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event

Faction Wars

The Tenth Floor season

The tenth-floor war that ends with roughly twenty thousand surviving crawlers and a resistance army coming home victorious.

Story so far

Faction Wars is over. On the crawler side, Carl emerges into the Zero Zone covered in ash and blood, shaking, and Quasar tells him that about twenty thousand crawlers made it to the tenth floor - an accomplishment so large it has flooded the market and made every exit deal worthless. Only minutes have passed for Carl, who has no idea whether Katia survived.

On the outside, Faction Wars was cover. The veterans of the resistance onboarded into it, leaving York alone aboard the Homecoming Queen, and while the fighting drew every eye, The Orc Yacht was vaporized and a broadcast was filmed for release the moment the war ended. Colonel Boomer returns aged and triumphant with a doggerel verse - we won Faction Wars, now we get to kill more of them - and immediately orders phase two: breaching suits, Cronus-class Power Armor, and bringing the war out of the dungeon.

Role

The tenth-floor conflict whose end triggers both the exit negotiations and the resistance's open war.

Relationships

Carl — Survives it and refuses every deal it earned him
Colonel Boomer — Returns from it victorious and aged
The Eleventh Floor — The floor that follows it

Earlier in this series

Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:

Sources — 39 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 1
  • The ninth floor: ten warlord-led teams, no protections for the rich, and everyone expecting a slaughter.
Chapter 4
  • The ninth floor: ten teams, nine attacking and one defending, fighting for the castle at the centre of Larracos - with the crawlers free to enlist, flee, or be conscripted.
Chapter 10
  • The ninth floor's mass war between crawler and NPC factions, governed by an elaborate rulebook of asset limits.
Chapter 12
  • Recurring competition in which factions invade Larracos to seize its castle, replayed across dozens of seasons.
Chapter 13
  • The floor's team-versus-team war, currently paused by ceasefire, with Shanty Town's ownership waiting on its start.
Chapter 15
  • Large-scale team competition staffed by ex-crawlers, with officer ranks and lethal veteran factions.
Chapter 16
  • The floor-wide war whose roster is upended by fifty thousand ex-crawler volunteers and a hundred fifty thousand enemy mercs.
Chapter 17
  • The floor's team-versus-team war, 52 hours out, whose phases reshape saferooms, mercenaries, and territory rules.
Chapter 18
  • The floor-spanning war whose rules govern strongholds, scouts, adjutants, and legal attacks.
Chapter 19
  • The ninth floor's ten-team territorial war, structured into four phases and stuffed with outsider mercenaries.
Chapter 25
  • The Celestial Ascendency's open war phase, triggered early when the Democratic Sortion's voluntary defeat cut the ceasefire short.
Chapter 27
  • The ten-faction war over Larracos, now in its 180-hour first phase with one team already eliminated.
Chapter 29
  • The territorial team war in which the crawlers hold two fronts and every team's castle is a target.
Chapter 30
  • The previous edition's war that the Posse's NPC veterans were conscripted into, shaping Donut's command style.
Chapter 31
  • The floor-spanning war between factions whose conventions and known exploits shape the trench battle.
Chapter 32
  • The massed trench battle between crawler-led factions, fought with artillery, aircraft, spies, and assassination.
Chapter 34
  • The floor-wide war whose slots outsiders can buy — D'Nadia's long campaign to purchase one is Carl's core grievance.
Chapter 35
  • The ninth-floor territorial war whose rules govern warlord kills, mercenary conversion, and the execution of prisoners.
Chapter 40
  • The floor-wide war whose rules govern warlord titles, titan pilots, and registered parlays.
Chapter 51
  • The season-long team competition whose warlords meet in council, now down to five teams after three eliminations.
Chapter 54
  • The floor-wide war whose enrollment rules leave Prepotente free to cross borders but bar Carl from using him.
Chapter 55
  • The season-long war between kingdoms, entered this year by eleven nagas and watched obsessively across the galaxy.
Chapter 58
  • The floor-wide war whose entire duration warlords can skip by hiding inside a light god's temple.
Chapter 66
  • The ninth-floor team war, now two hours from its third phase with six teams remaining.
Chapter 68
  • The floor-spanning war between crawler and NPC factions, which the mantids abandoned and the naga entered for money.
Chapter 69
  • The floor-wide war whose final unrestricted phase Operation Ruin is designed to end in a single day.
Chapter 71
  • The ninth floor's team war, whose rules are rewritten mid-battle and whose own tools turn on it.
Chapter 78
  • The season-long warlord competition, reverted to its original lethal rules for the Peeling.
Chapter 80
  • The floor-wide war whose previous iteration broke Rosetta and whose current one she returned to fight.
Chapter 81
  • The floor-wide war whose castle-holding rules and clocks structure the entire battle for Larracos.
Chapter 84
  • The floor-wide war whose rules — conscription, warlord menus, unit legions — now extend to conscripting gods themselves.
Chapter 86
  • The floor-wide contest whose clock will hand victory to the war mages in about five hours.
Chapter 88
  • The season-long war whose sponsorship rules have never before left Eris unsponsored and free.
Chapter 89
  • The team-versus-team floor whose victory condition is holding an enemy throne room for six consecutive hours.
Chapter 91
  • The floor-wide war that drew the galaxy's warlords, two of whom are now hiding as their castles fall.
Chapter 95
  • The floor-wide war whose castle-capture rules are about to execute Tagg and, with him, Louis.
Chapter 96
  • The ninth floor's war, now on a one-hour fuse with two factions left standing.
Chapter 97
  • The ninth floor's grand war ends with Team Retribution defeated and the Princess Posse declared champions.
Chapter 100
  • The tenth-floor war that ends with roughly twenty thousand surviving crawlers and a resistance army coming home victorious.
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