Second Siege of Sempiternal

The Second Siege of Sempiternal was the second major movement in the NATO-Mir war, fought by players from Columbia and Hallow against Mir. It took place on the 23rd of February, 2019, between the hours of 10am and 1pm GMT at the Columbia vault, which was named "Sempiternal". This was exactly one week after the first failed attempt, covered by the article The Siege of Sempiternal. One player was pearled during the siege, Ahrimane.

Preparations for the attack had been on going throughout the week since the first failed attack. Mirian forces had been snitching the key infrastructure links between Hallow and the Columbian vault, theorising that once the ice road, the main transit conduit between Hallow and Sempiternal, was deemed potentially too dangerous to use by Hallow forces, they would be forced to go overland through water where they could be picked off by the superior Mirian fighters. Preparations were made - the ice road was repeatedly snitched at both ends and along the middle stretch. NATO forces mined out the area around their ice tunnel finding many of the snitches, but not all of them. Satisfied that their intelligence network was reasonable the scene was set for Mir to attack on the weekend.

Attack on the vault
The vault break began at approximately 10am GMT. Under the pretense of greifing the bedrock outside the vault, as they had been doing for the last few days, the Mirian forces entered the vault hole hitting snitches immediately. Utilising Lysika's previous vault breaking experience they employed his preferred tactic of ring skipping - breaking into the 2nd last ring before attacking the bastions. Due to the web setup they were able to do this without danger when there was only a single defender, Shadedoom, online. As a direct consequence they were able to break the outer rings very quickly. Progress was slower on the third and final ring.

LyndonLaRouche logged in after the second ring was broken and organised the defence force made up of Gbalelul, Shadedoom and himself. Whilst the Mirians began breaking the final ring they were harrassed by potions, TNT and bow fire. However, the vault bastions had been placed incorrectly allowing the Mirian forces to build a safe room in the final bastioned ring. After approximately thirty minutes it became clear to the defenders that they were no longer able to slow the attackers and Lyndon logged out. The Mirians continued breaking the final ring whilst Gba and Shadedoom destroyed all the materials within the vault bunker and blocked it up with obsidian.

Subsequent Disabling and Skirmish
Once the final vault ring was broken the Mirians began placing reinforced stone in the rings in order to further disable the vault. At around this time Hantzu, the leader of Hallow and Nato, logged in and began to muster a force in Hallow some 3k blocks to the North West. Due to the work done by Mir in the preceding week they were able to identify exactly when Hallow forces began moving towards the vault and their progress. When the Hallow reinforcements consisting of Destrudo, Ahrimane and Erlich, began moving towards Columbia, Ez2Clutch and Gregy were sent to intercept. The Mirian Interceptors caught sight of the reinforcements and Gregy backed off whilst Ez2Clutch aggressively pearled into them. The Hallow forces ran and in the confusion left Ahrimane to fend for himself. After a short chase Ahrimane was pearled by Ez2Clutch in a river near Hallow.

The pearl was quickly brought to the main Mirian force at the Columbian vault. Upon its arrival the Mirian forces packed up, having placed sufficient grief to keep Columbia occupied for a few hours and escorted the pearl back to Mir. The attack was considered an unqualified success by Mirian forces.