived to provide aid to the herder orcs, who have been in a stalemate with the Tehn Trmoopers. Angered by this treachery, their forces swelled with orcish might, and pushed back the Tehn to their landing site.

The Hoak launched an attacked on the Copperites, whose airports were damaged by Orokkon betrayers (well, from their POV, they were just being pragmatic). However, the Copperites, thanks to the eagle eyes of the Khallow advisors, managed to mount some Alchemical Lasers in time, aiming them at the sky, beating back the encroaching Hoaks, before the aerial ambush got fully in range.

The Njad rabbits were waiting in Orokkon for something. Soon, it arrived: the boom of Nishikoon's volcano. They were full of joy!

The Sky Army was performing heavy bombardment of Tuvarith, while the Marv were taking over the hinterlands, guarding their rear. Tuvarith was soon a smoking ruin, and the once proud  elven villagers quickly capitulated to the space lizards. But at the very same moment, the Tugad airships managed to slip through all Marv forces, and began blasting the Sky Army to shreds, with their great flying galleon's broadside's. How the tables turn! But on the other hand, the Krokar and Gadesu&Ranitezan ground forces were unable to break through the Marv fortifications... They were almost slaughtered by the heavy saurine weapons, but with the power of gritting their teeth (teeth existing or not), and the wise words of the Khallow, they managed to dig in...

As they have decimated their enemies, the very angry Shamir and Enkre hold forces were on their way, albeit still far away.

And as all this was going on a great cry rose from the mountains: Synodia's... A great explosion broke out on the peak, and a great ball of light rose: the Usurper stolen the power of the immortal empress, becoming both the permanence, and the shifting of the moon itself. As the villain flew high, it merged with the moon, whose features began to shift, slowly becoming completely smooth... Many palaces and scrapheaps were eliminated, including the one with the leader of the Vrond. Last words she heard were "I have become a humble light in the sky, and as promised, you won't see me again"...


[End of war: part 1]

The war of the Copperites continues, with the Njad rabbits joining the fray, teaming up with the Hoak's. Together, they completely decimated the Copperite defenses, along with the Khallow ships to their aid. With this, the desolate coast is in control of the Moon.

But on the contrary, the Sky army is all but destroyed by Tugad, even if the Marv forces still managed to hold off the combined ground troops. Tuvarith is a smoking ruin though.

Despite the Shamir and Enkre hold finally arriving, and despite the biggest anger of the orcs, the Tehn are still holding out at their landing site, which they have turned into a fortification. And somehow, Arthuryay has vanished.

Up in the moon, the terrified dwarven and ghoul forces retreat into the deep red, but Queen Votu has an idea. She will channel the deep red into the moon itself, capturing, constraining, banishing the spirit, anything! As she pours her magic, and centuries of knowledge into her deep worms, who bite into the shifting surface, she starts to shift the world, but the moon fights back. Really, what was she thinking? But no... could it be? The great spirit king, Arhuryay was suddenly by her side, offering his power, at a terrible price: the fire of protection would certainly burn her too. She agreed. Together, they started to purge the moon of its infection, and with a great flash, the connection between the moon and the deep red was gone, along with Votu. But as she burned, so did the moon spirit, becoming a husk of its former self, powerless. The moon has become charred in many places, and many moon dwellers have survived, but the way down the deep was now sealed, forever. And with this great deed, Arthuryay faded away too, but not before throwing his sword at the earth.

The returning ghoul and dwarf armies helped destroying the Tehn, and together, the Marv forces were wiped out too. Exhaustion ended the war: the Plague Plateu and its territories survived, at a terrible price. The Moon people took over the Desolate Coast, likewise, paying a terrible price. This was marched into the annals of history as the war of the Greatest Crisis.

And then Aculadray, fleeing into the Deep Red, hiding in a cave yelled "Hahaa! I am invincible!", which was bad timing, as a spirit sword fell on him.

Will the Desolate Coast be freed again? Will the Moon people get back to the moon? Will the Commonwealth flourish, forever combined as siblings in arms? Did Synodia survive?

Centuries pass... in two hundred years, a new era was ushered in. The era of droplet, alignment, assault, helicopter, flatten and comtemporary.

How do you think that the world has changed by the time of this era? Reply with your thoughts...


[The End... thanks for playing...]

The Khallow are shocked and saddened by the loss of their homeland (again). Many of their people managed to escape on airships, but their spirit was broken, divided by the horrors of war. The divisions of Khallow society widen until their entire people splits in two:

The Song Khallow double down on their ways of peace and friendship. They become focused on pacifism, becoming vegetarians as a whole, and take professions as entertainers, doctors, and in general focus on helping others. The Song Khallow hate conflict and if they cannot mediate, they will leave the area.

Meanwhile, the Storm Khallow are those who reject the old ways. They blame the loss of their homeland on the Grand Emcee's peaceful nature, and curse the Commonwealth for failing to protect the Desolate Coast. They become fiercesom sky pirates, raiding anyone from their flying fortresses. The Storm Khallow swear that one day, they will reconquer their homeland and return there in glory.

The Shangal would never be the same after the event they henceforth called 'Stalkfall' - the damage wrought was a blow to the unity of the many species and factions, which would take hundreds of years to recover, even as the Council would continue to organise the war effort as best it could. Points of disagreement often revolved around the power of the aerial Wingborn over the rest of society as the importance of Blushes grew while the surface of the Jungle recovered.

Shangal was adamant that the lunar refugees return control of the conquered lands to their original holders, in exchange for resettlement elsewhere in the world. Resentment and bitterness at how their peaceful attempts at contact were treated would take a long time to heal, just as the jungle did.

Copperite insistence on arming the skystalk on weapons heightened suspicions for a few years, though many groups would later admit that more envoys should have been sent to the moon before such an ambitious project and that leaving it unarmed was thus unwise. The Shangal bonded with the Khallow and Halflings over their mutual experiences of loss and destruction. Tensions with Sogosha, the remnants of the old Republic and Orcs (especially when the treachery was eventually discovered decades later) would continue, especially as the crisis faded and the importance of the Crisis Council began to fade.

The Crisis Council itself eventually reformed into a more permanent body, but with limited power and more as a diplomatic meeting-ground than anything else... until another Crisis would emerge to threaten the world.

The disaster that consumed the moon left countless casualties in its wake. The arch-traitor Usurper Beast dealt horrible destruction to the new rulers, just as he did the old, and palaces and fortresses alike were consumed by the sweeping fire and nothingness. Cut off from the Deep Red, scoured and scorched, the survivors of the moon turned once more upon each other and the trapped dwarves and ghouls who were not able to retreat in time. Destruction and ruination left little of the lunar spacefaring infrastructure intact, and for a time, the moon was cut off from the surface-folk completely.

Upon the surface, lunar survivors congregated in the Desolate Coast of the far west. There, a new order was built by the surviving soldiers and officers of the combined lunar armies. Tyranny and oppression reigned for some years, but the lunar soldiers, though technologically superior and able to repair their equipment with any old scrap, were vastly outnumbered by the locals and distrusted each other as much as they distrusted the surfacers. Meanwhile, the Orokkon worked pragmatically with whoever they could to improve their own standing, aligning with the Copperites at times and throwing them under the bus at others, and taught themselves the intricacies of lunar technology so that they would once again regain their own advantage. The Copperites, for their part, tried to stand tall in spite of their new masters, and the rebel assaults on the Empire's bases - though unable to topple the lunar overlords in one swoop - were too numerous to ignore. This slow war won the Copperites (and the Orokkon who pragmatically threw in with them sometimes) many concessions, eventually completely breaking down the distinction between the rulers and the ruled.

A century of immersion in surface culture led to the lunar folk finding out more about how they used to live under Noble Synodia, before the Usurper Beast and before the Penumbra Pact, and many yearned to return to those utopian days, when all lunar species worked together in harmony. As the second century reached its end, it was actually being led by an Orokkon noble, descended from the khan, who organized its transition into a more egalitarian federal republic; the United Cities of the Desolate Coast. Though the wounds of the past still ache, and the landscape still bears the poisoned scars of the invasion, generations have passed, and some on both sides have come to forgive their onetime enemies - though only time will tell if enough can find this forgiveness to have this new republic last.

Of those lunar soldiers stranded in the Plague Plateau, they had few places to escape to. They scattered to the four winds, joining Orcish herder bands who would not ask their origins, or throwing down their arms to take sanctuary with the Gadesu and Ranitezia, fleeing into the secret places of the jungle to align with the Shangal, or even going further afield in search of a place to call home. Many ended up seeking out their long-lost brethren in the mountains, taking their broken ships to the Bastion, both lunar remnants now alike in being betrayed and made leaderless by the Usurper. Though trust was hard to come by after the short-but-bloody war, the two sides ended up uniting in the goal of finally repairing the Bastion, and maybe one day taking it back to the stars, to travel further than any had traveled before.

Eventually, contact was reestablished with the moon by way of new spacefaring gyrocopters, and this time it was far more guarded and heavily armed, in case of a new assault. But the moon they found was not the moon they'd fought generations ago. The collapse of the seven factions had left the moon a patchwork mess of technologically-backwards petty kingdoms ruling the flattened surface. A united dwarven-ghoulish remnant ruled one of the great flats, defending themselves in dwarf-delved fortresses armed with ghoulish defenses. The dwarf-ghoul remnant was more than happy to open up trade with the surface, welcoming the spacefarers to their adopted home. Many lunar monarchs refused to follow suit, isolating themselves from the surface out of a fear of repeating the past. Unlike their brethren who had been trapped on the surface, they'd had limited opportunities to interact with and normalize their opinion of surface folk, and many would go on to lead ill-fated assaults on surfacer explorers and trade caravans. But now the power and technology was aligned with the surface countries, able to easily slap down any petty moon monarchs who moved against them. But as of the bicentennial of the end of the war, they have yet to make a move...