Ascendant - Game On!

[Shigure]

Renojustin said:
Sauromatia lays claim to the sacred Neck. The ancestral homes of Old Sauromatia lay on the banks of the vast Middle Sea. Once a proud people lived there in shining cities.

Then Stravinsky the phoenix god came down and took the form of a stork. He gathered the wise old men of the proud city together, and challenged them to a game. He showed the men his golden-red rubies the size of kiwis, and then they knew greed.

Stravinsky used the air itself to move his cards and trick the men, and before long, he had won all the men's monies. But Stravinsky was a cruel god, and he offered the men one last "chance" to get their gold and jewels back.

Goober the Witch King, the Swamplord himself, rose and took the trickster's challenge and bet the ancient lands of the Neck against the shadows and trickery of Stravinsky. The challenge was simple.

"Heads or tails?" Stravinsky squawked - the stork suddenly burst into flame, cackling and howling like a thing of both the fire and the wind.

And a tritoness was carried in screaming by four monstrous black apes in metal armors, their immense figures sleek and dangerous. They readied their razor-sharp falchions as she struggled to breathe through drying gills.

This is the best manufactured casus belli I have ever seen. I'm not sure what the deal with the tritoness is, but everything you say about Stravinsky is absolutely true, especially the bit about the rubies.

Kailasa gave me a smack to the face last turn as well, but I ended up killing a good 60-70%% of what I lost in gold, and still expanding. It looked pretty bad till the end, but then my archers fired one last time before breaking, and shot up a squad of Yavanas pretty well.

Throw a large army of low-protection archers at a nation with strong earth mages, and the results are predictable.