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This invasion has not been going well.
Well. It was going well, oh... Four hours ago. Quite well. She had three times as many troops besieging Great Forks as they had defending, the defenders were either under-trained or foreign or both, their cover meant nothing to the accuracy of her archers' charm-guided arrows, she'd killed any commanders dumb enough to stand where her arrows could reach them on the first day, and she'd successfully gotten a strike squad inside the walls without anyone noticing a few hours before - thanks be to Luna on high -
And then midnight struck with a vengeance.
She'd gotten the first warning in the frantic blast of a horn and the rumble of drums - one of their rear positions was being besieged -
She'd gotten the second when an enemy fortification she was distinctly not attacking caught on fire -
The third, a rolling chill, and a low moan reverberating, the wind suddenly dying -
Luna's face began to tinge the color of blood.
And then the dead began to rise.
She's pivoted, since, stood down her active attacks against the city - sent envoys calling for an emergency cease fire - put her hidden strike force on standby -
She's contemplating how to evacuate the city she'd been trying to conquer - she's contemplating if she'll have to - if they'll let her, but the dead are pouring through cracks in the cobblestones and food is shriveling and sooner or later they'll try to flee, and the bulk of the dead are rising inside the city -
She gets into a shouting match with the gate guards, as the majority of her army sits and does nothing since the dead on her flanks are easily handled so far -
Then his position gets mostly overrun by war ghosts climbing the walls from within. Her archers shoot down whatever ghosts they can sight.
It takes an agonizing half hour, but - a conditional surrender comes, and the gate opens. Flags of truce tied to their banners, her army sweeps into the streets, her voice echoing from every stone as she orders them to protect the civilians and stop the dead from slaughtering everyone. Her personal guard forms around her as she plunges for the central temple where the city's three gods rule. Her owl scouts wing out into the city, searching for the enemy commander.
The scene quickly turns into chaos, not every disparate unit of Great Forks' defenders accepting the changed situation - obviously she's going to hold the city after this, she's not going to just back out and pretend they didn't let her in - there's at least five living armies with a notable presence, civilians mostly hiding but sometimes forced into the streets, and the dead interspersed among them.
