The taraakian assault
The taraakians make no further diplomatic response to the Union of the Worlds.
Apparently, they have made up their minds, and are not going to change them.
- - -
Also, the Alliance of Dread makes no further diplomatic gestures, either of alliance or of threat.
They are busy preparing for the war.
They send a direct message to Melkor - they are quite public about it: They expect the Corrupted Allies of the Shade to aid them in fighting the taraakians.
They want the Corrupted Allies of the Shade to launch all their Attacks and Assaults on the taraakians.
Since Melkor himself and his Shade are Disarmed, they wish these to launch all their Conventional Assaults on the taraakians.
They ask that the Red Armies launch all their Attacks and Assaults on the taraakians.
They ask that the Corrupted Allies of the Unseelie and Acererak launch all their Attacks and Assaults on the taraakians.
Since the DM is playing Zouron the Dark, he is launching his 11th level Attacks and Assaults on the taraakians.
The great Sleen (death machines - see a certain earlier Dragon Magazine) come roaring into Greyspace through gigantic astral portals, several dozen of them.
Instead of immediately attempting to kill everything in the Crystal Sphere, as they would normally do, they target their guns towards where they believe the taraakians will appear.
- - -
Somewhere in Wildspace near the IR Spheres, a massive ship looms in the Phlogiston.
It is made of a substance unknown to men, so hard that atomic fission will not heat it, disintegration beams will not cut it, and plasma bolts will not break it.
Indeed, this ship could withstand the heat at the center of a star, it's defenses would stave off the radiation, it's hull would stand the crushing gravity, and it's counterpoint mechanism would offset the slowdown in time.
The ship is about 10 miles long (perhaps around the size of the Command Ship in the film The Empire Strikes Back.)
How much it weighs, is anyone's guess; it is sufficiently massive that it has it's own weak gravity field, which has to be annulled by it's internal anti-gravitational fields.
It's shape is unorthodox for a spaceship; it is obvious it was designed by someone who had eloquence and appearance in mind, and not, perhaps, efficiency.
It's base is a mile wild, and lacks any visible means of rear propotion.
The base extends forward for one mile, and up and down also for a mile.
Out of the base, to the left and to the right, vast leaf shaped constructs have been built.
These extend out and then forward in graceful sweeps of metal, swelling in girth as they go, then shrinking again, tapering to points 5 miles forward of the base of the ship.
Two more leaf shaped extensions soar upward and out, and downward and out, from the base of the ship, again swelling as one goes out along them, then tapering to points alongside their 2 brethren.
The main part of the ship lies in the cavity formed by these four constructs, but it dwarves them in size, and it extends fully 9 miles out, well beyond their reach.
The central part of the ship resembles two great ornate leaves run one through the other, so that there are two axises along the main body of the ship, and the leaf shape is visible no matter which perspective the ship is viewed from.
Seen from a great distance away, the result looks like a plant, with one great leaf and four smaller ones surrounding the central one.
It also looks remarkably like an ornate sword.
There are beautiful, if indecipherable, designs running up and down the long sweeps of metal, all of them brilliantly lit by some form of magic.
These are all blue in color.
Blue also, is the sheen around the whole ship. What this sheen is for, is unknown; it could be a defensive shield, or it could be a visible effect of the sheer power that is contained within the ship.
If one were to go into the parts of the ship designed to accommodate visitors, one would find a situation similar to that in Star Trek, and certainly a large number of people could find refuge and safety there.
However, if one went into the rest of the ship, were it possible, one would be disappointed, for there is little to see.
Almost the entirety of the ship is either hull, with the outside, main hull being up to half a mile thick, or it is composed of great energy capacitors, one stacked right against the next - hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of these capacitors.
They are there to hold the combined magical strength of the ship's crew, and to aid them in channeling that energy as it is needed.
There are no passages or even ducts between the capacitors; not even emergency routes exist.
There are great forcefields in place, to prevent the destruction of one capacitor from destroying the whole ship.
There are no weapons systems on the ship; the weapons systems are the ship's crew.
They are all laying in carefully designed couches, with all manner of devices connected to them.
Helmets are on their heads, special gloves are on their hands, special boots are on their feet, and special vestments cover their bodies.
Enormous metal cables, 5 feet in diameter, connect each one of the couches with the webwork of conduits from the energy capacitors - the cables have to be enormous, even considering what they are made of, or they would vaporize from the energy flowing through them.
Most of the ship's crew of taraakians are in the core of the ship, behind every conceivable defense they could have built, behind the half-mile thick hull, behind the great forcefields, protected by energy fields that annull gravity, alter the flow of time, alter all the realities of the Einsteinian Universe.
Not to mention the Mordenkainien Universe.
They are in a special trance, in which they can think and operate communally, in which thoughts and directives can proceed at the speed of taraakian minds, where orders are given in a strict chain of command that requires the slightest nanosecond to be communicated and obeyed.
If they must employ the ship's energy, they draw it from the capacitors and manifest the effects of that drawing outside of the ship itself.
Thus the lack of visible engines.
Thus the lack of weapons systems, for the taraakians decide what form the energy will take, and that is a sufficient weapon for any purpose they need.
Everything that is done on this ship, is done by communal telepathy, and the ship itself responds to the thoughts of it's masters and mistresses as swiftly as they themselves would react - the ship and it's crew are one entity, working together, feeding each other, dependent on each other to survive.
For the taraakians are the engine of the ship, the power source for all the capacitors, the destructive energy of all the weapons.
The ship was built to withstand and hold the titanic energy these beings can produce - the taraakians are barely affected in their projection of magical might by any weakness of metal or ship's frame.
In the strange reality these beings are in, in their cyberspace control room that exists only in their minds, is everything a ship would have - be it historical records, scientific laboratories, the equivalent of the bridge, recreational centers, even places of privacy for trysts.
Great storage systems, magically protected computers whose speed is measured in tetraflops, assist and aid the taraakians in maintaining their virtual world, in supplying them all needed information, and in regulating the flow of energy to and from the capacitors.
Since the ship's sensors are, in effect, it's taraakian crew, the ship can never be blinded as long as it's crew is alive, and the main computer is undamaged.
Destruction of either is unlikely, since healing magic is automatically directed to where it is needed, the magic of the taraakians repairing instantly any failure of the computer, and the system healing any taraakian who is injured.
Only a complete destruction of the whole system would take it down, and for that to be accomplished, the entire capacitor grid would have to be drained of it's power to heal and protect the core.
- - -
Orders from the Star Empire are received and acknowledged.
The ship flares a vivid blue as it turns in the phlogiston, nimble as the smallest fighter, ponderous as the greatest Star Destroyer, aiming it's long leaf spires towards Greyspace.
With one titanic burst of energy, the ship disappears into hyperspace, reappearing an instant later over the selected target.
There is no bombardment.
There is only one single titantic blast of energy, designed to stun and incapitate briefly any and all magic-workers and psionicists capable of resistance in the enemy Power.
This attack is not entirely physical - much of it is aimed directly through the Weave, using the Weave itself to travel instantaneously through almost infinite distances to precisely selected targets.
Simultaneously, from the core of the ship, a magical hand reaches out, to snatch from the enemy Power a single, selected item, considered by the taraakians to be the crucial key to a victory with a minimum of bloodshed.
Can you guess which Power is the subject of this Attack?
Can you guess what it is the taraakians are attempting to seize?
If you can, you can attempt to protect that Power.
Even the taraakians are not so fast that they outpace the Seers who predict the future, and those Seers foresaw that something like this might happen.
The Assault is Category 40, but with enough Defense, it could be halted.
I'll give you a clue as to which Power is under attack - that Power is on Athas, and it holds the Diadem of Dreams.
I came back one more time tonight. 
