Moments after I wrote my last journal entry, I received a ticker message from Prefect Aerrin Campbell stating that a leader under Bordon's command had defected and captured a company of avatars from the Green Rock Legion. Apparently, the defector had split from our Legion and burrowed into the Dungeonworld. There, he decided to capture the Green Rock avatars in order to force them to form-fit and generate daemons to amass an army large enough to overtake a large portion of Galacia if not all of it.

In other words, the defector was establishing another Crimson Lion.

What bothered me initially about this message, though, was that the Prefect gave me a choice: either bring the enemy to heel and have us both attend to a sort of tribunal with a Prefect to preside and decide our settlement of gold and wealth gained from this quest, or decide the settlement separately between us and our allies but have this subject to a sort of "audit" by the Prefects to be initiated if the losing side files a complaint. I pursued the second choice with the notion that my allies and I would make our case to the aggressive nature of our defector in order to prevent any sort of "audit-settlement" from compromising our gains. After all, we would be making these gains by merit in any case.

So I met with Peter Creon and decided that we would employ our Legion of Camroc forces to partake in this. We had our lead avatars partner with the avatar-leaders with the Green Rock Legion in order to build up joint forces, to which we all agreed to reach out to my old friend, Erica Clemens, for assistance from Finbow's Legion. And so we formed a temporary pact and set out to defeat the defector.

The defector in question was an avatar named "Captain Marthdon." When we confronted his forces initially in the Dungeonworld battlefield, we were unprepared. The site was in an underground cavern, so we were forced to rely on infantry rather than airships. Marthdon had apparently mustered quite an infantry during his time underground, so he had the advantage.

However, I realized that this battlefield was close to the entrance to the Netherworld of Galacia in the Antecosmos, where lived the semi-deity avatar, Antiphone, cast by another old friend of mine, Ensara Webler.

Ensara Webler was one of the first Members of the Third Level Society whom I met when I first joined around this time last year. She is around the same age as Ivella Ogden and was one of the Members present at the Society's founding five years ago. So needless to say, she is a seasoned veteran and therefore proved a good mentor to me. She was not a deity-equivalent at the time but has gained power since.

I met with Ensara two days ago and explained our predicament. We spent two hours at the Slack over a cup of coffee and came up with an ingenious solution, which we implemented that night.

Antiphone sent daemons of her own, powerful underworld demon-like spirits, posing to assist Marthdon's forces in the battle against us. These daemons cast additional daemons who appeared to go to the front line in favor of Marthdon, but fell easily under the gunfire and spellfire discharges. This of course caused strategical mayhem for Marthdon to deal with. Meanwhile, Antiphone's real daemons cast invisibility upon themselves and started picking off Marthdon's forces from behind. When Marthdon realized the trick between me and Antiphone, it was too late. Before he could respond, we led the charges with a flurry of gunfire, spellfire discharges, and bombs, which literally blew holes in the battlefield into the Antecosmos. Though we, ourselves, lost a bunch of avatars which were forced to ressurect themselves at their points of origin, Marthdon's forces sustained heavier losses.

And that was when the real Marthdon arrived, on our side. As it turned out, the enemy we were fighting was actually Captain Maysom from the Legion of Styrn, who had previously been sanctioned by Carla Wright's Prefects to surrender a portion of his airship legion and was looking to regain power. Maysom's agenda to pose as Marthdon was designed to cause confusion among us. But Peter and Carla had a line of communication to the Member behind Marthdon that Maysom had not considered. And thus, the deception was thwarted.

The battle was over, and we had a large meeting through our avatars in the Arturian Realm, aboard the Airship Warloch. Here, we split our gains fairly as pertaining to the needs of each entity fought as well as allocate a bit of wealth as consolation to Captain Maysom.

And so it appeared that the outcome was settled without the need of assistance from the Prefects.

However, a Member had anonymously reported us to the Prefectdom. Very soon, Aerrin Campbell called us to a meeting and re-settled our outcome, splitting the proceeds of our credits and gains "as evenly and equally as possible." That meant splitting the gains evenly among the Legion of Camroc, Finbow's Legion, Green Rock Legion, and the Legion of Styrn. Most infuriatingly, however, the Prefect-avatars decided to take a share of the gains for "having conducted the service of mediation."

Needless to say, not only do I think this is an overreach, I think this is, quite frankly, a form of blatant corruption. And I know that I am not the only one with this sentiment. Other Members involved in the quest feel the same, including Erica Clemens, Zachary Landon, and Sari Frame.

There is one person, however, who has not yet voiced a complaint: Peter Creon. That is unsurprising, though, for I feel that I know where he stands.