When Cresians attack, or why Machiavelli was right
(quote)
But the one I'd like to share is that I believe that the Confederacy will start developing more and better divination spells. As a result of this and their highly effective command structure they develop a system for figuring out where the central portions of the Formian command net are located.
They then start taking out the command net from the top down over the course of a horrible series of days and using their very best teams of adventurers, those that aren't in Ausel, the Ausel members of the invasion force together with many of the remaining Myrmachs retaliate by staging a daring raid on the memorial city in which the confederacies headquarters are concentrated.
(end quote)
I'm not sure this would be a surgical strike.
The Ausel have never been really much loved by the mainland cultures. They raid, they trade in arms, they don't believe in gods, they practice necromancy, conjure fiends, and pervert nature, and now they're selling out the prime material plane to a bunch of magic bugs.
The Stempan oracles use their powers to see the whole grisly spectacle of Auselen history and are completely out of use for them.
After they explain things to the Ta'jinn and the Cresians, it's agreed all the way around. The Stempans and the Ta'jinn are ready for a holy war to make sure the Auselen stay out of the other planes for the rest of time...heck, next time it could be abyssal ants that come over from the next plane.
The senior Cresian Huntmaster present says something enigmatic about calling some butterfly friends of his to see what they can do.
The Stempans and Ta'jinn go back to thumping Formians as best they can: while they can't pull the same trick on the army twice, they have been able to come up with new tricks pretty consistently.
Trading space for time is embarrassing in that regard, but very helpful, because the Formians have to keep readapting to the terrain with every new landform, which is just one more thing for them to worry about.
The Huntmaster, meanwhile, goes to talk with his bardic friends. Control Water, for some odd reason, is not a druidic spell. But it is a fifth level spell for bards. Figure about half a dozen bards throughout the Cresian nation can cast it. They get on a ship, go out to see, get a bearing on the Auselen coast at least and the Hive queen at most, and begin casting raise water.
After a few minutes, they get a 20 foot high 600 foot long wall of water.
A Cresian druid casts Control winds and blows the whole thing towards the Auselen coast at 25 miles an hour.
(Now, this may be a generous reading of both spells combined, I'll admit. But if a player came to me with a spell called Tidal Wave that had these dimensions, I'd probably only let it be 300 feet long, but I'd say it was 7th level. So this kind of magic could well be out there, if we permit non SRD spells to exist)
As the Cresians break open a fantasy Bud, one of the bards asks the Huntmaster "What do we say when people ask us what happened today?"
The Huntmaster smiles wolfishly. "Just tell them the surf's up. Waayy up..."