A flurry of reports are arriving from the United Tomchaka Covens, and Field Marshal Kiskonski is acting decisively from his headquarters in the Lwazi Peninsula.

After the sidelining of the Sararit Coven in the peace treaty, saddling them with heavy reparations and laying the blame solely on them, the coven didn’t passively accept their new circumstances. They skipped the first two scheduled payments, and got to work late last month.

Small venomous spiders began assassinating politicians from rival covens, man-spider hybrids breached the High Coven and seized thousands of representatives and staff, spider centaur veterans from the war emerged from forests and jungles to overrun cities, and the pets and mounts which had been sold to private citizens and druids for decades were activated with druidic magic.

Reports say a Tomchakan woman with ‘radiant, glossy, obsidian black skin’ walked onto the stage of the High Coven, flanked by two elven-spider centaurs. She declared herself the Spider Queen and rightful ruler of Tomchaka to all the captive representatives. Those who dissented were killed, and the survivors unanimously voted for her as monarch.

The coup was not fully successful, however. The Sararit Coven took most of the developed islands, and Erdashu is destroyed, but UTC loyalists retain the continental strip, some of the islands, southern Huilapole, and the northern vassals. Loyalist covens seem to be regrouping in the north and preparing for a long, bloody civil war.

The Field Marshal’s response was to move the legions into the vassal states of southern Erdashu. They’re still reeling from the war, the UTC is too occupied and desperate to help, and they’re terrified of the Spider Queen. We’ll move in, keep the civil war from their borders, and it doesn’t matter who wins the civil war because Tomchaka won’t return south.