In Progress Let's Play: Fallen Gods

[Modron]

(why there are two sets of completely different dice is anyone's guess)

Maybe you're rolling against the npc's wits roll?

I guess Njal should handle it but at the same time he's pretty beat up a bad outcome could be the end of him.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Brennu Njal shall have his say.

 

[Tyranicon]

Well that's gross.

Let Njal handle it.

 

[Strange Fellow]

graphic design is my passion

 

[Demo.Graph]

 

[Hellraiser]

I, for one, vote for engaging the Draugr with brute force combatfaggotry. Suffer not the corpse to shamble about.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Spoiler

Last time on the Bloody Adventures of Norse Jesus, you decided to Leave it to Njal (tm)

Come on baby make me rich.

I was thinking very seriously about rerolling. Maybe I should have.

Sometimes, the sexual emergency is just too strong.

well fuck

I hope you are well aware how screwed we are.

This will take some careful strategy and bold risk-taking if we want to get out of it not just alive but also without half the team dead.

I throw the god and wolf at the big draugs' mercy and have Ullin engage the slim draug that is at full HP. Why? Because anything else would end with him against a big draug and there's no way he can survive this.

The big draugs are seriously serious and two hits are enough to bring Ilsa down to about 1.5 hp.

My plan for this is roughly as follows:

Ullin and Njal will try to take care of the slim draugs. The god with Hilda's cheerleading should be able to quickly dispatch the big draug. The wolf is doomed to die but so it goes - I may have miscalculated something here.

Seeing that god + Hilda are not enough to kill the big draug quickly enough, I send Njal to help them after the slim draug is dead. Now that he's level 2, his bonus vs undead appears even greater, and also boosted by the maiden he does some real damage.

Unfortunately Ilsa hits the dirt one attack too soon. I was placing all my bets on her to keep both the big draugs busy this round, because with that I could have easily put Ullin + Njal again on the damaged one, while drawing the full HP big draug on the god.

Meanwhile Hilda stabs the god's big draug to death. Her damage is pathetic but the draug had only a sliver of health left, fortunately.

Bad news is that Ullin is now engaged by the full HP big draug, and there's no way he's getting out of that fight alive.

This is the point where I start considering to GTFO, because the odds look terribly bleak and I really don't want to lose Ullin, but given the big draugs' yuge domoges, it wasn't even particularly assured that Ullin could flee before dying. So I continue.

We can still turn this around bros!!!

Njal smashes the slim draug to relieve some pressure from the god. It also had to be done or I risked having the free big draug ALSO engage Ullin.

DEATH OR GLORY

I send the maiden to support Ullin.

Who is now on death's door.

Njal leaves the big draug with only a tiny bit of health. If Hilda can't poke him to death, Ullin is toast.

The god is also in considerable trouble right now. Our HP counts are truly a sight to behold.

Hilda could not poke the big draug to death.

The god scores a crit on the big draug!

(you can tell by the sparkly shine on the tip of his sword)

While Njal wastes the other one. One round too late

Yeah, heh, an extraordinary victory that was never in doubt

MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE HAD THAT ARMY COME HELP ME, ASSHOLE

Losing Ullin is going to be a tremendous blow. At least I can bring the wolf back to life, though it'll cost me 1 max HP.

FK U

Some options are unlocked, including resting, which I take immediately.

At least this asshole of a jarl lets us rest for free.

Now to inspect our spoils.

Oraekja's Folly is our first equippable item, a suit of armour to be precise. It gives a whopping +3 to defence.

That shirt is steeped in something foul.

What's the worst that can happen?

Push comes to shove, we can always drop it in Ormson's barrow.

Seeing that we've been seriously weakened by losing Ullin, I check the recruitment screen.

There's a lot to choose from here. A skald we won't need for now, because we already have two non-combatants. Instead I splurge all the 25 gold we got from the jarl on a karl.

It's a pricey deal, but an instant level 2 fighter is nothing to scoff at.

Balance sheet on castle visit:

-1 Ullin
-1 Max HP
+0 gold
+level 2 fighter
+armour

Not sure if good deal.

Let's see what tidings we can find here.

English, motherfucker, do you speak it

That's better.

Reasonably close.

Times are tough.

That wasn't terribly enlightening.

Well men, our first month in this surly middle earth has ended, and we still have a lot to explore and no good sights on any way back home.

The question is: where next to conquer?

Shall we go south, past the unknown town and a cave with a singing troll?

Or north, to the aptly named Eisgard suffering under climate change, a bog with a wicked witch, and a mountain peak with The Broken Body of Karringar (tm)?

Yeah, we've never heard of Karringar before specifically, the tooltip on this location seems unlocked from the start. There was some gossip we picked up that is pertinent to her though:

What shall it be?

You have some time to think because you shouldn't really expect an update before Monday

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Go to Eisgard, get rid of the cold.
I want to grill, dammit!

 

[normie]

fuck njal

 

[Luka-boy]

Let's visit the singing troll.

We need to support Codex musicians after all.

 

[Dualnames]

You know most of my runs usually go another way, the way of enter the wrong cave boom clapped. Or "oh this man asks for a coin" "deny coin" "turns out man was WHITE DRAGON WITH BLUE EYES", I'm glad you guys are enjoying this!

 

[Demo.Graph]

Troll, of course.

karjallaallaallaalla
TROLL

 

[Hellraiser]

Let me guess, if we went for the mondbluntian solution right away instead of trying Njal diplomacy like a bunch of cowardly women, we would have gotten some kind of initiative advantage in the inevitable combat and maybe the losses would be lower?

Anyway I am pleased with the outcome, RNG Jesus gave us high testosterone just in time for Easter.

As for the next exercise in demonstrating the failures of democracy:

I vote north, swamps and bitches... I mean witches. Just think of all the FUN that might be lurking beneath the mire.

 

[lightbane]

Welp, that ended poorly. These zombies do train, it seems.
I vote for the troll. Hopefully you can recruit him.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Let us go Karringarward

 

[Jaedar]

The corpse of a god seems like a decent way to get hints on how to rekindle our own dwindling divinity. Karringarward!

 

[Hellraiser]

Let us go Karringarward

It's spelled Královec and it is Czech.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Let us go Karringarward

It's spelled Královec and it is Czech.

Gesundheit

 

[Darth Roxor]

Spoiler

Going north won 4:3, so we'll first go to stop the global warming in Eisgard.

We arrive at the hillstead without incident.

The event starts immediately as we enter. We must see the lost menvolk home without delay!

'Go meet this ghost' is a god HP check, 'seek the lost folk' is god wits + HP, sending the wolf checks her HP.

Not trusting the god's 5 HP at all, I send the wolf into the blizzard.

come roll the dice, take a spin on the wheel

DAS RITE

Two souls for (almost) free is a good enough deal. Too bad that the day of delay made us run out of food.

And due to the loss of sheep, food here is very pricey indeed. I'll hunt for it afterwards instead.

Next stop: Karringar. I also picked up a churl to fill out the party, seeing as we're going to the bog next.

Nothing but not-quite-dead heathen gods in grim and frostbitten hills as far as the eye can see.

The golden maid calls me.

I let Hilda lead the way up because that apparently doesn't entail any checks.

Zomg!

Do not heed this fiend!

This is what called me!

I opt to hear her out. We should always give everyone a free chance to speak up.

You should never have listened, and dare not do this.

Two hundredweight of gold is no light load.

So... technically speaking, this ancient goddess of evil is indirectly responsible for our getting kicked out of Skyhold, since the gods are afflicted by her curse to be total morons.

But does that mean we're still afflicted as well? Is this like Nupraptor's madness all over again?

All I know is that Norse Jesus is not going to take a deal with any devil, especially not against his own volk. And if we're truly under her curse of greed, then that free gold is enticing indeed

Heh heh heh

You chose the better path.

This short detour almost recouped us the cost of the jarl's karl. Not too shabby.

Let's see what the stinking depths of HRAEDHOLM have to offer.

Along the way, we are ambushed by foes most foul!

There's a lot of them, but they don't look like much.

When it's the central wight's turn to attack, suddenly its arm starts glowing green.

Ah, balls, it's poisonous

Then this one attacked by Gudleif suddenly starts screaming.

Calling more of its kin to its side!

IT'S THE FREAKING VIETCONG

SHELLS! SHELLS IN THE NIGHT!

Fortunately they die really fast. Just two whacks with the churl's club are enough to bring the weaker ones down.

And soon we're free to continue. Only the poisonous wight faced by the god was any tougher.

Pest control, as always, yields us nothing.

Here we are, men. I can't see the warband for the fart clouds.

Ick. Let's proceed.

Love the artwork on this one.

Obviously we let the monsters fight for our amusement. Nothing good can come from helping some vile undead.

Putting this fight up on pay-per-view should yield me some souls.

That was to be expected, but at least the wights softened them up a little.

This shouldn't be too hard... but there's some nuance.

If you look closely at the god's sprite, you'll see some black bits. This was a shadowy effect that spread over his body, to show that Oraekja's Folly has decided to kick us in the nuts. Any damage taken by the god will now be significantly increased instead of lowered.

OF is a gambler's item. When it works, it works wonders. But when it betrays you, things can go ugly.

Fortunately these draugs aren't much, so we can whack them despite the setback.

Gudleif and Ilsa can take them on well enough.

The big draug still hits like a truck though, and Gudleif loses two hp blips in one attack.

I couldn't prevent the big draug from attacking twice, which is a bummer, because Gudleif is now close to dying.

Keep on moving'

Yeah, this is going to be easy shit.

Note the god's HP went down by one. Poison can sting you even when moving through dungeons, which is nasty.

Not much to show here.

We got plonked once by each outlaw, but that's all.

I decide to get the god up to speed with Healing Hands.

r u shittin me

There will be no fleeing from this fight.

Looking over our party, this is not a fight we can easily win. Even if these are just 6 scrublord outlaws, Ilsa, Gudleif and Ornolf are much too wounded to take them on. And something tells me they are not just scrublords.

Come to think of it, 20 gold is a fair price for passage. And surely it will allow these men to abandon their lives of crime and become good citizens. And also this was Karringar's ill-gotten gold anyway.

Gudleif and Hilda are disgusted by our slack-jawed wimpiness, and their morale went down by 1.

Let's just move on and never speak of this again.

FFS

First thought: this may or may not end up ugly.

Second thought: Oraekja's Folly decided to betray us again. This will be ugly.

If we were at full HP, this would only leave us battered. But now, someone's gonna die.

Predictably, Ornolf hits the dirt.

Meanwhile, the shade woodsman whacked the god for 1.5 HP due to OF's curse.

Njal takes down the woodsman damaged by Ilsa.

And with Hilda's support, the god can finish off the other one.

Here, I decided to skip the wolf's turn in hopes the shade fighter would attack the god.

Obviously it did not...

I wanted to have the god help Ilsa and Njal, because that would have smacked the shade down for sure.

However, the game decided to bug out and prevent me from attacking that shade. I could only attack the one engaged by Hilda and Gudleif...

IT'S A BETA BRO

Here goes nothing.

Yep, the wolf goes down. Fuck.

And then Njal banishes the final shade. Fuck.

Fuck.

The wolf is too good to leave behind, especially when we don't have an S-tier party, so I raise her for the bargain price of another max HP point...

And I figure I might just as well heal Gudleif with HH.

Moving on...

At least it's not more mortal wombat.

'Follow them' shows no check, which is mighty suspicious. I opt to evade these wisps instead.

ring-a-ding-a-ding, baby.

Note the 'woodcraft' check. This is a derived stat based on wits. We don't have anything that can boost it anyway.

Two days down the drain...

And that's actually 10 food down, not 5, for the two days spent on wandering.

At least there's only that fabled witch left now

Kill her, or let us leave at once.

*Growl*

'Make her swear' and 'bid her come' are god wits checks. The other options come with no apparent checks.

What shall it be?

 

[Demo.Graph]

She invited us in so is bound by the law of hospitality. Also, she probably had already sucked someone dry.
Go with her.

Edit: also, trying to make her swear is probably an offence, so she would attack -> we'd default to attacking her.
Bidding to come with us should probably require lots of wits and also might split the party.

Edit 2: "The door is open, but all is dark beyond." Not on the pic. Literally unplayable.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Kill her

 

[Hellraiser]

Witches ain't nothing but hoes and tricks, and this one isn't even good looking.

Kill her, it's the only way to be sure she won't trick us.

 

[Luka-boy]

Try to get her to join.

Kill her

 

[Jaedar]

She invited us in so is bound by the law of hospitality. Also, she probably had already sucked someone dry.

I would generally accept this, but witches are not bound by laws such as that, because they are ugly.

Make her promise not to harm us, for even witches well know the power of promises and the ills of breaking them.

 

[lukaszek]

obviously go in, follow witcher and gorasul teachings