Motif · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

The nine factions

The teams of the ninth floor: the Princess Posse, Team Retribution (the NPCs), the Blood Sultanate, the Skull Empire's Bone Clan, the Lemig Sortion, the Prism, the Operatics, the Dream, the Reavers and the Madness — and the Bloc, the truce of eight teams at war with the Princess Posse and Team Retribution.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — Porthus; Welcome to Faction Wars
• Chapter 7 — Donut Holes; the Semeru dwarf
• Chapter 9 — Juice Box's war room
• Chapter 10 — Hamed's club; the small wedding
• Chapter 12 — The base camp; Tina
• Chapter 13 — The FUPA; a suicide bomber
• Chapter 14 — The flag room and the Ramp-Up
• Chapter 16 — Everly; Glory Bound
• Chapter 17 — Eleven hours
• Chapter 18 — The minor quorum; code red
• Chapter 19 — The ruling; the ceasefire ends
• Chapter 20 — Christmas Morning; the Ramp-Up
• Chapter 21 — The southern trenches; rot stickers
• Chapter 22 — Colonel Boomer
• Chapter 23 — Killing in the Name
• Chapter 25 — Empress, you have visitors
• Chapter 26 — Milk; the Empress marked
• Chapter 27 — Gavrilo Princip
• Chapter 28 — Toyotomi; Agatha is looking for Carl
• Chapter 29 — The Bamboozle
• Chapter 32 — King Rust arrives
• Chapter 33 — Parlay
• Chapter 34 — The king's message; Rosetta's whip
• Chapter 35 — Volteeg; the dwarves' tunnel
• Chapter 36 — Orren's zero zone
• Chapter 39 — Alliances break; Operation Snake Pit
• Chapter 41 — The production facility; Aryl goes dark
• Chapter 42 — The warlord council; Princess Vinata
• Chapter 43 — Odette hosts; 'It's coming'
• Chapter 45 — Prepotente's rant
• Chapter 46 — Operation Snake Pit: the line of succession
• Chapter 47 — Tattoos, and a flower offered
• Chapter 56 — Justice Light; the Nest
• Chapter 59 — Operation Ruin
• Chapter 61 — The War Mage Rebellion
• Chapter 62 — A non-team entity
• Chapter 67 — Hey, Dickless
• Chapter 68 — The Grease Monkey
• Chapter 69 — Interlude — Several days earlier; Interlude — Rosetta; Zarogoths
• Chapter 70 — City of Broken Dreams
• Chapter 73 — An act of fiendish cruelty
• Chapter 74 — Bijanbi
• Chapter 77 — Not yet
• Chapter 80 — Inside the dragon
• Chapter 83 — Psamathe confesses
• Chapter 84 — And then there were two
• Chapter 85 — Zerzura
• Chapter 86 — We just need to kill you

Progression

Eight teams form the Bloc and declare war on Team Retribution and the Princess Posse (ch. 1). They fall in order: the Lemig Sortion to its own warlord's suicide, a defeat the system calls voluntary (ch. 19); the Prism to a ring and a dinosaur (ch. 27); the Operatics to a gargoyle's Weeper (ch. 35); the Blood Sultanate to a sluggalo's hatchet (ch. 55); the Bone Clan to its own war mages (ch. 61); the Madness to a dead man's switch (ch. 68); the Reavers to their own nukes (ch. 80); the Dream to a dinosaur's beak (ch. 84); the War Mage Rebellion by leaving (ch. 78); and Team Retribution by taking a city to the twelfth floor (ch. 85). The Semeru dwarves, the White Dragons and the Scream Warriors are the Good Guys' own (ch. 12, ch. 20, ch. 29).