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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 764566" data-attributes="member: 6533">Actually, and this may be jumping ahead a bit, I would like to see the Cressians and the Ta'jinn settle their differences and go up against the Auselen and some of the Stempan city states for the next round.The only thing the Cressians and the Ta'jinn have against each other at the moment is that they only understand enough about each other to be discouraged about talks and to see that the other is a threat.  This when it seems to me that the Auselens are the most threatening force.  Both the Cressians and the Ta'jinn are essentially non-aggressive expansionists.   The Ta'jinn are happy to participate in conflict, but can't really use much that isn't plains without having to deal with a large conquered population that they can't ever adapt into their culture.   The Cressians are happy to gain more areas for the living cities, but they have to expand slowly to let them grow and conquest is unpleasant because it takes them forever to indoctrinate anyone and they have to rework their whole social structure in order to do so.  Both cultures are, however, highly paranoid as a result of fighting really evil magical cultures who threatened not just their soveriegnty but their entire value system.   Both cultures see internal stability as paramount and dependent on preventing exterior aggression. Thus, while they have their own reasons for entering into the Stempan conflict in the first place, they have reacted in fundamentally similar ways throughout the conflict itself.  Only their cultural signs, not their policies or codes, clash.The Auselen, on the other hand, hold refugees from the cultures both Cressia and the Khanate abhor, are magically invested in ways that both cultures detest, and have a society of high competition and flexibility that is built on fostering conflict and draining resources.  The Auselen are just better at hiding all of this.Another source of conflict is the immediate goals of the war.  The change in the conflict will occur when the Cressians and the Ta'jinn realize that they are fighting each other to deter and remove a threat to their socities that only has potency because they are so ignorant of each other.  It is true that they are in competition, but no more so than they have been with the Stempan states against whom neither of the powers have ever contemplated a war of annihilation since they represent at most a minor threat to each culture's internal stability.   The Auselen, on the other hand, are a culture who's only goal as an ally or enemy is to destabilize both cultures and they are willing to use methods that neither side would readily contemplate.Think of it:The Auselen have given Zombies to a culture that has never seen them before but reveres life and is deeply distrustful of heavily destructive magic.  The Auselen have given Elementals to a culture that has never seen them before but deeply distrusts the idea of summoning extra-planar entities and the idea of high level arcane magic generally.  They have exhibited double dealing and Machiavellian tactics with a culture that deeply prizes honesty, personal heroism, and law.The Auselen goal is to increase instability at no cost to themselves and open up opportunities to compromise treaties that hold them in check.  Materially they hope to gain control of some Stempan cities and ground that has been left open by the diminishment of both Cressia and the Khanate.The Auselen seek to prolong the war.  When the Cressians and Ta'jinn send large forces through the no-man's land they will encounter obscenely powerful Auselen forces that will make sure that the two original forces waste each others resources while they become more deeply entrenched.The turn will come when the Stempans get their act together and threaten to enter the war as an independent or game ending component of the conflict.As the stability of the conflict threatens to unravel the Auselen will inadvertantly turn their hand by attempting to right the conflict through powerful magics used against the Stempa.  Both of the original cultures will discover a new threat and a three way war will break out until interaction with the now truly frightened Stempans reveals the nature of the two empires to each other and attention turns to the Auselen.The end of the conflict would be a dirty sort of stalemate and relationships between the three continental powers could be better or worse, but Cressia and the Khanate agree that they have bigger fish to fry than each other and the Stempans agree that anything is better than having other people's wars fought on your own soil.  The Auselens, on the other hand, feel that all their interests are best spend in attempting to unbalance power in their favor</blockquote>

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