ISLAND OF BLOOD

"The black rocky beaches ran red when the killing finally stopped. Then I saw them appear from the fortress and I knew I had to turn the boat around and get away. Someone had to survive. Someone had to report.” 

• Mei Zhang, sole survivor of assault on Nyx fortress island, executed for cowardice,
  Day 17 of The Burning, 124 AP

On the coast of the Jade Domain, a fisher finds a barely alive sailor, washed up on the beach.

The exhausted sailor is taken to a military outpost, where she tells of her freighter being attacked by a Ceres war party.

The Ceres are a well known scourge of this region, and the local Jade Domain commander decides to send an expedition to the nearest known Ceres outpost, one of the mysterious fortress islands along the coast of the Jade Domain.

Jade Domain Troopers gather up equipment for an amphibious attack.

A flotilla of aging attack craft of all shapes and sizes, mostly dating back to the wars of the Great Collapse, takes the Troopers to the fortress island.

They soon reach the fortress, which is surrounded by artificial concrete piers and wave breakers.

As the landing craft reach the island, the Troopers quickly disembark onto the concrete landing piers jutting out into the sea.

As the troopers struggle to scale the angular concrete surfaces, gun turrets are emerging from previously hidden compartments all around them...

A moment later, the gun turrets open fire on the attackers!

There is almost no cover on the open concrete structure and the troopers are too lightly armed to take out the turrets in return. They are slaughtered out in the open.

Hundreds are killed in moments, as the well-placed gun turrets sweep the ramparts and approaches to the island.

The guns keep firing until no movement is detected anymore...

Here and there, a few troopers wearily rise out of cover and surrender.

Meanwhile, the mutant creatures of the sea greedily begin to feed on the dead and the wounded alike...

The Skryx, the mysterious inhabitants of the fortress island, emerge and quickly round up the survivors.

Inside the base, the prisoners are placed in pods, not dissimilar to the growth vats they were born from. These pods however are designed to shred the minds of the occupants and wipe their consciousness away, turning them into human blanks. Afterwards, if they have survived, the pods re-program their minds...

Not all prisoners survive the mind shredding and re-programming...

But those that do have been re-programmed into something new and different.. a new generation of Nyx Acolytes emerges.

In the deepest, darkest cave of the fortress island the Nyx AI has her lair. Her corrupting mind is staying in the shadows for now, sending her Witches and their forces to do her bidding, slowly building up her power and influence around the world...