Inactive [LP CYOA] Overlord

Final tally:

A I II IV - 2
A II IV - 4
A II V - 2

B I II - 6
B II - 1

Post-flop:

A I II IV - 0
A II IV - 7
A II V - 1

B I II - 6
B II - 1

 

Talal and Zayan

“Man, it’s a good thing you picked up Lady Zayan when you did, Sir Muhchacraken. I’d have been in so much trouble if I had to go back without her,” says Talal cheerfully. He is riding alongside your cart on his horse, a magnificent black stallion that makes him easily look an order of magnitude more dashing than some man with a tall hat in a cart pulled by a cow. “I am sure that Governor Ambrese must have thanked you, but let me offer you my gratitude too. Of course, I’m afraid that words are all I can offer for now, but rest assured that when we return to Dijeh, I will have your great deeds written down in full on my report!”

“I’m not doing this for personal gain,” you say humbly. “I’m afraid that politics are out of my area of expertise.” And indeed they are: you try not to dabble in them more than is necessary, as politics always causes more hassle than it is worth. It is a useful tool for getting what you want – such as an inventor to take home, or an interesting magical ore – but in itself it has no value to you.

“Ah, you are just like Lady Zayan then, a noble person at heart despite your strange appearance!” Talal laughs.

“She is… noble at heart?” You are surprised. You would call Zayan many things, but noble-hearted is not amongst that list. In fact, Talal seems blissfully ignorant of her attempt at defection. It seems that the governor had not revealed that to him – only that she went missing.

“She is, Sir Muhchacraken, she definitely is. I have never met a person more pure-hearted in my life, more dedicated to improving the lives of the people.” Talal gives a silly grin. “Her heart is as beautiful as her looks.”

“Yes, he’s definitely got it bad,” whispers Rin from behind you. “I’ve read about this before. It’s a type of terrible sickness.”

“Are you sure you are reading the right things? Anyway, this should be far enough.” You pat Lucy’s back once. She moos once in acknowledgement and comes to a halt. You are in a particularly remote section of the road, flanked by tall trees on each side.

“What’s the matter?” Talal orders his men to stop. “Is there something wrong?”

“Everything is fine,” you say. “But I’m afraid this is as far as we go.”

“Is that so? Ah, I’m sorry to hear that. I suppose you do have other things to do than accompany us.” And he does look crestfallen indeed. “I was actually hoping to share your company till the border. You have been a wonderful travelling partner, Trider Muhchacraken.”

You can tell that he and his men share a good camaraderie. They had been nothing but friendly and courteous to you thus far: it had actually surprised you at first to see his men treating Rin and Aria with respect and not attempt to grope them drunkenly as is your experience with most soldiers. You had even spotted a couple of them striking up conversation with Runde: they appeared to be interested in his working conditions, for some reason. In terms of professionalism they definitely seem to take after their captain.

Well, it is a pity that this has to come to an end.

“Zayan, what do you want to do with them?”

Zayan gets down from the carriage, walking to your side while mumbling over some notes. Out of the corner of your eye, you catch Talal’s face twitching into a smile at the sight of her.

“These? You can dispose of them as you see fit,” she says absent-mindedly. “It won’t do for them to bring word back, right? Not that I care that much, so I’ll leave it up to you.”

***

A. These soldiers might be useful, and they seem to have little prejudice against non-humans. You offer all of the men a choice to follow in Zayan’s footsteps and serve under you.
1. Of course, any who refuse will have to die here. They will not live to spread word of you and your abduction of Zayan.
2. You should be able to coerce those unwilling to follow you into secrecy with a show of force. Still, even if they don’t, it is not particularly important to you whether they talk or not: as long as they don’t blame the governor, your end of the bargain is still upheld.

B. You offer Talal the chance to follow Zayan. He will have little chance to be close to her back in Dijeh: here, he can protect her forever.
1. The price is simple: he only needs to cut down his own men. You have little use for the rest.
2. You threaten the lives of his men to get him to acquiesce to your demands.

C. You stick with the plan and dispose of them all. You have no use for more men.

 

C>A1

 

Muh textwalls of exposition and infodumps!

Interesting choice. However, one thing to keep in mind is that these men have their families and homes in Dijeh, and their loyalties probably are to their homeland first and foremost. There they have everything and a good pay on top. What can we offer them? Their lives?

One must never, ever coerce the troops he values. Keeping a slavegirl or two is fine, provided that you can keep them from escaping, but the soldiers - they are the ones that fight for you and defend your holdings when you are away. If they have no loyalty to you, you'd better ensure they are never given a crucial task. Even so, the cost of constantly watching them would hardly be worth the return. And with your forces in the state that they are (~60 goblins), you can't even ensure that the soldiers are the minority that your loyal troops can control.

If we are considering doing this because we think they might be valuable, we'd best forget it. A coerced soldier is only good as an expendable trash you throw away at a first opportunity. If we are thinking about it to soothe our conscience... well, what conscience? I always thought our motto is to kill all men and take all the women, and that's exactly what we are doing here. For there to be a moral dilemma, they should have been a squad of amazons. And even then we'd kill the ones with a hotness score of 7 or less.

A is out of the question for me. Apparently not.

I suppose I can make an exception for the captain in B1. One man is easier to control and manipulate than a group of people if we can twist him just enough that there is no longer a way back for him. He could, in theory, become useful to us. However, then there is the question of why would we keep a twisted, psychotic and unstable individual with a penchant of backstabbing that is madly in love with a crazy inventor with no concept of loyalty, ethics or gratitude? That's the very essense of Theseus Naim multiplied thousandfold by the object of his passions.



I'd do it for Lambchop.

C>B1. Switched to A1>C.

Oh, and we should absolutely seek to hire more soldiers from Dijeh in the future. They are bros.

 

Infodump will be released tomorrow in the form of an interlude update.

 

B1 is the only really evil choice, love itself being the evilest of all forces in the universe. Is it a risk? Sure. That makes it fun and twisted. He certainly will be firmly decided for or against Djeh after killing his men.

Don't worry, either, he will be our cuck till the end. To actually let him have the object of his affections would defeat the purpose and dim his ardour.

Letting them all either serve or to leave, the (2) options are most foolish. C is the wisest, but wisest is not necessarily the best for a dramatic story.

 

The only reason I'd keep the captain alive is to make our own nemesis or unstable lieutenant. But I'd rather not metagame this.
C, don't get greedy. We already got out way ahead in this city.

 

Actually, C is being greedy and is the metagame of "playing to win" while doing B1 is just playing out Erdrick's noted pathologies surrounding women and the love that he never got from his mother (the reason for all evil!)

 

wat

 

Well...This is a pity...
We could always use professional soldiers with good morale and no prejuction towards our monster guys, but I don't see how we could sway them to be under our command rather than being loyal Dijeh soldiers.

I suspect that the captain is a key here.
The Captain seems to be able to inspire good morale with his troops as being capable enought to be granter such a important mission. He certainly would be useful when training new soldiers, because not only he is knowledgeable in warfare, but also seem to have charisma to get troops following him...However there is such a thing as being too greedy.

I shall wait for further argument.

 

I'd explain Freudian psychology to you, but I'm lacking a cigar and a donut as necessary stage props.

 

There is always more where they came from.

A shame the rulers of Dijeh are pansies who can't even tortute their prisoners right!

Imagine what they could do with a competent ruler, like us! We must conquer it ASAP! Then these guys can be both under our command and loyal Dijeh soldiers.

Well, there is a problem. How do you get him to follow you while preserving all the qualities that make him a desireable hire in the first place?

You can probably corrupt him, sure, and he might retain some of it (his military training won't go anywhere), but that just wouldn't be the same man. Whether it would be good or bad for our purposes is not an easy question.

 

Well, it seems that the things we asked for were considered acceptable for the Governor.

On the other hand though, perhaps we could have asked for more stuff.
Either way, what's done is done. My votes are:

B1>C

If this dude goes that far for love, he'll undoubtedly pose a threat to us in the future due his mental condition. However, a proper Overlord needs a psychotic lieutenant that may or may not attempt to betray him at some point (I recommend employing the use of an explosive collar to ensure his loyalty). Alternatively, the rest of his men are welcome if they don't mind betraying everything they know and stood for. I'm sure Erd can relate to this experience.

But if they don't wish to cooperate, then they'll be disposed of in a swift and bloodless way (if only to not to gain more "Pigeon points").

Actually, if Erd has some issues, I believe these would have been related to the fact he was literally thrown into a warzone when he was a kid, forcefully separated from his family and then forced to fight in increasingly hellish encounters to survive, battling countless monsters for many years. But I'm sure the Goddesses were merciful and gave the necessary psychological attention that their champion needed to not suffer a breakdown at some point, instead of doing something lazy and petty like a mind-controlling medallion that also worked as a remote bomb... Oh wait.

PS: What about an extra choice?

D: You reveal your angelic nature. Then kill them in self-defense when the soldiers inevitably freak out.

 

C>B1

And we should have gotten the letter of recommendation from him as proof of his agreement. It not only would have protected us against a double-cross, but also could have been used to blackmail him.

Honestly, it's as if you guys have no experience at this at all. Guess we'll just have to kidnap his daughter just to make sure.

 

A1>C - Who knows? Maybe some of them will take us up on our offer.

It's a shame we're going to off a bunch of decent blokes. Wrong time and place for them.

 

B1 > C.
Talal will be broken but he can be a useful tool. We may also get some inside info on Dijeh that the mayor couldnt have provided.

 

You sure Zayan isn't the one to be asked about it?

 

Oh i forgot about her. You are correct ofc. But at least we can verify some stuff i guess?

 

C.

 

Yeah, this is a bummer. Just let's keep it professional and not give them too much extra pain if we can avoid it.

C.

 

An important question is where do zayan's tits rank on a scale of 10? Any less than 8 and Talal can freely pursue her and he might be worth keeping around. 8 or above and we're gonna have to permanently nip that Theseus situation in the bud.

Of course if her tits are <8 but she fancies Erdrick's long hat then we still get the triangle situation.

 

I would assume that a mad scientist's only love is the love for SCIENCE!!!. However, Zayan most likely will develop interest for Erd once she realizes he's a non-human creature. To be specific, she'll want to vivisect him to see how his insides work. But perhaps you people are into that kind of stuff.

Did these soldiers really ask a slave about his "working conditions"?
Either they're truly nice guys/white knights, or they're hiding something. Also, even these guys completely ignore Arlin. Poor kid.

 

Yeah. Talal is going to have a hard time either way. Sacrificing everything for one single thing, only to be denied that. You need not look farther than Sensuki to know that it never ends well.

We will make him into a master assassin. No one will ever notice him until it's too late!

We have speculated that Zayan is part-monster. Maybe Dijeh has a few of them settled there?

 

I expect that this fight will be much harder that we think, they are fishy as hell, unless is an army that hasn't fought a war in decades.

 

A1, becasue why not?