The Shadow Wars

For centuries a number of factions have been warring amongst themselves. A few times this has spilled over to settlements & regions of other creatures, drawing them in, at least temporarily. Each faction has been around for millennia if not millions of years, but only now is it moving up in scale.
The Necrocult, Children of the Nazarene, Dragon Cults, and the Star God Cults, are starting to take the concept of war to the next level. They are vying for power in different regions, primarily at each others borders. The Necrocult has it's power base in Europe, and the western end of the Eurasian Steppes. The Children of the Nazarene has it's power base in North Africa and the Middle East. The Dragon Cults are primarily in the Far East, and the eastern region of the Eurasian Steppes. And finally the Star God cults are worldwide.
The borders of these regions are the main places for skirmishes involving troops of each side. They can deploy many different types of tactics, while before they would have sent out minor forces & individuals for specific tasks. They still do, and they generally follow the basic tasks of: assassination, robbery, extortion, raiding stores & magical laboratories, planting hidden troops, spying, agitating local populations, and winning over local populations to their own side.
The increase in many sentient lifeforms has allowed many of these groups to expand their armies, and specialist classes. In turn they are now likely to attack en mass where possible to seize territory, and harvest resources they feel they need. Each is quite willing to attack out in the open if need be. Most leaders of these groups though feel they do not want unnecessary attention from the empires of mortals, as this would cause more enemies to openly attack them. Instead they prefer to attack their enemies in places that draws little attention. This helps that if any action is viewed by others, there is the chance nobody would be believed. It also helps that usually smaller settlements that are attack or caught in-between two such groups can be either exterminated easily or passed off as being attacked by outside forces. A rare few do this deliberately, just to raid the settlements for slaves, treasure, or other resources. With agents placed in most of the major world powers, they can influence the outcome of such responses to such raids. Even going on to orchestrate the raids themselves to suit their masters plans. It also helps to gather information of different sorts to supply to their own people.
The Yuan-Ti are seemingly untouched, or not involved in this. It doesn't mean they are not though. They will happily play one against the other to weaken them before striking out and wiping out the weaken winners. They are extremely patient with this, and quite willing to play the long game.

Sometimes there are more than one type of agent in a nation's hierarchy, usually as a noble family member or specialist attaché. This allows them greater access to troops, and supplies that can be diverted, mainly away for former, and to a designated site for the latter. They effectively act as spies in this respect. Also, they can deliberately embroil different nations & tribal peoples into carrying out attacks on their enemies, either to cover their own cult battles, or to explain away an apparent attack. The odd time they may slip information to the host nation, allowing for them to do the cult's dirty work. This can be used to weaken the other side, by removing troops, or individuals, by tying up enemy resources, or preventing expansion.
There are at least four known enemies of these cults that are striving to slow down the Shadow Wars. If they can, they will stop at nothing to prevent any side winning. They are: the Warriors of the One True Cross, the Ulmist Inquisition, the Church of Ezra, and the Oaken Shields. Each have been keeping tabs on enemy agents & armies for centuries in some cases. Sometimes they employ adventurers & mercenaries to help tackle threats that are going to spill out of one of these instances.

Conflict Type

Military Campaign