The Grand Cross Is Crying (1)
For the duration of the Grand Cross event, no NPC's stance falls below Neutral.
Under that rule, even NPCs who were basically sitting at "hostile-neutral," and the Four Great Factions (now three) as well, turned hostile against the Grand Cross fortresses. That was the event in a nutshell.
The Grand Cross Is Crying. (1)
Faced with Grand Crosses that had managed to piss off even the Four Great Factions, player opinion split right down the middle.
One camp went, "The factions will figure something out." The other went, "Even the Four Great Factions can't possibly wreck those things, right?"
All that back-and-forth dried up in a hurry, though, the moment the "extremely enraged" factions used their representative clans to throw full support and a full-scale offensive into the field.
First off the line was the Pirate Coalition.
Under Betelgeuse's full command — a woman whose intellect was genuinely formidable despite a chest so flat it held not a single pouch of wisdom — the Loki Clan gently lured a Grand Cross that no player force could face head-on, then hauled the thing all the way to the Pirate Coalition's home base.
Along the way there was a minor little mishap in which roughly seven hundred clan members, subordinate-clan members, and the fleets of some random players passing by all got wiped out (gacha ships excluded), but whatever.
The point was, they had dragged the mobile fortress into range of the Pirate Coalition headquarters — close enough for the Grand Cross Cannon. What brilliant counterplay did our Pirate Coalition and Marian have left?
Word on the street was that Pirate Queen Marian unloaded a double helping of curses on Betelgeuse's head, but the mobile fortress had already closed the distance. There was nothing for it.
They scrambled the entire Armada and launched an offensive against that damned Grand Cross.
Watching that unfold, other players figured the Grand Cross's main gun would simply erase the Pirate Coalition's fleets and strongholds, and that once the fortress was on cooldown after firing, Betelgeuse's Loki Clan (plus the subordinate clans) would hit it for the second wave and stomp it flat.
The actual battle did not go anything like that.
[Image: Ironblood and the Armada that infiltrated the interior rampaging through internal facilities.jpg]
Instead of the Eclipse, the Armada led by the flagship Ironblood forced a direct assault through the gateways into the interior.
More precisely, it wasn't just the Armada — a fleet that, ballparking it, easily numbered over twenty million ships warps in via Hell and the other gateway strongholds.
Because of that, the Grand Cross's main gun has been rendered inoperable.
Sounds confusing, so let me explain: Ironblood is, after all, a faction supreme-flagship-class vessel. On top of that, the Super Dreadnoughts, Gigantia-class, and the rest of them are all satellite-scale in size.
So Ironblood and the Super Dreads shove in from every direction inside the Grand Cross and physically block the planet that was going to be used as the main gun.
And while the Grand Cross is stuck unable to fire its main gun like that, the nearby Pirate Coalition strongholds and Hell open up with their own fortress main guns, force-demolish the defensive lines, and into that gap the Eclipse under the Empress herself, the remaining Armada, and the core fleets charge head-on.
From the rear, the Loki Clan and the rest of the player fleets swing around and hit it — the Grand Cross's defense force just can't hold lololol
Belial had absorbed Icarus's tactics… and Marian had absorbed Belial's. True to form, she used the gateway assault Icarus had always loved to render the Grand Cross's firepower completely useless.
Then, while they themselves unilaterally brought fortress main guns to bear and tore every outer defensive line to shreds, they calmly walked right in.
The Grand Cross facing the Pirate Coalition was getting beaten far more mercilessly than the players had expected — to a genuinely pitiful degree.
At the same time, as for the Grand Cross that had shown up in Beast territory…
[Image: Colossal tentacles jammed into the Stellar Engine propulsion systems, thrashing.jpg]
Tried to fire the main gun, then the Beasts dropped Armageddon and the Typhon Swarm, and now it's filming a tentacle flick.
More precisely: the instant Armageddon tanked the Grand Cross's main gun with Beast-style all-in frontal armor, the Nest — the Beast home base — teleported the ultra-massive tentacles it keeps for home defense over via the base's teleportation wings and did that to it.
[Image: While the Stellar Engine is getting reamed by tentacles, Beasts, Justice, and assorted player fleets fighting from every direction.jpg]
And of course, once the Grand Cross is stuck immobile and eating damage like that, players from all around come swarming in to try and snag the last hit.
The Beasts had not only scavenged teleportation tech from their own tech tree long ago — they had refined it further. The result was a blindside ambush with no dead angles. Tentacles thicker than planets(!) drove straight into the Stellar Engine's thruster ports, locking the fortress in place while it got absolutely demolished.
All in all, it was looking thoroughly helpless.
That said, given the situation the Beast-invading Grand Cross was in…
[Image: A toad in a suit licking a tentacle with a very strange expression.jpg]
How do I put this.
[Image: Beast colossal tentacles jammed into the Stellar Engine thrusters and thrashing; stellar flares leaking out.jpg]
It got me \hard/.
[Image: Planets meant to serve as barrels for the Grand Cross Cannon being converted into bio-planets by Beast fleet infection cells.jpg]
More precisely it's infection content rather than tentacle content, but anyway
It was good!
Come to me, O sweet tentacle content!