Inactive [LP CYOA] Overlord

[TOME]

AC. No point in leaving resources untapped.

 

[Kipeci]

It looks like AC is going to win, I hope that works out. My concern is that they'll just raise another army and start rooting out these garrisons with it while preparing whatever means by which they might have taken the other angel captive for use against us. I don't believe for a second that the Marquis actually died just now, and once he's back in his home and has some time I'm sure that he'll devise some military scheme to get us in a trap.

If we were to just strike now while their army is a total mess (at best, some stragglers are teleporting in as a mess) it'd be at the time where they are least prepared for an angelic assault. We could do serious damage to the leadership and throw them in to confusion so that they cannot capitalize on our disorder while we put our forces back in some semblence of order. My concern is that if they remain organized then whatever human outposts we can concert are just going to be picked off one by one when the Marquis reforms his army and we're occupied with whatever they'll spring on us, and then we're less that many of the people most prone to supporting us. I get that we're in a terrible shape with officers, but the vote seems a bit reactive to that while ignoring other looming issues.

 

[Esquilax]

Gentlemen, we are in a no-win situation, long-term, which means that taking risks is absolutely crucial if we are to make it here. Consider this: We are fighting a two-front war (always an ugly situation), where we are reliant upon an energy source with extremely dire consequences that are unspecified. While it might be a decent idea to tap into it for the short-term, I don't believe that such a status quo is ultimately sustainable - we need to be vigilant and be very careful of what we wish for here.

Right now, we have an element of surprise that we can take advantage of. If we can knock one enemy out of the running, suddenly our dire situation becomes a whole hell of a lot more manageable.

So, to that end, I vote that we go direct to Yuiria and deal with our problem at its root before anything else. As for the power source, I vote for draining the prisoners - if you want to make an omelette...

While I can tell that draining is obviously not popular among the voting bloc, I think we ought to consider it a lot more seriously given the circumstances. In any case, of the two options, our immediate move is a lot more important IMO; if we do in fact choose to tap into our "unlimited" power source, we must do so with the aim of ending this conflict as swiftly as possible.

Any thoughts, guys? Nevill Baltika9

CA

 

[Baltika9]

I dunno about that combination, man. I have nothing against going into Yuiria, in fact I'll flop to AA, but immediately starting Matrix-scale human battery fields while at the same time making every last survivor in the Kingdom scared shitless of us is just begging for partisan actions and sabotage from within. I think that AA is a good combination, with our attention narrowed down to one front, I think we'll be able to manage R'lyeh.
So, yeah, Flop to AA.

 

[lightbane]

We have a tie now, but the problem with second A is that we might have to fight against the full might of the Priests, which may be lethal for us. Or worse, that they believe the tales about Angels and killing Methuss' king only encourages them to fight to the death. However, lately I don't particularly care as much as I used to do with this CYOA, so I'll vote for:

AA
If it screws up everything and ends up killing Erd, so be it.

 

[Esquilax]

However, lately I don't particularly care as much as I used to do with this CYOA, so I'll vote for:

AA
If it screws up everything and ends up killing Erd, so be it.

Apathy is death

Honestly though, I think that this is the best way to go. Here are our options, as I see them:

1) Retreat, use less energy, shrink our borders a bit. (Nobody is voting for this but it's still an option.) Not ideal, because we're still fighting a two-front war and we didn't use the diplomatic option earlier when we returned to this world.

2) Stand our ground, take on all comers. This involves using our mysterious power source of DOOM and fighting a long war of attrition with unknown, potentially serious consequences from using our "free" power source.

3) A desperate, highly risky attack to force a quick end to the war and allow us to focus on one enemy at a time. This avoids having to use the power source for a prolonged period (or at all) and make the war a lot more manageable.

Basically, from a long-term standpoint, the only thing that is sustainable IMO is #3. Obviously it is extremely dangerous in the short-term and possibly fatal to us, but I really do think that it's the best route for us to take at the moment,.

Also treave, I'm assuming that if we use ourselves as a power-source for the time being, we wouldn't see any drop-off in our own effectiveness and skill should we assault Yuiria, correct? Zayan seemed to imply that was the case, just wanted to confirm.

 

[treave]

Also treave, I'm assuming that if we use ourselves as a power-source for the time being, we wouldn't see any drop-off in our own effectiveness and skill should we assault Yuiria, correct? Zayan seemed to imply that was the case, just wanted to confirm.

That's right. A few thousand are how much you can safely supply without seeing any stat drains.

edit: Alright, AA it is then. Locking votes.

 

[treave]

Return to Yuiria

Though it had taken you the better part of a month to reach the capital, this second journey will take but a second. As the saying goes; strike while the iron is hot. And you will strike at it hard indeed. This war is a terrible hassle and bringing it to a close quickly would be in your best interests. Telling Runde and Zayan to clean up at the fortress while giving explicit instructions for the two girls you defeated at the tower’s peak to be kept somewhere secure but unharmed, you go to end the war.

You close your eyes, chant the spell, and your surroundings shift.

Then, you feel yourself being jerked violently. You hear the whistling of the wind rushing past your head. There is no ground under your feet… at least, not immediately beneath them. The nearest patch of land is perhaps hundreds of feet below. “Ah,” you mutter. Perhaps you have been a bit too hasty. It looks like they have set up some form of anti-teleportation magic to cover the capital. The counter-spell has had the effect of hurling you high into the air above Yuiria. You presume that it would also have triggered multiple alarms.

Well, it is not like you would die from the fall. You have seen people fallen greater heights and managing to survive, such as the time you and a cadre of archmages collectively applied a few thousand Forceshields onto a hapless apprentice and teleported him far above a demon general. The initial part was a success, crushing the demon and leaving the apprentice unscathed, but he had not survived the ensuing vengeance of the thousands of demons around him. Suffice to say, the human anvil tactic was not used again.

Heaving a sigh of relief, you remember that would not need to rely on that anyway. You do have wings after all. Stretching them out, you steady yourself and stop the free-falling plunge that would have guided you right into the river.

The large city lies sprawled out before you. If they meet the margin of competence that you expect, even now their forces must be scrying the air for your presence. You do not know if you have actually been found yet, but regardless of what you do next they have been alerted to your arrival.

With your senses you can detect magical shields flaring to life all over the capital. The thickest concentration of those would, of course, be around the royal palace.

***

A. You decide to greet your enemies with a bang, since your cover is or will be blown soon. Since that is the case, you cannot afford to hold back here too much. A powerful Gigadyne will be your best choice at swift destruction, considering the number and strength of the shields that are appearing all over the city.

1. You go right for the Royal Palace. Awe these humans enough and then you can simply negotiate with the remnants of government after the heads of state are all wiped out.

2. The Grand Temple should be the ideal location for your first strike. It is a dangerous location, and you do not want the priests getting any ideas about your presence here.

3. You target the Royal Caster Society to stop the mages from mustering any further response to your presence. Though individually they are no threat, you do not have full knowledge of the spells they may cast collectively.

4. You aim to destroy the Royal Barracks. Strike at the knights and their soldiers and public morale and order will be lowered.

5. You go for a random target. Thinking of one is too much of a pain.

***

B. You will take a less direct approach than a direct attack, bypassing the magical shields. Once you reach the ground you will have various less violent, less deadly ways of reaching the palace. You just want to talk with them after all. And if after that they still don’t listen, well, you’ll do what you have to do.

C. You stay where you are. Let their defences come to you. You will rip it apart, shield by shield, mage by mage, knight by knight, and show the entire city that nothing they have in their arsenal can do a single thing to you. It is the best way to let them despair as each of their hopes are struck down one by one, and these should make them more amenable to negotiation.

D. The time for talk is past. The interrupted teleportation has put a crimp in your original plan and worsened your mood. You summon a Thunder Dragon to protect you, and then prepare to cast a large-scale Gigadyne that would utterly destroy the entire capital.

 

[Kipeci]

Wonderful! The city lies before us, ripe for the taking. Hopefully.

I'd be most fine I think with any non-A option. Something about C really appeals to me in the narrative sense, since it's a gradual escalation that still leaves us with some power for later. It leaves me reminiscent of our fights as MTP starting off strong and getting gradually more ludicrous, it's a more satisfying thing to read I think than just converting everyone into char and static (though I doubt that there'd be zero complications to leave it as cut and dry as that). The more gradual depletion of mana is also an advantage over just giving everyone the Gigadyne and nuking the place in that we'll have substantial mana left over to respond to unwelcome developments while we're here.

The problem with C, though, is that we've been shown time and time again that when they have time to collectively prepare a bad day for us, our tendency is to be blind-sided. One of our big advantages right now is the surprise factor, and by taking C we just throw that in the garbage and wait for them to give us their best shot... and frankly, we don't know if we can take that. If it's true that they caught an angel before, they might use whatever measures they had to capture it. Or release it, even. I'm not sure how well Erd would measure up to a native angel in combat, even if it's one that they've been keeping in a drained state in the temple complex.

So if we go with D, we skirt around most of those problems by just blowing it all up. Assuming that we can blast through the shields (and I'm pretty sure the one that Zayan set up was supposed to be better and treave confirmed that a full on Gigadyne would punch straight through that) most of the city is immediately going to have a terrible time. We've upgraded our Mana stat by, what, a full rank since we became an angel? If I recall the numbers correctly that treave told us to ignore and never use for calculation when he gave an idea of what rank progression might look like, then that's somewhere around three-four times more mana than we had to start with, which would indicate a correspondingly larger Gigadyne than the already ridiculous one we had to nuke the ruins. Scary stuff.

The one thing I'm concerned about in D is that we don't know if the angel exists and is around. If we Gigadyne the place and it's able to rise from the ashes, we'll be right out of mana for a likely angel fight and hilariously screwed... though, on that note I wonder if the destruction of capital cities would serve as an aphrodisiac for angels? Mass suffering could be the cure for our own. I don't think we want Erd to be taken as an angelic sex slave even if that's the case, though, though maybe I should speak for myself there.

B is interesting. The city is on guard but there's not the obvious angelic threat to contend with that the whole city can see, so it's a bit harder for them to all focus devious plots on us straight away. The diplomacy option counts for something, I guess, and I think the royals will probably be more prone to surrender if we give them the chance and demonstrate thunder dragons and the like to break nice things in their palace than if we just atomize them. They certainly seemed scared by the thunder tiger before.

I think I'm inclined towards D because I really want to capitalize on our advantage and knock out the head of the operations against us as well as the tricksy mages and priests, but what do you bros think? There's a pretty solid chance that this could make everyone else ruin their pants and declare war, which would be less satisfactory even if we're given a bit of breathing room.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

B>D

 

[Baltika9]

I think I'm inclined towards D because I really want to capitalize on our advantage and knock out the head of the operations against us as well as the tricksy mages and priests, but what do you bros think?

I think D is lookin' mighty fine right now.


It might be a red herring, though. Soloing an enemy capital is a tricky thing, they obviously have defenses against large-scale magics, what if the barriers are just the first layers?

 

[Kipeci]

I think I'm inclined towards D because I really want to capitalize on our advantage and knock out the head of the operations against us as well as the tricksy mages and priests, but what do you bros think?

I think D is lookin' mighty fine right now.


It might be a red herring, though. Soloing an enemy capital is a tricky thing, they obviously have defenses against large-scale magics, what if the barriers are just the first layers?

Well, Erd is our resident magic master and he only seems to be detecting the ones just now blooming up. It's not impossible nor even improbable that there are more defenses, but would they be capable of taking a full on blow from a Gigadyne strike even stronger than the one that treave confirmed to be capable of blowing our Zayan's super advanced one? Even if blunted by other shields, that seems like a lot to contend with.

I don't think it's a red herring, I'm fairly confident that the city will be ruined if we commit ourselves to that end. The concern is whether or not we will be the last one standing (floating, whatever) or if there is anyone rushing in a panic to go defend the city now that the alarms are going off who might show up just in time to wreck us if we commit too much. Or if our quick hit to knock these guys out of the war is just going to inspire the two presently uninvolved to immediately jump in.

Well, anyway, I think it's a risk worth taking and I'm going to lock in my vote for the moment. It'll be an interesting time if they turned out to have that angel, after all.

D.

 

[Kz3r0]

D.

 

[Azira]

A2>C

 

[Grimgravy]

B

 

[lightbane]

A2>A3

Better to take care of these guys before they can bind us or unleash their own supposed angel. If said creature ends up being free anyway, perhaps we can join him to destroy the capital together. Too bad for the artefacts, loot and magical books that will be lost.

 

[Azira]

Too bad for the artefacts, loot and magical books that will be lost.

Don't worry. If the artifacts were to be interesting to Erdrick, they ought to be able to survive a gigadyne.

 

[Storyfag]

A3

 

[TOME]

I don't want the palace destroyed, I want to get me some princesses. That leaves just A2 or A3.

A2 since we know it to be the bigger threat.

 

[lightbane]

Too bad for the artefacts, loot and magical books that will be lost.

Don't worry. If the artifacts were to be interesting to Erdrick, they ought to be able to survive a gigadyne.

Doubtful. It wouldn't be the first time treave gives us the full consequences for doing something stupid, such as shooting an ion cannon against the capital, which will set the entire world and Methuss' survivors against us, for not to mention exhausting Erd way too much. Speaking of which, kinda funny that he fully embraced his "carnage pigeon" nature: mass genocide doesn't seem to bother him much to consider doing so. Kipeci got what he wanted at the end.

 

[Kipeci]

Too bad for the artefacts, loot and magical books that will be lost.

Don't worry. If the artifacts were to be interesting to Erdrick, they ought to be able to survive a gigadyne.

Doubtful. It wouldn't be the first time treave gives us the full consequences for doing something stupid, such as shooting an ion cannon against the capital, which will set the entire world and Methuss' survivors against us, for not to mention exhausting Erd way too much. Speaking of which, kinda funny that he fully embraced his "carnage pigeon" nature: mass genocide doesn't seem to bother him much to consider doing so. Kipeci got what he wanted at the end.

The point of the option is that if it goes off without a significant hitch, Methuss won't have enough survivors to be significant. Which is well and good, as we were hated there even prior to any opportunity to ion cannon the vicinity. It's not a matter of looting, it's a matter of decapitating the armies that would otherwise walk all over us by depriving Methuss of their best and brightest, their leaders and mages and formers of unpleasant surprises. The Methussian war effort would be dramatically weakened, and their advantages in superior organization would be lost so that we could have a bit of breathing room. That precious, valuable time could be used to raise up collaborators from the humans who don't want to oppose someone that could wipe a huge city off the map.

Are there disadvantages? Gosh, certainly. I don't tend to care much about loot, but you're right in that most of that is vaporized along with a number of lovely ladies. It definitely jumps into the fear end of the spectrum rather than the respect, and the rest of the human nations can't exactly ignore something like this and stand by unless they're just too fearful of the same happening. But I think our hand has been a bit forced, ever since Rin decided to invade everyone at everywhere. The human nations have our number and want us dead, so we need to make some sort of move to preserve ourselves.

That said, you are reminding me of my earlier words of a vision for welding the disparate peoples of this world into a unity under our power. Perhaps nuking a whole city immediately upon our return is a less than ideal means by which to accomplish that end, though tempting from the angelic perspective of XP and the like. I'm conflicted.

I suppose that the royals seemed rather intimidated when we were showing off our more meager powers at their fortress, so perhaps we may pay them a visit and call for peace. I don't believe for a second that it will last if successful, but it would allow for some consolidation without drawing the whole world in on our head... at least, not as much as wiping a city off of a map would do.

Destroying the temple is likely to invoke at least the religious Barzamites to war, and yet potentially wipes out the troubles that we've been having about angel catching so that we could be more confident in zipping around and annihilating armies in the open.

Ah, I'm missing the DISCUSS!! that we used to have, with immediate pages of passionate arguments one way or another. I wonder if that's due to the general population of Codexians having to bother going through an extra section to get to CYOA Land and then here, as the whole section seems not so lively as it used to be and not just this thread.

I suppose... ah, let's go for B > A2, you've got me convinced.

For B if nothing else and negotiations totally fall through, at least we've put ourselves inside the shields and don't have to expend as much mana to cause terrible damage. I'm not sure if we still have our admirers within the city, it would be a shame to destroy them and those who may be convinced... we might try to take a cute hostage to prevent war from breaking out, also.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

A3>A2>D

The mages are the primary threat. Ground troops can be safely ignored from the air. The priests are a threat too, but I say we leave them be for now. We have nothing that is anywhere near divine level magic and we know that the temple has a powerful magic suppression field constantly around it, but it's better than b or c and I think d might take too long to charge up.

I really don't like B. We betrayed their commander in the last choice and broke the neck of their pretty knight girl. They have no reason to trust us no matter what we say. There is too much that can go wrong and it gives them too much time to prepare.

These are the people that captured a carnage pigeon on their own. Who is to say they won't try it again?

 

[Zwist]

A3.
It comes down to who gets more dangerous if they get to prepare. It might be the priest(catching angels and stuff), but we know that mages are capable of annoying rituals, so mages it is.

D is tempting too. It is basically the nuke options.
Big pro: We might prevent any immediate retaliation. Which is big.
Con: Every nation around us is going to see us as a threat and will try to remove us.
Or: They will be scared into passivity(until they find a counter measure)

B won't work. Not after our last move.

Killing of the royalty would be fun, but not the "staying around afterwards" part.

 

[Kayerts]

I'm not sure a decapitation strike is the right approach, since a feudal system is more of a hydra than a snake with a single head to cut off. Duke Brescia, for example, was explicitly mentioned as having a plot to crown his puppet prince king, and was not in the capital at the time.

Killing the king and his court also muddles our victory condition, as it leaves Methuss without a single leader to surrender to us. This and the previous issue are problems that can be solved with time, by going after key high nobles, but the Game of Thrones dynamic whereby

Spoiler

killing a sitting ruler causes you to immediately absorb his political powers, Highlander-style

is unlikely to apply here.

There's also the question of the other three kingdoms in the region. Seeing one of your peer monarchs' court get one-shotted from low orbit seems like the sort of thing that would inspire a unified alliance to shut down Flaccidael or whatever they're calling you. There's some historical precedent for this sort of thing happening when a previously unknown force showed up and started overrunning everything, but our Subutai has gone MIA and wasn't very competent before that, so I'm not sure we want to go there.

C > B > A1 > D

 

[Kayerts]

Barbarossa dying en route to the crusade probably would've had different consequences if, instead of dying because he forgot that armor doesn't float, he was slain by a giant djinn who descended from the skies, strode into the middle of his camp, and summoned a pillar of flame, warning the survivors that Saladin could send him after any other Christian monarchs, if he felt like it. Point is, random deaths from natural causes (incompetence is natural) have different effects from deaths caused by a legendary abomination posing an existential threat to all powerful people.

Relatedly, the Norman Conquest is a terrible example of how killing a leader resulted in a smooth regime change. William arranged marriage alliances between two prominent English earls and his relatives, and they STILL revolted, and he spent the next fifteen years quashing unrest and fending/paying off foreign leaders who thought they smelled blood.

I agree that nuking the palace will end this war, but it will start others, potentially with more capable opponents, and I don't think it'll gain us much to bring against them.