SirNitram wrote:I'm fine with it. Want I should post my part of the Beginning of the End in the game thread, or just let it be revealed here?
I'll just go through it here. It gets a little long and convoluted, but the payoff is worth it
The Big Secret
or
The Axis of Evil
We'll just start with the kicker and get to the explanation after. *ahem* The Overseer is still alive, and you have all been dancing like puppets on our strings since the Rape of Terra.
Item one is that the actual ruler of the Realm of the Blood King is Basil, as many of you may have guessed. He is the oldest and most powerful of vampires, approaching or more probably attaining the status of D&D godhood (there was more character development that I was going to go into, viz. the fact that he became immortal by simply having too much willpower to let himself die, and then killing the god of death when he came to collect). Being personal witness to the Rape of Terra, he saw an opportunity.
The Overseer was, clearly, a creature of immense power and potential. It was insane and very violent, but it's primary problem was that it considered all "warmlife" a threat. This presented an advantage, because the Vampires were certainly not alive and thus had the unique ability to treat with the Overseer. The machine-mind had hitherto been universally persecuted, attacked, and used, and now it was being put on the run and would eventually be destroyed. The opportunity that Basil saw was that by
saving the Overseer from it's inevitable destruction, he would enter its confidence and become it's only ally in the lonely universe.
In exchange for minor recompense (a design for carriers and drone fighters which were produced just in time for this final war) the Vampires sent material aid and endeavored to find a way for the Overseer to strike back and recover its fortunes. In the pursuit of this goal, Basil sold magical assistance to the Ousters in exchange for shipyard machinery. This machinery was immediately shipped to Overseer space, where it was discovered by the Krell.
[OOC: The plan at this stage was to blackmail Thirdfain; either he would enter our secret alliance or Nitram would make sure that further evidence of Ouster aid to the Overseer would be discovered, and the Ousters would be destroyed just like the Arcane. When Thirdfain figured out what was happening to him, he was actually so impressed that he joined willingly . . . we then developed the Elanie "subplot" into a major story element.]
Around this time, of course, you recall that the Arcane Empire was destroyed for aiding the Overseer. The evidence for this was fabricated by the Vampires and the Machines for this very purpose, though of course we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The Overseer feared magic and wanted them gone, and Basil knew that the only beings in the universe wise enough to spot his plans and strong enough to kill him were the Mages. So, he quit the secret defensive alliance he had with the mages, and they were set up for a fall. Karsus was executed shortly thereafter, because he was a threat to the integrity of the plan, and because Basil had previously sworn revenge against him (another story entirely).
This was a major victory, but we still had the problem of saving the Overseer from destruction. This actually proved to be exceedingly simple, as the Monacorans had been unwise enough to trust the task to mercenaries. We simply outbid them and the Krell entered our camp, secretly. You may have noticed the strange changes in the behavior of the Adar Krell character. The Machines now converted a number of their cyborgs to the purpose of impersonating an independent power, the Etern (in a particularly devious move, the Etern actually believed themselves to be free people, so that there was no possibility of them ever giving the plan away). With significant material aid from their new allies, they set about the task of rebuilding their armed forces. The alliance at this point was called the Axis of Evil or the Four Faces.
At this point we had a little bit of time to play with. We had to wait until the Overseer was prepared to participate in a military action, which would take quite a while. We filled up this space by maneuvering the Unification and UPA alliances closer to a conflict; inserting Elanie into the control position over the Ousters; and maneuvering the Ousters into a close "cooperation" with the Unification.
Eventually, of course, Elanie triggered the war with the UPA. The Unification was the stronger alliance, especially with the aid of the Ousters and Krell, but it was not so much stronger that it would not take an exhausting fight to win victory. The plan was for the Ousters to ensure that they did not take too many losses during this war--they were accomplishing this by concentrating their efforts in a slow and careful fashion against the White Suns Commonwealth, whereas the rest of the Unification participated in a headlong rush for territorial aggrandizement.
You may recall that the Ousters repeatedly made reference to their terms of peace, whereby they would kill 6,000,000 citizens and destroy installations of equal value--an eye for an eye, and all that. What you didn't know was that they fully intended to stick by those statements and would have displayed quite righteous indignation as the Unification pressed ahead against the UPA. They would be
so indignant, in fact, that they would leave the alliance, sign a
casus belli ante bellum peace with the UPA, and then wait until the diminished forces of the Unification and UPA had effectively destroyed eachother. We did not doubt, however, that the Unification would win in the end, and extract a humiliating peace treaty.
At which point the Ousters, Vampires, and Krell would announce that they simply could not tolerate such a victory and issue surprise declarations of war against the Unification powers and they would be bringing the Overseer's reconstituted fleet to the party with them. The Unification Fleets would be overextended into UPA territory, leaving their homeworld centers of production easy prey for lightning strikes. The fleets themselves would be severely depleted and facing a force which was fresh and significantly larger than their own. They would not fare especially well.
The peace treaty would be a cross between Versailles and some of the more humiliating medieval treaties. War indemnities to all members of the Axis, colonial worlds annexed away, an official apology to the Overseer, and official oaths of fealty from the Royal Families of Monacora, Asgard, and Manticore to the Throne of the Blood King. The Unification would effectively become dominions of the Axis sphere. And, of course, Basil planned to dominate the Axis personally. After all, he founded it, he saved the Overseer from destruction, he planned the war and rise to power, and his protegè controlled the Ousters.
The UPA would be so severely depleted by their war with the Unification that they would not be a threat for years or decades, and even then they would never catch up to the Axis. Geographically speaking, they were also isolated from Veithan aid and could thus be dominated by the Axis in years to come.
The Veithans were the potential wrench in the works, but we were counting on them to either express diplomatic disapproval of the Unification's war, or to militarily oppose the Unification--which I'm fairly sure they were gearing up to do as the STGOD4 crashed to a halt. If the Axis of Evil swept in and overran the Unification in a lightning campaign, the Veithan Accord would be dislocated politically because they could not stop us without contradicting their earlier statements and actions.
The Axis in general and Basil specifically would thus be in the position of Hegemon of Known Space--not necessarily overcoming the Veithan Accord immediately, but
eventually. The Elanie, Basil, and the Overseer all being effectively immortal, they could afford to be patient and take their time. Eventually the Ousters would become publicly known as the domain of Elanie and here own coven of vampires, and some centuries down the line Basil would also put her on the thrown of Temesvar. The personal union of the two vampire states would continue until they were effectively indistuingishable from one another, thus forming one superstate.
. . .
And it all would have worked, if the STGOD hadn't died. Curses, foiled again.
