Prelude
Over the past 2 weeks or so, Weasel and his friends have been on Vigam, rallying the Burrower and Sugar Glider resistance movement to take over the Tatian-occupied planet Vigam. So far, they have restored the Burrower Capital, Caputus Vigamius, to its former glory as well as freeing the Wasps, Hornets, Bees, and Yellow Jackets in the Lunar Cliffs from the tyrannical rule of the Tatian-controlled Broodmother. However, the Tatians are not out of the fight yet. They still control Hurrian Gorge, Fort Rachias, and all of the continent on the other side of the Starfall Sea. In order to land the Aurean Alliance troops they need to liberate the rest of Vigam, Weasel and his friends need control of an airfield, which they do not have. The only airfield nearby is at Fort Rachias, a Tatian-controlled, nearly impenetrable fortress the Vigamians built millennia ago to keep out Tengol invaders. Since an earlier failed raid in the Lunar Cliffs, Tate has known about the presence of Weasel and his friends on Vigam. As a result, he has moved several Tatian garrisons in the north to Fort Rachias further south, as well as sending two of his own warlords--Sir Will of Cole and Elliot--there with them to oversee the fort's defense. Since Fort Rachias is situated at the far end of Hurrian Gorge, the Vigamians will be facing extremely difficult terrain. To provide another obstacle for the Vigamians, the Tatians have assembled all of their 10,000-or-so Centipede conscripts in the area and stationed them in Hurrian Gorge. Upon hearing of this, the Vigamians launched their offensive a day early in an effort to take offensive positions in Hurrian Gorge before the Centipedes would arrive. However, the Centipedes got there first. Because of the fact that they were in a gorge, each side could only fight with their front lines and flanking maneuvers were impossible. Eventually, Vigamian Dragonfly Riders flew down from the top of the gorge and began dropping bombs all over the Centipedes. Sugar Gliders also glided down behind enemy lines and engaged the Centipedes from behind. Trapped in a pincer, Commander P'Yuu Aff'Strond of the Centipedes surrendered and joined the Vigamians. However, so many Centipedes were killed by the time of Aff'Strond's surrender that there were only around 1,700 left to join the Vigamians. Even though that skirmish was won by Vigamian air superiority, that was the Tatian strategy all along: lure the Vigamian air force into a false sense of security by letting them attack the centipedes, then catch them by surprise with the Tatian Fighters and SAM Turret when the Vigamians attempt to attack Fort Rachias. Now that the Centipedes were out of the way, the Vigamians spent some time debating back and forth about the best way to take the fort. There was not enough time to construct an embankment or siege towers, so those were out of the question. The Vigamians lacked any kind of siege train, so surrounding the fort and waiting for it to surrender was also not an option. They decided that the only option was to have the Dragonfly Riders, with Sugar Glider escorts in case Tatian Fighters showed up, bomb the gate to the fort until there was a gap big enough to move their troops through.
Battle
Almost as soon as the air force was in the air, Fort Rachias's hangar opened and hundreds of Tatian Fighters, much more than the Vigamians were anticipating, flew out and engaged the Sugar Gliders. Due to their lack of sophisticated weaponry, the Sugar Gliders at first took extremely heavy losses while inflicting little to no casualties on the Tatian Fighters. However, they eventually figured out how to destroy Tatian fighters by shooting arrows directly into their engines, causing them to stall and crash. As soon as the Sugar Gliders figured out how to take out fighters, however, a turret on one of Fort Rachias's wall towers began firing surface-to-air missiles at the Vigamians, inflicting massive casualties. Seeing that the Vigamians would not last much longer if that tower was allowed to continue firing, Weasel and his friends decided that they needed to storm the tower. They directed a Dragonfly Rider who happened to be flying near the tower to bomb the side of it, which he did. Once a hole was blown in the side of the tower, Weasel and his friends rushed inside. They easily killed the Scorpion guards defending each level of the tower, until they reached the top, which was defended by Sir Will of Cole. Weasel and his friends managed to kill Sir Will of Cole after a lengthy battle, taking control of the SAM turret. The SAM turret then began firing on Tatian Fighters, distracting them while the Dragonfly Riders began bombing Fort Rachias's gate. Once the gate was destroyed, the Vigamians charged into Fort Rachias to find over 80,000 infantry, 10 Heavy Walkers, and 30 light walkers waiting for them. They were forced to focus on the infantry due to the fact that their weapons were too primitive to pierce through the armor of the Tatian walkers, which began inflicting massive casualties on the Vigamians. Around this time, however, the Tatian Fighters, whose ranks had been drastically thinned out by the SAM turret and the Sugar Gliders, fled into outer space. This allowed the Vigamian air force to focus on taking out the walkers, which it was able to do easily due to both the fact that they had bombs and the fact that Tatian walkers lacked surface-to-air weapons. Within ten minutes, the Tatians had lost all their walkers and their infantry began to become bombing targets. Without control of the skies, the remaining Tatians decided resistance was futile and surrendered.
Aftermath
The Tatians who surrendered were held in Fort Rachias's prison hold for the time being. Almost as soon as Fort Rachias was captured, Weasel called in Aurean Alliance troops to land on the southern half of Vigam now that they had an airfield with which to do so. The next day, Weasel crossed the Starfall Sea on his own to continue learning Shadow Magic at the Castle in the Sky, an ancient castle floating above an island in the middle of the Starfall Sea. A few hours later, Aurean Alliance troops conquered Rachias Beach, allowing them to sail across the Starfall Sea from there and land on the northern continent of Vigam, where Weasel would meet up with them and help them liberate the rest of the planet. After a final battle in The Hive, Vigam was fully liberated and Weasel and his friends would be celebrated on the planet as heroes. However, they uncovered Tate's darkest plans in the process: blueprints for "Shadow Weapons" that are strong enough to cause mass extinctions. Once Vigam was completely liberated, the Tatians who surrendered at Fort Rachias and elsewhere on Vigam were transferred to a POW camp on Planet Squid. While the Battle of Fort Rachias basically eliminated the Tatians' chances of retaking Caputus Vigamius or the Lunar Cliffs, it is also the first battle of the war where air superiority mostly decided the fight.