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Myth: A New Age CYOA

Fangshi

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So here are the results based on my tally (if I screwed up the count be sure to yell at me until I fix it):

1. Closed - You will buy the Arrows indiectly and make Ceannard a partner. The first payment will be covered by Albrecht and he will have full use of the Arrows while you are gone in the South so long as it does not severely compromise your own instructions to them. They will do their best to meet both your orders and their demands and Ceannard will use his own judgement when needed.

2. Open - Shopping List:

- 1 bottle energon whiskey

- 10 quivers for Uttu

- 6 magazines for Taide

- 1 pair entangled dice

- 1 enchanting oil can

- 4 vomit disks

- 2 suits fire resistant armour

- 1 wooden fire resistant shield

And possible one or more suits of leather armour. By my count Jester voted to buy one suit for Lyssa, Azira voted to pick up two suits for D&T and Grimgravy wanted to pick up something 'for the mages'. Since you are buying the fire resistant leather for your two other mages it would stand to reason that you will not need anything for D&T but I don't want to make assumptions, an extra suit might come in handy if you managed to get your current ones destroyed.

I will need some sort of vote one way or the other about the leather. You have enough votes to buy some but I will need to know how many and for whom.

A single vote will be enough to decide the issue and it won't impact the text of the update so I will leave this vote particular vote open for now.

Currently the bill is sitting at:

91 WPs

With one suit of leather you are at 95, two suits puts you at 100, and four at 109 WPs.

Edit: forgot the discount on the fire armour, I have adjust the price accordingly.

3. Closed - You will hire the elephants for 40 WPs.

4. Closed - You will bring your 'core group' and the following:

The former Legionaries, the mortars and the grenadiers.

5. Closed - The Arrows will go with you to Nanshe they will then return to the city.

6. Closed - You will leave the spy in place, leak information through her and attempt to turn her into a double agent should the opportunity present itself. Timo will handle the issue personally.

7. Closed - By a very slim margin Mel will remain at the palace until you return. Hopefully it will not be raised by the enemy or anything... :lol:

8. Closed - So based on the Jester-Nevill plan as coined by Baltika9 you will leave the following orders:

To the Arrows:

They will work to support the King is all endevours, they will see what can be done about finding and destroying any cultist compounds in the city with a particular emphasis on finding and destroying the cloning facilities if present.

Half of their number will work to tutor the Greys and try to turn them into real soldiers.

To the Greys:

Simply 'get good'. Sit tight and learn from the Arrows.

That goes doubly for Lady Grey, try and get Ceannard and his officers to turn her into a proper mercenary captain.

To Astrid and the Sovereigns:

Investigate the 'unforgotten, unforgiven' graffiti in the city. the Sovereigns and Letta are to report directly to Astrid in this.

To Timo and Mayer:

Root out Spider Cultists and Necromancers as they find them. Run the information game and see how much of your enemies' networks they can collapse between them.

To Mayer:

You are essentially giving him overall control of your projects in the city. He will manage your finances, work with Timo against the Cultists, and periodically check in with your projects at the Academy. He will be instructed to respect the letter and the spirit of all contracts you have made.

To the Boys and Blackrock:

The Boys will be transferred to Blackrock with an escort of loyal Hose Albrecht Guards who will hopefully keep them out of trouble. Sufficient House Hesse Guards will be recalled to the city to make room for your people. Once there the Blackrock mercenaries will train those whose primary potential lies in soldering while those without such potential will set to work pursuing their trades in an attempt to make the Fort more self sufficient and reduce costs. Your people will also work to expand the fort as needed. Mayer will oversee all 'civilian' matters from Myrgard while Myora and the Brothers deal with the miltiary end of things and matters at the fort itself.

9. Closed - For your escort you will once more take the charioteers.

10. Closed - You will go through with your con. You will invest 50 WPs of your money to see it done.

11. Closed - You will interrogate the Weasel Captain for a full seven hours.

12. Closed - Since most of those that presented ideas generally wanted to investigate magical signal manipulation and suppression that is what you will do. A whole sub department of volunteers will be put together to see what they can come up with in the area of personal signal dampening or displacement. They will try everything they can think of and Mayer will check in from time to time to see how it is going.

13. Closed - You will hire advanced tutors for another 6WPs monthly.

So you are looking at a final cost somewhere in the range of 181WPs to 199WPs.

This will necessitate a loan unless I misunderstood you all. The loan will be for 47 to 65 WPs depending on how much you buy and it will be at 25% compound monthly interest.

If you want to borrow more you can should you wish to leave yourself some money.

Also if you want to spend those shells you acquired with the Brothers then you can do that too, they are worth 15WPs. That would leave you short something in the range of 32WPs to 50WPs.
 
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Nevill

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Fangshi said:
3. Closed - You will hire the elephants for 40 WPs.
I believe I voted to hire them with Albrecht's money.

I have not seen any confirmation or objections to this, though.

Baltika9 and Azira, can you weigh in on this?

Between our own funds and the sack of ghol shells (15 WPs), we have enough money to pay for the rest.
 
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Fangshi

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So from what I am hearing you want to:

1. Buy a suit of leather for Lyssa for 5WPs

2. Use the shell curency with the Brothers to cover 15WPs

3. Use Albrecht's money to hire the elephants saving you 40WPs

That would leave you with 3 WPs to your name if my math is correct.

Is that what you want to do?
 

Azira

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Codex 2012
Sounds good.

Also, good thing we decided to go to Nanshe, now that the interlude confirmed that she's caught TWM. Now we just need to shove him into the dreaming and hope he doesn't wrangle himself out of that place..
 

Fangshi

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Alright then, that seems to be the will of the majority of those that voted for the elephants (and the votes in favour of Lyssa's armour are enough to break that tie as well) so that is what you will do.

The update will be up hopefully some time in the next twenty four hours depending on how things line up. If I can't make that deadline then it should still be up within the next forty eight hours at the latest.
 

Nevill

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Care to share any information about the rolls involved in the update, now that we know the outcome of the fight?

I am also interested in the rolls made prior to the battle. If I remember correctly there was a chance the TWM would grow restless and would not buy our excuse. What other rolls were made?

Did our vase ever come into play?

I wonder if it were his vultures that intercepted our eagles. Seems plausible.
 
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Karwelas

Dwarf Taffer
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Codex Year of the Donut I helped put crap in Monomyth
Can someone only tell me a few things?
- This Thin White Mage is servant of Watcher - so he seems to be our bad guy in this story?
- The Empress of the Ghôls and her army are on our site? Why they have fake 'Derryth' and rest of our team?
- Are Dreams some more powerfull forms of magic (or rituals)?
And the most important question: Why the hell that guy sings in the middle of battle? (Kind of joke question ;) )
 

Azira

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TWM is a bad guy. Not the worst one out there though. That'd probably be the Watcher.

Nanshe and us have an ... agreement. Fake Derryth was arranged to bait TWM.

Dreams are the foundation of spells. Know a dream (or nightmare), and you know a piece of really powerful, primordial magic.

TWM sings because he's got class. Sure, he is a narcissistic, psychopathic creep, but he's got class.
 

Nevill

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The Thin White Mage and The Watcher are at the top of the very long list of the bad guys of the story. The world of Myth is not a very happy place, and two wars that wiped out most of the humanity in the last 60 years did not make it better.

The current 'big bad guys' of the arc are the Spider Goddess, one of the Dark Gods, and the Watcher, one of the Fallen Lords. Of the two, the Watcher is the worst, by a fair margin. At least the Spider Goddess has a need of living followers.

There are all sorts of shades of grey, too: The Faceless Man (the Watcher's colleague, by the way, though he is listed as our ally) is up to no good; the Wyrm, whose motives are unknown, is stalking us; and even the entities we work with, like the Demon Prince Morpheus and the Silver Lady, the only living sister of the Spider Goddess, are closer to the 'bad' side, and could well become antagonists given time.

The Empress of the ghols is our 'ally', though one that is best kept secret. You can learn more of how it came to pass in Chapter 39: In for a Pound. We are currently working for the dwarves, and the dwarves and the ghols hate each other unconditionally and probably irreconcilably. If words of our association ever gets out, the consequences would not be pretty. It is well within the realm of possibility that we will end up at each other's throats, but for now we have a common enemy.

Faking Derryth's presence was a part of our plan. TWM has a certain unhealthy fascination with us, given that we have outsmarted and killed him about 3 times in a course of a month.

You can find more about Dreams in this post.

Karwelas said:
And the most important question: Why the hell that guy sings in the middle of battle?
Because musical magic is strong with this one. Wait until we learn Heavy Metal (and no, I am not kidding, this is a thing).

I have nearly completed the summary, so you can read on the 2nd Chapter if you want. :)
 
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Karwelas

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Codex Year of the Donut I helped put crap in Monomyth
I have nearly completed the summary, so you can read on the Chapter 2 if you want. :)

Send me it please, if you can. I will have debt.

So we already fucked with 'god' and one of Fallen Lords. Good timing. Playing with dwarfs and ghols. We fucked deeply. But I like it. At it is start for me!
 
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Fangshi

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Nevill said:
Maybe Fangshi can link to it from the front page?

Sure, sounds like a good idea. Will do. :salute:

Nevill said:
Care to share any information about the rolls involved in the update, now that we know the outcome of the fight?

Most of them you should be able to guess based on how things went but sure, I have no problem quickly listing them:

-both sides had a number of movement checks to get into position and the like.

-Enki and the priests had a set of rolls to cast the Rotting Mist Dream successfully. It was not too difficult as Enki knew the spell quite well.

- TWM had to roll to identify the giant spell devouring his people.

- The vultures had to roll to move into place around the spell without getting dissolved. Most of them gave it enough space, a few got 'eaten'

- Once the vultures were in place everyone had to foll will checks except for those warriors with lead in their helmets. Instead of rolling for each individual which would have taken a long time or buckets of dice I split the army into sections and assigned willpower values based on the average strength of the warrior there. Those sections that failed fell to infighting. Most of the chieftains also wore lead lined caps so none of them were compromised (the only one at risk was Enki as he needed to be able to cast so could not wear the armour. He did not have to pass a test though as I had TWM avoid directly aiming for the mages who would require an additional effort to subdue (an additional willpower check). Instead TWM successfully realized it would be easier to break the spell by controlling the lower WIS guards of the mages and then have them attack their masters.

- There were a number of rolls here for all of the named characters on Nanshe's side to determine if any of them would die. A few came close but they all made it.

- At this point TWM began to advance across the battlefield with his retinue and he made a number of rolls against different groups he came across to determine how he would handle them.

- When Nanshe saw TWM advancing she broke off from her bodyguards (before the battle she cleverly switched her armour with one of her Immortals and used the freedom that allowed her to escape the attention of the hounds and mages.

- She reached the tent first and set up a few traps within it for TWM, she also removed her helmet and one gauntlet to let her cast properly in the lead armour.

- TWM and his remaining escort reach the tent and he sends his mages in with orders to capture the ladies alive. Nanshe was operating with no such limitations and so she quite readily cut them down.

- The TWM enters and Nanshe gets a roll to try and incapacitate him, she fails.

- He rolls to light the tent and gets a few checks to determine if he can figure out what is going on that second, he fails but not by much.

- He launches his attack and Nanshe activates the Purple Sun Nightmare that you successfully broke a few weeks ago.

- TWM manages to muscle his way through it and almost manages to shatter the spell so Nanshe in desperation activate the fourth stage of the Nightmare and renders TWM unconscious.

- TWM screams as he falls and his followers scatter as he projects his panic onto them. The vultures also drop out of the sky without his power to keep them going.

- The hounds allow basic self preservation to kick in when their master's influence disappears and they scatter into the hills as well.

- What follows are a lot of movement, perception and medical checks to determine who dies, who lives, how far the wounded army can crawl and how many of the Watcher's fragments they are able to find since several of them were quite small.

Nevill said:
I am also interested in the rolls made prior to the battle. If I remember correctly there was a chance the TWM would grow restless and would not buy our excuse. What other rolls were made?

Rolls to see what sort warriors Nanshe could mobilize in three days.

Rolls to see if TWM would edge closer to Blackrock.

Rolls to see if the Watcher would demand that TWM stop wasting time and return to the south.

Rolls to see if the Watcher would even notice what TWM was up to (he did not have orders to engage you again, this was all done on his own initiative and arguably hurt the aims of his 'master').

Just that sort of thing really.

Nevill said:
Did our vase ever come into play?

It cast a few times before the fighting started and helped to reassure TWM that you were actually there but it was empty by the time TWM reached the tent.
 

Nevill

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-Enki and the priests had a set of rolls to cast the Rotting Mist Dream successfully. It was not too difficult as Enki knew the spell quite well.
So the priests worked as batteries for that one?

I wonder if our Seekers can pull off something crazy if they all link together. :)

- There were a number of rolls here for all of the named characters on Nanshe's side to determine if any of them would die. A few came close but they all made it.
Damn it! Er, I mean, good job, Princess. Good job indeed.

- TWM and his remaining escort reach the tent and he sends his mages in with orders to capture the ladies alive. Nanshe was operating with no such limitations and so she quite readily cut them down.
But they weren't told to bring Nanshe alive as they had no reason to believe she was there in the first place. Did they even have no chance to retaliate?

- TWM manages to muscle his way through it and almost manages to shatter the spell so Nanshe in desperation activate the fourth stage of the Nightmare and renders TWM unconscious.
But she did not know the 4th stage when we fought her! Or did we just not wait long enough to see it? Did she have a limit break level-up? :)

Rolls to see if the Watcher would demand that TWM stop wasting time and return to the south.

Rolls to see if the Watcher would even notice what TWM was up to.

Just that sort of thing really.
Yeah, this is the stuff that I find interesting. Little random things out of our control that failures and victories are made of.

I wonder, though... if the Watcher recalled him, would he have followed when he was so close?
 
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Fangshi

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Nevill said:
But they weren't told to bring Nanshe alive as they had no reason to believe she was there in the first place. Did they even had no chance to retaliate?

Nanshe was standing directly in front of 'Derryth'/Cass and the other two. If they threw fatal magic at Nanshe and missed they would kill the targets so they had to tone down their spells. That limitation combined with the element of surprise and Nanshe's metallic skin spell proved decisive though two of the mages did get a chance to defend themselves.

Nevill said:
But she did not know the 4th stage when we fought her! Or did we just not wait long enough to see it? Did she have a limit break level-up? :)

Maybe she managed to expand her knowledge? Maybe she received a little help? Maybe a certain sexy demon prince gave her a hint to ensure she would win if it came to a one-on-one fight? It will just have to remain a mystery unless you can come up with a good reason to ask her. :cool:

Nevill said:
I wonder, though... if the Watcher recalled him, would he have followed when he was so close?

Maybe, maybe not.
 
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Jester

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Can someone only tell me a few things?
- This Thin White Mage is servant of Watcher - so he seems to be our bad guy in this story?
Watcher (Main bad guy? We will see) one of few original dark lords still active. He posses dream all necromancy comes from, making him basically an archlich. Was fighting against kingdom and empire under Balor?, but lost. Petrified and cut in number of pieces (part of him are capable of controlling weak minded as you can see in update), after being caught in ambush set by Alric current Emperor (he really hate that guy). His consciousness? soul? ended up close to kingdom. In his attempts to get more power base and revive started again war with Kingdom, but we happened and things went quite bad for him. TWM is one of his main minions only one we directly met, hundreds of years old, narcistic. So old he basically got really bored from lack of any real challenge, but Derryth and Thais were able to blind side him several times sparking his interests. Become obsessed with capturing them. He has a hobby of collecting interesting mages, by making them love him obsessive (becoming his puppets). He is more of quirky mini boss from my view.
- The Empress of the Ghôls and her army are on our site? Why they have fake 'Derryth' and rest of our team?
Nashe is mage we encountered used to release Ghols from watcher enslavement. After that she became leader of them. She is currently cooperating with us to get rid of TWM to weaken watcher (and she hates the guy). We have big conflict of interest, so i expect big battle with her after watcher is dealt with. Ghols and Dwarves have a real long history of hatred dated from times Dwarves emerged from underground. They went to war (its so long ago no one knows who started aggressions each side thinks they were in right) either way dwarves end up conquering Ghoul lands.
"It is no secret that the dwarves and the ghôls have long made war on one another. The southern hills of the continent have been bathed in the blood of both races since time immemorial but the events of the last two hundred years put even that bloody history to shame. Albrecht fought at the head of his father's army against Balor and his ghôl armies. He fought valiantly but in the end he failed to defend his homeland. The twin capitals of Myrgard and Stoneheim fell to the Fallen Lords and with them fell the kingdom.

Albrecht ruled his people in exile for over sixty years, fleeing the advance of the Fallen Lords and offering to humanity what resources and aid he could. Alric's surprise victory over the Fallen Lords provided the dwarves a chance for revenge and they have spent the better part of the last sixty years beating the ghôls back into the wastes and reclaiming their homeland. Much work remains to be done but Albrecht has never been one to shy away from a challenge."
From Preparations Part 1 objective view. Recent war memories making things more difficult. With our politic of equal opportunity employment in our evil? corporation we dont care to much.

- Are Dreams some more powerfull forms of magic (or rituals)?
Dreams and Nightmares are primal spells believed to be basic of whole magic. Each of them gives you power of archmage level (things like spider goddes or Morpheus are about 3 times weaker level).
"It is said that the Wyrd, a deity or being of great power, had created the world out of a dream. As he awoke, all that his eye beheld became as the lands of his dream.

This dramatic reshaping of the world angered the goddess Nyx. She had just breathed life into her new creations, the Trow, only to have the entirety of the world change. Trow legends claim that Nyx and Wyrd had a titanic battle that shook the very rock of the world. Nyx had caused a great wound to Wyrd, which formed into the volcano Tharsis, but Wyrd would not fall to her assaults. In her rage, she called upon the powers of the Dark Gods to aid her. The Wyrd was shattered, his powers flung to the corners of the world in rocky fragments. And yet, the One Dream of the Wyrd remained."
And the most important question: Why the hell that guy sings in the middle of battle? (Kind of joke question ;) )
The guy with good voice? Someone insane? Disney villain?
 

Nevill

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I have a question about 'The Worrier King' interlude.

Myrkridia.

The old horrors let loose in the world since the last war, they have grown in numbers, bred in the dark corners of the world and if the Prophet's journal is too be believed they are headed north in numbers not seen for an age. If his newly minted kingdom is too survive then it must be ready, he must be ready.
But weren't myrkridia extinct since Connacht caught them in the Tain, and only resurrected by the Summoner in the last war, about two years ago?

Unless myrkridia are like butterflies, isn't two years a bit too early for their breeding to produce a noticeable result? They are fairly humanoid in their appearance at least.

Could it be that the north is under attack by what is left of the Soulblighter's forces, and if those die, the threat dies with them?

The GiantBomb, while, admittedly, is not a very reliable source, has this to say on the matter:
Led by King Alric, the Legion would eventually find and kill the Summoner, who provided Soulblighter a means to quickly repopulate the Myrkridian numbers. Without a way to renew their ranks, the Myrkridian menace would eventually pass, though small groups of the vile creatures presumably still roam the world.
Indeed, a victory over the Summoner would not be such a turning point in the war if they could reproduce so quickly.
 
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Fangshi

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Nevill said:
But weren't myrkridia extinct since Connacht caught them in the Tain, and only resurrected by the Summoner in the last war, about two years ago?

They were functionally extinct before the Summoner started freeing them again, that is correct.

Nevill said:
Unless myrkridia are like butterflies, isn't two years a bit too early for their breeding to produce a noticeable result?

More like really big rats actually. I can not give you the exact numbers since no one has actually been able to study the monsters without being killed by them (or killed for associating with them) however it is known from surviving myths and historical accounts of the creatures that they reproduce very rapidly. It is not unthinkable that a population could quadruple within a year or two if the conditions supported such a population boom.

Eventually though the myrkridia population will hit the maximum capacity for whatever location they choose to inhabit. What usually happens is that they wind up at war with one another over resources and mates but if they have a skilled leader to hold them together and drive them forward they can be a significant threat to other people.

Nevill said:
Could it be that the north is under attack by what is left of the Soulblighter's forces, and if those die, the threat dies with them?

Possibly, though if someone wanted to be completely sure they would need to follow in Connacht's footsteps. They would need to sweep the warrens of the myrkridia and ensure that every female and pup is dead.

Nevill said:
The GiantBomb, while, admittedly, is not a very reliable source, has this to say on the matter:

GiantBomb is not the worst resource out there though there are certainly better ones. In this case though they are being rather optimistic.

Nevill said:
Indeed, a victory over the Summoner would not be such a turning point in the war if they could reproduce so quickly.

I think it is important to note that the Deceiver and the Legion killed the Summoner on the 20-21 of April.

Alric killed Soulblighter just one week later on the 27th.

Alric was also the aggressor in the last days of the war. He pinned Soulblighter's army against the Cloudspine and pushed until it dissolved though it cost him half the Legion to do it.

So the breeding rate of the myrkridia would not matter anyway unless they could grow to full size within a week.

My interpretation is that Alric had learnt an important lesson from the last war. You do not leave mage lords alive if you don't want them coming back to cause trouble. He launched that attack on the Summoner for two reasons then, the first was to cut off the immediate supply of reanimated myrkridia for Soulblighter's army. The second reason was to ensure the Summoner would not outlive his master and try to start another war a few decades down the road. In both of those aims he succeeded. I do not think that he was aiming to completely wipe out the myrkridian race with that attack though he likely would have considered it an added bonus if it did happen.

Alric only needed a week, I would say that the events of the game do not tell us much about their rate of reproduction as a result.

What we do know though is that as a species they are almost incapable of internal organization and that it took a human to teach them tactics, warfare and more advanced magic. We also know that they have little problem fighting one another when their instincts take over. Finally, despite the fact that they are very tough individually they are definitely commensal animals (they live, eat and work in packs). Their desire to be close to one another and their tendency to lash out at whatever is near them when they get angry when combined with their generally vicious nature and lack of respect for life in general is likely to create a species that suffers from high amounts of intracommunal violence and a fairly high death rate even in the absence of 'enemy species'.

Well, any species that behaves that way would extinguish itself rather quickly if its birth rate was not high enough to compensate. So I am fairly confident in ruling that the myrkridia do have a high birth rate and a quick reproductive cycle which fits nicely with the general view of them as a swarm of unstoppable horrors.

That is how I approach it at least.


Edit:

The update is going to be delayed a bit. I have seem to have caught some sort of flu/cold/bug and it is making it rather difficult to focus on much of anything. Hopefully it will be out some time this week but it is slow going.
 
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Nevill

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So, uh... I've been pondering about it for a bit, and I want to see if any of you guys gave it a thought.

What exactly are we trying to achieve with Nanshe? In the long term, I mean?

- Are we trying to keep her pointed at the Watcher, until he is no longer a threat, and then destroy her to scatter the clans and keep the Dwarven Kingdom safe?
- Are we just 'going with the flow' and doing things without an agenda other than immediate survival?
- Or are we going to actually try and prevent both dwarves and ghols from clashing with each other?

It might be too early to worry about it just yet when there are at least two other hostile sides even without the ghols, but I want to test the waters. Nanshe does not make a secret out of her desire to take Myrgard, and the presence of the raiding parties in the south, if it is her doing, may indicate her interest in capturing Stoneheim after it has been weakened. My question is, do we intervene, and if we do, in what way?

And if we want to deter the ghols from attacking, or want to prompt them to leave the dwarven lands, how do we go about this? Do we let the "grand empire in the south to rival even that of the Cath Bruig" rise?

There may be a few things Nanshe would want more than destruction of the dwarves, and there may be a few deterrents that would be able to stop even the fiercest of assaults, but do we even bother? Changing a situation that had been that way for several thousands of years is a pretty tall order, after all.
 
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Jester

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So, uh... I've been pondering about it for a bit, and I want to see if any of you guys gave it a thought.
What exactly are we trying to achieve with Nanshe? In the long term, I mean?

- Are we trying to keep her pointed at the Watcher, until he is no longer a threat, and then destroy her to scatter the clans and keep the Dwarven Kingdom safe?
- Are we just 'going with the flow' and doing things without an agenda other than immediate survival?
- Or are we going to actually try and prevent both dwarves and ghols from clashing?

It might be too early to worry about it just yet when there are at least two other hostile sides even without the ghols, but I want to test the waters. Nanshe does not make a secret out of her desire to take Myrgard, and the presence of the raiding parties in the south, if it is her doing, may indicate her interest in capturing Stoneheim after it has been weakened. My question is, do we intervene, and if we do, in what way?

And if we want to deter the ghols from attacking, or want to prompt them to leave the dwarven lands, how do we go about this? Do we let the "grand empire in the south to rival even that of the Cath Bruig" to rise?

There may be a few things Nanshe would want more than destruction of the dwarves, and there may be a few deterrents that would be able to stop even the fiercest of assaults, but do we even bother? Changing a situation that had been that way for several thousands of years is a pretty tall order, after all.

Well from my point of view main objective with Nanshe and by her proxy all clans she will get is to set them against Watcher forces. They know the land and their actions should be able to decrease overall loses.

I really doubt we can make dwarfs and them even remotely friendly, but perhaps we will be able to set some official or unofficial agreement between Albrecht and Nanshe preventing war. Everyone are badly hurt after great war so i doubt that Dwarves or Ghols have enough manpower to repopulate and build new settlements, so if future expansion policy will be wise there shouldn't be problem here. Any possibility for relationship improvements between them is to make them know each other and i doubt that it will work, it would require huge amount of goodwill and you know the situation.

So overall keep watcher busy and later show why clashing with each other is very bad idea. Nanshe should understand that attacking Kingdom would mean attacking our corporate interests and she should know first hand how that's end. Albreht will understand possible threat of Empire involvement in case of Kingdoms weakness. Why start another war when houses are still on fire? Nanshe can build her Empire as long as she dont start anything with our local Dwarves, but if they come to her looking for trobule... everything goes. We could even start trade with Nanshe Empire after they set it, that could help to defuse situation a little bit.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I am pretty sure any noticeable 'relation improvement' is impossible unless we are talking a big timeskip during which no major atrocities take place. I mean, all the stuff they do to each other is beyond redemption or rationalizing. Even though their leaders might recognize the benefits of not continuing the war that has seen no conclusion for millenia, their people will never agree to just let it slide, and the rulers would lose their legitimacy in an instant if their subjects ever so much as suspect something along these lines.

The only possible prospect for peace I can see is to deny nations contact to one another and let the slighted generations die out while new ones take their place. Without their parents being roasted alive and eaten or chunked on an altar for the Dark Gods, they would find it much easier to tolerate one another. Which is simpler to do with ghols rather than with dwarves, as the former are short-lived, and their generations change 5 to 10 times faster.

We have also seen that dwarves are less warlike than ghols, and have no real interest in expanding their territory, but are content building on what they already have. All of this combined suggests to me that if we want to pursue this course, Nanshe is the one to approach with the idea. It depends on her actions more than it does on Albrecht's.

There is also this to consider: Nanshe's rise and popularity hinge on her spoken and unspoken promises to achieve something of lasting worth, as Enki put it, and realize the dreams of her people - and the destruction of the 'dwarven oppressors' is one such dream. Her hands are tied in regards to what she can actually do. Her worth is determined by her victories, and unless she piles one on top of the other, the rivaling clans will turn on her. It is not as easy as her ordering her people to sit still, just like Albrecht can not act on his whims as long as the Lords are around.

Unless we come up with a solution to that problem, all our threats and promises are empty, as we will always be farther away from her than her own subjects who demand this of her. I have a couple of ideas in mind, but none of them are very satisfactory.

Damn it, it would be that much easier if we just killed her.
 
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Karwelas

Dwarf Taffer
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1,064
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"Mostly Harmless" planet
Codex Year of the Donut I helped put crap in Monomyth
Damn it, it would be that much easier if we just killed her.

I think we should first thing about us. Like Jester said - we can make secret meeting with Nanshe and Alb. They seems to be more inteligent then most of their people and thinks about their future. They should be able to make secret pact about prevent fighting at lest for some time. We need every ally that we can get in this damn world and it seems we have enough enemies in it. We should think about our future. Mel enemies probably still want to get her and after we wake her up we should think about stoping them (I suggest do that right after Watcher).

Another problem are our 'allies'. Morpheus and the Silver Lady may want to fuck us after they don't need us anymore. We must think about them too.

And the last but not last - future itself. What we will do after (we may not get alive from it, but hey! We must have hope!) Watcher and Albrecht traitor? More job from dwarfs? New way? Maybe making new shit around.
 

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