Prelude
Soon after arriving on the planet of Rahasy, Weasel and Taftenkhamun were scammed into entering the palace of the Mongoose Empire in the capital (Mongoose Mahal). Their crazed Emperor Shrikar has captured them and is holding them captive in his dungeon, preparing to execute them. Emperor Shrikar has also revived and kidnapped Priyanka, the sister of the Moodha. Desperate to bust out before they are killed, Taftenkhamun used his radio transmitter to call the Ishga camp downriver to get them out of the city. However, doing this will be a Herculean task. Though the Ishgas have landed around 2,000 of their own troops on the planet, trained around 15,000 natives as sepoys, and enlisted over 120,000 native allies, the Mongoose Empire possessed a much larger force in Mongoose Mahal of over 2,000,000 men and 300 war elephants. In addition to this, the Mongoose Empire had successfully repelled a full-scale Tatian invasion attempt some years earlier, so they were a force to be reckoned with even though the Ishgas had vastly superior technology. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Lord Sashank (Emperor Shrikar's son) had been training a group of 2,000 Mongoose Elites for the sole purpose of overthrowing his corrupt father and taking the throne for himself. Using technology stolen during a night raid on the Ishga camp, Sashank wiretapped the communications between Taftenkhamun and the Ishgas and decided to strike the night before battle. In an event that history would later remember as the Night of the Tainted Goblets, the Mongoose Elites snuck into the food rations of Emperor Shrikar's entire army and poisoned everything they found.
Battle
The next morning, the Ishgas arrived facing Mongoose Mahal's eastern gate, led by General Hutchinson (a veteran of the Aurean Alliance since nearly the beginning). Hutchinson left a force of Sepoys at each gate to block any exit from the city. Around this time, Lord Sashank and his Mongoose Elites sneak up on Emperor Shrikar while he is sleeping and take him hostage. The Mongoose Empire troops, led by General Rohit Agrawal (who was in charge of repelling the earlier Tatian invasion attempt), expected an easy win and charged the Ishgas, who immediately got into square formation. Ishga planes soon arrive, serving the purpose of both diverting the attention of the wall cannons and raining hell on Mongoose troops. Although the Mongoose Empire manages to take out all 3 of the Ishga helicopters with its stolen anti-aircraft turrets, there are too few turrets to really make a dent in the Ishgas' other planes (and the cannons nearly universally miss). Unprepared for this kind of warfare, the inexperienced Panthidians in the Mongoose Empire's lines begin to panic and run back into their own lines, causing chaos. In an attempt to counter this, General Agrawal sends out his war elephants. In response, General Hutchinson orders the Ishgas to switch to their heavier weapons (Rocket launchers and grenades). These explosives easily succeed in panicking the war elephants, sending them barreling into their own lines, making the Mongoose Empire's situation even worse. By this time, the Ishga planes have taken out almost all of the enemy cannons and all of their anti-aircraft turrets. Just then, Lord Sashank and his Mongoose Elites sneak into the Mongoose Empire's lines and assassinate all of the influential politicians and generals under Emperor Shrikar's command (including Rohit, who Sashank dueled for a while and killed personally). After this, the elites announce they are taking over the army under the orders of Shrikar, who they are holding captive and have forced to sign an order allowing them to do this. They then tell a large portion of the Mongoose Empire's soldiers to head to the north gate, where they are told there are supplies. However, they are ambushed by Sepoys upon arrival and suffer heavy casualties. Eventually, that portion of the Mongoose Empire's army is entirely wiped out, allowing those Sepoys to enter the city and engage the Mongoose Empire's main forces from behind. Sashank and his elites then return to Shrikar's Palace, where they free Weasel, Priyanka and Taftenkhamun. Priyanka then murders Emperor Shrikar after Sashank places the latter in a stockade. Just then, the poison that Sashank and his elites had left in the enemy food rations the night before began to kick in. Any chance the Mongoose Empire had of winning this battle was simply eliminated at this point. The Panthidians and Rajphants in the Mongoose Empire's ranks simply broke ranks and fled the battle, while the Mongoose Empire's soldiers were destroyed in a near wipeout pincer movement. Finally, with almost all of their troops gone, the surviving Mongoose Empire troops decided to surrender.
Aftermath
Almost as soon as the battle ended, Sashank fabricated a story about Emperor Shrikar being trampled to death by a panicking war elephant and declared himself Emperor of the Mongoose Empire. Weasel and Taftenkhamun stayed in the city for some time to stock up on food and supplies, but then went off into the countryside to continue their search for the ghost of Akhet-Ra. Once Sashank became Emperor, he immediately began cleaning up Mongoose Mahal's crime-infested streets, as well as expanding the economy by reopening the Mongoose Empire to interplanetary trade after millennia of isolationism. Once this was accomplished, Sashank began his quest to unify Rahasy under his rule. His army easily defeated the Rajphants at the Battle of Rajphantstan, allowing them to finally annex that pesky client kingdom. After years of fighting in the jungles, Sashank would finally subdue the last Panthidians at the Battle of Hanuman Hill, creating a new united Rahasy.