The Long Night is a battle that took place in the Mercurian city of Heliopolis on February 5th, 754 PCE where Lysander au Lune rallied the Society Remnant loyalists in the city to sabotage and defeat the occupying Solar Republic armies.
Prelude[]
On January 5th, Darrow managed to thwart the efforts of the Society Remnant to crush the Free Legions in the Battle of the Ladon. As part of his battle strategy, he excavated ancient terraforming machines known as Storm Gods and restored them to working order with the help of the Master Maker Glirastes.
Since Darrow had previously promised Glirastes to avoid bombardment of population centers, Darrow killed Orion when she attempted to take the Storm Gods above primary horizon. Despite his anger at the broken promise and the massive amounts of civilian casualties that resulted, Glirastes assisted the Free Legions with constructing a modified EMP aboard the Morning Star to facilitate their evacuation from the planet and their escape from the Society's blockade.
Construction of the EMP began approximately twelve days after the Battle of the Ladon, after Darrow and the Free Legions received fresh radiation medication from Luna courtesy of Virginia, and took around 3 weeks to complete.[1]
Meanwhile, after several days of wandering in the desert, Lysander au Lune was captured by Atlas au Raa's Gorgons while inspecting one of Atlas' forests of impaled Martian soldiers on the outskirts of Erebos. In the dungeon of the Gorgons' mountain base, he finds himself sharing a cell with his cousins, Alexandar and Drusilla au Arcos.
Six days before the Free Legions were scheduled to depart, Atlas returned to the base and spoke to Lysander about the state of the Society's operations on Mercury during and after the Battle of the Ladon. Atlas informed Lysander that Atalantia was planning to launch a chemical bombardment of Heliopolis in five days that would indiscriminately wipe out all life in the city. Wanting to prevent civilian casualties and live up to the ideals that Gold was meant to embody, Lysander convinced Atlas to help stage his own capture and the Acros' escape so that Lysander can get inside the city and convince Glirastes to help him retake it before the chemical attack.
The Battle[]
The Aftermath[]
The Long Night resulted in the Society remnant retaking control over the surface of Mercury.
Thanks to the arrival of Cassius, Darrow, Harnassus, Thraxa managed to escape the planet along with Screwface and approximately 196 other troops. Meanwhile, Colloway's shuttle was unable to reach orbit and hid in the Hesperides mountains until his band of survivors managed to hire a group of iron smugglers to sneak them off-planet in a stolen Votum torchShip. Colloway's band of survivors managed to steal the ship after leaving orbit and slowly began working their way across the solar system. The rest of the army remained marooned on the planet, where two million[2] Martian Reds and Golds were impaled in a line from Heliopolis to Tyche, while the remaining Republic troops were forced into labor camps where they were conscripted to rebuild the damage caused to Mercury's cities by the Storm Gods during the Battle of the Ladon.[3]
Lysander's actions during the battle resulted in various factions within the Society Remnant pledging their loyalty to the heir of House Lune. In order to avoid further infighting between his allies and Atalantia's, he convinced her to agree to a marriage alliance in order to unite the two of them under one banner.
Shortly after the battle, Kalindora was poisoned and slowly succumbed to it, finally passing the day after the Society Remnant's Triumph. Before her death, she revealed to Lysander the truth of her and Atalantia's involvement in the deaths of his parents.
Some time after the Triumph, Lysander met with Apollonius au Valii-Rath in the desert and convinces him to agree to ally with him against Darrow.