The Beastfort was a hive of activity today.
First, the Transians and the merfolk army had joined forces to break through the city gates and kill Dagon's chosen son inside. The Transian warriors, fierce as wolves and tigers, had fanned out through this "genuine" garbage city, cutting people down for military merit. Before they'd even finished tallying their kills, two hundred thousand fishman marauders had come out of nowhere and swept into an area that had only been quiet for a few hours, bringing their entire families with them.
The players were now fighting desperately to break free of the street battles and regroup with their five-hundred-man warbands, heading to reinforce the defensive line against the fishmen's main force. Even the usually gentle mermaid girls had gotten serious. Old Qin had ordered them to fall back, but the on-site commander, Lady Nikita, knew exactly what that would mean.
With the terrain behind them—the Gray Trench—so narrow and straight, if they retreated today, it wouldn't be easy to fight their way back into the Beastfort against an army of fishmen whose origins were unknown.
So Nikita ordered her entire force to hold its ground. The merfolk formed a defensive line on the flank of the players' front, and she even rallied the exhausted children of Triton, who had fought all day, ordering them to lie down on the seabed and serve as a makeshift barricade.
The Tide Warriors of the Temple of the Avenger stood at the front, with priests from the Temple of the Great Reef behind them. All manner of sea beasts trained by the merfolk were also mobilized to hold fast against any advance toward the Gray Trench, while the priests raised a tidal barrier to seal off the waters.
The order was firm: they would not retreat