Laresa

Laresa buried her tears and her broken heart under the ruins of the necromantic superweapon that Keres and the others had managed to stop at the cost of their own lives. As she stepped in to fill his shoes, she realized that her romantic relationship with her ex-faction leader had to be set aside in order to keep an objective eye on her family-faction's goals. For better or worse, she was now in charge --a role that she originally detested while Keres was still alive. Her days of independence and avoiding paperwork had ended, much to her chagrin. She immediately went to work organizing the Vharag's resources and manpower towards recovering what they had lost, and what little free time she had left was spent in endless meetings with the other willing faction leaders to map out what to do next. To her surprise, their alliance found that deep beneath Orebus's surface was a semi-functional interstellar ark ship whose function was not clearly known. Was it an escape route? Or another superweapon? Laresa intended to find out more, but before she could, her allies warned her of an incident to the south of the continent. A golden ship had crashed down, and there was no doubt that it was an omen of the war to come... The news from the scout teams was as bleak as one could expect. From what the teams had deciphered and learned from the crash's survivors, the Dust-Yellow King's armada had finally begun its slow, agonizing advance towards Orebus. And why would they hurry? Their swarms outnumbered the defenders several thousand times over, so a leisurely approach was called for. In fact, the King's commanders were so confident of their victory that they permitted the various mercenary companies that clung to their legion's wake to attack ahead of the vanguard. While some of the insectile loyalists resented the privilege, the battle's outcome was never in doubt. Laresa joined the Ulnhann's call to arms, dividing her time between bringing the skyships under her command to battle readiness and preparing the ark ship for launch. To her astonishment, a recovery team informed her that they had unearthed Keres's soulcutter blade, a potent yet dangerous weapon that they had thought lost forever. No effort was spared in duplicating the weapon's power into smaller forms, and as the Vardket's deep-space sensor networks began to sound the alarm, Laresa ordered the Vharag's small fleet to battle readiness. The plan called for a direct assault onto the enemy command ship--a risky gamble with a severely low chance of success. Meanwhile, the final preparations to launch the ark ship had begun...