R'lyeh -- Turn 5
Turn 5 begins with a message -- say, a threat -- from Fomoria:
I don't want to get into a war this early, not while there is all this water to be secured first. A fort for every province! Well, maybe every second. With a lab, so I can gate in mind lords and troops. With a temple, so I can build a bunch of polypal mothers to provide freespawn and to preach my dominion up.
Also I can take the "Isle of Balor" as the Fomorians call it (we aboleths know it by its ancient, dreaded name: Koromoo) anytime I want. Corinthian does offer me an easily guarded 3-province peninsula (Numecria, Bolfagon and Saeborea) instead. I suspect he wants me to guard his northern flank for him and perhaps hopes that I'll get in trouble with Maverni, although I doubt he already knows that his north eastern neighbour is Maverni.
I check that Maverni has a route to Fomoria further inland, so I'm not going to block him. That's good. And I suppose I can cede Numecria if it gains me an ally against Fomoria.
I send back this message:
Some days after having sent his message, a singular man was brought before Buarainecht. Though well above middle stature, and of somewhat brawny frame, he was given an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy blueness of his small watery eyes, the scantiness of his neglected and never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and the listless drooping of his heavy nether lip.
He had been given to strange fits, thrashing his limbs and railing at the "terrible fish with their slithering voices". Though he seldomly spoke with any lucidity, he often mentioned the name of Buarainecht in a desperate tone, and so the people in the Dead Marshes -- for he was a native of that dismal, unwholesome place -- resolved to bring him before that worthy.
After much pleading, they did finally gain an audience, in which a pronounced change came over the afflicted man. "If you take the isle that once was called the Isle of Balor, and now men call Koromoo, a doom shall fall on Saeborea, and Bolfagon, and even proud Ermor-that-will-never-be, which men know as Numecria."
With that strange pronouncement, his eyes rolled back in his head, and a most violent fit overcame him, from which he fell into unconciousness.
It incorporates a passage from one of H.P. Lovecrafts stories. Use your google-fu to find out which one!
If you've looked at the map closely, you'll have seen how the battle in Moon Sea ended. So without further ado, here are the opposing armies:
The grand army of R'lyeh you already know. This is what they're up against:
The tritons of the amber clan are quite heavily armored, perhaps the finest fighters the ocean has to offer. They crash into R'lyehs line of enslaved sea trolls, weathering the paralyzing mind blasts.
Atlantean slave troopers are driven into the gaps between the huge trolls and are sent to bolster the right flank. They are badly equiped, trained and motivated; it does not take long for them to break.
Meanwhile the Amber Clan's attack falters under the relentless barrage of mindblasts. Even worse, here and there one of the brave soldiers turns against his comrades, face frozen in a rictus of despair as he stabs a spear into a friends back...
The turning point arrives when a flanking force of slave tritons and lobo guards falls on the Amber Clan's overextended left flank. Beset from within and without, one group of warriors turns to flee, thereby dooming their brothers in arms.
Yöt-Webbogoth has succeeded in defeating the shark-knights of Baptizer, but a lance remains lodged in the rubbery flesh of its mantle. It pays the wound no heed, and continues eastwards, accompanied by a capering atlantean that whistles a mindless, mad tune on a strange and malformed shell...
Behind it, Nithü the Slave Mage dutifully searches the corpse-strewn ocean floor for sites of power. With some success:
The tale behind that you've already read...