Yeah her vision is pretty scary…
it surprised me that Zel was taken in by her at first. I would suspect her charm skill except that I didn’t see any differently colored text

I’m not reading all of that, but to answer the first half of your comment, the character of Magnolia appears to be inconsistent because she’s acting. Appearance is very important to a [Lady].

We know the necromancer is making some weird shit so I’m guessing those “easy to beat limits” the necromancer had are gone at this point

To be fair for the 5000 years this world has existed war has been it’s constant state, she’s trying to make peace in a world that’s never really known it

He could place an end crystal on every peak of the high passes! Climbing those would be nearly as difficult as actually killing him.

(Where are the fanficwritten bits kept and are any of them worthy of being incorporated?)

It’s rather more that she doesn’t need to understand the logistics more than what was shown. She calls for her subordinates to send levies, and they come. She probably has skills that make Bad Things (yes, those caps are appropriate) happen if such a request is ignored.

Thus, it wouldn’t be too hard for her to rally an army in such a manner. Once the army has gathered, there are probably going to at least be a reasonable number of officers that can deal with the minutiae of actually organizing things. Her responsibility is simply to get them to gather, and that’s all she cares about. She is not really leading them herself, other than perhaps as a figurehead to rally around.

As for the armor, considering drakes have a different body type compared to humans, I find it likely she just requested “an artifact armor that would fit a drake general” or something like that, and the Heartflame Breastplate was the easiest option for Regis to hand over. He probably has at least a few sets of drake armor that he’s accumulated (read: stolen/looted) over the years, most of which would be relics to the drakes. Any of the others would likely have drawn the same exclamation from Zel.

Magnolia kind of answered that in her talk with Zel: if Laken ended up making most of Izril into his empire, their very classes would put her at a huge disadvantage compared to him. And for what she wants to do, that would be entirely unacceptable. If she started doing anything at all he didn’t like, at that point, he’d be able to shut her down pretty quick, and she wouldn’t be able to do much against him. Thus, dealing with him early on, before he can consolidate power, is essentially her only option.

Even if he nominally agreed with what she was trying to do, just the fact that she was beneath him would possibly create a lot of issues. Not many people enjoy the way Magnolia does things, so Laken could be easily pressured into curtailing her power.