Meanwhile, in the game’s world, the battle for that world’s freedom rages on under the eyes of the players around the Perseria region. As the enemy reinforcements arrived at the city’s gates, Monseigneur celebrates high mass near a gate, from behind the enemy lines. This causes the enemy forlorn hope to fall asleep. And then Clavet casts a lightning storm, electrocuting them in their sleep.

Yet, summoning multiple lightning bolts in an area may not necessarily kill those in it in their sleep. Perhaps stun them for a bit if they survive. Which the rest of the rebel cell exploits to massacre the enemy forlorn hope.

But before Clavet’s cell enters the city, she issues her new orders for it, before another wave of Perserian troops come:

“It appears Jutudiel’s cell is going through the waterworks to assault the upper city; we need to cover her backs. Yasama, Monseigneur, follow me to the city hall, everyone else reinforce the lower city!”

So while Clavet’s rebel cell is staying behind to ensure the three could get to the waterworks and, from there, to the city hall, the three warriors make their way through a section of the city devastated by the fight for the city. A no man’s land sandwiched between rebel positions. Residents being herded into the upper city by the remnants of the garrison.

Oh boy, we can’t afford to let harm come to the city’s remaining residents, who must be in herded in some of the fancy residences! Clavet starts thinking about how the three should act when they are going up the waterworks.

Speaking of the waterworks, the enemy doesn’t seem to be patrolling these, believing them to be impractical to use for any attacker, mostly because people can only travel in single file through the upper city’s aqueduct. Thank God for the outfitter magic waterproofing my gear! Monseigneur starts thinking while scaling a service ladder of the upper city’s aqueduct.

“Once we get out of the aqueduct, we need to watch out for the cataphracts, ghost or real, patrolling the area around the city hall!” Clavet warns her fellow rebels as they approach a maintenance entrance in the upper city. “And make our junction with Jutudiel elsewhere in the upper city!”

Cataphracts. The pushtigban were supposed to be Upper Perseria’s strongest trash, and the elite Perserian cavalry. But the Sable Order awaits us around the city hall, and these are no joke, not the least because they are immune to the high mass, Monseigneur’s memories of this fateful Upper Perseria run resurface.

Speaking of cataphracts, they are converging on Monseigneur, who promptly draws a bright line on the pavement. While ghost cataphracts charge blindly and headlong into her as they cross the bright line, the three rebels take cover behind a cheval de frise. With the three attacking the cataphracts, the ghosts are hurt, but they aren’t down yet. And, for some reason, they somehow remain on their ghost horses.

However, the savarans, or living cataphracts, loose arrows on them from behind the bright line. And, because the enemy treats Monseigneur as a priority target, she gets hit by multiple arrows, bleeding her.

“You can’t hide, Monseigneur!” the lead cataphract yells in her direction.

But as the ghost cataphracts’ charge appear headed to hit the cheval de frise, the three move sideways, hoping the aswarans, or ghost cataphracts, prove slow to turn. However, because Monseigneur is bleeding, she is the slowest to get out of the cataphracts’ way.

“Just pull through, Monseigneur. If you can just LOS the living cataphracts...” Clavet helps an ailing Monseigneur get to a position where the enemy cataphracts will be forced to move to get to her.

The ghost cataphracts break their heavy lances against the bathhouse, as well as ”killing” their ghost horses on impact. As the ghosts are thrown off their dead horses, the living cataphracts cross a fading bright line. While Clavet casts an alcohol cloud spell, the blinded cataphracts get drunk as well. But why is it that, in my last run of Upper Perseria, we couldn’t unhorse cataphracts, yet we unhorsed them? A perplex Monseigneur wonders, with the ghost cataphracts coming their way.

Now that’s what I call using the friendly fire cheese! Yasama picks off the injured, unhorsed ghosts with an explosive arrow. A sword-wielding ghost explodes, sending shrapnel on the others, and onto the riding path of the living cataphracts. I can’t count the number of times where the friendly fire cheese has saved me!

But once the living cataphracts turn around the street, Clavet casts a quick first-aid spell on Monseigneur’s injuries, hoping to stem the bleeding. However, even if the injuries didn’t bleed anymore, they would still affect her ability to fight.

Yasama, however, takes an arrow aimed at an ailing Monseigneur and gets injured in turn, forcing Monseigneur to cast her very own first-aid spells on him. And on herself as well. Still, none of them are at full health just yet.

But, by and large, the blinded cataphracts miss their marks. More vulnerable than ever, they get hit by attacks from all three rebels. Bluish-white holy flares from Monseigneur, chain lightning from Clavet, explosive arrows from Yasama.

“Are you all right?” Clavet asks the two.

“I… guess?” Monseigneur, still a little shaken, answers her.

They then close in on the city hall, the main building whose style differs from the rest of the city. Rather than Middle Eastern architecture, the city hall is a pyramid more reminiscent of a much older era, namely Ancient Mesopotamia. I never set foot in the city hall proper, the Giant Garuda was in the city hall square. Speaking of which, another party is fighting it, Monseigneur thinks while trying to figure out how will that play into getting to the city hall.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

What the players in the party fighting the Giant Garuda don’t realize is that, even though the rebels aren’t supposed to get in the boss room, they get in the way of the people in the haunted park. But even that makes the trio dodge tornadoes on their way to the city hall’s main entrance. For which there’s only one way in at their disposal.

A pair of gyan-avspar, or Sable Order knights, bar the entrance at the staircase’s base.

“Halt!” a knight wearing black armor screams at the three, crossing his heavy lance against another one to bar passage.

“We have captured Monseigneur as she fought cataphracts in the upper city” Clavet tells a half-truth to the guards, hoping that it would allow all three access to the city hall.

I really hope it’s just a ruse from Clavet and that I can be freed in short order, a worried Monseigneur ruminates while Clavet and Yasama climb the staircase with her. When they get at the top of the staircase, and hence the three-level ziggurat, the council’s bugler announces the arrival of the prisoner the city residents asked justice for.

“Honorable Councillors, these citizens have brought Monseigneur to justice!” the council’s bugler then ushers the trio inside the city council’s chamber, on the top level.

Just outside the council’s chamber, a cloaked Jutudiel realizes the enemy went all-out in a last-ditch attempt to defend the city, and a distraction is needed to win. She contacts the ranking officer at Heathrow, using her magical tablet, while hiding in a maintenance shaft:

“Heathrow Actual, this is Jutudiel. We need to attack the enemy from behind, now!”

“What you’re asking me amounts to leaving Heathrow undefended. Why leave Heathrow undefended?” an angry officer asks her.

“The enemy is unable to mount an attack on Heathrow, and Pandemonium would prioritize the Gates of Tartarus over Heathrow!”

“If Heathrow goes down, I go down with it, understood?” the ranking officer then has his second-in-command dispatch the rest of Heathrow’s garrison to Perseria. “I guess, I will need to patrol Heathrow by myself” he sighs.

So while the garrison at Heathrow brings with them demonic weapons to the siege of the city, the three pretend that Monseigneur is guilty of killing Perseria residents, and go along with the charade, for now. Unarmed since the Sable Order took their weapons away before appearing in the council chamber.

“What do you have to say for your defense?” the mayor asks an unarmed Monseigneur.

“Rogue ghosts used the victims as meatshields, and this wouldn’t have happened if the city’s haunted park ordinances were actually enforced!” Monseigneur retorts. “This is for the people who died because of the city’s criminal negligence since the opening of the city’s haunted parks!” she shouts in front of the city council before casting a holy flare.

Clavet, unarmed, stands right outside the council’s chamber, walks behind the witnesses’ stand. Sensing an opportunity to kill the city council, she waits after the flare subsides to cast chain lightning. Which electrocutes the mayor and lightning radiates out to the councillors, seated in a half-circle around him.

But that wasn’t the end of the story: the Sable Order, realizing what’s happening, rushes into the city council’s chamber. Clavet turns to face the twelve gyan-avspar knights at close quarters, with alcohol magic, while Monseigneur casts another holy flare on the blinded city councillors.

Yasama, however, uses a dagger that he normally uses for cooking and skinning beasts and, as such, has trouble getting to the enemy joints.

The noise of the commotion makes Jutudiel come out of the maintenance shaft. And, after she gets out, she decloaks behind the guards. She then casts a stolen medicine spell on Yasama, since he got stabbed almost to death by inebriated Sable Order knights.

Speaking of which, in their drunkenness, one of them swings wildly and hits the two magic-users. Here goes nothing, Jutudiel sighs before catalyzing the stolen medicine administered to Yasama. But even with the catalyzed stolen medicine on Yasama, she still needed to keep Clavet and Monseigneur up.

At that point, even when her belly is bleeding, Clavet casts chain lightning centered on the enemy hospitaller. Which arcs to the other knights through their gear.

While the Sable Order knights get zapped through their main hands, electrocuted even for some, Jutudiel knows time is short to cast transfusion. But even as she casts transfusion, she gets hit by an arrow fired from the ziggurat’s intermediate level. Which forces her to cast injections on herself just for her to stop bleeding. The thief then returns to the safety of the maintenance shaft.

The city’s bugler, upon realizing the two witches have trashed the city council chamber, and massacred the city councillors, makes demands of the surviving Sable Order knights:

“Make way for the city council’s bugler!” the bugler yells at the knights wearing black armor.

“These two witches massacred the mayor and council!” one of the surviving knights points at the puddles of blood in the council’s chamber, in Monseigneur’s direction.

Yasama then slips past the drunken knights and picks up his bow and quiver in the antechamber. Bow in hand, he shoots arrows behind the surviving knights, who are obsessed with Monseigneur, even in their drunkenness. However, his bow arm starts feeling the pain after just a few shots. And he feigns death after collapsing in pain on the floor.

So while neither “witch”, as the bugler calls them, is at full health, the two fall back to avoid the wild swings of the surviving knights. Yet everyone on both sides feel some pain, except for the bugler. Pain no one seems to feel in active gameplay.

However, one of the knights, still reeling in from the chain lightning, swings his sword at Monseigneur, she casts holy fire, her main single-target offensive spell, at his visor. This causes him to catch fire, starting with the head. He bursts into flames, and dies in seconds in a room smelling like charred flesh.

With the Sable Order dead, the bugler gets out of the antechamber and onto the top balcony to break the news to the population. He doesn’t suspect that some threat looms large. Especially not when a cloaked Jutudiel moves quietly on the balcony.

“The perfidious rebels massacred the city council! But the Sable Order died in a valiant battle against the rebel assassins, who also died in the fight!” the bugler announces, in half-truths, oblivious to the thief moving behind him. “I hereby declare the city council...”

But then Jutudiel decloaks, and draws her wakizashi, thrusting the saber into the bugler’s back, protected by a tabard only. When his back is cut open, from bottom to top, the bugler screams as his blood is spilled on the staircase. As he bleeds dry, the bugler collapses on it.

And, for good measure, Jutudiel rolls the bugler’s body face up, before thrusting the wakizashi in his heart. The bugler dies almost instantly, amid brief screams.

Once the bugler dies, news of the city council’s massacre spread across the city. The residents harbor hopes that whoever will replace the defunct mayor will be able to sort out the mess left behind by the ravages of this civil war.

When the rebel agents no longer feign death, they awaken, still in pain, but not as much. With Jutudiel casting IV drip, the thief’s AoE heal over time spell, when she returns to the city council’s chamber, the three’s pains slowly decrease in intensity.

In the lower levels of the city, the loyalist forces appear to be demoralized upon hearing about the city council being massacred in the chamber. They feel like not even recalling every combatant from any outlying garrisons proved enough to protect the city.

In the moments to follow, the pockets of loyalist resistance, in and around the city, have decreased in size and activity along with their morale. Some even start surrendering. And yet, the rebels know loyalist holdouts could be tempted to flee the city when things go sour.