Second Siege of Sempiternal

The Second Siege of Sempiternal was the third major battle 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 5am and 8pm EST at the Columbian vault, which is named "Sempiternal," and has four rings total. This siege occurred exactly one week after the first failed attempt by Mir to break the vault, covered by the article The First Siege of Sempiternal. One player was pearled during the siege: Ahrimanne, a NATO fighter from Hallow.

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 intercepted and harassed by Mir Team 6. 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 5am EST. Under the pretense of griefing the bedrock outside the vault, as they had been doing for the last few days, Krallen (Mir) was sent to the outside of the fourth ring to begin mining a port of entry into the vault's ground level, followed soon by the rest of Mir Team 6, hitting snitches immediately. Utilizing Lysika_Lantariel's (leader, Mir) previous vault-breaking experience, they employed his preferred tactic of ring skipping—mining into the second to last ring before breaking the bastions. This was possible due to design of the rings, being that only the outer edge of each ring was trapped, creating a safe zone for bastion breakers on the side closest to the center of the vault. They were also able to do this without much initial danger because there was only a single defender online for quite a while. shadedoom (Columbia) had again been the first to log on and notice the attack, but despite his efforts to harass the Mirian forces in the vault hole, he was poorly equipped and had unwisely moved his Columbian-based combat alt from Sempiternal to Hallow's vault the night before, thus making an effective defense impossible without reinforcements. As a direct consequence, Mirian fighters were able to break the outer rings very quickly.

Progress was slower on the final ring and ground bunker of the vault. LyndonLaRouche logged in after the second ring was broken, and organized the defense force made up of Gbalelul (Hallow), shadedoom, and himself. Whilst the Mirians began breaking the final ring, they were harassed by a familiar barrage from debuff potions, on top of TNT and bow fire. While this tactic from NATO did somewhat slow the Mirian advance, the vault's bastion layout included an extra bastion in ever ring along each cardinal direction. This allowed the Mirian forces to build a reinforced stone room at the outer edge of the final ring after breaking the ring's bastions, at that point contesting the extra bastion along the West cardinal of the ground bunker. The room would later be improved by replacing the stone with cobblestone. While this was a long term benefit for Mir, it also allowed more use of TNT by LyndonLaRouche in the short term to blow up unmatured reinforced blocks.

Eventually, although NATO had successfully slowed Mir Team 6's advance somewhat, the defense had become arduous and LyndonLaRouche realized they could not hold the ground level much longer without reinforcements. He shortly retreated into the sky bunker and logged off for about an hour. At this time, shadedoom organized himself and Gbalelul to evacuate materials from the ground bunker to the sky bunker, and begin filling the ground bunker with reinforced obsidian and cobblestone grief. The Mirian forces continued breaking the final ring whilst the evacuation was going on, almost entirely uncontested in their attack tunnel.

Subsequent Disabling and Skirmish
Once the bastions in the final ring of the vault were broken, the Mirians began placing reinforced stone to shore up their attack tunnel and further disable the outer rings. At around that time HanTzu (leader, Hallow) finally logged in to muster reinforcements in Hallow, about 3000 meters to the Northwest. Due to the snitching done by Mir in the preceding week, they were able to identify exactly when Hallow's forces began moving towards the vault, and their progress along the way. When the Hallow reinforcements, consisting of Destrudo (alt of HanTzu), Ahrimanne (Hallow, Mount Augusta), and Erlich (Hallow), began moving towards Columbia, Ez2Clutch (Mir) and Gregy165 (Mir) were sent to intercept. The two interceptors caught sight of the reinforcements, triggering Gregy165 to back off whilst Ez2Clutch aggressively pearled into them. The Hallow forces diverted, and in the confusion, Ahrimanne went in the wrong direction. After a short chase, Ahrimanne was pearled by Ez2Clutch in a river near Hallow. The remaining Hallow fighters tried to reach Ahrimanne, but backed off when they realized it would likely cost them their pearls as well.

Ahrimanne's pearl was quickly brought back to the main Mirian force at Sempiternal. Upon its arrival, the Mirian forces split up, some kiting to nearby bunkers, and some taking the pearl back to the Mir Vault. The attack had left Columbia's Security Council and the leadership of NATO with the decision to either repair the vault in an attempt to hold it once more, or to retreat from it with all of the important and valuable materials remaining there. Given the casualties had defending it, and the cost and effort it would take to repair it again, the choice was made unilaterally to abandon and self-grief Sempiternal to minimize future losses and the effect of future grief of the vault. Evacuation efforts were organized in the following days, headed by shadedoom and Ladezkik (Holy Jaded Empire). This siege was a tremendous success and major victory for Mir in its war against NATO.