"Remember this day! With this victory at the Gates of Tartarus, we have shown Hell that freedom is coming to the damned!" Béteulle harangues the survivors of this assault on the Gates of Tartarus, from its main battlement, while the Perserian rebels' banner is being raised atop the towers of the gatehouse. "Freedom from the torment of haunted parks!"
Hopefully it will prevent the Pandemonian government from using the Gates as a haunted park to torment the living! That was the whole aim of this operation! Béteulle sighs while the alcohol wizards under his command prepare kegs of beer for what is to become the garrison of the Gates of Tartarus. These otherworldly entities called players refer to haunted parks as dungeons and raids!
At the same time, the corpse of the previous commander of the Gates, Charon, is retrieved from where his damaged barge was found, aground. Once his corpse is recovered, he is prepared for burial, while a lot of sleep-deprived demons thrown into the Acheron River during the battle had unrecoverable bodies.
The following morning, Béteulle holds a war council meeting with other key participants in the assault on the Gates of Tartarus, even though there was only one gate. In a room with a rustic table. They are reminded of the harsh reality of Perseria still being in a civil war, and haunted parks were also part of the casus belli.
"I say we get as many damned as we can get, and then strike at the very heart of Hell! We control the only land access to Hell, and the enemy morale has never been lower, especially after we recaptured Heathrow!" Béteulle argues that maybe marching on Pandemonium might be feasible for the living.
"No, Béteulle, even with the loss of Hell's footholds in the lands of the living, even with the loss of the Gates, to get any kind of lasting advantage over Hell, we need to have our affairs in order!" Jutudiel, a thief, and the leader of a rebel cell that mostly operates behind enemy lines, tells the other participants.
"With the capture of the Gates by our hands, the Perserian army will believe that our main objective isn't to recapture the city, but for us to get a foothold in Hell! They will diminish the strength of the city's garrison, and Perseria will become vulnerable!" Clavet, the commander of a rebel cell, and a witch, expresses her thoughts.
"But you can be sure that Hell will seek to recapture the Gates sooner or later!" Jutudiel tells the other two.
"I'd say, we need to take in some of the fringe elements among the damned that have axes to grind against their tormentors in Hell!" Béteulle comments about where he will get the manpower to hold the Gates of Tartarus against Pandemonian reprisal. "But until then, all we can do is prepare for a Pandemonian attack, such as repairing the wall and the barge"
"We would be stretched thin otherwise! Too thin, I'm afraid. I guess, we have no choice" Jutudiel then storms off the meeting to get to her cell's camp in the Perserian desert, unseen thanks to her cloaking magic.
Afterward, what troops still remain after the departure of the elements from Jutudiel's cell departed are busy repairing the damage wrought by the assault on the Gates. And, for those who are handier with wood than with stone, repairing Charon's barge using materials left behind by the defeated Pandemonium forces. By first beaching it so its hull can dry appropriately. And then the hull breaches can be repaired and cleaned off.
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And yet, a sleep-deprived demon who barely survived the assault limped back to the nearest camp, still in the First Circle of Hell, where that demon had terrible news to deliver to the rest of the camp:
"The living have captured the Gates of Tartarus!" a clearly distraught demon yells all over the camp, while, at the same time, the demon struggles to move around the camp because of fatigue and sleep deprivation.
"When? By whom?" other demons start bombarding him with questions, not realizing that the demon might be too traumatized to answer just yet.
"The living killed Charon, too!" the survivor from the Gates keeps lamenting before collapsing on the ground.
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The sleep-deprived demon causes the other demons in the camp to enter quarrels between each other. However, as that demon collapses, his sleep is disturbed by the demons, and the damned at their service, or under their custody, make their state of mind clear:
"First the Sun Disk, then Heathrow, and now the Gates of Tartarus?" another demon yelps upon hearing about the loss of Tartarus. "Will these mounting losses end one day?
"We can't even build our own haunted parks, and the living saw fit to ruin everything! What am I going to tell the Senate about this abject failure to renovate the Gates of Tartarus for use as a haunted park?" the commander of the camp fumes at these demons. "Now the living can attack us at any time!
"These losses against the living were caused by one thing: we believed for far too long that haunted parks made defenses impenetrable!" yet another demon officer exclaimed.
"Yet, the living have their own problems with haunted parks!" one of the damned serving the demon officers, in ball and chains, screams. "Perseria's citizenry is revolting because of their haunted park policy!"
"Excessive faith in haunted parks is not the issue, it's low morale induced by endless torments, and poor living conditions!" another damned added to this chorus of laments.
"And the Senate's constant squabbling and interference over the conduct of the war on the living has caused issues!" a third damned patiently waits for the brawl to begin among the occupants of the camp.
The commander of the camp uses encrypted communications to tell his immediate superior, Astaroth, the general in charge of all forces in the Second Circle of Hell, about what happened at the Gates, which also served as Hell's forward operating base after the loss of Heathrow.
Suffice to say that, as news of Hell's loss of the Gates spread like wildfire across Hell, so many damned started to disapprove of the Caliph's leadership. So many that unrest can pose a real threat in Hell. Potentially causing hell to break loose.
Speaking of which, the Caliph, Satan, called an emergency Senate meeting. As per usual, the meeting is held in the Ninth Circle of Hell, with Satan and Lucifer front and center.
"Dear demon lords, a grave matter have forced this meeting. The living have captured the Gates of Tartarus, killed Charon and several units of damned have gone rogue, or worse still, defected to the living outright!" Astaroth gives the first speech of the meeting. "As we speak, the First Circle is headed towards revolt!"
"If we do nothing, the living will have free reign across the outer circles of hell, and Pandemonium itself might be threatened!" Baal yells at his fellow senators. "We must prevent further defections of damned, and maybe even demons, and only then can the safety of hell can be guaranteed!"
"The terrain in Circles two through five is much more treacherous than in the lands of the living! Swamps, gale-force winds, flash floods, mountainous and even volcanoes that can erupt at any time will cause the living and the damned to have a hard time making progress!" Asmodeus retorts.
"It appears that so many among the damned are quick to blame the endless torments and poor living conditions for our losses against the living. We must improve the living conditions of the damned!" Mephistopheles yells at his fellow demon senators.
"With the size of the damned population, that's too expensive! We must build more haunted parks at strategic locations!" Mammon counters.
"Mammon, you seem to place too much faith in haunted parks!" Satan retorts, before using a falsetto voice. "You all seemed to think that the living would take heavy losses trying to assault a haunted park and a haunted park is, because of the ghost garrisons, able to provide early warning for us so that we can deploy our forces to meet the enemy, living or damned!" Satan returns to his normal voice. "We built haunted parks as you suggested we do, the Sun Disk and Heathrow, and we lost them both, taking heavy casualties to protect them!"
"I'd say we launch an expedition to retake the Gates of Tartarus! I will even assume command of the expedition myself!" Lucifer starts drafting a plan to recapture the Gates, not realizing that the morale of the troops has cratered.
"At this point, the heavy losses we took in this military adventurism in the lands of the living have forced our hands, and the only way I can see us recapturing the Gates is if we make peace with the living!" Mephistopheles yells and starts drafting a plan for a possible peace treaty with the living, while secretly getting these to a plenipotentiary diplomat.
"How can you ensure the living will keep their word, or how can we ensure that we will keep our word?" Astaroth starts questioning whether an attempt by Pandemonium to make peace with the living will work. "We are negotiating from a position of weakness!"
I guess, the best we can hope for is that, in exchange for us not attempting any further crossing of the Acheron River, on our western border, and us renouncing any claim to any territory west of the Acheron River, would get the living off the Gates of Tartarus, the diplomat chosen by Mephistopheles starts thinking about what to expect from negotiations with the living. And, of course, getting them to renounce any claim to territory east of the Acheron River might cost us some concession we don't know yet, but if it means a ban on haunted park construction...