No reviews. Just tabletop news.

War crimes in the Imperium: Prophecy of Kings addendum

imageByEli RichmanJune 25, 2021
War crimes in the Imperium: Prophecy of Kings addendum
Source: Fantasy Flight Games

The Tabletop Tribune’s previous coverage of the trial of Twilight Imperium factions was fairly comprehensive, but events from the Prophecy of Kings expansion have now significantly changed intergeopolitics in the Empire. That means it’s time for the galactic council to evaluate the new arrivals in the galaxy, as well as re-evaluate existing factions given new information.

The events in Prophecy of Kings—which for the purposes of this article occurred consecutively exactly five minutes ago—began with a Creuss-led expedition to a dead planet called Acheron. On Acheron, they found a dormant portal, and like all responsible horror protagonists, they reawakened it.

This allowed ancient tyrants called the Mahact to access the galaxy again after many generations of exile. Not wanting to risk being reimprisoned, they pushed their planet through the portal, which destroyed it and opened up a giant rift out of which monsters called the Vuil’Raith are now pouring. This doesn’t appear to have been their intention, they simply wanted to be in the middle of the galaxy again, which they achieved.

We have now evaluated these dangerous new arrivals, as well as several other intergalactic powers that have become more prominent in response to these events. This brings the total number of factions evaluated to 24. Here is how they are now ordered, from least war crimes to most. New or newly updated factions are bolded:

The crimes of the seven new factions are detailed below. Like in our last entry, I stuck as close as possible to war crimes listed here by the United Nations, along with more specific written Geneva Convention protocols.

All included quotes are from lore provided by Fantasy Flight Games in Twilight Imperium 4th Edition Prophecy of Kings expansion unless specified otherwise. I can’t include most game art without violating copyright laws, so instead, I described each faction very badly. You can find more art here, as well as more details on the factions’ abilities.

Editor’s disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, nor am I an expert on international law. I am absolutely unqualified to write this piece with any degree of authority. All conclusions should be immediately discredited.

The Titans of Ul (0 offenses)

The Titans of Ul are a group of sophisticated robots who gained sentience while in dormancy and decided to rebel against their former masters. And when has anything like that ever gone wrong?

The twist is that their former masters are the Mahact Gene-Sorcerers, who are allegedly the worst tyrants the galaxy has ever seen. So in a way, we’re happy to see the biomechanical giants with a benevolent dictator and a Dyson Sphere entering the political realm—they make us feel safe.

Calling them Titans is not metaphorical or an exaggeration—they never stop growing. Their youngest are over 30 feet tall, while the older individuals can be “the size of a habitant tower,” whatever that is. (The term never appears again outside this faction summary.)

Their eldest they call “the Ul,” and they freely submit to his rule (and worship him?) because he’s the biggest. He doesn’t even move anymore; He stands in the middle of the capital city, which has been built around him, offering advice and “literally looking down over their people.”

Hard to find war crimes for the Titans because they just haven’t done that much yet. They went into dormancy when the Mahact were imprisoned, and awoke when they returned. And we don’t have good records of what happened before the Mahact were imprisoned.

After reawakening, the Titans took control of a Dyson Sphere that they had previously built (under orders from the Mahact). They have since turned the outside surface of said Dyson Sphere into a verdant garden world, despite presumably not needing oxygen to survive. They have spent their time in the galaxy so far trying to track down each of their kin and bring them home, which is extremely hard to criticize, even for the U.N.

The most worrying thing in their faction summary is the hint that they have ambitions for galactic dominance. From the faction summary:

As the ancient prophecies come to pass and war looms, the Ul looks into the skies of Elysium and sees a galaxy in chaos. They know that the only chance that teeming multitudes scattered across countless worlds have for survival is a steady hand guiding them to peace. They know that while some may not realize it, there is a place for everyone in the universe, and everyone must find their place—with the Titans to watch over them all.

So that’s… not great, but it’s pretty tame as far as Twilight Imperium factions go. The Titans have a great preference for “order and organization” under the complete rule of the Ul, who is a dictator of sorts, but also might be the smartest and most powerful single being in the universe. (Its competition for that title being the Arborec, who can’t directly communicate with anyone, and the Nekrovirus, who everyone canonically fears and hates).

So if you’ve ever found yourselves yearning for the rule of Plato’s Philosopher Kings, I can’t think of a much better example of it.

The Naaz-Rokha Alliance (0 Evidenced offenses)

The Naaz (smol space monkeys) and Rokha (swol space panthers) are the galaxy’s underdogs. They join the Mentak and the Nomad as the only multiracial factions in the game. But the Naaz-Rokha want to make extra sure you know about it.

Not only do the names of the two species make up the faction’s name, but they are also always depicted together in sort of a Jak and Daxter/Ratchet and Clank setup. The faction summary makes it clear this is canon.

“Every level of Naaz-Rokha society became an equal partnership, from families (a typical Naaz-Rokha family consists of two Naaz and two Rokha, plus any children from either couple) to government (the Alliance Chamber of Congress is overseen by an executive Tetrarchy [four people who jointly control the power of a dictator] of two Naaz and two Rokha who each oversee different portions of Alliance territory). When any elected official steps down, only an official from the other species is allowed to take their place. And when the Alliance terraformed and colonized one of Naazir’s neighboring worlds so that the Rokha could have a homeworld of their own, the population of the new world was equally divided between both species—the same as on Naazir.”

The closest analog that I can think of in our world is the Lebanese constitution, which attempted to maintain a balance of power between religious groups by institutionalizing that balance in the formation of the government. An IJPS Journal article from 2009 describes the formation of this “consociational” government.

“The consociational system allocated the presidency to a Christian Maronite, the premiership to a Muslim Sunni, and the Speakership to a Muslim Shi‘ite. All public offices were corporate according to confessional and sectarian affiliations. They were assigned confessions on the proportional principle of 5 Muslims to every 6 appointed Christians. Along the same confessional office-allocation principle, all elected seats of the National Assembly were divided. Cabinet ministers and ministry general-directors as well as heads of the Armed Forces, the Central Bank, and the National University, among other sensitive public positions, were distributed along sectarian lines to accommodate the delicate confessional balance.”

Imad Salamey (2009), “Failing Consocialationalism in Lebanon and Integrative Options.” International Journal of Peace Studies, Volume 14, Number 2.

The initial idea was that this balance would adjust to changes in the population. But by refusing to take a new census—and thus acknowledge that Muslims had exceeded Christians in population—the original formation was abused to maintain Christian dominance in the legislature.

I’m not sure I see this scenario affecting the Naaz-Rokha as long as they maintain exactly equal populations by giving each Naaz their own Rokha to ride around on, but that does seem like a delicate balance. The Rokha allegedly don’t mind this arrangement because the Naaz are technological super-geniuses like the Hylar and advanced their society by allowing them to harvest free energy from another dimension. Also they’re really small (relative to the Rokha) and kinda cute, so maybe carrying them around isn’t such a burden.

Whatever the internal politics truly look like, the faction allegedly loves this arrangement so much that it wants to export it to the rest of the galaxy. From their summary:

“As chaos builds around the Mahact return, the Tetrarchy has stood before the Chamber of Congress and announced its intent. The Naaz-Rokha Alliance has already demonstrated that two species can live harmoniously as one. Who better to take control of the ancient seat of the Imperium and bring that harmonious cooperation to the stars?”

I’m not really sure where to start with this one, but a few things strike me:

  • It’s absurdly optimistic to think that this type of balance of power will work with at least 23 distinct species among 24 factions.
  • It reeks of “exporting democracy,” aside from the fact that they seem to be proposing that four individuals take control of the entire galaxy, at least in the short term.
  • It’s not… the worst pitch we’ve heard from prospective emperors.

As always, we can’t try factions for things they haven’t done yet. So any war crimes the Tetrarchy commits in pursuit of this goal in the next game of Twilight Imperium are still theoretical. We can only evaluate the existing evidence.

In game, the Naaz-Rokha have abilities focused on exploring undiscovered worlds and putting artifacts together more efficiently… which aren’t necessarily actions the Geneva Convention is concerned with. (Situations could arise concerning treatment of local species and property rights of “artifacts” but that is still theoretical).

The main possible war crimes of the Naaz-Rokha would have to be found in their revolution against occupying forces. The occupying force was constantly changing during the Twilight Wars but the Letnav was in power when the revolution took place.

The pattern continued for centuries, with the Naaz barely able to rid themselves of one conqueror before being invaded by the next. Eventually, a network of Naaz rebels gathered enough resources to try a new plan. To get rid of their current overlords (an alliance of Letnev merchant-princes), they would hire an equally downtrodden group of mercenaries: the Rokha … The nascent alliance between the Naaz and the Rokha proved successful, driving the merchant princes from their world.

So, this isn’t a huge amount of information. But we can establish a few things: Hiring mercenaries isn’t prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Neither is attacking an occupying force in the context of conventional combat.

The Tabletop Tribune previously knocked the Yssaril Tribes for attacking an occupying force, but that was outside of a combat situation—the Yssaril can turn themselves invisible and they simply murdered farms and barracks full of sleeping people without discrimination.

Without more information about the Naaz-Rokha’s war of independence, it sounds like they hired mercenaries to conventionally battle military installations, which gets close to fulfilling the Geneva Convention’s only accepted rationale in a war: To “weaken the enemy.”

The Nomad (2 possible offenses)

The Nomad might be from the future. Granted it doesn’t say that anywhere in any of the game’s text as far as I can work out, but the Creator said it so it must be canon. (I hate this line of reasoning.)

The faction summary does contain a quote saying “the future must be preserved at all costs,” and a faction ability called Future Sight, so it’s conceivable. But they could also be predicting possible futures or just worried about it.

The Nomad is unusual as Twilight Imperium factions go as it alleges to be a single person. A solitary, mortal person who has influence over more than one planet and command of multiple fleets.

If we’re happy with the time travel explanation, the faction summary seems to imply that the Nomad used their Knowledge of Future Economies to make the perfect investments at the perfect times and become ludicrously rich and powerful.

“In the course of a few weeks, the Nomad took over Sumerian, seemingly by chance. A series of licenses, contracts, and deals ended and began at the perfect time to grant the Nomad control of the station’s operations and most of its major factions … It quickly became apparent that the Nomad had access to nearly limitless sums of money, and they used their funds to buy influence in planetary governments and outright control of corporations.”

(Astute readers will notice that the Nomad’s home system, Sumerian, isn’t a planet or even a moon… it’s a space station.)

If we’re not happy with the time travel explanation, it’s probably not a stretch to assume that The Nomad is a larger organization purporting to be a fictionalized face (Like Anonymous, Big Brother, Emmanuel Goldstein, Mr. Wilford, Q, Mavis Beacon or Nicholas Cage). The Nomad’s literal face is always covered, so this would be trivially easy to pull off, as the faction summary concedes.

“Some argued that the Nomad had to be a mask for members of a larger organization. Anyone could use an environmental suit to obscure their identity, after all. Others insisted that the Nomad was a single individual, even in the face of rumors that they had conducted business in several different star systems across the span of a few days.”

In that case, the real leaders of “The Nomad” would likely be the five leaders (representing five distinct species) that the faction has access to—two more than most factions. This would go a long way toward explaining why one of those heroes is a Mahact Gene-Sorcerer, despite the fact that there are only supposed to be a handful of them, and that they just came back to the galaxy like five minutes ago.

It’s not clear that the Nomad has committed many crimes in their game of five-dimensional chess—does future sight count as insider trading?—but we can suss out a few. For instance, the faction summary strongly implies that the Nomad assassinated and/or framed their political rivals:

“The few magnates and mercenary leaders who attempted to resist the takeover simply vanished. The head of Sumerian, a trader by the name of Huro M’es, ended up being quietly arrested and imprisoned,” it reads.

The only problem for us is that this feels more like a normal crime than a war crime. The Nomad has never been in a formal war scenario, however, so references to “the enemy” or “the conflict” are approximate. Stretching those definitions to their breaking point, we might accuse the Nomad of the following offenses of the Geneva Convention:

  1. Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities; By potentially assassinating the previous magnates and other leaders of Sumerian.
  2. Destroying or seizing the enemy’s property unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war; By seizing control of Sumerian.

The Geneva Convention is pretty clear, however, that it is only valid in international conflict.

The Empyrean (4 possible offenses)

The Empyrean are enigmatic space angels that barely communicate with the rest of the galaxy and are able to survive in the vacuum of space. They definitely have the ability to communicate—unlike, say, the Arborec—they just choose not to. This means a lot of their faction summary is speculative and unhelpful.

Though they do not actively avoid confrontations, anthropologists and diplomats who have attempted to establish contact with the Empyrean tend to find them frustratingly noncommunicative. Individual Empyrean tend to avoid answering questions about their purpose in observing the actions of other species, or about themselves or their civilization. Though they are sometimes referred to as the galaxy’s “historians,” nobody knows if the Empyrean keep a unified record of galactic events. If they do, they have not shared it with anyone else.

They are known to show up to observe galactic events whenever a faction colonizes another system, but the only action they take is “occasionally sending unobtrusive probes orbiting through the inner system for closer observations.” Only one Empyrean ship has ever been to Mecatol Rex, and that was very recently.

Their only possible offenses have happened recently as well, and they are not definitive. As more Empyrean ships showed up, “Some free traders have begun to refuse to follow the deep space commerce trails, repeating rumors that ships have begun to vanish in greater numbers, and Empyrean craft have been sighted following lone vessels.”

If the Empyrean are indeed abducting civilian ships—and that’s a fairly big “if”—then we have to give them the standard four offenses for doing so (the same ones previously given to The Mentak Coalition (pirates), The Argent Flight, and The Ghosts of Creuss).

  1. Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
  2. Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives.
  3. Destroying or seizing the enemy’s property unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war.
  4. Taking of hostages.

The Argent Flight (4 possible offenses)

Source: Fantasy Flight Games

The galaxy’s birdpersons aren’t new arrivals, they were just hiding. Their home system was deliberately hidden by the Lazax Empire so that a monastic order (The Argent Flight) could take off (sorry).

The Argent Flight was tasked with observing Acheron to make sure that the Mahact could never return to the galaxy. The group “accomplished” this for decades by abducting ships that got too close. They then spectacularly failed their task because a Creuss expedition, the one that ultimately found the gate on Acheron, was “too large to defeat in combat.”

Without unprovoked combat, what was the Argent Flight supposed to do? Tell them? That would betray their secrecy and bring them out of hiding!

So once the galaxy’s worst jailkeepers failed their original job, they retroactively decided that their mission was actually to lead the fight against the Mahact, who had so unfortunately returned. Then the group came out of hiding.

The Argent Flight knows, now that its ancient nemesis has returned, that it has no choice—it must lead the rest of the galaxy on a holy crusade to finish what the Lazax started so long ago.

Nothing the UN loves more than a holy crusade.

Even though the Flight’s inaction directly enabled the Mahact to return, I’m not sure we can accuse the Argent Flight of any crimes just for being utterly incompetent at its job. But the faction did spend lifetimes abducting ships that got too close to Acheron rather than just provide information to other powers. This makes them potentially guilty of:

  1. Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
  2. Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives.
  3. Destroying or seizing the enemy’s property unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war.
  4. Taking of hostages.

Interestingly, the Argent Flight’s now-admitted abductions of civilian ships took place in Shaleri space, in which we previously accused the Ghosts of Creuss of abducting ships that got too close. This means we have to reopen the question of whether the Creuss should be charged with the same thing. It’s possible that we could attribute all the ships that disappeared in that area to the Argent Flight, which would mean the Ghosts of Creuss are innocent of those charges, as they have always claimed. But there is no way to confirm this.

We are going to reevaluate the Creuss later on.

The Mahact Gene-Sorcerers (16 possible offenses)

Source: Fantasy Flight Games

The Mahact are the galaxy’s original Big Bads. They used to rule the galaxy as tyrants (we’re supposed to take this for granted) until the *heroic* Lazax, who definitely didn’t write the history books, showed up and imprisoned them on their home world of Ixth.

We’re given little information about what circumstances were like when the Gene-Sorcerers were in power. But the summaries are damning enough.

Gene-sorcerers. Mad tyrants. Kings. The Mahact are a primal tale from ancient history. In the distant past, the Mahact dynasties terrorized the galaxy with their infighting and genesorcery. They could warp the forms of living beings, compel eternal obedience with a gesture, and turn the biospheres of entire worlds into seething, caustic hells. They unleashed their most vile technologies in war or even in debauched sport

So we have space Sauron returning to the galaxy and very few living beings remember what things were like under Mahact rule.

The Mahact may well be guilty of every war crime. But without more information, we’re only able to focus on the flavor text contained in the game.

The Mahact have given us plenty to work with in the five minutes since they returned to the galaxy, however. Upon being accidentally freed from their prison during the Creuss expedition, the Mahact immediately used their gene-sorcery to mentally enslave and take control of every Ghost in the vicinity.

They would later use these slaves as emissaries to approach Mecatol Rex and demand control of the galaxy. There are very few actual Gene-Sorcerers left, so they would not wish to risk their dwindling numbers by traveling to the capital themselves.

Though there are only a handful of them left, each has the power of eons of technosorcery at their fingertips. The remaining Mahact turn to their own holdings, awakening their Ixthian bio-factories and assemblers, and summoning their dormant agents and their genetic descendants.

They didn’t want to be trapped again, so after establishing control of the Starwormhole gate on Acheron, the gene sorcerers used that gate to force their planet Ixth out of orbit and directly into the center of the galaxy.

A planet is too big to fit through a wormhole gate (duh). So the Gene-Sorcerers’ action, while successful, tore the wormhole open to the point where Acheron and its star were pulled in. And that wormhole now leads to a parallel dimension full of demons, who have started coming through and invading nearby planets. (More on that later)

So between its history of terrorism, the enslaving of the Ghosts of Creuss, and unleashing an unrelated superpower on the galaxy, The Mahact Gene-Sorcerers may be guilty of:

  1. Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; By destroying Acheron and its star system.
  2. Destroying or seizing the enemy’s property unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war; See above.
  3. Compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power; By enslaving the Ghosts of Creuss that opened the gate at Acheron.
  4. Wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial; See above.
  5. Taking of hostages; See above.
  6. The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory; By teleporting their entire planet into the center of the galaxy.
  7. Declaring abolished, suspended or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party; See above.
  8. Compelling the nationals of the hostile party to take part in the operations of war directed against their own country; See above.
  9. Subjecting persons who are in the power of an adverse party to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are neither justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the person concerned nor carried out in his or her interest, and which cause death to or seriously endanger the health of such person or persons; That’s their bread and butter, baby.
  10. Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments; See above.
  11. Willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health; See above.
  12. Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; See above.
  13. Killing or wounding treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army; I’m not sure if gene-sorcery counts as “wounding treacherously,” but it’s possible. The faction summary doesn’t say anything about killing their enemies, it’s more about dominating them as slaves.
  14. Declaring abolished, suspended or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party; I believe “dominating their enemies into endless servitude” covers this one.
  15. Employing asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices; May be a leap, but certainly possible that turning “the biospheres of entire worlds into seething, caustic hells,” may involve some harmful gases and liquids
  16. Employing weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the international law of armed conflict; Unleashing the Vuil’Raith Cabal probably caused some unnecessary suffering. Speaking of…

The Vuil’Raith Cabal (19 possible offenses)

The Vuil’Raith Cabal are predatory space demons from another universe that the Mahact accidentally summoned when they forced a planet through a portal. Sounds bad, but is it?

Although they have been in the galaxy for all of five minutes, the Vuil’Raith have already torn open wormholes in the Ghosts of Creuss’ system in an effort to merge their reality with the area. And the faction summary makes it clear they have the same plans for the rest of the galaxy.

The worlds on the edges of Shaleri space have come under assault from the Vuil’raith. Looming flesh-ships smash system defense fleets from the void, and crackling portals open in the streets to disgorge hordes of ravenous demon-beasts. With the Acheron rift providing an anchor into this reality, the Vuil’raith work tirelessly to build additional gateways to their hellish domain, their only desire to rip open the heart of Mecatol Rex and set a gateway amongst its bones.

This quest to destroy everything raises a couple of concerns for the intergalactic community. The quote above implies over a dozen war crimes by itself. It means the Vuil’rath are attacking entire worlds, without provocation or any discrimination toward civilians versus the military. And this is just half the picture.

The Vuil’raith Cabal also has an ability called “Devour,” and it allows the faction to “capture” non-structure units it destroys in combat. This capture mechanic is unique to the Vuil’raith. The captured units can be used in two ways: With an ability called “Amalgamation,” which allows the Vuil’raith to trade the captured unit to produce an equivalent unit of its own without spending resources. Or, if the faction has captured a type of unit it hasn’t accessed yet, it can use “Riftmeld” to learn the unit’s technology without prerequisites by “researching” the captured unit.

In the view of the Geneva Convention, this translates to either forcing them into servitude or killing them and researching their corpses.

All evaluated together, the Vuil’Raith are potentially guilty of:

  1. Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments; by absorbing captured enemies into its army.
  2. Willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health; by launching attacks on worlds at the edge of Shaleri space.
  3. Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.; See above
  4. Compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power; By using its “Amalgamation” ability
  5. Compelling the nationals of the hostile party to take part in the operations of war directed against their own country; See above
  6. Wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial; By using its “capture” ability
  7. Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement; See above
  8. Taking of hostages; See above
  9. Destroying or seizing the enemy’s property unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war; See above
  10. Killing or wounding treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army; See above
  11. Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; See above
  12. Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated; By attacking entire worlds, rather than military installations.
  13. Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives; See above
  14. Pillaging a town or place, even when taken by assault; See above
  15. The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory; By using its portals “in the streets to disgorge hordes of ravenous demon-beasts.”
  16. Subjecting persons who are in the power of an adverse party to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are neither justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the person concerned nor carried out in his or her interest and which cause death to or seriously endanger the health of such person or persons; By using its “Voidmeld” ability to “research” captured units.
  17. Declaring that no quarter will be given; The Cabal’s “Capture” ability is public knowledge in Twilight Imperium, so it has made clear what it intends to do with its targets.
  18. Declaring abolished, suspended or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party; See above
  19. Employing weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the international law of armed conflict; Flesh-ships, portals to Hell, etc.

Base game adjustments

The Ghosts of Creuss (4 -> 0 offenses)

The Creuss were the ones who initiated the journey to Ixth, so in a sense, we can blame them for freeing the Mahact. That was not their intention, however, so I’m not sure we can consider it to be a method of warfare. Further, we can’t charge the Creuss with destroying Acheron and unleashing the Vuil’Raith; the Mahact made that decision.

We also need to consider the Ghosts’ maintained innocence of abducting ships in Shaleri airspace. Now that we know the Argent Flight was regularly abducting ships in that area to keep them away from Acheron, their continually professed innocence makes more sense. We’re going to tentatively remove those charges from the Ghosts of Creuss, which eliminates its potential war crimes.