When the Tiger Leaves, the Wolf Becomes King
[Verification image of the 'Rotten Water Clan' dissolution as displayed in chat.jpg]
The Rotten Water Clan, whose main fleet was completely wiped out during the recent battle for Tunguska Fortress City, has reportedly been fully destroyed as of today.
Most of the clan's former members were absorbed into the Magellan Clan in exchange for keeping their bases and fleets intact.
Clan leader Raksha and a handful of other players, however, managed to break through the encirclement and escape — even though their base was destroyed.
The fact that Rotten Water Clan — by pure average skill the strongest clan of them all — had finally slipped into the footnotes of history hit the gallery, and a week after seizing the stronghold, living through the usual odds and ends, I found myself feeling something complicated and hard to name.
In a den without a tiger, the wolf becomes king.
But once Magellan Clan swallowed Tunguska Fortress City, the situation started flipping in yet another direction.
Every minor clan that had been living near Rotten Water suddenly found itself with only two choices. Unlike Rotten Water, which for all its reputation had nothing more than a face-saving Level 1 stronghold, Magellan now held a Level 7 fortress — meaning they had zero fear of a surprise strike from the rear, and could throw their full strength into crushing anyone who stood in their way. Submit, or get trampled into raw materials.
Naturally, some of those minor clans immediately took to the gallery to air their grievances…
[Image of Magellan Clan's fleet invading a neighboring minor clan.jpg]
These absolute pieces of shit.
How the hell do you forget you used to be a minor clan yourselves and just start invading everyone around you?
[Image of a sneering toad]
This is the disaster you invited yourselves. Yeah.
Crushed under the catastrophe you called down~
A truly tragic tale for those minor clans — but their unfortunate pasts and whatever grudges they held against Rotten Water Clan meant absolutely nothing to most of the gallery users.
The spectators watching from afar simply poured mockery onto people who had, for all practical purposes, driven out a tiger only to invite a wolf into the den.
And while countless minor clans that had stood by and let Rotten Water collapse were now being trampled under Magellan's boot, the clans that had actually answered the call and launched the attack themselves were getting a very different treatment. Magellan either paid them out in generous compensation, or elevated them into proper subordinate clans with real independence and a share of the stronghold's rewards.
As mentioned before, they handed their old Level 2 stronghold of Bern over to the clan that had fought the hardest and taken the most serious losses — a proper reward, cleanly delivered.
And so the player power map inside Space Elf territory… no, inside the Zenobia Empire's domain, began stabilizing far faster than anyone expected after Rotten Water's collapse.
Something else accelerated that stabilization even further.
[Screenshot of Monalisa revealing the fact in public clan chat.jpg], [Photo of Monalisa and a lavishly dressed elf throwing up V-signs together in chat.jpg]
Confirmed that the elf-side envoy is none other than the Zenobia Empire's First Imperial Princess.
This explains how he walked away fine after receiving an Anomalocaris-class combat carrier from Old Man MurimBuilder last time — and why he had so many high-end Zenobia ships in particular. Shocking…
The moment he boldly announced that he was under the direct patronage of the vast Zenobia Empire — and that he fully intended to let that sponsorship trickle down through his clan — mid-sized clans that had previously been hostile toward Magellan started bowing their heads. Some even dissolved their own clans and petitioned to be absorbed outright.
Barely a month after bringing down Rotten Water, Magellan Clan had firmly established itself as one of the flagship player clans inside Zenobia Empire territory, and its growth rate was nothing short of staggering.
The problem was that this mindless expansion had nearly put them on a collision course with the Justice Clan, which sat astride the border between Zenobia Empire and Space Kaiju territory.
And on that particular matter, neither the gallery nor most of Magellan's own members seriously believed Magellan could win against Justice.
[Screenshot of a rumor floating in global chat.jpg]
Is this for real?
There were plenty of other scattered takes, but the consensus among the people actually involved could be summed up in four words: winning was impossible.
And me? I was sitting pretty inside my fortress, sucking honey, watching the soldiers put on tentacle live-octopus mukbang shows, seizing the surrounding resource zones, relocating the old forward bases — and, while Griyanaar ran some bizarre thing she called the Kliment-Voroshilov Plan, getting an unexpected front-row seat to the horrifying spectacle of only Oxianor's lower half getting gender-swapped, among other things.