Barely a week after the Fleet departed, taking the majority of the Bloom with them, Abra Gualtieri issued the remaining Bloom with orders to leave the country or be killed. This rather dampened the previously successful inter-world diplomacy, and put the Bloom enclaves across Esharia on a war footing. Alessandro Boccaccio and Antonio Vestris were also known to be against Bloom remaining in the country, as was Balthazar Rise, who bought the weight of the Firefighters to bear against them, insisting that this wouldn't be necessary if people didn't keep bloody well provoking them.

The conflict never actually reached open war - the advanced technology of both species, the entrenched position of the Bloom, and the willingness of the Builder Clades and their compatriots to fight to defend their Bloom allies would have resulted in such heavy casualties that neither side was willing to commit troops to fight anything more than minor skirmishes. As soon as this became apparent, Rise's troops attempted to keep the peace instead, negotiating a short cessation of hostilities.

The week-long ceasefire was long enough for the downed Lifegiver to drag its way to the sea and submerge, taking most of the Bloom with it. Those colonies that remained were primarily in the most inhospitable part of the Heights, and though Gualtieri was said to have made a great effort to wipe them out, they proved remarkably resistant. With the secession of the Heights a year later, assaults on these increasingly large and well-integrated communities became non-viable.

Intelligence suggests that the Bloom are less active around the Qeltan Sea, but have established (currently) peaceful colonies all around the world. Necrouque remains under their control, as does Ikoss, and the now-aquatic Lifegiver is a mobile base of operations in the Qeltan Sea.

It is in the Heights that the Bloom have been most successfully integrated, in large part due to the technological efficiency of the Arcana Church and the extensive work of Bella Ciao, who worked tirelessly to ease SHADE, Clade and Bloom relations. The recent instatement of an Eshteri as an Arcana preist is an unprecedented move, and one that is likely to significantly alter diplomatic relations between Esharia and the Heights.

The Bloom remain very open about their intention to rule the world, but are equally adamant that they will only do so with the knowing consent of everybody on it, even if that takes several thousand years. Fortunately, we can at the least say that they no longer have any foothold in Esharia, and that they do not have the resources to achieve such a feat - yet.

—Excerpt from Bloom: Know The Facts, a pamphlet printed by the Esharian government to provide 'an objective and unbiased assessment of the threat posed by the Bloom'