There is something magical about a well planned operation carried out against an inert target. 

[Friction: 6] The ground assault could not have gone better. Linking up with the kobold commandos who had been making an ongoing catalogue of every Azura movement and ammunition dump, the Aotrs forces achieve total strategic surprise over a vast area. Azura divination is a powerful tool for forewarning troops when and where there will be a battle, but that pales in comparison to a detailed strategic observation. One kick to the door and the whole rotten edifice comes crashing down; the ground battle almost immediately becomes a disorganized rout, enabling the Aotrs to seize control of the target temple complex, numerous anti-air emplacements, and several large munitions dumps and vehicle pools. What does Aotrs doctrine say to do with an initial victory like this?

The necromantic temple the Azura have half-built thrums with power, drawing in the souls of the recently deceased. It's a strangely beautiful thing up close, glyphs flowing and crashing into each other like water, walls embellished with paintings in strange studies of blue turning red to violet. The stones ache with mysterious purpose. The blueprints provided to suborn it need construction work of steel beams and carefully arranged light glyphs, the work of many hours.

[Friction: 2] The antimagic assault team, however, has far worse luck. They emerge not into a quiet corridor of a vast ship but into a fully staffed and very confused military hospital and engineering department. Azura divination had detected an instance of mass death and mayhem occurring in this location but had given them no sign of any enemy forces, so they had interpreted the signs as indicating that there was some sort of technical breakdown happening in this area of the ship and started a full systems check. 

Against another species this might have been salvageable, but Azura doctors are biomancers, and biomancers are, as the Aotrs learn, [i]terrifying[/i]. They are surrounded by clusters of engineered life forms called drones - whereas a servitor is a full, intelligent, independent and thinking entity made for purpose, a drone is an organic droid. Dull-eyed and lifeless before the biomancers activate their mutagenic triggers, the drones fly into psychopathic, self-destructive berserker rages. Shots go right through them. Horrifyingly, they don't have [i]organs [/i]- no lungs, no digestion, no immune system, barely a nervous system that doubles as a distributed brain, meat empowered by a high energy nutrient fuel slurry, stuffed into a bony shell. They burn out in minutes; dozens of drones literally dropping dead atop the bodies of their victims. The incursion is a disaster and there are no survivors, and everything is taken to the vats for recycling.

[Friction: 5] On the diplomatic level, pact made with the biomancer Genetor, Ellis, holds. Immediately upon approach of the Aotrs fleet, Biomancer ships start activating their inertialess drives and leaving the system. Interpreting this as a rout, numerous loyal ships follow them. Before a shot is fired the Azura fleet has lost a third of its force.

The remainder rallies admirably, as far as they go. The Generous Knight asserts the command she won earlier around Tanshin III and collects her diminished force behind the first layer of monitor craft, sacrificing them to patch the holes in her formation. On the sky and in the ground something changes in the Azura as their shock starts to alchemize into determination, a proud and unifying conviction to not allow the shame to define them. 

The Generous Knight's battleplan seems to be a prioritization of the ground engagement. The core of her formation are floating orbital barracks spheres that she intends to deliver to various crisis spots on the ground, re-establishing control of the orbital defenses. This necessitates splitting her fleet into three groups to hit each crisis spot, with a fourth mobile reserve group drawing itself into the centre of a cluster of accelerator rings to respond quickly to commitments of force.