Merely a few seconds after Alistaira had been ‘kidnapped’, two groups of people had made their approach towards the Black Ship that Alis and the rest had arrived on. The warning of the Arch Necromancer had been proven to be worth listening to, not that the crew had ever not taken her word to begin with. Just moments after she had disembarked, the crew had begun preparations for the attack that Alistaira had predicted, and by the time that the two different gatherings of people had made their way within eyesight the deck of the Black Ship and much of the immediate area on the dock beyond it had been heavily fortified.

The crew had… borrowed several large crates and bags of miscellaneous goods to use as cover and had placed a few traps here and there in order to funnel their foes through into areas that they had more control over. These traps were nothing complex, just a few bear traps, a couple hundred caltrops and a couple puddles of a very sticky substance, but they would do the job quite well. When the two outside forces arrived on the scene, they were as much shocked with the fact that each other were there to possibly do the same thing as them as they were with how heavily the area around the Black Ship had been defended.

But both of the attacking parties had no love for each other, so the meeting turned into a three-way free for all in no time flat. Neither of the two gatherings seemed willing to identify themselves beyond wearing certain articles of clothing, and neither of their members spoke a word about who or what they supported. The sailors guessed that this kind of thing was a common enough of an occurrence that there was no need for words between the two opposing forces, but they themselves would very much have liked to know exactly who was fighting for what.

Perhaps due to the rather dangerous challenges posed by the fortifications made by the sailors, the two gangs fought mostly with each other, with only a handful of each breaking off every so often to try and rush through the defenses of the Imperial sailors. This went about as well as one might expect. Perhaps if the two had stopped fighting each other and worked together they might have had a chance of claiming the Black Ship, but as things were now there was too much bad blood to allow such a truce to happen.

With all that being said, the result of this skirmish should be painfully obvious to any who read of it. Gradually the two gangs were whittled down by their own foolishness and disdain for each other, eventually leaving the sailors of the Black Ship the ones left around to pick up the pieces. But the battle was not nearly over just yet. There was still yet one more enemy to face, not that the foe was the legitimate force it claimed to be.

Before the sailors could begin to dismantle their defenses, someone in the crow’s nest spotted a nasty looking formation of soldiers marching towards them. The captain decided that it was better that he should be safe rather than sorry and ordered the traps be replenished and reset. This was a good idea, as the soldiers did not even bother to say why they were here and simply rushed towards the improvised fortifications with a clear killing intent.

The crew were left to ask themselves one question as they fought off the armed and armored men.

“What did Alistaira get us into?”

…

The Sultan, Arcail IV, was pissed. His advisors had gone behind his back and now he was getting reports from one of the few parts of his court that were not in bed with the War Faction that they had not only sent troops to take the Black Ship but also that they intended to replace him via a coup d’état! Naturally, he was not about to let this go on any longer. He had heard horror stories as a child about what Darksol was capable of, and he was apparently one of the few people in his court who realized that the stories had a firm grounding in reality.

He had to act fast in order to prevent a total catastrophe from happening, and this forced him to make a very difficult choice. He retreated from the gathering of court officials that he had been roughly forced to attend and went back to his personal chambers. Making sure that there were none around, he opened a secret passage and followed it down into a hidden chamber underneath the palace. There he beheld the secret weapon of the Sultanate, a hidden army of supposedly unkillable soldiers, all of them locked in place and awaiting his orders.

He approached a pulpit-like place in front of the several thousand metallic janissary look-alikes and spoke the command that would both potentially secure peace between the Sultanate and Darksol while also eliminating everyone who was his enemy with brutal coldness. This one command would forever cement his reputation in the history books not as the compassionate man he was but as a cold, cruel and heartless despot, but that was preferable to having the Sultanate be overwhelmed by a civil war combined with an invasion from Darksol.

“Execute Protocol 66.”

At these words, a dim white light flashed in behind the metal masks of the secret army and the troops that had been locked away for a rainy day began to move towards their designated target.

…

The dinner that the Sultan had left was still ongoing, with the people gathered there discussing how to better control and manipulate the puppet they were going to replace Arcail IV with. Now that the Sultan was out of earshot, they figured they didn’t need to worry about hiding their true desires, but things would soon go from happy to terrifying in no time at all.

From seemingly everywhere at once came a sound that anyone who has watched R*venge of the S*th would recognize. Before anyone could react, hidden panels in the walls opened and lines upon lines of heavily armored (by Sultanate standards) men emerged in complete lockstep. The silent soldiers drew their blades and began to massacre those still in the palace, be they noble or non-noble alike. Not even the butlers and maids were safe as the seemingly unstoppable and utterly mute soldiers struck down all within the palace with equal callousness. By the time that an hour had passed, no sentient hearts were left beating in the whole of the palace beyond that of the Sultan himself.