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Inactive [LP CYOA] Overlord

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
If Zayan is gone or dead, Lucy the cow is now our only waifu.

Mission accomplished.

4241572-cow.jpg
 

treave

Arcane
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11,370
Codex 2012
Possible incentive to cooperate are money? Revenge mby? Ambition? Fear of death?
Well they still would be people greedy/ambitious/hateful/cowardly enough to be ready to work with maniac to achieve their goal. Quite dangerous and each have it's own problem. Might be hard to control to.

If you can't figure out a normal way to persuade them, that's why you keep them imprisoned until you invent a domination spell and break their mind with magic.

Who said anything about giving him time to pack up and leave? I thought our character was a miser?

They need to march home now. (And die as soon as our spell is ready.) Anything they leave is ours.

The whole 'point' of B is that they get far away enough to relax their guard before you spring a surprise Gigadyne on them. Packing or not, that's more than enough time at a far distance from you for whatever is about to happen, happen.

You guys aren't actually very suitable with an overlording mindset, are you? I'll have to change up the upcoming choices to compensate for that.
 

Jester

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 24, 2013
Messages
1,493
If you can't figure out a normal way to persuade them, that's why you keep them imprisoned until you invent a domination spell and break their mind with magic.
Emm we want them to lead our armies, so breaking their minds would be counter productive? Would not wish to destroy one thing we want from them.
Something like queen was using in last chapter could work I guess?
Depending how easy mind control breaking is and how it works in this setting. If it's like hypnosis you doing only thing you are fine with, or actual control. Person used on will keep his intelligence, or become mindless thrall etc. If its hypnosis, or criples inteligence it is not very useful.

The whole 'point' of B is that they get far away enough to relax their guard before you spring a surprise Gigadyne on them. Packing or not, that's more than enough time at a far distance from you for whatever is about to happen, happen.
I am guessing they have some kind of bomb and will blow this place up?
They do not have powerful mages, heroes, nor supernatural beings, so I do not see other way for them to mess this up. Teleportation could work to.

You guys aren't actually very suitable with an overlording mindset, are you? I'll have to change up the upcoming choices to compensate for that.
Personally I think our main problem is that we are wrong genre savvy. Some choices got good reasoning why it might be correct patch. Like in Legend with demon sword, or popularity fight.

We are in overlord mindset its just not your overlord. :D
 

archaen

Cipher
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Mar 10, 2014
Messages
633
:negative: everything since the freeform clusterfuck. "It was a bad idea to use a teleport circle" but no one listened and I reluctantly went along trying to fool proof it but derp anyway. "Stay away from the giant penis in metaspace" and what do you know, we get it rammed up our ass. "Use our spells to decimate their army's main camp and save our forces" and then we lose our bandits and slimes. "Now that we lost what left of our semi-intelligent forces, take prisoners or murder them all now followed reluctantly by attack from afar" and hopefully we bad end and can just play as Rin.

I think you guys actually drove Nevill away from this LP and he lives here.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
If you can't figure out a normal way to persuade them, that's why you keep them imprisoned until you invent a domination spell and break their mind with magic.
That would be assuming we had a way to properly imprison adventurers and heroes for a long time, which I doubt we have at the moment.

I am guessing they have some kind of bomb and will blow this place up?
They do not have powerful mages, heroes, nor supernatural beings, so I do not see other way for them to mess this up. Teleportation could work to.
Hopefully they focus on damaging Erd and not his forces. The former can heal himself, while the latter is needed, even if they're lowly goblins who are barely better than mana batteries.

everything since the freeform clusterfuck. "It was a bad idea to use a teleport circle" but no one listened and I reluctantly went along trying to fool proof it but derp anyway. "Stay away from the giant penis in metaspace" and what do you know, we get it rammed up our ass. "Use our spells to decimate their army's main camp and save our forces" and then we lose our bandits and slimes. "Now that we lost what left of our semi-intelligent forces, take prisoners or murder them all now followed reluctantly by attack from afar" and hopefully we bad end and can just play as Rin.

I think you guys actually drove Nevill away from this LP and he lives here.

True, the player-base has dramatically lowered over time. For good or bad, there's no longer "+1 SWORDS!" discussions. And I too miss Nevill, his Vangers lp was fun and was a few steps away from completion. What a shame.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I tend to have undue influence over LPs I get invested in since I am usually rather vocal in my statements. Say what you may, being the loudest still grants a humongous advantage in a discussion where onlookers are involved, though having an actual argument does not hurt either. So when there was an outcry about a vocal minority steering the LP their way, I took it as my cue to step back, take a break, and let people shape the character as they see fit.

I have no idea what happened to us (I thought I'd catch up with the story in a few months to see how it develops), but I can only assume it was not good. That does not surprise me. It is still my belief that we can't play a villain if our lives depended on it. I mean, sure we want to cross a line or two at times, but when it comes down to a decisive step, the more - eh, is soft-hearted even the right word? - back away from it. Cassandra Lambchop warned us about it all the way back when there was a vote on whether to kill off Rin.

Last thing I saw of the LP (when I already wasn't voting) was the stuation with Faria starting to play out in the exact same way as Youxia city. I don't know how it ended yet, except that it concluded the chapter and something hard was involved.

That was in part why I wanted to have a bit of a leeway in character interpretation and tried to downplay Erdrick's villainous side, keeping him a bit of a comical figure to the endless frustration of some voters, and attempting to at least maintain some remnants of his heroic side. Everyone on the 'Dex knows how to play a hero, and it is something that can unite us in times of uncertainty. Villains, though... everyone has their own ideas about how far they would go, and not everyone even wants them to succeed.

And I too miss Nevill, his Vangers lp was fun and was a few steps away from completion. What a shame.
Hey! Don't mourn me yet. I still lurk here, you know, just not in the thread? :D

The Original War LP too went on a half-year hiatus. I still finished it, right? I hate leaving things unfinished. One day it'll get the better of my laziness.
 
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wjw

Augur
Joined
Jun 6, 2007
Messages
287
There could be an E option.
We ask him for his soul and eternal devotion, cut his hand, and do something that looks like a bloodritual. In return his men (and women) would be allowed to retreat freely.
The fact that we will do it publicly will make it hard for him to turncoat later, also he might actually believe that the soul contract is for reals. The fact that we offer free passage for his army will make him look noble. It will just be a personal sacrifice, which might be right up his alley. Next up, we ask him to take over Methuss for us, in any way he sees fit, or something something along these lines. And reward him with something he desires. Then we can return to the more important matters at hand (our little procreation problem).
 

Storyfag

Perfidious Pole
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Stealth Orbital Nuke Control Centre
If you can't figure out a normal way to persuade them, that's why you keep them imprisoned until you invent a domination spell and break their mind with magic.

I like this idea. We shall call this spell The Taking, and Erd shall adopt the monicker: The Dominator. His rule shall be henceforth be known as The Domination, and his bride as the Lady.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,237
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
If you can't figure out a normal way to persuade them, that's why you keep them imprisoned until you invent a domination spell and break their mind with magic.

I like this idea. We shall call this spell The Taking, and Erd shall adopt the monicker: The Dominator. His rule shall be henceforth be known as The Domination, and his bride as the Lady.
And just in case, we'll pre-emptively wipe out anyone named the White Rose.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
I have no idea what happened to us (I thought I'd catch up with the story in a few months to see how it develops), but I can only assume it was not good. That does not surprise me. It is still my belief that we can't play a villain if our lives depended on it. I mean, sure we want to cross a line or two at times, but when it comes down to a decisive step, the more - eh, is soft-hearted even the right word? - back away from it. Cassandra Lambchop warned us about it all the way back when there was a vote on whether to kill off Rin.

Well, the decision to kill Rin or not was way more than becoming a villain or not, it was to decide if this game should continue being a CYOA, or instead become a text-based Diablo/Undertale/average CRPG with less faggotry and more murder.

The Original War LP too went on a half-year hiatus. I still finished it, right? I hate leaving things unfinished. One day it'll get the better of my laziness.

Yay! But, to be fair, Vangers is way stranger and harder to play than OW, so it won't be easy to reintroduce yourself to its strange world. On the other hand, you still have all of your notes written on your Lp.
 

treave

Arcane
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Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
11,370
Codex 2012
Sorry for the delay, fell badly sick over the past week. Will be updating before this weekend is over.

edit: Just a bit longer, got a bunch of work thrown on my head at the last minute.
 
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treave

Arcane
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Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
11,370
Codex 2012
Energy Crisis

A wave of heat and light washes over you from behind, buffeting your body about and forcing you to extend your wings strenuously just to stay upright in the air. In front of you, a good distance away, large smoking craters are about all that is left of the Methussian army. You cannot be sure that you nailed all of them but hunting each and every one of the survivors down would be far too much hassle. Furthermore, you had sensed a brief resistance to your spells as they hit – some of the mages had managed to conjure up protection, showing that your unexpected attack had not been so unexpected after all. Behind you, however, something more concerning just happened. At the same time your spell had landed, a massive explosion had occurred within the walls of the fortress.

You return and land, surveying the damage. The ground seems to have pushed itself outwards, jagged hills of rock surrounding a gaping wound in the earth that has bared a dark, fathomless abyss. “My Master, are you alright?” shouts Runde with concern as he trots up to meet you. He is met with silence as you attempt to scrutinize the aftermath of the explosion. There are traces of magic left behind, akin to the stench of blood lingering after a thorough massacre. No doubt Methussian sorcery was involved somehow, but from your prior experience with their wizards you had not come away with the impression that they could pack so much power in their spells.

“Runde, who is in charge at the moment?”

“Boss would be-“

“Ah, he’s dead,” you say curtly. Runde’s face begins to twist up but he composes himself quickly enough. “Who’d be second-in-command?”

“That… that would be me, Master,” he bowed. “I think.”

“Well, perfect. Organize something and get this place cleaned up, will you?” you say.

Acknowledging your orders, he moves towards the rest of the goblins and begins to bark out commands. It looks like the formerly shy goblin scholar has grown somewhat in your brief absence. Looking down at the hole in the ground, you sigh, suddenly missing the calm and restful days of being trapped in stone. You reluctantly step off the edge and drop into the hole, using your wings for a careful, controlled descent. Your halo provides enough light to see by as you fall and you decide not to use an Orb of Light. A short way down, you begin to see strange pipes and tubes embedded into the rocky surface, and the hole begins to widen. Further down, and you are unable to even see the walls of the far side anymore – even the light from your halo does not reach out that far.

Finally, you spot a small ledge sticking out from the near wall. You glide down towards the ledge and find yourself on the edge of a ruined chamber, clearly artificial from the smooth and polished surfaces. Within the chamber every inch of space seems packed with the pulverized remnants of strange contraptions. A beautiful elfin-eared woman with messy brown hair is kicking at a particularly large piece of equipment angrily, screaming a flurry of crude curses that your spell has no problem in translating.

“Hello, Zayan,” you greet her.

She turns to you, pushing up her quartz glasses. “Huh. Oh. You’re awake, Erdrick,” she mutters. Bitterly, she kicked the metal again only to yelp slightly as she stubs her foot at a wrong angle.

“You don’t seem particularly astonished to see me,” you say, stepping closer to her.

“I am slightly surprised that you are up and about, and without a stitch of clothing on your person at that, but forgive me if I must moan a greater loss at the moment. Damnable Methussians! Those barbarians!”

You look around the room. “What was this for?”

“Remember those ley-lines I once spoke of? I discovered more of how they worked. Though my research is incomplete, and is now set back even further thanks to those Methussian fools, I learned enough. Think of them like… like blood vessels that conduct energy all over the world. The concentration of these ley-lines are particularly rich under Grahferde because there is something that both feeds off and regurgitates the energy within the ruins beneath. We’re managing to tap into it with our magnatite-based machinery like parasites, sucking up the excess and repurposing it for our needs. It’s what has been powering our golem army. Up till now, at least.” She frowns and then screams again. “They blew it up! Those maniacs, they blew it all up! I can’t believe their nerve!”

“How did they manage it?” you ask. “Did they manage to invade this far into the fortress?”

Calming herself back down, Zayan says, “Some of them, I think. I was not around to see it. Well, whoever did it definitely did not walk out alive anyway. Most of this damage was due to the feedback from the machine’s destruction, and I am sure I placed enough anti-magic tampering barriers to prevent any manipulations from a distance. I am not sure about the details of how but really, that is not what concerns us at the moment. The problem here is that we are facing a big problem with our energy reserves. In simpler terms, Erdrick, that golem army of ours won’t be functional for much longer. They constitute the bulk of our forces and even though I am not a strategist, even I can see the problem with that.”

You can definitely see the problem with that too. “Surely we can just rebuild and tap the power of… wait, you said you were using the power of something. Do you know what that something is?”

Zayan shrugs unconcernedly. “Not at all. I don’t know a thing about it except that it’s energy, waiting to be used.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit… risky?”

She snorts and laughs. “Oh, what are a few risks in the name of science? We don’t even know if it is a sentient thing. It seems to be living, but trees too are living things and we don’t fret about chopping a few forests down. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

As a former hero who has done his fair share of delving into dungeons, you are not very certain about continuing to use mysterious energy from the deep. Still, it seems that you may have no choice if you want to continue down this path. “Very well. So what is stopping us from rebuilding?”

“The explosion collapsed the conduit we were using. To establish another one, we would have to dig deeper, and that would require deeper exploration of the ruins to establish a new spot for a conduit. The last expedition was stopped when our goblins were devoured by a mass of black tentacle monsters that came pouring out of – oh, don’t make that face like we messed up, I properly sealed the entrance and nothing bad’s happened since!”

“Black tentacle monsters, you say?” you sigh, putting your hand over your face.

“They wouldn’t be any threat to a being of your caliber. The princess certainly took care of them easily enough, though to my utmost disappointment she smashed them so thoroughly that I was unable to procure any specimens. We decided that it was not worth the manpower to delve further however, since we could create the conduit on this level. That feedback from the explosion just now cut off the ley-lines reachable from this conduit from the source deeper down. Theoretically it would regrow with time, but that is a process that takes centuries. No, we have to go deeper.”

“Aren’t there any alternatives?” Spending your time fighting tentacle monsters does not feel like how you would like to spend your days so soon after being set free.

“Well, you are a pretty good source of energy yourself. I could use you to continue powering the golems, but that would only be sufficient to upkeep maybe a few thousand golems without sacrificing your own health. Anymore and we would start to see considerable side-effects to your physical and mental ability.”

Without missing a beat, she continues, “We could also drain other living things to power the golems, but there just aren’t enough beings even in the entire kingdom to maintain the number of golems we have at the moment. Considering the number of tributes we can feasibly draw upon, including captives obtainable by force… we would have to cut the one million-strong golem army down to a tenth of its size. One hundred thousand. With more time I could improve on their energy efficiency but unfortunately this is as far as we can get at the moment. Shamefully, I must admit I was spoilt by the endless energy, so much that I did not think of focusing on reducing the golems’ energy expenditure…”

You wince. Given the already porous nature of your defence even with such overwhelming numbers, reducing the numbers that much would definitely leave your forces wide open. “I see. How much time do we have before our army falls apart entirely?”

“Unfortunately they struck at the worst possible timing. You’d almost think that they were monitoring our magnatite crystal resupply schedules to pull this off… or maybe they did, I don’t know. We have a week before the furthest golems run out of power, three weeks before all our golems shut down.”

That does not give you much time. At the moment you are in conflict with both Methuss and Dijeh, so without a sufficient army you would lose territory fast. Though you do have to wonder – Rin was the one who made the conquests. Do you absolutely need to keep that much under your control?

***

In order to maintain your golem army, you need to search for an alternative source of power:

A. You will clear out more of the ruins so that Zayan can reestablish a conduit with which she can power the golems. It might be a hassle, but it is a necessary one if you want to maintain your advantage in numbers.

B. You will power the golems by yourself, though it would drastically reduce the number of operational golems.

C. You begin taking in prisoners by force from all the places under your current rule, draining them to empower the golem army.

***

You are also now trapped in a two-front war, which is not the ideal situation at all. Though you are unable to do anything about Dijeh immediately, there are other steps you can take. To try and salvage the situation, you decide that your next move should be to:

A. Teleport to Yuiria and force a quick end to the war with Methuss while they are still unaware of your awakening and capabilities. If that requires you to demolish the royal palace along with all its inhabitants, so be it. Rin might have enjoyed playing Dark Lord by holing up in her fortress but you do not share the same proclivities.

B. You let go of the territories conquered, withdrawing back to the borders of Grahferde and its surrounding forests in order to reduce the drain on your resources and also allowing you to reconsolidate your forces and strengthen Grahferde’s defenses.

C. Attempt to recruit more human forces under your banner. Rin had not ruled with a particularly cruel hand, but she had made no effort to court the humans under her thumb either, which was why her forces had to rely primarily on the golems. If you can manage to organize loyal militias in each village or town able to defend themselves, this will help reduce the numbers needed in the garrisons.
 
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a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
My worry with Aa is that we will be setting ourselves up for two potentially large battles in a row.

Also, Methus has priests. Not keen on setting ourselves up for a direct fight with them, but we are already in a war with them...

treave what resources are we getting from the surrounding territories right now. Is there any advantage in keeping them?
 

treave

Arcane
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Codex 2012
In terms of resources Ontoglia is your most important location, though politically they're more of an independent ally at the moment than being under your rule. They don't fall under the options to withdraw or to organize a militia.

Otherwise there is not much you would need since a golem army doesn't require food. There are however numerous golem factories located around your lands where golems build more golems to replenish destroyed units. You would also need to consider securing supply routes for their materials and magnatite.
 

Kipeci

Arcane
Joined
May 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
Vicksburg
AA

Might as well dig in for the effectively limitless energy supply while we're here. I don't particularly care about the stability of our borders, so long as we can adequately defend where Zayan is holed up. Black tentacle monsters are a plus if anything.

For the second choice, all the options have their own appeal. It is good to set about recruiting the human populace and goodness knows we have an absurdly porous line of battle and an army that clearly can't enforce a monopoly of violence on the territory it 'holds', but I'm concerned about leaving them be at the capitol. When word gets back from this offensive about what we are, assuming that the rumors about the captive angel are correct they'll be on high alert and promptly begin to prepare to do to us whatever made the other submit.

Frankly, restoring full power to sustain the full golem army won't do much to help there. It obviously wasn't enough to prevent this disastrous strike at our base. And I don't think whatever human militias that we can rouse up to fight against the kingdom based on prior greivances will be able to hold against what the cunning and able Marquis will be able to throw against them.

But if we can make their organization as much of a disaster as ours by cutting off the head and demoralizing the whole kingdom, we just might be able to stand a chance. Dog that guy until we destroy his ability to lead an army.
 

Kipeci

Arcane
Joined
May 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
Vicksburg
Come to think of it... treave, I've a question. It was my understanding before that the leylines and Zayan's genius married together had brought us the best forcefield in the world to cover the whole village, presenting an impassable barrier to any Mexicans armies that might seek to make an unwelcome visit. Recent updates make it clear that this has done no such thing at least to the guys who blew the place up, so do we know what happened with that?

Also, with Zayan free was searching for her in the middle of battle a waste of time, or might we have discovered these sneakier guys before they blew up the channel we were tapping from?
 

treave

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
11,370
Codex 2012
Nothing is impregnable. That and they neglected to expand the forcefield when they built the fortress so it's not covering a lot of places.

If you searched for Zayan you could have prevented the explosion. That's just random unpredictable consequences though so it's nothing to regret.
 

Zwist

Learned
Joined
Jun 6, 2012
Messages
236
AA I guess.
We need to take risks now.
And if we risk waking the old ones, so be it.

Allthough the second A might kill us. Badly.

I remember mention of certain powerful individuals. A mage with a staff?
 

Jester

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 24, 2013
Messages
1,493
AC

Evil is equal opportunity employer dmn it. I will not change it.
 

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