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 Warlock: Master of The Arcane What the hell? Warlock: Master of the Arcane is a pretty simple fantasy 4X game that seems to have already overpowered 2 LPrs. Strange, since basically it's Baby's First 4X Game: Return of the Difficulty Spike. Build cities, train armies, wage war, fire spells, drat the AI. Usual 4X fare. They told me games have plot... In the tradition of modern 4X games, Warlock lacks a campaign, has some interesting (well, funny) lore. It's set in the universe of Majesty 2 - Ayn Rand's Fantasy Simulator - with unclear relation to that game's timeline. Most probably some time afterwards. I'll make poo poo up as I go because I'm not going to just spell out unit movements and, after a few turns, I'll leave the informative side altogether. So what's new? Well, usually 4X games rely heavily on research to build better units than the rest of the world and trample the AI spearmen under the threads of Future Murder Tanks. Not so here. Units are build and upgraded if you have the required buildings, which is more about city development (easy) and city positioning (easier). Research is done to get spells that your wizard rear end can cast from his tower. Unfortunately, the game has failed to produced a clearly visible spell tree, but that's only a minor impetus. Most of the time your overtrained and overgeared units can do well. Also, you have a bad case of Notmovingitus, which means that your capital never moves and you lose the game if it's destroyed. Be vary of enemy deep infiltration missions (that never happen on normal). To keep the things interesting, monster spawners appear worldwide at random intervals. This is annoying, especially in cases of small, undeveloped cities. Aside from the main world, there are pocket dimentions that can only be accessed by gates. This is a whole new level of "fun". So, what's the world gonna be like?  I'm going to play normal difficulty and without the "50% Holy Grounds" option. I doubt the enemy AI will be smart enough to do the other things and I have no idea what's an avatar.  I'm thinking about making a world somewhere between normal and huge. It will be mostly continents, so I'd be separated from other mages at the beginning, but still have place to develop. Also, sea travel and seas in general suck. I'll take 6 opponents because... why not? 8 would be too much, especially in prolonging the endgame and interrupting my Teleport/Resurrect spells. The number of planes is set to highest because I want to show them off - well, show their terrain texture off. I also like the idea of pocket dimensions. Cylindrical map means that we can go south (or west) till we reach the place where we left off. Hurray for realism?  This is your prebaked mage selection. Note the lore! Mages give a name and a face to your nation, as well as perks. These can vary from immediate resource bonuses (hello, wasted points), to unit enhancements and spells researched. Again, pretty much run of the mill stuff. Some of the mages are pretty cooky.  Channel your inner furry!  This means I have the elf DLC! Create a magical idiot  Here's the wizard/nation creation screen. You have points, and perks and spells cost points. Simple. You can also change name, portrait, color and race. Notice how lame all of the banners are. Here's a sample character I created for the test post play.  Twik the Goatrapist is a Koatl pervert who became a great wizard through the power of goat love. He commands a Monster nation, because nobody else would accept him and making love to undead goats is just obscene. Twik, having spent most of his time in farm and barns, knows something about Farming (Food income bonus). Also, while tending to his band of lovers and organizing their defense from wolves and their rightful owners, he became A Glorious Tactician (10% to unit attack). It's still a mystery how he learned magic (Fireball and Healing). Audience input You get to vote for which race I play!  Humans: Your run of the mill inhabitants of Every Fantasy Game Ever. Generic to the core, easy to play, not that badly voiced. Masters of Gold production, which is really important when you want to upgrade your units with best gear. Have the biggest variety of Holy Grounds units.  Monsters: Organized and civilized Goblins, Werewolves, Rat Pirates, oh my! Max out food production AND have beastly bonuses. Also come with voice acting and lines so bad, that it should be classed as a war crime.  Undead: Skeletons - well, you know the drill (no fat chicks?). Take less damage from arrows and black magic. Take mana upkeep which might be inconvenient for a spell slinging player. Have the most awesome unit in the (DLC-less) game: Galleus of the Sky.  Arethi Elves: The DLC race! Basically the Space Marines of the setting: all male (women hosed off to the woods - seriously), more expensive and thus better units than everyone else. Speak in Elvish, so at least we're spared horrible lines. Are actually armored and pro-order, unlike the usual Dark Elf BDSM fare. Like the Undead, have a flying ship. Unlike with the Undead, this one wasn't made by replacing a dragon model with a ship. Much like the Undead, these pose a challenge when making any sort of narrative. Another big point  The Armageddon DLC gives you a whole new game mode: defeat an an alien invasion from one of the pocket dimension! Some game designer probably took offense at allegations that randomly appearing monster spawners are annoying and decided to teach us a lesson. You know, like in hentai, where they rape a girl till she likes it, here you get really, really powerful spawners and monsters. Playing Armageddon could mean losing, since I've no experience with. Victory conditions are replaced by victory against the alien invaders. Have your say and I'll take this into consideration! I'll try updating this once a week because I actually have obligations to play other games. UPDATES Chapter 1: Landing on Goblin Rock Chapter 1.5: A Growing Backwater Empire Chapter 2: Taming the Wilds Chapter 3: The Invasion Chapter 4.1: Lycanthrope Oblige Chapter 4.2: From the War to the Wilds Chapter 4.3: Damned Wilderness Chapter 4.4: The Amazing Adventures In Thread Lock Dodging Chapter 5.1: Even the Smallest of News Chapter 5.2: Hateful Universe Chapter 5.3: Worse Tidings Chapter 6: Anchored To The End of The World Chapter 7: Anchor Crisis Chapter 8: A Slipping World Chapter 9.1: Taking Care of Business Chapter 9.2: Help Chapter 10: Direst of Portents Chapter 11: Wild Fronts and Frontiers Chapter 12: Invading Demiplanes Chapter 13: Beyond Death's Door Chapter 14: Forward Onto Glory Chapter 15: Who Mourns for Dremargor? Epilogue JcDent fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2013 15:22
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Lotish posted:This. You can't accuse them of war crimes and expect anything less. I promise to include a short video of Monster unit sounds (the main offenders are Goblin Archers and Spearmen). I'll get them anyway since it is nigh impossible NOT to get cities of other races during your conquest. Yep, this game is very CnC about it.
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Jun 20, 2013 17:33
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Chapter 1: Landing on Goblin Rock Reassembling oneself was not the first trick that King Litch V has learned, but it was very useful. After all, the undead don't have many fans, especially the nigh immortal litches. And so it came to pass that Litch King died again and was reborn – well, reassembled from small pieces of skeleton – once again. Now his name would be Litch King V and that meant correcting the names on all of his belongings. A bit of a hard task to do when all of your subjects are undead. Mindless skeletons that are animated through one's will and magic make for poor artisans. Come to think of it, they also make crappy guards – that's why Fiver had died so many times already. This just would not do! But what people would willingly bend under the will of an undead monstrosity? You can't just conquer them – that would just mean replacing your incompetent dead guards with people who actually want you dead. How to win their hearts and minds? The humans are out of the question. They only respected nobility and King Litch wasn't a blue blood when he had actual blood. Even if he did take the throne by force, the nobles would tear each other apart using accusations of incest, long gone claims for lend, protectorships of defensive fortifications located in regions of extreme cold and so forth. It would be even harder with the all-male Arethi Elves, who had their heads busy with some Truth that they kept mentioning, but never really explained to anyone. Female elves were even worse, living in small villages until someone pressed them into service as archers or opened a gambling hall. Dwarves were content to smith and drink their days away in their howels, the little monsters. Wait. Monsters. Now there was an idea worth investigating. Most of the monster populations, unified into one social group after the King gave them citizenship, are made up of Goblins, an aggressively stupid, rapidly breeding folk. Kill their chief, bump a few of his followers on the noggin and now he's King Litch V of the Monsters. Eventually, with his lands growing larger and prosperous other, not as useless monster species would come. Yes, that was a perfect plan! Now, to just fly out and find a goblin tribe! ...or not. It appears that dying isn't beneficial to spell retention. At best, he could fart out an unimpressive shadow bolt. This would kill a few peasants, but he needed more than that. Conceding defeat, King Litch searched the remains of his library for books on kingly matters. After grabbing a few tomes, he gathered some scattered coins, wrapped himself tight in whatever scraps of black cloth he could find (necropolises rarely featured cloth in other color) and marched out towards a human village he vaguely remembered from his past life. Unfortunately, during the royal unholy reassembly, the village had grown into a bustling human port. That what life without constant undead raids does to an economy, after all! On the other hand, the city had it's own monster ghetto. This would become a perfect starting point... later on. For the time, King Litch V rented a room at a dingy inn (he claimed to be a poet, that's why nobody bothered him about the pale expression or diminished physique). Most of his time was spent in his room, reading through the books, only sneaking out at night to investigate or to shadowbolt a few people to get gold for the rent. Eventually he won over such ponderous tones like “The Early Campaigns of the King”, “Violence as A Last Resort: Resorting To Enough of It” or “Barbarian Ways of Looting, Raping and Pillaging, Recorded By Hybiscus Squarefoot Who Lived, Ate And Traveled With Them”, all of which helped him to become a master tactician, useful skill when commanding the cowardly lot that is the Goblin race. He also delved into treatises about magic, such a “Tapping that Lay Line” and “Turning Immaterial into Palpable Power, by F. F. Shinra the Seventh”, to fuel his mana reserves once he relearns a few specials. One day, feeling ready, Fiver paid off his bills (at such an early stage, it didn't pay to have enforcers go after you) and strode into the ghetto. A rousing speech – tactically peppered with words simple enough for Goblins to understand – and a few well placed shadowbolts, he had a band of goblins ready to follow him wherever he wanted to go. To that end, a boat was commandeered (nothing would go afterwards, since cleaning a ship after Goblins had been there just wasn't worth it), a sail was raised a course set northwards. Hopefully, those harsh margins of Ardania would be free from bigger settlements or ancient spider being civilizations.  After an uneventful and quite comfortable journey (for the King, at least – being dead, he didn't feel cold, damp or sea sickness), their ship crashed into the marshy shores of a northern tundra. By the time King Litch pried himself from the mud, the goblins had already established a city on the frozen slopes of the nearby mountains. On his way there, he was met by two warbands: one was made up of Ratmen Robbers who, after the ship crashed, were woefully underemployed and Goblin Archer, the support class of every goblin army, made possible a peculiar mix of cowardice (to go the frontline) and intelligence (enough to use a bow). With a wave of his bony hand, King Litch V sent them to explore the surrounding tundra.  All things considered, Pestyhall – gotta change that name in the future, the litch mused – was located in a fairly forgiving piece of arctic tundra. Sure, the place wasn't exactly ideal for food production, but at least there were spots of magical energy nearby – and those had a variety of exciting, potentially deadly uses!  Meanwhile, the Archers, bravely freezing their way eastward, spotted a humble human settlement of Golddale. It was a small farming community, eking out a living in a land not exactly suitable for such activities. No matter – King Litch would extend his helping hand by eventually conquering it. He just needed more forces.  To that end, a Pub and a surrounding high crime entertainment area was constructed further into the mountains. A few simple gambling halls, some stills of mushroom beer, a brothel or two filled with goblin women (or green colored pigs) was all it took. The dangerous terrain would take care of the least intellectually inclined, thus, in the dreams of the Litch, pawing way to goblin race that would one day be able to read, maybe write and not drown in the rain. A secretly state run affair (subtleties of running a pub were a bit hard for the Goblins to grasp), it would keep the goblins well fed and drunk. At the same time, this was an opportunity to grab some of the greenskins who showed aptitude in bar fights and press them into the royal service as Goblin Spearmen. Thus reinforced, the forces of the Great Wizard King Litch V consisted of such units:  "Biographers who consider the career of Marshall Nolak the Strong often point out that his famous ante-mortem declaration about spear-armed goblins not posing any threat is in fact often misquoted. It was later discovered that he meant to say "Goblins armed with spears do not pose any threat to such stout-hearted warriors as yourselves. Onwards, my boys!" To our great distress, the good Marshall never finished his thought, because he was interrupted midway through the sentence when a goblin pierced him with his own spear." From "The Overall Description of Everything" by Master Alfus Bumblegate. Goblin Spearmen were the mainstay and the best cannon fodder of the monster armies. Born in number and to a population that didn't grasp such things as “war weariness”, they presented a perfect shield for better Monster units. At least they were fast, which, to King Litch, meant moving them to their inevitable deaths that much quicker.  "Most well-informed minds believe that these archers are nothing to be feared -- for who has ever heard of an accurate goblin? And just because well-informed minds are few and far between, that doesn't mean they're wrong!" From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor. A Goblin is given a bow and some arrows. If he doesn't choke on said arrows, he's made a Goblin Archer. To such a cruel and cowardly lot as Goblins, the bow is the ultimate weapon: it allows them to hit enemies without any fear of reprisal.  "These land-locked ratmen are true sea wolves. That is to say, well, yes many of them have never even seen the sea in their lives, but the free-wheeling spirit of a sea wolf lives in the hearts of each of these rogues." From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor. While he rarely felt the need to wear them himself, Fiver generally respected Ratmen for their pant wearing ways. Arguably the smartest troops in any budding Monster warband, they were the beady eyes and shaggy ears of military. Unfortunately, they suffered from the beastly curse of being extra susceptible to arrows, a fact that brought endless grief to Ratmen mothers and widows.  It was Squeeks the Shanker who first spotted the trouble over the horizon. Elves. And not just some elves of the female persuasion: Arethi elves. This meant that northern lands weren't that free for the taking. Not willing to risk open fighting so early on, King Litch sent ratmen envoys to deliver a proposition of piece to the elven king, the high wizard Amberon the Dark,  Being a wise and powerful ruler – and maybe just a tad afraid of giant talking rats sent by a litch – Amberon accepted the proposal for peace! This meant, that from now on, a land grab in the north would be peaceful affair, fought by recklessly risking the lives of the settlers that were to grab the beast pieces of land instead of sending troops to enforce one's claims by force.  One of the goblin advisers – selection through a rigorous process that included asking a participant to stick his hand into fire and then selecting those who asked “why?” - said that he had collected funds from concerned goblin families and craftsmen which they were willing to send to the treasury if Fiver saw to the destruction of a band of wolves.  “You see, lord, nobody wants to wake to the screams of “wolves ate my baby!”.  "In Ardania, wolves are as ubiquitous as trees. One major difference being that trees don't eat heroes." From the collected works of His Majesty's Adviser And true, Wolves were a common nuisance in Ardania. On the other hand, they weren't a particularly strong nuisance and were usually overshadowed by other, stronger beasts – a fact that only reinforced the notion that only the criminally insane traveled the Ardanian wilderness.  It was metal against teeth, claw against paw when the wolves attacked the scouting Ratmen. Quickly, the savage beasts fell to the organized, well armed, pant wearing military might of the Robbers and the coffers were filled with money that would undoubtedly be used in meaningful ways later on.  Unfortunately, Goblins were still a part of the budding nation under the command of King Litch V. Through his Glass Ball of Limited Viewing, he was tracking a band of archers who were exploring land to the east of Golddale. The good news were that there weren't that many lands past Golddale – which meant less enemies and the freedom to concentrate the green, smelly forces in the west, driving towards whatever mysterious lands the Elves had yet to conquer (how they multiplied without having any women was anybody's guess; a guess best left unspoken). The bad news were that it was a mountain range archipelago that terminated in an ogre's hut at the tip.  "These monsters are famous for their size, strength, drowsiness -- and for their unfortunate habit of dragging fair maidens around by hair." From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor Sure, the place was perfect for the brute. The mountains were the preferred terrain of his kind, so he always had an advantage when fighting would be invaders. There were enough goats to eat while the scenic location meant that any kidnapped maidens would be less willing to cry and shriek all the time. While ogres didn't really know why they kidnapped maidens, they liked doing that, and, once the Slighshtofenholm syndrome kicked in, the females would be of great help around the house. And while monsters didn't have any maidens worth kidnapping, a ogre was still an unpleasant neighbor, who nearly drat wiped out the scouting archers when he ambushed them in the middle of the night! Surely this had to be dealt with sooner or later – a cozy hut like that was likely to attract more ogres.  But that was to be in the future. Humans of Golddale proved to be mute and deaf to negotiation (well, King Litch V was sure of it, so he didn't even try), which meant that Golddale had to be taken the old fashioned way: over the corpses of man and goblin. As such, both of the Goblin Spearmen regiments were tasked with taking it without possibly being wiped out to a goblin... JcDent fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Apr 26, 2014 |
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Jun 28, 2013 15:20
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Litch King V the lich is going to be renamed in a an update or two. We'll chalk it up to goblin scribes being almost illiterate. As for the gameplay mechanics... I really loathe to explain them in game, since they're pretty simple and would break the narrative flow. Also? The game is dead simple. REALLY. Most buildings only have one effect - say, increase in gold production rate - and they're that easy. Also, resource production buildings don't cost upkeep. City management is also easy, since it's devoid of such things as happiness and other such nonsense that stymies expansion in CivV or Endless Space. Just have positive food balance and you're set. You can only build buildings when cities advance in level. Terrain sometimes impacts the upkeep/production of the buildings built on them (like you can see in any window that has Icy Plains). In any case, I try to weave the building role in the narrative, so you can guess the basic function of it (the Pub gives you food, but costs gold to maintain). I won't do that for every building, just the new ones (unless I have something special planned narrative sense). Unit battle is like in CivV, down to level up upgrades and terrain influence. You can't rename them, there isn't even a mod for it, which is a shame. I think that about covers it.
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Jul 3, 2013 14:30
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Chapter 1.5: A Growing Backwater Empire. A shorter update this time, since this and chapter 1 initially were planned to be a single one, but my writing got out of hand and I was afraid it would be too lengthy. Yet it had such a well placed dramatic ending that I loathed to lengthen it Sieges! Now that's a thing that Undead did quite well. For the obvious reasons, the shambling armies didn't need that many supplies to keep operational – this meant they could stay outside a castle till it crumbled from old age. Also, skeletons didn't have much in the way of the flesh that could be pierced by arrows, the weapon of choice in all besieged cities. This made small villages especially vulnerable, since that usually meant that their first, main and last line of defense was useless. And only a bit annoying to the undead - those rib cages full of arrows made the most horrible of racket!  Alas, King Litch V now found himself in a situation where he had to make use of live troops. Sure, goblins were more expendable than skeletons – at least skeletons were loved when they were still living – but this didn't make it any easier. Then again, this was a but a small human settlement, so two companies of goblins would be enough. Sure, both of them were highly untrained and the second one was raised after a particularly dense goblin fletcher affixed arrowheads on top of broom handles, but what was one to do? The severely flattened company of archers would later on provide support, but they're of little use since even turf huts provided good cover for the defenders and allowed them to show all sorts of obscene hand gestures through their pig bladder windows.  With the assault on Golddale laid out in simple terms (“attack it until the town is taken or you all die) and left to goblin commanders, the King had to take care of some other things. Climbing into his royal palanquin (as a litch, he would never tire and could float, but he somewhat enjoyed causing misery to goblins), he ordered the greenskins to take him to the eastern edge of the city, where a new project was almost complete. The stunty smelly oafs complied and trundled down the uneven streets laid with all sorts of waste. Only the cold of the north held the horrible stench at bay – combining it with the vapors of the nearby swamps would cause sensory overload even to a litch. With scenes of abject poverty that passed for comfortable goblin living passing by, the small group climbed on top of the hill that housed the city's market – a wonderful place that sold hooves, tails, bones, smelly mold and moss and other essentials of goblin daily life. Ratmen stood out here and there, visibly nervous: there was difficulty in explaining what “protection money” is to such a dull crowd. Eventually the clatter and the clamor of the would be marketplace was past them and the small procession descended from a hill towards the massive construction at it's foot. A sort of shoddily made massive copper plate was placed, at an incline, on a huge stand and held in a wooded frame. Magical sparkles danced around the dish and smelly goblins milled around the base. A few mud hut surrounded the whole strange building. Of course, King Litch knew what it was. Regular mages fired thunderbolts and pantaloons ripping wind relying on their own reserves of mana, the strange, unknowable substance that enabled magic. Fiver, on the other hand, was no ordinary mage. His shadow bolts needed to kill more people and his magical winds had to knock down more that a straw roof of a peasant's hut. Thus, they needed a lot more mana for their spells. That's where mana traps came, used to collect ambient mana and store it in silver lined barrels for use later on, or, in case of accident, to rapidly mutate a goblin into a mass of mysterious appendages and gibbering mouths. You don't become a Great Mage just because you can collect a lot of mana; you become by being skilled enough to use those huge amounts of mana without becoming a human candle. Usually, mages have a few of them, but with the new settlement and his powers still at relevant infancy, the King only had one. Still, it had to suffice for some time. In the mean time, the day had to be won over the corpses of goblins. After the inspecting the mana trap and happy with both the collection rate and goblin casualties being within the acceptable limits, the King turned to leave when he heard a dreadful sound...  "When goblins reappeared in Ardania once more, following a long absence, gnomes were also spotted amongst their number, and were seen building a quite different style of architecture than was formerly typical for goblins. Arguments immediately broke out across Ardania over what could be hace reconciled these long-warring races. Some argued that the gnomes must have been enslaved by their green-skinned enemies, while others suggested that gnomes quite simply did not care what, or for whom, they build." From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor.  “Oy, you sorry lot, pull yer pants up, we're to see the royalty”loving gnomes. Gnomes were the actual life and blood behind the monster cities. While the goblins provided disposable low skill workers and even more disposable troops, the actual stuff happened because gnomes had something to do with them. Gnomes had a monopoly of mushroom farms. Gnomes commanded the brewing of beer. Gnomes made sure that goblins were armed with spears that would not crumble on first impact. Gnomes cleaned the gutters one in a year. Gnomes expanded consciousness. Trouble is, they were fat, drunk louts that only ever cared for living in a city, eating, drinking and producing as much offspring as gnomish childbearing hips could bear. And they could bear a lot. It was said that goblins met gnomes on their self imposed (i.e. they got lost) exile from Ardania. Now, gnomes were a disorganized bunch of small people in a world where even cockroaches grew to respectable sizes and knew rudimentary military strategy. That's why a lot of gnomes got eaten by all sorts of nasty creatures. But from the goblin tales they learned of magical places called “cities”, where a lot of gnomes could live in one place, grow food and procreate to their hearts content. If worst came to pass, they could be defended by city walls and even troops, such as goblins. That's why they traveled with the green doofuses and eventually accidentally returned to Ardania. And now they requested the attention of Litch King V. “Oye, boss, listen up!”, - said the fattest of the bunch, while holding his pants with one hand and scratching his chest hair with another. “Them turnips lads turned this place real sour”“Turnips what no...” “Yeah, the Westhill Turnips, those assholes! They refused to marry...like... eight of our daughters!”  “More like nine!” - added a very hairy woman while stroking her moustache.“And buggered Jibby while they were drunk!”“I still can't sit!”“And they shat in our smokestacks!” - said another gnome woman, reinforcing her point by giving birth on the spot. “And they stole my dirty pants!”“You know how hard it is when you can't sit?”“And they take all them building materials, our lads have to sleep in the mud!”“And they cut off...”This continued for a bit. Fiver sort of phased out – not literally, of course – and just waited for all the clatter to stop. Once he noted a lull in the clatter – one of the gnomes passed out drunk in the middle of a complaint – the litch gave out a ghastly sigh, rubbed his eyeholes and asked  “What do you want me to do?”“Well, mount an expedition, 'course!”“Yeah, give us wagons! And goblins! And gonkeys!”“And beer!”This proved to be acceptable solution, thus making this a self solving problem – also known as the best kind of problem in the circles of lazy mages and bureaucrats. Carts could be liberated by a royal decree delivered at spear tip, the goods for the journey would probably be collected from houses of the leaving clan (and those unfortunate enough to get in the way) while gonkeys, the sort of animal that resulted by leaving a lonely donkey and a lonelier goblin alone in stable, were never in short supply. And thus, in a week, a clattering mass of gnome and gonkey left for the west, where a nice place with easy access to pigs and magical sources had been noted by the ratmen scouts.  Eventually, the King was able to return to his magical tower, built as well as possibly can be built by goblins – and with regulation compliant floating top, too! Here, in his Crystal Ball of Limited Seeing, he was able to watch the ongoing siege of Golddale. A magnificent thing was happening. After a few forays and some losses, one of goblin companies came to a sudden realization that closing your eyes and wildly stabbing towards the presumed direction of the enemy was not the best course of action. In fact, it seemed that running towards the enemy and pushing him relentlessly was the way to go! Of course, this revelation only came after one of troops got his rear end engulfed in flames (sieges provide ample fires everywhere) and ran towards a well to douse himself. In his mad charge he didn't even notice how he scattered a band of peasant defenders, but the other goblins took note. They were so happy with this discovery that they decided not to share it with anyone else.  And thus, using these revolutionary new tactics backed with wave after wave of goblins, Golddale fells. Corpses of peasant militia lined the impromptu barricades on the edges of town. Others had been trampled into the mud of the streets. The last lay in huge pile in the city square. Eventually, one man was sent by the survivors to declare their surrender and beg for mercy. Luckily for them, among the goblins a werewolf was embedded. Lucius Rendclaw, esq. Had disgraced himself by showing unfitting amorous advances towards human females and thus was driven away from the high werewolf society. With little other options – a lone werewolf was prone to death by werewolf hunters or nymphomaniac forest maidens – he had gone to Litchopolis and pledged his service to King Litch V. Thus he had to supervise the Golddale siege and accept surrender, which he had most graciously done out of his perverse fondness for humans.  Meanwhile, on the other end of the explored world, the Ratmen came under attack from cockroaches... the most horrible foe of all! Well, they weren't that combat capable, but gigantic roaches were ugly as sin and many ratmen perished in disgust. One would thing that as a sever dwelling species they would be used to such things, but the messy appearance of the sever entrances was just a ruse to scare away tax collectors. The inside was actually clean, even if not that well lit and stinking of wet fur. After the short and squicky battle, the enraged ratmen, still furious about such a gross out scare, found the cockroach nest. With their men away (and now dead), only cockroach females, babies and eggs remained there. The perfect targets for a retribution run! In the end of the day, every full grown cockroach had been eviscerated, all the eggs – smashed and the babies roasted in pans, coated in honey and sold to a traveling merchant, thus earning a few gold pieces.  The news of valiant defeat of the cockroaches and the profitable retribution reached Litchopolis, where the goblin “merchants” had a new idea. “Now, see dere, boss, if we had port, we could make ships. We could put cockroach on ships. And sell. Make money! Buy mushroom beer and pretty goblin women!”“You do realize that we may not see cock...”“Naw, boss, we new you ran a hard barge-ing. So here, we collected some gold and mana barrels. Build port, make merchants happy, merchants give it to you”The material rewards seemed quite nice and maybe the goblins would smell less if some of them “accidentally” fell into the sea, so Litch King V agreed.  The King had more important matters to attend to, anyway. A deep study of the book “The Living and Their Strange Predisposition Towards Eating” revealed to him harvest spell. It, miraculously, improved the food production in any city. The crops would grow harder, faster, stronger and would be all but immune to various bugs and weeds. Pigs would bloat to incredible sizes, full of bacon and little piglets. Mushrooms would sprout everywhere. And thus, adding food to the simple goblin population equation, would meant a booming population, too. Of course, this meant using of that mana flow to keep up the effect, but faster growth of cities was worth it.  Meanwhile, the western colonization effort had just crossed mountains and wanted to settle near a natural source of pigs. But this was protested by the Commission for Drawing Magical Border Lines, so the goblins had to move back a little.  After reaching the shores of the sea again, the gnome grandpappy Preyton decided he wouldn't move another inch, so the expedition had nothing else to do, but build their city between too magic sources that, while not as appealing to gnome as pigs, were still of great use to their King, so what were they gonna do? Just build some turf huts, call the new city Preyton and get drunk.  Of course, the King didn't want the city to be named after some lazy old gnome fart, so he ordered the previous name to be stricken from the records and replaced by “Litchship Down”. “This brings a certain grace to the city and commemorates the beginning of our glorious nation” said Fiver and Lucius heartily agreed.  Later that evening, the litch was studying various tomes, scrolls, book, charts and other implements of definite magely importance when he felt the tower shake. Some bauble slid off the shelves and shattered, releasing fumes that were probably harmful to the living. A huge elf skin bound tome “Ardanian Tax System: A Primer” fell off a table and flattened a panicking rat. Crystals rattled and gave of sounds that could only be described as fitting for an age that was interested in space. The tremors had barely subsided when Lucius, panting and with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, burst in through the door.  “My lord!...” “How did you pass the floating section of the tower?” “My Lord, cataclysms have been happening all over Ardania...”
JcDent fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Apr 26, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2013 05:14
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Torrannor posted:Nice update. Did the human town change to monsters now that you've conquered it or did it remain human? It has the original race. But it gets like... 50? percent growth reduction because nobody wants to be under the yoke of the "other" guys. Why this happens to undead I don't know. Then again, how do skeleton settlers work and how do undead pops increase is still a mystery, too. Maybe they send out criers to other towns to shout "bring out your dead", then buy them and resurrect them like Dusties.  Also, excuse me but I'm excited about using that smiley for the first time.
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Jul 8, 2013 15:53
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Mzbundifund posted:Natural disasters just happen at random since we're playing in Armageddon Mode. There isn't an Armageddon Clock per se, instead the world will be more or less screwed up depending on how well we manage to contain it. Assuming this LP isn't dead, you'll see what that means before too long. LP isn't dead, only lengthy in writing and life keeps getting in the way. Academic life.
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Jul 18, 2013 13:07
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Chapter 2: Taming the wilds All was well in Litchopolis. The tower was still floating, favorable winds were blowing goblin stank away into the mountains where it was seriously damaging the goat population, slightly drunk gnomes were breeding and erecting new buildings to drink and breed in, greenskin troops were dying in some frozen, faraway ditch... King Litch V could just relax, study spell books and leave the state to Lucius and the assembled Council of The Slightly Intelligent Goblins And Not Morbidly Obese Gnomes (sometimes mockingly shortened to “Council of the Wise”).  But no, there were always interruptions. A goblin steward was shouting from the last step of the staircase of the non-floating part of the castle: a visitor who wishes to see his majesty! King Litch just sighed a ghastly sigh, closed “Musings on Goblin Vivisection” and floated down to his kingly hall where he would sit on his throne to listen to another complaint about goat marriage or something else as trivial. Instead, a human dirty disheveled human was unceremoniously dumped on his royal mixture straw and mud that existed instead of a carpet. “What is your name, living one, and why do seek the audience of Litch King V?” the king asked with a voice that sounded like it came from the beyond the grave, which was technically true.  “Excuse me, your highness, my name is Melchior Tanenbrook from the University of Ridgebrook. I come here to offer my services!” the guest answered while he brushed muddied straw off himself. “I see. But why did you leave the confines of your comfortable alma matter? Why didn't you stay to drink away your days and harass tavern wenches?” “Well, you see, m'lord, I and, uh, the other academia had sever disagreements about the appropriation of funds, use of quarters and controversial paper that states that there's no correlation between the ginger population and the appearance of imp portals. Those louts stated that this was a frivolous paper and that the only part that rang true was my statement that gypsies were definitely tied to demons. While, in my entire life!...” Melchior was now red and gyrating arms very fast, which made some of the goblin “honor” “guard” woozy and one of them fainted. “Stop your prattling, human! I don't know what use I could have for you. We have no universities here and no easily impressed noble ladies to swindle coin from”. “I could always be your majesty's scribe”. “But I already have one. Why would I need you?” “Well, for starters, I know that there's no 't' in “lich”...” All was well in Lichopolis. A goblin scribe shaped splat was being scraped away at the bottom of the tower...  And the heroic goblin forces of the Golddale campaign were sent East to get rid of the Ogre menace, before more of them are lured there by the wondrously placed shack. Citizens of Golddale lined the one street that the town had, happy to be rid of their heroes, prefering to take their chances with wild monsters. Alas, their celebration was incomplete since one company was left behind to wait for reinforcements and bury their dead in an anonymous roadside ditch.  Meanwhile, goblin archers were making their way through the frozen wasteland, their skin too thick to freeze, their nerves too dull to feel cold. Green leg after green leg trampled the snow underneath, leaving behind a road pockmarked by discarded goblin ration bags. Said rations were offal, goat joins and other food detritus, mixed with 50% of moss and wrapped in whatever filthy rag or rotten skin was nearby. Despite such horrible packing conditions, it neither rot, nor took maggots since it was disgusting. On the other hand, goblin religion revolved around the idea of eating the whole world. This suited King Lich V just fine since it saved foodstuff for other, more respectable troops, like ratmen or so. Unfortunately for the less valued troops, one of the forests along their path burst and an ogre surged forth, its skin marked with scars and healed-over arrows from their last meeting. And as quickly as that, most of the company was flatened by vigorous hits with a tree trunk, sending others fleeing back.  But running a kingdom responsibly can't be all fun all the time, and King Lich was forced to leave the Crystal Ball. Matters of the state required his attentions! First of all, Lucius had some concerns about the gnome population. His suggestion was simple, elegant and cheap: sent them off to build another city. He had already made the necessary preparations – ordered cart building and told some influential gnome women that the women of other clans have secretly been sending lard to court their husbands.  Then, a clearly uncomfortable elven envoy arrived and with a great dramatic sigh announced that Amberon the Dark is offering an alliance to the heathen monster kingdom. Since this meant some safety from their closest neighbor and a sweet spell that protects from arrows (a natural predator for some of the more monstrously inclined citizens of monster kingdoms), King Lich V signed it posthaste and sent the envoy on his way. Some of his retinue looked like they were about to pass out from the smell, which could have lead to diplomatic troubles, which was way more than the infant military could bear, even if they armed infants.  After the elves had made their hasty retreat towards more civilized land, a small and dirty trader, his ramshackle gonkey drawn wagon (which looked like an inverted hut since all manner of daily appliance hung from its sides) parked in the castle “yard”, scurried into the hall.  “M'lord” he said pressing his toothless mouth into a semblance of a smile “m'lord, I have wondrous wares for you to see! I have traveled far and wide, searched high and low, and thus I present the fruit of my labor to your highness!” “Oh for Krypta's sake... what is it that you're peddling, old man?”The trader rummaged in his potato sack coat and held out a gnarled wooden stick – which was magical, as indicated by its glowing end (it was either that or some oversized glow bugs were tied to it with very thin string”. “Behold! The Gnarled Staff! It belonged to a witch, oh yes, a powerful witch! Mean and old, but filled with folksy wisdom and profane magical power! Some say she could call lightning down from the sky! Others say that she could turn into a dragon and meddle in the affairs of mortals even while professing disdain towards them! Oh yes, a bitch of witch she was...” “Pray tell, if the witch was so powerful, how did you get the hold of her staff?”“Well, by plain fortune I rode her down with my wagon. She was exhausted from a fight with a hero sent by her daughter. Luckily enough, the staff remained intact, but the hero had already ransacked her hut, so this was the only thing that I got. But it's powerful and I am willing to sell it to you, m'lord!”This was a bit of a conundrum for the undead monarch. On one hand, he hadn't hired any heroes yet, so the staff was useless. On the other hand, you never know what mage would visit their far off lands or be resqued from some bear den. And the money just sat there in the treasury, not being used for anything good... “Alright, salesman, we'll take your trinket staff”. Plaguetail Ratterson had enough of this frozen north. First, they crashed on some tundra, then they built the city on some frozen rock – a suboptimal place to build severs, ratmen habitat of choice – and now he had to go even further west, to scout out a new place for the settlement. And there was nothing interesting here, except for the elven domain to the south, and that place was weird – even looking at the farms made his head hurt. And on the other side of the hill there were more frozen forests, running up to the Impassable Magic Barrier at The End of The World. There was nothing else to do but jot down the approximate contours of the surrounding area on a piece of parchement. And then he smelled it. Bears. The natural predator of colonists. Surely as he smelled it, the Lich King saw it in his crystal ball. “Bloody hell, another monster hunt...”   Meanwhile, on the front of the current monster hunt, thing were going quite smooth. Sure, goblins were getting squished on a regular basis, but the ogre was getting hurt, too. Sometimes it would step on a spear of a dead goblin, sometimes it would slip on a dead soldier and fall. Hell, once in a while a goblin would even manage to hurt it intentionally. For the survivors, this was paying off in spades. One of the goblin spearmen companies came up with the idea that presenting a unified line of spear tips towards the enemy would help to deter attacks and make them more costly to the enemy. This was proposed by Horts the Goblin, who noticed that pricking your finger on one thorn was less painfull than grabbing an entire branch of thorny bush (he was trying to find a place to poop when he noticed this). Sadly, he bled out and died after the presentation, but this only helped to reinforce the idea. Goblin Archers had advanced, too, by discovering actual aiming. By a stroke of luck, one of the archer's eyelids froze open, so he couldn't close his eyes before firing (a common goblin practice thought to bring good luck and hide them from the enemy retaliation). To his surprise, shots started landing where he wanted, so he taught the trick to his comrades. Eventually it was discovered that this could be done even without using snow to freeze one's eyelids. And the actually smart troops were learning lessons even without taking casualties in the process. Ratmen bandits were starting to feel comfortable in the wilds and eventually started coming up with ideas on how to use the surroundings to their advantage. This mostly involved using terrain features and foliage to bypass enemy attentions and especially to effectively escape after an attack. This also served to bolster their spirits, as it reminded them of darting in and out of sever pipers way back home, only this time logs they hid behind stank less.  Back on the eastern front, King Lich came up with a cunning maneuver – by using some of the goblins to draw the ogre's attention, he'd slip another company past the beast and use it to loot the creature's house. This plan set in motion, he returned to his books, where he finally cracked the secrets of a new spell, the humble lesser fireball. Sure, “Cooking with Extradimentional Beans” wasn't a book he expected to have much use from, but here he was, again able to shoot balls of searing hot magical gas.  His celebration (trying to shoot goblins in the streets below with smaller versions of fireballs) was momentarily interrupted by a gust of wind that brought vile smells and content oinking. The Ardanian wild domestic pig was a mystery to all who tried to study as something else than a haunch on a plate. It had no masking colors, wasn't exactly fierce and used to stay in one grazing spot no matter what. Any nearby settlers only needed to built pens around them and the pigs would provide a lot of food to feed the hungry bellies of the expansionists. One such pig 'deposit' had been discovered near Lichopolis and the King had ordered sties built in order to feed his growing armies. Pig hooves and tails were also a new, nutritious part of goblin provisions, which allowed to cut down the portion of the expensive mosses.  In the meatime the Goblins in the east managed to bypass the ogre and found his house unattended. After scaring away some redhead would-be princess (who insisted that the ogre was the only one who loved her), they went to do some proper looting and pillaging. Beds were chopped up, linens - eaten, books - burned, curtains - used to wipe goblin posteriors, goats – made love to... in the end, valuables collected from the Ogre's dwelling were deemed to be worth about 100 gold pieces. As for the dwelling, it was demolished and shat upon, which made this place no longer attractive to would be ogre colonists.  But this is overshadowed by even more important events. Through the back breaking, painful mutation, madness and death inducing labor of goblins who will never be remembered (because nobody wants to) barrel upon barrel of mana has been transported to the cellars undead the tower in Lichopolis. Finally, the magic reserves were large enough to cast one of bigger spells – Harvest Blessing. Sure, this would cost some mana to keep, but the resultant increase in food (and, consequently, population) growth more than made up for this. Beeswax candles were lit. Carved tablets with likenesses of lesbian nature spirits were anointed with scented oils. Pouches with dried flowers were placed around the room. Soft, effeminate words were spoken. And the air in Lichship Down crackled and turned green with virile energies of nature. Turmors and broken bones disappeared from goats. Mushrooms sprouted from the ubiquitous dung piles. Vines and other greenery, killed by various pollutants secreted by the green fold, sprang back to life. Beer turned into less-patriarchal cider. A single flower bloomed somewhere out of the reach of nincompoop citizens. Downian Goblins looked around, then up and, taking in all the green, thought in unison “Who farted?” Ratmen scouts, on the other hand, had some more important things on their hands. For example, maps and reports that showed that bears not only infested a treasure site (probably some poor caravan they ambushed and ate), but also had a bear den nearby, which meant more bears. Then again, King Lich remembered the disdain he felt for most of his subjects and colonists continued on without any knowledge about possible bear-related death.  The scouts, however, were important, thus they were sent south, away from bears and their rodent rending claws. There they found an independent monster settlement... which the elves were successfully besieging. Huts burned, field rot unattended, hostages hung from the trees, ritual sacrifices to the Elven One Truth lay in circles of unardany symbols drawn in blood. Basically, it was what they deserved for striking independent, so Ratment didn't really bother with it. They had lunch in a nearby burned farm, pointed out a cellar full of refugees to an eleven patrol and went on their merry way east.  And soon Gnomewall fell in blaze of fire and orgy of violence, the survivors damned to spend their days under the harsh whips of the elven overlords, who'd flog anyone deviating from the One Truth (for all had to follow it) but never explaining what it was exactly (for many were unworthy).  But while one city fell, another rose nearby – Dragonhall was established on the foothills of frozen mountains, nestled between a vein of iron and a vein of magic.  It also acquired the proper name of Lichholm, because, as the King said, “Dragonhall could jinx the town and attract dragons. I don't want to see any dragons anytime soon”.  These great news were made even greater since one of the goblin companies found the ogre passed out from blood loss. After they were sure it wasn't moving, they attacked it and after three hours of vigorous stomping, slashing, poking and gnawing, the beast died, the whole operation costing only ten goblin lives. The goblin forces were then ordered to head way east, to clear the bear menace or/and die trying.  Unfortunately, not everyone were as incompetent as goblins and Ratmen, in an attempt to scout more area faster, overextended themselves. Sure, they found a nice place for a city or two: the lands were somewhat fertile, another magic vein was there, ruins promised knowledge of bygone eras and a distraction for buxom female archaeologists, there was mooing of minotaurs to be heard and, just on the horizon, a faint glimmer of elven female city shimmered with gentle lough and sudden spikes of menstrual violence. Yet this placed ratmen too close to a den of monster eating spiders – who, due to their size, made away with camouflage and were horribly blue -, a holy site guarded by a fire elemental, an imp portal (already with imps) and a bear den.  Not long after a nightly assault by the spiders, with the rat survivors tending to the wounded or seeing if pieces of chitin made for good armor or just dinner plates, the Fire elemental roared over the forest. And in his fury over having to guard a holy site (fire elementals were agnostic at best, although most of them thought that there are no gods, only fire), he bellowed a great cry and sent forth a huge fireball. Ratmen were charred to the bone where they stood. Thus with nary a squeak and drenched in the stank of burning fur, ended the story of the first scouts of King Lich V's army... JcDent fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Apr 26, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2013 15:54
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Torrannor posted:Great story about your new scribe and the Li(t)ch issue. I really like your writing style. So we are in the expanding phase, racing with the elves for good places to build cities. Do our races like different terrains? Are the icy plains better for us and the more green lands better for the elves, or are they worth the same to us? Your questions imply that Warlock is a complex game. It is not. Terrain might give bonuses or maluses to resource production (those frozen wastes are -20% food, +20% gold because... reasons), but that's about it. I'm guessing these are the resource bubbles you asked about, right? There are special magical terrain, but well talk about it when we come to it!
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Jul 20, 2013 05:10
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Torrannor posted:No, I meant this: Ah, those things! No, it doesn't. And the thread isn't dead, it's just that life is getting in the way.
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Aug 6, 2013 13:40
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Chapter 3: The Invasion And thus, with great clamor and belching and crying and braying of gonkeys, the settlers left for a faraway place they could settle and thus be away from the attentions of King Lich V, who had more important things to do in any case.  For example, he had now mastered a great new spell that did tangible (well, more tangible that charred corpses) changes to the world: Zygfryed the Fryed's Natural Terrain Altitude Enchantment or, as it was known among mages who liked to have friends, „Raise the Land“. It's most interesting property was that when used on the sea, a fresh field of grass would rise from beneath the waves, devoid of now dying fish, stinking weeds or underwater lizard lesbian colonies. This was one of the unexplained mysteries of magic, but everybody was fine with using it anyway. The only people who ever pretended to be interested in this effect were some poor university academicians who needed to show that they're indeed working and worthy of patronage.  And to top it, great news came from Lichship Down. In the local hills, a great project was completed. A dome was constructed over a wast magic node. Inside the building there was a great deal of brass tubing and various arcane machinery (all made from gnome beer stills) that were used to capture and store mana in barrels, that were again handled by the expendable goblins. The smokestacks were there to spread the magical run-off into the environment, where they killed flying snakes, the annoying cliff racers and elf women protesting magical run-off.  Even Melchior Tanenbrook demanded some attention! „My Lord, if you would so kindly look out of this window, could you tell me what do you see?“„Some muddy huts“ said Lich and, after doing the undead equivalent of squinting, added „And goblin copulating with a gonkey“ „Well, that's true, but look above it! Look to the north east!“And then Lich King V saw. At the edge of city, surrounded by the ever present goblin slum, rose a white dome, sort of like an upscaled iglu that one northern tribe used before dragons ate them all. It looked sturdier and great deal cleaner than anything else between the Tower and the new building. „Well, scribe, what is that thing?“„That, your highness, is our alchemy laboratory! I took the liberty of inviting some of the other... disenfranchised colleagues and there we will do out magical research. We only ask a pittance for the upkeep“.„I see. But I'm no fat wife of a fat merchant, I actually know magic. So if any of you tries to present some nonsense as genuine magical research...“ „Oh, My Lord, rest assured, nothing of the sort will happen! All of the disreputable folk who were interested in joining fled at the mere mention of a ruler that knows magic!“But as all sorts of “science” and “arts” people were moving their meager possessions into the alchemist laboratory, a beasts nostrils flared far away. It bared it's canine teeth, for it was a smell it hadn't smelt in some time: academia.  And then, as if to prove his point about being ruler that is powerful enough a mage to detects shenanigans of people who use grant money to cover up their beer tab and debts to seedy monster brothels, King Lich cast the spell of fertility on the new city of Lichholm. The sky went green, life bloomed, etc. „What happen? Why sky green?“ „Eh, cousin tell me someone at Litchship fart“. „Hur, hur, farts...“ One later day, when King Lich V immersed into browsing an old, yet influential lich manuscript called „Victoria's Secrets“, he heard some commotion from down stairs. He immediately floated down to investigate and, in all probability, shadowbolt the offending party. What he didn't expect was ratman in royal clothing, wearing excessive amounts of jewelry and carrying a golden scepter. King Lich readied a minor shadowbolt: “Who are you? What is the meaning...” “Yo, king bro, I'm yo hommie rrat prince Snoop Jim-s, undigga! I came 'ere to maybe sell you mah services, kno-wut-am-sayin?” “What? Why...? “Well, I be genuine rrat royaly, real rat OP, but mah old man, he don't like ma style, so he send me away. Now I be a smart rratigga, so I think 'why not work wit da King Lich, he got all da bitches'”. “Melchior, what is he and what's this nonscence he's spewing” “Sire, I don't know what he's saying exactly, but I believe – oh Helia” the scribe fell onto his knees as seized by a fit, convulsed a little, grasped for air and shouted “I BELIEVE HE'S SPEAKING GHETTO”King Lich flashed his ghostlights in surprise “Geto? What's that? What happened to you?” “Ghetto, m'lord. I believe that word means a specific style of talk among the poor and disenfranchised rrat youth and some of the goblin. Might refer to their slums, too. Oh, and that was divine inspiration – that's how we come up with new words” “Didn't look that divine to me!” “Well, this was not a very important word that would oft be used by virtuous people. The effects are different with the word type – those naming new sexual experiences have it the best, I believe”. “Sometimes I'm very happy I'm dead. So, is it safe to shadowbolt the vermin now?” “Er, no, sire. You see, he's one of the rrat princes. There's usually quite a lot of them, so the excess ones are booted from the court to just travel around and hopefully die. Some might return and eventually become kings. In any case, you should probably hire him – he's a noble and, due to all the rat training, a good fighter! And as the legends tell us, all sorts of wayward princes are bound to become legends, and it would be good to have one of those on our beck and call!” “Alright, I'll hire him...but send him so far that I would never hear ghetto squeek again”.And thus Snoop Jim-s became the hero-errant of King Lich V, who would have preferred a wizard.  Or an archer, as the scruffy merchant appeared again and this time wanted to sell a suspicious looking bow he picked up from a corpse of an elf (only elves had truly suspicious bows – most other races carried bows that were suspicious in the “I suspect that it's just a walking stick with some string attached” kind of way). Since the king saw no use for it, the merchant was escorted away and given some offal in gratitude for his service.  Meanwhile, in the north-western expedition, goblins were bravely getting maimed by the bears. The archers, subject to torturous damage from both the elements and things like angry ogres, accumlated enough scar tissue and frost bitten skin that they actually became somewhat resistant to both death and natural damage. They would have celebrated, but their tongues had fallen off.  Their spearmen compatriots, on the other hand, got some more mauling. Well, not as much as the other goblin spearmen company, which got mauled pretty hard. But these goblins found out that while watching others get attacked by bears is not only fun; it's somewhat educational, too! If you look closely enough and maybe even do that “thinking” thing that kind deadguy keeps talking about, you might even come up with vague ideas how not to get ripped apart by furry death avatars.  Unbeknownst to them, King Lich V came up with a great new idea in the field of disposable soldier retention. A long time ago, this one mage was really allergic to all sorts of healing herbs, disliked leaches and found healing potions to be just short of vomit in taste. So he huffed and he puffed and he made the spell that would later on be known as the healing spell, the most basic spell to generals who wanted their troops healthy again or for fat mages who couldn't leave their towers.  But no sooner as his undead highness cough a goblin to thrown down the stairs (to test the effectiveness of the spell) when a messenger arrived bearing news of new construction in Lichship Down. King Lich felt some remorse about swearing to see any new structure that his subjects build, but that was what he had to do. After all, he had to make sure that it wasn't something potentially dangerous before it could be replicated in other cities. Of course, the thing that he saw was probably too stupid to be built somewhere else. “Cheese cave, guv'na”, - said a proud gnome with thubs under his suspenders while leading the king down a dimly lit cavern. “Cheese doesn't grow in caves” - stated King Lich flatly. “It sure does. Well, it doesn't usually, but this there a special, jinxed place! You just place a bite of cheese in the wall, water it with gonkey milk – and cheese grows!” “And you eat it yourselves? Not feed it to the livestock or goblins or something?” “Now why'd we do dat, sira? This is prime cheese, good for all an any gnome!” “But it's magical, unnatural cheese!” “I fail to see the point, sira.” “It's probably for the best that you don't”.Satisfied with such answer, the cheese foreman sliced a bit of the wheel that was growing from the wall. He broke it in two, eating one half and offering the other to King Lich: “Cave cheese, m'lord?” A trip wasn't a total waste of time, though. Lichholm was nearby, and the gnome settlers were temporarily staying at a field near it. The problem was obvious: there was an ogre in region, one that was continuously attacking the elves and was attacked by them in turn. Naturally, a fat gnome caravan full of fat gnome would have been a tempting target for the beast, if only for the food (gnomes were known for their tender meat). This problem had to be rectified, but the goblin companies were busy dying valiantly while fighting bears at the north. The only available asset was Snoop Jim-s and so an order was sent to him by a pigeon. The bird returning with the answer was mysteriously shadowbolted out of the sky and King Lich just had to rely on his faith that rrat prince would do his bidding.  And the royalty even got to watch the heal spell in action! Since he couldn't try on himself (undead and all) and the captured goblin escaped, King Lich decided to heal one of the goblin companies who suffered injury in their cowardly duty in the north. Visually, the spell was less interesting that harvest – it only produced some lighting effect that even charlatan mages would call “cheap”. The effect, however, was immediate: puss exploded from infected wounds and disappeared as smelly vapour, gashes in flesh closed with horrible slurping sounds, broken bones found their position and re-knit all while shaking their owners bodies in unnatural spasms. In short, a whole lot of goblins were made battleworthy almost instantaneously. This pleased King Lich and was only mildly horribly painful to the goblins.  “Take dis, fatso cracka foo'!” said Snoop Jim-s as he swung his scepter and bashed the battered ogre's head in. And as the mighty mountain of meat fell, Snoop Jim-s felt real proud of himself, and even composed a song that no minstrel would ever agree to sing. But the way was clear, and both the prince and the settlers were free to move to the new lands.  Back in the old, boring, nobody-is-trying-to-kill-us land, the human citizens finally managed to build a harbor, for which King Lich collected a bounty from the trade guild and kicked some of them about for having the insolence to think that the king can be bought. The harbor had everything you needed to keep a small fleet going. A huge warehouse housed enough apples to eradicate scurvy everywhere; brothel owners banded together to teach their whores how not to fall down when walking bow legged; pressgangs were preparing their truncheons for recruitment drives; royal inspectors where checking the inns for required seedyness and old sea dogs – for saltyness. Even a fund for widows of sea serpent attacks was put up. Now they only needed to build a ship. Eventually, when the king deems its fitting.  However, the king trusted humans enough not to check in on the new port (wasn't the case with goblins), so he was able to inspect the first (and most likely the only) Enchanter's Workshop to crop up in the kingdom. It was run by a gnome – a somewhat twisted of body, greenish of skin, wild of hair, singed and mad eyed gnome. He had a singular task (or wasn't willing to do anything else): to enchant troops' weapons with elemental magic. Research into this field (and gross incompetence) explained the damage that the gnome has sustained. However, he was as magical as you could ever pray – hoping wouldn't nearly be enough – to be and still stable enough to work. King Linch only needed to promise a steady flow of reagents, weapons to enhance and to pick up his tab at the local brothel. A fair trade, all in all.  The same couldn't be said about what came next. A goblin sharpshooter of unmatched skilled came to offer his services. Alas, the coffers were a bit empty at the time – and the king didn't want to admint that turning down the artifact bow was a worse decision that taking the magical staff – so he had to be turned down. The kingdom still had only one one hero – the ghetto speaking rrat prince that nobody wanted to be around.  The hero that the king DID hire has scouting the way south (also know as “the not-so-frozen direction”) since further west were the already scouted Rat Murder Forests. All the evidence as scouting report from the rrat rretinue foraging parties promised two things: a lot of areal fire (“dem bunch o' flying mofo snakes up in dem hills” said one sooty, smoking ratman) and an ogre.  "They say flying serpents are the reason why heroes who stray too far from their guilds often tend to dissappear." From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor. Not willing to risk his neck fighting flying murdersnakes that breathed fire, Snoop Jim-s turned a little more south east, to maybe scout out the the western border of the elven kingdom (who, according to the reports he was getting, broke the alliance with his king) and maybe hit an ogre over the nogging. Ogres didn't fly, which made them a more favorable target.  Speaking about ogres... The northern expedition/random armed mob of goblins ran into more of the giant oafs. Before goblins could start having ogre flashbacks, a new battleplan was drawn up: most of green horde would heroically hold the ogres back by providing bodies to crush while one company would try and flank the brutes, in order to loot their dwelling, thus making sure that if the present ogres weren't slain, at least no new ones would move into the frozen forests.  And thus they did. Unfortunately, one of the blocking companies turned out to be the archers, also known for their excessive squishy-ness. Only time would tell if they survived the ordeal! Meanwhile, the misplaced spearmen were bee-lining for the ogres hut, eager to poop in pillows and steal cutlery.  But watching goblins die all day long might get tiresome, so King Lich decided to attend another building unveiling ceremony. The Lichholmians, having uncovered the iron vein they were actually sent to find, built a foundry and even found a gnome with enough upper body strength to actually work there. He used to a master plate maker, making the finest diner ware out of the finest lead availably, but now his talents would be employed making armor out of iron, for once giving the monster kingdom someone akin to a real smith and armor expert.  The first one to benefit from the gnome's craft was, of course, Snoop Jim-s, who immediately received a shipment of masterwork armor. This proved to be extremely fortuitous to him, since the armor protected from the blows of the ogre and even missiles, the natural bane of the beast folk. And even before engaging the ogre, the rrat prince had come up on a tent. A lot of halberds were lined outside and men in shining cuirasses were merrily drinking inside. Royal guards found themselves without a job when the last King disappeared, and now sold their services to whoever bought them. Their camp had to be taken into account when settling the next city.  On the topic of rats, squeeking envoys from King Rrat XLII arrived at Lichopolis and announced that, well, his domain was somewhere near by. Added to the proclamation was a short note saying that King Rrat has heard about King Lich hiring the services of Snoop Jim-s, and, as a prudent monarch, wouldn't hold it against him even if the son perished in line of duty.  “After all, it would probably be only his and his stupid manner of speech's fault”. No sooner had the rats left (with some magical cave cheese as free provisions provided by the King) did the cryer belch out “His Majesty's attentions are required by Avgustus Fon Wolfhenze and his court of fangs”. Now, this was a more noble procession – actual werewolves! They walked with pride and stature speaking of good education, great meals and royal upbringing. And even though they looked somewhat worn – not all fur was shining, one ear had marks of bad stitching and they had no servants to order about – but their importance looked palpable. King Lich V was intrigued, if only to speak to some new people who knew how to count and did it without picking their noses. Avgustus fon Wolfhenze presented himself as the leader of his clan; it was forced to leave it's former lands after the attentions of their king became too demeaning and lewd to bear.  “The poor sod – who's name I won't mention out of courtesy – totally lost it! He tried, tried to seduce our women and smaller runts! He pretended to howl at the moon and say how he felt like one of us! And then he stuffed a fox tail died grey into his trousers, so that he would appear more like us! Eventually, one lad spotted the king making a horrible mockery, a werewolf costume. This just could not do! We had to sneak out and we were on the road ever since. But luckily, we picked up on the scent of academia, the peculiar mixture of craziness and alcohol – and we wanted to see who brings civilization to these desolate wastes. Noble king, I, Avgustus fon Wolhenze, would like to pledge my allegiance and that of my clan, to you and your kingdom!”This was, indeed, great news. King Lich V read about werewolves being the nobility of monster cities, as well as formidable troops. And attracting any possesing these qualities to the frozen tundra was somewhat hard. Without a doubt, King Lich accepted their pledge, gave everyone titles that were made up on the spot (after all, there weren't that many goblins who could hold a court title; as a disastrous experiment with Master of the Hunt proved, titles don't give much prestige if their holders are utterly incapable of following up on them) and land was given between the castle and the pub. A goblin shanty had to be torn down, sure, but that was easy, since the northern climate made it easy to contain the fire. And thus, out of the ashes of goblin poor, rose a the Chateau of Loup-garou.  There were other good news, too – the distraction tactic work perfectly in the north, and the goblins managed to raid and totally destroy an ogres den. Among the wreckage they found a dusty old tome that detailed the Firestorm spell (created by Archmagus Yonah The Cinder) and some gold. The only challenge left was escaping alive.  Back in Lichopolis, the month of drunken revelry (hosted in celebration of the werewolves' arrival) had just begun when troubling news came from the coast. Over night, from seemingly nowhere, appeared a vile structure and started tainting the land. “Those fleshy heads growing out of the ground do look vile” agreed Lich while looking at the structure from atop a hill. “Is the land around it dangerous?” “Yes, my liege, we tried it a few times. See for yourself” said Lucius and threw a goblin scout down the hill, onto the repugnant mass of... wrong.At first, nothing happened. But then the skin of the goblin started to melt. This proved to be somewhat distracting to the poor creature – but not as much as the ground itself starting to consume its legs.  “Hmm, look dangerous indeed” agreed the king “But behold, I learned a new spell! It was made by a racist Grand Wizard to cleanse the land from people he didn't like, but he did mistakes while coming up with the incantation, so it only cleans the actual land. Behold!” Lightning crackled from the sky and pierced the foul ground. Mysterious cosmic lights poured from the sky, purifying everything in horrible bright flashes. Even the many husks of goblin scouts disappeared as the land was cleansed by horribly powers and restored to it's pristine, grassy state.  With vapors gone, Melchior was able to get a better look at the monsters that grouped around the fleshy, unholy hills on the horizon. “Hmm” he said while browsing “Monstrous Compendum: A Manual of Rare Mystical Beasts And Eldritch Horrors”. “Look here, m'lord, I think I know what that is”. The Lich King glanced at the page.  "We know very little about these creatures, as they have appeared in Ardania just recently. They were named "Dremers" for their resemblance to the race described in the ancient prophecy of Koatles. It is said there that at the end of times dremer-worldeates will come from the outworlds and that they will eat the sun of time, and... well, it will shine again but a bit differently. We do not know if these creatures are the said Dremers, or even do they have any kind of intelligence, but it is obvious that they are extremely aggressive strong and dangerous, and tend to attack everything on sight." (From "The Overall Description of Everything" by Master Alfus Bumblegate) “Dremer, you say? Well, this means only one thing...”
JcDent fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Apr 26, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2013 10:14
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Holy snap, I published the last one how long ago? I blame Saints Row IV (which I had to play) and Europa Universalis IV (in which I still suck 27 hours in). Anyways, the rest of Chaper 4 will appear here posthaste. Between this and my fanfic, this is going to be a creative weekend. If you have some questions/suggestions about my LPing (besides, you know, "could you be faster?"), feel free to leave them in the comments. Chapter 4.1: Lycanthrope Oblige  The siege of Lichopolis continued. Well, it wasn't much of a siege: Dremer warriors never left their post while King Lich V threw (mostly ineffectual) bolts of magic at the Dremer gate which responded in kind. As far as sieges go, this was uneventful, unsiege-like and sorely lacking in goblin deaths.  It was so uneventful that they even had time to found a city. Mealburn was its name, which was decided after the gnome cooks got drunk on fermented goblin milk and burned dinner meant for the entire expedition. Lich King V had no objections over this name, partially because he was busy defending his capital and seat of power from extra-dimensional invaders.  Fortunately, there were forces to be thrown at the grinder... the heroic grinder of enemies for the defense of the motherland, that is! A goblin company was placed on the shortest path to the capital to defend against possible enemy assaults. And the goblin hero was there to use his masterful (for a goblin) archery skills to harass the enemy from afar.  It was a better fate than the one that befell the archers in the south-west. While they were drunk fermented stale run-off from the nearest elven city – they had to celebrate the easy victory over the wild serpents – an ogre ambushed them. There was much carnage and brutal horror, and when the morning came, every last goblin was a red-green smear on the ground. The ogre was disappointed at how fast the entertainment went away and decided to go look for comfortable boulders and tree trunks to scratch his rear end with.  And a similarly unfortunate goblin spearmen were facing foes up in the west northern expanse. First, they got mauled by bears, who appeared suddenly in trees, shrugged off a lot of spears and then went on their way, because bears were prone to random acts of violence. Then the trees attacked them. People used to joke that goblin spearmen were so inept that their targets would sometimes overtake them and that some would goblin woodcutters would lose a fight to a spruce, but this were actual waking, malevolent trees. They assaulted the goblin survivors with leafy fury and their violence branched out far. Only a paltry few escaped. And those ran into werewolves. Now, these weren't the noble werewolves that could be seen in a king's court discussing the strength of one royal bloodline or the other. No, these were just simple peasants, traders and followers turned by a bite from some other equally wild and uncouth werewolf, the dregs of the lycantropes society. Their jaws spelled doom for the remaining goblins.  Back at the important places of the kingdom, the goblin archer hero – the king still hadn't dignified his presence by learning his name – got a helping of the Dremer gate fire. It was a clot of hot blood and generous in proportions, but most of it missed the hero – one goblin is significantly to target than a company of them. Still a good part still splashed and burned him. The smell would have hurt, too, were he not a goblin and used to thing not actually smelling good.  Usually, it's not easy to turn around a gnome caravan. Gonkeys are as stupid as they're stubborn and are best used by pointing them towards the destination and hoping there wouldn't be no ravines. Besides, you need to hit them on the noggin to make them stop, and for gnomes that is too much labor that doesn't end in beer or procreation. Sure, goblins are happy to use this method to guide the creatures – it also doubles as encouragement/punishment for goblin you or a sign that one of the parties in a goblin sex act is bored/satisfied – but nobody want goblins to be responsible for pretty much anything. Besides, their appetites don't bode well for all feed meant for gonkeys. And gnomes, not usually the quickest folk to do something, don't really like changing momentum – this applies to both literal movement and to such nebulous things as “way of life”. So a gnome settler caravan only stops at night, or to eat, but really hates changing direction. It just plods forwards, leaving behind devastated country side, livestock bone piles and an occasional lost baby gnome. Then again, spotting ogres on the horizon is one thing that helps them change their opinion – and direction. Ogres love eating gnomes – “fun sized” humans they call them – and gnomes somehow make worse warriors than goblins. This leads to the natural stratification of monster society, with a ruler/Grand Wizard being on the very top, werewolves making up the nobility, the middle class containing ratmen and gnomes, gonkeys being the underclass and only then come goblins. This also leads them to fear anything that looks at them funny. So wagons were turned around, the obese gnomes – sent to the rear (maybe an ogre will get a stroke after eating a few) and the whole undulating mass of fat bellies, unkempt hair, greasy pots and baby poop started flowing the other way. Luckily for them, the ogres seemed to be more interested in the land of the elves.  “Holgen's Spell of No More Fun” was a peculiar thing. It served to protect one from melee attacks and was very useful in times were people had to deal with spontaneous invasions by bears and ogres. However, as it can be inferred from the name, it wasn't created for such end. No, Holgen was a human wizard who had a pretty wife. Had her until the moment he saw her tied down in the stables and moaning with pleasure while a very confused stable boy whipped her. Of course, Holgen never really knew about the slightly deviant inclinations of his dearest: high wizards aren't the most attentive of lovers and even if he had known, it's unlikely that his wizards physique would have allowed him to carry out her wishes, what with fragile wrists and stick like arms. Anyways, as he huffed and hawed in anger, the wife left his tower and took the stable boy with him. Furious, but unable to smite her as such is looked down upon in the wizard community, Holgen came up with a plan. If his former wife liked beatings, then there's an easy way to take that pleasure away! After all, a protection from melee spell wasn't a curse, in fact, it's an out right blessing! And nobody would know the exact details of, because people weren't as likely to discuss their sexual matters. In the end, Holgen's former wife had no more ogrespasms (the finest scientific minds of the time thought the sound was similar) and her “curse” got her the envy of every abused husband, professional soldier and unruly child whose father was certain that famous educational quarry went “nature vs. leather belt”.  Never the less, the siege raged on. The gate would strike with their baleful power, the wizard tower would retaliate with clots of pure magic and the casualties were healed by medicinal herbs. At least the alien warriors weren't moving away from their position. The werewolves watched it from the balconies of their castle, supped on fine wine, discussed the horrors of war, made bad poetry about the destruction and even made a few passable oil paintings. Among this slightly boring horrible carnage, a message came that the Elven king has destroyed some city. Nobody shed a tear since it was probably some independent human settlement, full of runaway peasants who dreamed of such foolish things as peace and freedom.  And then, a great day came.  "Noble werewolves are by no means the brainless animals that many people wrongly imagine them to be. They know everything that a well-educated, modern werewolf needs to know: medicine, anatomy, chemistry, astronomy, cooking and several anti-flea remedies." (From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor). Tower doors flew open and in marched Avgustus fon Wolfhenze, followed by members of his court. “M'lord, King Lich V” he said, bowing as low as werewolf could “let me present you this gift and proof of the werewolf nobility's willingness to aid with building the greatness of thine kingdom”. “I accept thee, noble Avgustus, and await to see the full extent of your idea” said Lich, amused that finally something interesting and intelligent was happening in his kingdom. “Behold, my liege, the Lupus Militia” said the old werewolf as he and his entourage stepped aside to let those following them pass. Oh, and what a sight that was! Young werewolves, standing shoulder to shoulder, marching in perfect formation. Great muscles moved under skin and fur, light armor, specially tailored for their physiques, gleamed in the magical light of the tower, sharp pierced air as surely as they would cut flesh and bone, sending mysterious shivers down the onlooker's neck. “These are the fine young werewolves, volunteers one and all, that I trained myself. While not exactly experienced, lacking their first test in blood, they are set to be consummate warriors. Werewolves fear little and any wound that doesn't kill us will heal in short order. And we have no need to maintain weapons, for our claws are the only weapon we need, never breaking and possessing the rare and mysterious power to rend both body and soul. It is our greatest hope that we will be of assistance while dealing with these other worldly foes, whose skin deflects metal as one would rebuke the plea of a commoner!” The king was impressed. Snarling wild werewolves tore apart a goblin company in the north while these were well trained, well fed and motivated civilized werewolves, easily under his beck and call. Also, while he was quite pleased with the slightly fuzzy nobles, the King was elated to see that they actually showed interest in defending his lands, and without crying/extorting privileges beforehand! “Let it be known that from this day your sons and daughters will be the warrior elite of my kindom! No expense would be spared in outfitting them and no sacrifice of goblin lives will be too big to ensure that these wolves of mine would not perish without good reason. I welcome you and greet you, for you have truly shown the greatness of werewolf nobility!” And many a joyful howl rang through the halls.
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Aug 29, 2013 17:04
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A few notes about the game while I write. My original plan was to use as many goblins as possible in goblin wave attacks, but their build time and actual cost (yes, unlike in Civ, units cost money here) don't make it a viable tactic. Plus, vanilla goblins suck (even though I read that human soldiers suck more). Also, I can't do economy. In no game ever. Well, maybe in Cookie Clicker, but 4X economies are a mystery to me (so, no Endless Space LP). As well as research optimization. But I do like fighting and writing seems to be going well.
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Sep 3, 2013 15:55
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Chapter 4.2: From the War to the Wilds Despite all the celebrations and all the grand works spoken, werewolf youth did not immediately become the decisive factor in war against the Dremer. Though stationed in a forest – werewolves feel natural afinity for forests and surrounding swamps are hated by everyone – it was still thought by the most briliant military minds of the kingdom that they were too young and inexperienced to take on both the Warriors and Gates. So, the forest became a forward outpost, blocking the most dangerous path of attack that the alien warriors could take. Meanwhile, arrows would continue to pour down from the sky because even with goblin aiming, a lot of sharp stakes falling from the heavens can do a lot of damage over time. The young werewolf warriors spent their time gambling, shouting insults towards the Dremer, telling ribald tales and having concertina duels .  The slow war was having some other effects, too. Ratmen, possessing cruel cunning and unwilling to let their children be boiled alive by flying magical blood clots, moved to Lichship Down and made a permanent settlement on the other side of the mountain. There were many upsides to having ratmen settle nearby, no matter how this may sound. As a tribute to severs that birthed them through magical contamination, ratmen build their burrows to mimic them. And they functioned as actual severs, something that neither goblins, nor gnomes would ever build. Also, higher levels of ratmen severs contained a lot of seedy businesses that actually paid taxes. Gambling halls, rat theaters, rat “theaters”, rat opium dens, midget ratmen racing on giant cockroaches, knife fighting arenas, knife emporiums – every last one of those establishments, even sock shops that sold mismatched pairs of socks obtained by training rats to steal single sock from clotheslines in human cities, all paid coins to the king's coffers. Also, hard tunnel life trained ratmen to the level where they could be hired to serve as scouts for a monarch's forces.  Of course, not everything went smoothly. For example, the Dremer finally set out to attack the were outpost in the forest. Claw met bone spear, teeth tore otherworldly flesh, havoc reigned through the night... Powerful creatures they might be, but Dremers were already weakened by the unending barrage of goblin arrows and magical attacks, plus they were going against werewolves in a forest.In the end, the Warrios left a few of their own dead while werewolves dragged several badly maimed friends back to their camp to sit and wait till their natural regeneration kicks in.  The last push came in shape in Snoop-Jim's finally arriving to attack the unnatural threat. He charged in with quips about “crackers” and “caps”, madly swinging his stock, biting left and right with righteous fury. The Warriors held for a moment and then broke, abandoning their postion at the Gate. After this feat of arms, rat people started rumors about the prince being the fabled Ratsbane who's paws were said to be infused with the power of death itself.  With Warriors out of the way, the young weres were tasked with dismantling a gate. It was a decisively less mechanical process than the name would imply, as wolflings tore into structures of the Gate with tooth and claw. Such blood frenzy lasted until the obscene shrieking heads of the Gate were no more than ribbons of flesh and fine red mist that quickly dispersed in the air.  To add insult to the injury, the remaining Warriors were run down by goblin spearmen. Powerful and terrifying the aliens might have been, but they were badly battered, away from the defenses of the Gate and unholy nourishment from despoiled ground had been cut off in the first days of the invasion. The the bloody, arrow laden hulks turned to meet their new enemies, they were swept away in a see of green as spearmen crowded around easy pray, stabbing and slashing with malicious glee. And so the first incursion into Ardania was over. “There's no chance that this was all the threat that Dremers can muster, is there?” “Not a chance in the world, m'lord. Many a goblin will perish before this is over”  This monumental event was marked by another occasion. King Rrat sent his envoys who, after witnessing the terrible might of both Dremer and King Lich, offered a most gracious pact of Non-Aggression. Of course, the sums of gold and mana had initially been bigger, but several barrels of mana exploded, taking out a huge part of a goblin shanty and most of the gold train.  A grand feast was thrown in the capital of Lichopolis. So grand was the feast that Khargem Smoky Trails managed to miss it totally and wandered of into the frozen wastes. Probably still under effect of Dremer blood clots, he hallucinated various things, such as goblins being competent and gnome warriors. Eventually, after he came back, it was discovered that he had covered his arrows with a dangerous poison derived from the puss seeping from the many sores that a goblin has.  His return coincided with a visit by the merchant, who came to Lichopolis figuring that the roads were now safe. Unfortunately, his offer to sell The Baton of Marshal Frost was denien as the coffers were quite empty after all the war preparations. In fact, King Lich was becoming quite suspicious about the merchant and his ability to uncover magical artifacts – after all, the lode left by the dead witch should have ran out. But by the time his majesty though of instructing the guards to seize the scoundrel, he was already off, no doubt to try his ploy elsewhere.   "The Caravel is the logical development of the ideas embodied in the Cog's construction. Unlike its predecessor, the Caravel is significantly larger, has two masts and, most importantly, a special cannon deck. These cannons are the Dwarven blacksmiths' most recent invention." (From "The Overall Description of Everything" by Master Alfus Bumblegate) The humans of Golddale had built their first seafaring ship for what was surely destined to become a great and powerful fleet of Lich King V's domain. After great deliberation and rejecting such names as “To Be Lost To Sea Serpents”, “Currently Not Sinking” and “Warspite”, the ship was christened “Golddale Duck”. A pot of moonshine was smashed at it side, thus prompting the only fatality of the festivities as the town drunk tried to lick the liquor off the side of the boat and drowned. It only took three days of celebrations and two days of hangovers to finally get it afloat and on its mission to boldly go where serf has gone before and hopefully kill something.  With the noble-wide celebrations over, the troops were re-tasked for more serious state building business. After the elves built their colony way up north and going east was mostly sea, expansion would have to be made towards the north west. The rat scout killing north west, full of mauling bears, rending werewolves, bashing ogres and at least one pissed off greater fire elemental. This did not bode well for the goblins. But at least they were improving – after all, when you're at the very bottom, the only way is up! For example, some of the archers discovered, that it's not enough just to keep your eyes open while firing arrows. As hunting for animals (a deer sneaked into the camp one night and ate all the moss MRE's) tough them, concentrating on the target and then aiming really helped to kill stuff. And not starving to death.  Back in Lichopolis, the inevitable had happened. Some of goblins went and ate remains of the Dremer gate. Those weren't a healthy food to begin with and had even gotten some rot in the meantime. Never the less, the goblins ate it and began experiencing vivid hallucinations, visions and hearing voices. Mostly about divine will requesting that they bathe less and eat more. They proclaimed themselves to be shamans and built their hut near the “inspirational” forest patch. “Melchior, is this some plot by the Dremer to infiltrate my kingdom?” “I'm afraid not, my liege. Their feverish ramblings match what most educated scriptures say about the matter of goblin religion. Without a proper temple to Grum-Gog, goblins revert to some degenerate form of shamanism where they start to worship eating as it's the only thing they're good at. As the humble master Alfsdorf of Mel...” “I don't really want to know more about the goblin culture. Every time I hear about it, I feel the urge to take off my skull and clean the inside with lye. Did that to my eye sockets once” “Rest assured, m'lord, as with everything that goblins do, this is stupid, but harmless. And shamans seem to hold at least some form of real power, so we might find use for them yet!”  The efforts to expand north-west were bolstered by the forces of more competent troops in the shape of both heroes that the kingdom had and the company of werewolves who saw this as an opportunity to sharpen their skills.  While men (and probably some rebelous wereladies hiding their breasts under tight wraps of cloth) slowly trudged through the North, King Lich received troubling reports. It seemed that Mealburn's citizens, instead of building a pumpkin farm, started some unholy cult instead. This required his majesty's personal attention. And so did the lich king go to the place near Mealburn where instead of goblins doing backbreaking labor under the hot sun, they danced around a pile of carved pumpkins. It was a terrible dance to behold, even more horrifying than regular goblin dancing. Wretched figures pranced around the pumpkin altar, their moves unnatural and broken. Sometimes one of them would fall on the ground and pumpkin seeds would issue forth from various orifices. Some were wearing cawed pumpkin masks. Something was afoot. Especially when one of the dancing goblins slipped, fell and rolled down some mean rocks. As his broken body lay there, life hurriedly shuffling off a stinking mortal coil, horrible, unnatural spasms overtook it. A faint green glow appeared and pumpkin wines sprang from the goblin's wounds before exploding and leaving behind new skin. The goblin stood up and went back to dancing. Just then a new figure separated from the altar. A fusion of goblin and pumpkin, it shambled towards King Lich's group. It stopped a few feet in front of the undead monarch. “Well, what devious entity you might be? Identify!” the king challenged pumpink-goblin. “I am Hill o'Win, unliving one” the answer plopped out of goblin's misshapen lips. “Never heard of that name in my many years. What are you doing with my goblins?” “Goblins are Grum-Gog's people. I have hatred of Grum-Gog that pierces the heavens and transcends time itself! Goblins are the only way to get to him” “Wait, Grum-Gog?” asked King Lich V, puzzled “He almost a non-entity as far as gods go. Only goblins and the horribly disturbed fetishists pray to him. And both are met with fire in most civilized places. What do you have against him and what do you plan on doing?” “My hate is difficult to explain to mortals – or even those having a post death existence. Suffice to say that Grum-Gogs choice of domain offends me. And what I'm planning to do with goblins... well, it's even harder to explain, but rest asured, this will not harm your precious little world”. “Well, I probably have to take your word for it. Krypta knows, I don't have time nor resources to deal with both you and the Dremer. But I still want compensation for my loss in goblinpower!” “What will you desire? The realm and wishes of mortals are unclear and not interesting to me”. “Just... hold here a minute” said the king and ordered a little discussion with his advisors. After a few moments and the few plans to ask for exploding pumpkins, or pumpkin giants, or unholy exploding pumpkin giants rejected, King Lich V once again stood before the goblin-pumpkin. “These healing powers you demonstrated, could you somehow grant them to our troops? Of course, without any mind control or other suspicious business”. Abominations answered almost instantly: “Yes, it is possible, but on lesser scale. You'll have to make certain carved amulets for them. But they come at price...” “Yes, what would that be?” “They'd have to be made...from bones of goblins! Living goblins” The king chuckled, his dead teeth clattering in his skull “And here I thought it would be something bad. No worries, I'll send some gnomes to get the specifics” “And your people would deem me a monster...” “I'd sooner start wishing I was still alive than I'd start caring about what goblins think”.  Back in the capital, a pumpkin fest was thrown, but the festivities were interrupted by an unexpected visitor – a human healer! “What would a person like you do in a kingdom of monsters run by a skeleton?” asked King Lich, his amusement not reflecting in his face since he had neither skin nor muscle. “Us healers” spoke Emerah the Savior, for that was the healer's name “go where the suffering is thickest, for there we can do most good”. “That is commendable, m'lady, but a bit foolish, considering that most of my subjects are still of the goblin kind, “touched with the emerald brush” some would say. Also, your fee sheds some... doubt on the selfless generosity of your activities”. “The money goes to maintain my healthy status, as well maintaining our charities, such as “Pants for gnome orphans”. “Well, yes, those orphans do seem like they're in desperate need of pants. And you're in lack – our north-west expedition has more suffering than any other place in my kingdom. Welcome to my court!”  As if the universe was rushing to prove the king's word (or just flat out hated goblins), the goblin spearmen were ambushed by a pack of wild werewolves. The disheveled, gnarling, dirty, stinking creatures, horrible fusion of Lycanthropy and poverty, tore into the goblins. Wild and powerful, took down quite a few before running away. “So you see” continued fon Volfhenze “even if we tamed these wild weres, they should never have their voice heard in the running of the state. They're just common rabble!”  Much like the commonest of the common rabble running the ex-elven city of Galarkarn, which was, in all probability, taken over by ogres, who would now don the several sizes too small clothes of the mayor, kill nobles for minor infractions and pass various frivolous edicts detailing the ogre's farts, the comeliness of pigs and giving peasant lack back to the people that work it. At least that's what the werewolf noble was afraid of.  Especially since Golddale was seeing the rise, as one panicked noble put it, of merchant middle class (as opposed to the current merchant class of well off vagrants): minotaurs from a nearby minotaur palace, built a labyrinth. They claimed it was to put their part into the kingdom's defense, as the labyrinth could be used for navigation and close quarters training. Men of Golddale said it was just a ploy to get their women, as they were supposedly sneaking away to the labyrinth at night, and that cries of “where the human women at?” could be heard. The court's opinion was that this was all just a ploy to avoid being drafted to fight Dremer, bears, ogres and other horrible things.  Although the situation was improving, just a little. For example, Khargem managed to use other goblins as cover and shoot some werewolves dead – not an easy job when the enemy can regenerate and is a giant wolf man.  "Some say that these tree spirits have existed in Ardania long before the men. Others believe that demonwoods are the creation of Andrevus the Dark Mage. But the one point upon which all are agreed: demonwoods, no matter their history, harbor ferocious hatred towards all other creatures." - From "The Overall Description of Everything" by Master Alfus Bumblegate “M'lord, you could either spare some of your magical power to burn the walking demonic trees or throw goblins at it until werewolves get it”. “How do these trees sneak up on them, anyways?” “Well, the face would be a giveaway, even if they close their eyes. The thing about the north is that the local villages are full of giant trees with faces, some of which seem to bleed” “Is that some... cult of Fervus?” “I don't think they pray to any of our gods. Kind of explains why they don't have a kingdom. Or why the goblins over run their villages some easily. Would you believe that one of the settlement was just one old fart and forty women who were both his daughters and wives?” “I've seen a lot of peasants both in my life and unlife, Melchior. Nothing about them amazes me anymore”.  “I've seen all kings of farms in my life, but this still baffles me” said captain John Grain of the “Golddale Duck” while examining an Elven settlement through his spyglass. “What's this city called, sir? I need to note it on the map” asked the cartographer eagerly, his eyes bright with anticipation and his nose black with ink. “Well, there is a sign board that says 'Rilti' but I can't read the rest of it, some arsewipe propped a shield against it. Just note the drat elf city and let's sail onward”.  Yet not all news were good. For example, the troops in the North-West just walked into a frozen forest full of pain...
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Sep 5, 2013 18:30
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Torrannor posted:
No, if it were, we would have seen an Elvish mug pop up. I don't think we'll meet more Elven civs since Oberon is the only high mage to be associated with them (Armageddon might have given us another, although that just might be my brain plain' tricks one me). The doesn't mix'n'match races with mages.
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Sep 24, 2013 18:06
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Chapter 4.3: Damned Wilderness While most units were getting frozen, beaten or eaten in the Near West, magic research continued in the tower of Lichopolis. The newest spell to be re-learned by King Lich V was the basic dispel (didn't even have a fancy name), very popular with kings who had the habit of not inviting witches to their daughters' birth feasts and thus invoking their ire and curses. All in all, a good tool when some valuable servants come under unwanted magical attentions and probably never used on goblins.  No sooner than the left spell testgoblin had been put out, a somewhat dusty and dented all over elf envoy arrived. After catching his breath (and refusing a mug of goblin ale, which is something even the dying of thirst are known to do), he announced that his lord would like to offer an alliance. To sweeten the deal and maybe gloss over some previous alliance breaking, the spell of Greater Lands Raising had been added. The best use for it, so far, has been raising islands to build towers to hold wayward princeses and through the process of questing and drowning, controlling the population of questing knights. King Lich V, of course, agreed.  The young werewolves, gifted with both regeneration and mostly weak enemies, soon came to love the smell and taste of blood (well, more than werewolves usually do). Also, in response to their more proactive use of jaws in offensive maneuvers, their teeth started growing larger and sharper. This caused some discussion this would affect making out with were-dames back home.  "Fire Elementals are beings of living plasma, creatures from the elemental plane who have traveled to Ardania for unknown purposes. They often guard Holy Grounds." - From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor Of course, not everything was sunshine and effortlessly ripping an enemies jugular with your own teeth. A temple ground – a land blessed by divine influences and thus perfect for temples – was nearby and, as always, guarded by a Greater Fire Elemental. Now, these critters were very tough and bad news for everyone. As to why they guarded temple grounds, especially since those weren't dedicated to no god of fire, was a mystery that even the very drunk couldn't tackle. Still, eventually the monster would have to be defeated. For now, it only harassed the werewolves.  The odds were stacked against the forces in the north. Werewolves, the most capable of tackling such threat, could have attacked, but there was little hope that they would survive the retaliation. As such, they bid their time, hid behind trees, played dice poker and waited.  And attacks did come, from a distance, from far away, where werewolves couldn't reach. Huge fireballs would land in their midst, burning fur, boiling flesh, breaking bone, exploding the latrine. Smoking bodies would be left laying in the field... and would start to twitch, move and stand up again. Werewolves were a hardy bunch and it would take more thank simple fireballs to kill them, but this did prevent their attacks.  Meanwhile, the „Golddale Duck“ was coasting along the coast, with various horid monsters seen through the spyglass... and this peace was shattered by flying serpents and their fireballs. „Sir, do you really think canon will hit them?“ „It bloody has to, because we don't have any other weapons. Fire the broadside!“ And so did the canon balls fly and rip a large number of serpents to shreds, upon which feasted fish and all other monsters of the sea.  "Demons are a stronger and more abominable version of their impish kinsmen. They have little interest in mere mischief, but rather prefer genuine terror and total mayhem." - From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor Demons were a godsend to all manner of preachers and priests of Ardania. Demons, as in the sense that they were dark spirits who would subtly convince men to wrong their brethren, were hard to explain to farmers who spent most their time contemplating dirt and would sometimes „mistake“ their priced hog for their wife and thus be sometimes cough in compromising positions. Demon-demons were very real, very mean and a very easy to point a finger at. They wanted nothing more than terror and destruction, and thus were a good example of someone evil, someone more angry than a farmer's wife who'd take a pig being „mistaken“ for her at best as an ilsult to her beauty. Luckily, they were easy target for the archers to perforate. After all, red does stand out in snowy wastes!  And, with a big fiery exception, things weren't going that bad, especially considering that most monsters left were simple beasts, no match before the semi-organised goblin military and almost heroic heroes. Their plundered dens would provide funds for future campaigns and some more bells and whistles for the troops.  Then again, luck barely ever holds in the military. Just one fireball and what used to be column of goblin archers became a crater of thawing ground and burnt meat. A whole unit wiped out, in a single attack! And even if the death of goblin veterans merited retribution (it's something a King must do, even if unwilling), that would have to wait, for the werewolves were attacked, forced to retreat and then entangled in the webs by none other than monstrous spiders! Truly these were the dark days of the northern expedition.  In order to alleviate the pressure in the north, the first batch of pumpkin medallions reached the werewolves. As they hung them around their necks, they felt their innate powers of restoration strengthen and burn fur regrow faster. It led to some complaints about „the feeling of wines spreading under our skin“, but those were mostly ignored as Kind Lich V was happy to make his actually valuable troops more durable.  Another blessing came in the form of granting the certificate of being “Tested by the Labyrinth”. Since the weres were nowhere near any of the minotaur labyrinths, some of the bullheaded creatures had tome come to the wastes, pull some string between the trees to simulate the labyrinth and whack some werewolves over the head as they walked it in the night. Somehow, that mad ethem better troops – or at least that's what minotaurs told the King.  They actually bid their time to sell their services well because the King was in the process of dismissing the merchant who brought the Kortana blade. It was too expensive for the treasury and it also had a spirit in shape of a naked blue human female who spoke gibberish and constantly pointed at the inscription on the handle that said “MSTVR CHF”.  The merchant barely had time to get out before the news came the the Elven king had destroyed another settlement. This was puzzling, considering the fact that elves were losing cities to monsters and probably didn't have the leeway to so.  On the other hand, the hotspot in the north wasn't moving – literally. The spiders used their webs to make werewolves immobile. They didn't mid much, though – they had killed the spiders anyways, the enchanted renewal powers kept them in good shape (if a bit singed) and silk was useful to dress wounds or to send back home to be made into lingerie.  The part of expedition that wasn't entangled, however, were making good gains in scouting and claiming treasures. Numerous monster dens were pillaged, their inhabitants slain, their fortunes stolen! Sloop-Jim was making a beeline for a rumored treasure chest while Khargem made way a bit to the south, with other, less skilled goblin archers in tow.   In a bit less frozen frontied, that captain of the “Golddale Duck” had just finished turning flying serpents into floating giblets. And the he noticed them. Giant spiders. Everybody hated giant spiders; those who didn't were burnt at the stake or drowned in town's cesspit. Captain was no stranger to this hatered and ordered all canons to open fire on the beasts. Quite unexpectedly, this served to improve the gunners' accuracy since neither flying serpents, nor spiders were that easy a target.  And while canon shot was tearing spiders apart, the Elves kept losing cities to the monsters. This was both absurd and absurdly funny and nobles in the court in Lichopolis laughed heartily, even if they felt that the King's laughter made their souls feel chilly.  Meanwhile Snoop-Jims made it to the treasure chest and, after defeating the snow orphans guarding it, opened the chest and grabbed whatever was inside. It just so turned out to be a Combat Broom.  “Hey, da gently caress is happenin?” screamed Rrat Prince as the broom lifted him through the air “Dat poo poo ain't natural, yo. Ain't no rat homie gotta fly, man!” Back in Lichopolis, it was determined that yes, flying rodent princes weren't a good thing, especially when the rapid mode of transportation could be more useful to other, more important, female shaped people.  After some rigorious calculations that involved most of the rogue scribes and soothsayers, and copious amounts of magic, a solution was established. Snoop-Jims was to land, take the broom and throw it at a send angle and heading, thus directing the broom's magic powers to take it back to the capital. He succeeded, even if the broom impaled three goblins upon arrival.  Meanwhile, the goblin archers spotted a very enticing vein of adamantium..
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Oct 5, 2013 15:23
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I love this game. I was going to ask why you weren't upgrading your troops...then I saw your gold level. Management is one of those things that I only learn after hours upon hours of learning... and by that I mean reading internet guides. I'm not sure how many hours (in tens) I sunk into Warlock, I still blow at it.
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Oct 7, 2013 14:40
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Glazius posted:What are you spending all your gold on, anyway? Unit upkeep? Spending, not earning it... Yeah, unit upkeep eats the most, I guess, then buildings.
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Oct 11, 2013 04:50
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The thread isn't dead. I'm just lazy and I keep doing the mistake of doing a lot of screenshots in one go, then putting them into an LP over several posts. Gotta limit my playing time - or be pickier with what to post! 4.4 The Amazing Adventures In Thread Lock Dodging  Beloved mother, my service to our lord, King Lich V, continues. Though we have been stuck in frozen tundra for weeks, we are well provisioned and cared for. The only indignity we have to suffer are the continous fireball attacks by the fire elemental. It seem that the smell of burning fur never fully dies down. Never the less, military leadership assures us that our post here is vital to the entirety of the North-Western expedition. And so are our lives – that's why we're not allowed to attack the fire elemental outright. I'm sorry for not writing sooner. My hand needed some time to regrow. In those moments of respite when fire does not rain on us and we are not dragging our wounded to medical ditches, I think about home in Lichopolis. I promise, once this is over, I will marry Suzana de la Crua-Baneclaw. Her muscular physique and big bones are bound to result in strong, healthy offspring, very fitting for his majesty's service, and thus advancement of our family. I am sorry to have doubted your wisdom and I regret being misled by youthful notions of “true love” - war has cured me of such delusions! Give my regards to the family. Your loving son, Alfred  Back in Lichopolis, King Lich's experiments into making some sort of airborne scouts that didn't require magical artfacts we failing: throwing goblins tied to kites in catapults appeared to woefully underproductive and one of them even crashed into the werewolf castle, causing one of the weremaidens to get a suddent bout of fainting illness. As such, there he was not too ired when a messenger arrived from King Rrat. „Parley! I demand parley!, - squeeked a rat in panic, his head moving left and right, eyes bulging. „What's wrong with this one?“ „Your majesty, I think I know what happened“ said Lucius „Judging by certain red specs on his clothing and a fain waft of stink, this rat must have witnessed one your goblin flight experiments”. “Ah, yes, that must have been the case. The we tied to bunch of pig bladders full of swamp gas crashed in the middle of the street. The only good thing about it was the fountain of blood”. The king then turned to the envoy. “Ser rat, I assure you, my palace is quite safe from any crashing goblinoids. Might you continue with your task?” “Squeek, yes! My majesty, King Rrat, would like to propose you an alliance! We offer you these 24 gold pieces as a compensation for all the parchment and ink and seals needed to formalize this deal. And as a gift more worthy than any sort of material possessions, his majesty presents you with this spell”, said the rat, kneeling and extending a scroll forward. The lich looked at the magical inscriptions: “What's this? Why, Lucius, I do believe we are in possession of a spell of enfeeblement! It's an early version, so it's not too powerful. Never the less, it admire the approach that the mage that created it took. It doesn't affect muscle or bone or sinew directly. Instead, it draws on the immutable law of nature that states that poets, bards and others of their ilk are invariably weak of constitution and limp of wrist. This spell channels the said afliction of the arms – hence why in prepration to cast we, we have to pour cheap wine over parchment of horrible poetry, a book full of sappy romance stories and some gaudy trinkets that a poet would give to the first whore he'd deem the love of his life, then set it all on fire with a red candle. Thus the target would be infused with the spirit of poetry and thus not really able to strike with his whole might”. “Truly a devious spell, m'lord!” - Lucius exclaimed. “Indeed it is. Envoy, tell your king that our nations are in alliance from now on! And do be mindful of goblins”.  But that wasn't the only spell gained that day. While reading the book “How To Pretend To Be A God Without Fear Of Smiting”, he found a spell that was really useful in convincing non believers of a mage's divine power – the lightning bolt! After he stripped the part of the incantation that forced the spell to target “harlots, catamites, cattle violators, peoples of color and women of opinion”, it became a useful battlefield tool.  No sooner than he had done this, a booming voice rocked his whole chamber 'KING LICH V' 'What the he-” 'LORD DAUROS THE KEEPER OF PEACE THE SERVANT ORDER DEEMS YOU WORTHY OF HIS ATTENTION” “Wha-” “FERVUS' FOUL SERVANTS ENTER YOUR REALM. SLAY THEM AND BE REWARDED WITH MY FAVOR AND RICHES BOTH MATERIAL AND MAGICAL” “Wh-” “FAIL TO SO AND WITNESS THE WRATH OF LORD DAUROS” finished the voice and the room stopped trembling. “Well, I best get to it” said Lich, crawling from under a pile of books and shouting down the stairwell “Lucius! Melchior! Did we notice any, uh, disciples of Fervus nearby?”  "With the help of his animal familiars, a single Beastmaster can challenge an entire army! These servants of Fervus can tame the wildest of beasts, Your Majesty. Even I am afraid to look them in the eye!" From His Majesty's Advisor's address speech. “...the author also goes on to ramble - in what seems to be a severely prejudiced manner - about Beastmasters' “slanty gook eyes” and the inherent unseaworthiness of the “yellow race” - Melchior commented while reading from a tome. “Huh. But we can kill them, right?” “Considering our more than generous magic defenses – yes, yes we can. Also, getting the influx whatever material goods Dauros promised would beneficial to our coffers”. “Well, then it's settled! Off with their heads!”  The ogre was rolling down the hill while holding on to his foot and bellowing in pain. “Dat's rite, foo! Ain't nobody can get a homie in 'is turf, busta! 'specially when da turfs a hill, you! Gechho stinkin' rear end to school 'n' learn some tactics!” shouted Snoop Jim-s after he spat out an ogres toe. And then his ears went up, and he fell his whiskers straighten. “Ma elf woman sense be tinglin'!” Somewhere, probably surrounded by spiders, was a elvish settlement, full of nubile elven ladies – and Snoop Jim-s would see it added to his majesty's growing kingdom! Out of loyalty to the crown, of course...  Back on the home front, an imp portal and some imps - “How many times I have to tell you, Lucius, ginger people have nothing to do with Imps! I know that! I wrote a thesis about it” - appeared. At the top of the mountain, in plain view and comfortable range of defenses in two cities, and with an eager band of newly mustered goblin archers waiting to kill someone. They stood no chance.  Yet amidst the carnage, the arrow filled piles of sulfur that used to be imps and the portal rocks with profane symbols that were in the process of being of washed away by copious amount of goblin pee (they had the a drinking contest on the way to dismantle the portal), something of value was found. Imp hearts proved to be a good source of magic. And upon the sacrificial altar, amids the burned remains of what seemed to be a merchant, a bow was found. Glimmering black, constantly shedding ash that disappeared before touching ground, it was definitely magic. “Shame that the only archer champion in the kingdom is a goblin”, - mused King Lich V while ordering the bow delivered to Khargem.  The goblin weighted Hand of Ashes in his palm. Is was masterfully done, smooth, a bit warm to touch, crafted from some unknown material, and constantly shedding ashes. “Do you want power?” - Khargem heard in his head. Other goblins would have soiled their pants. But Khargem had age, experience and discipline. Plus, momma Smoky trails drank while pregnant and dropped young Khargem on the head a few times, so he was a great deal smarter than other goblins. He knew a good deal when he saw one – or felt it's slippery cold whispers in his mind. “I am power. Use me” said the bow. “Take an arrow and draw”. Khargem did as he was ordered. His custom made arrow – pinnacle of goblin craftsmanship and barely passable by human standards – turned black: sleek, straight, and sinister. “Now close your eye. Receive the secret of the Hand of Ashes!” He who aims with the arm is on the path to ruin. He who aims with the eye is on the path of glory. I will not fall to ruin. Khargem felt, for the first time in his life, the eye of his mind open. He felt that as if he could rise above surrounding area and see for miles, the souls of living critters all around him, at once a sea and a gathering of distinct creatures. He who shoot with the hand is on the path to ruin. He who shoots with his mind is on the path of glory. I will not fall to ruin. Khargem saw a group of giant spiders – and he loathed spiders just like everyone else. He watched them through his minds eyes, focusing on the distinct pattern of their souls, focusing like he would do on a target. And then he beckoned the arrow to fly and to kill them. And so it flew. He who kills with the bow is on the path to ruin. He who kills with his heart is on the path of glory. I will not fall to ruin. This arrow wasn't propelled by mere drawn string. A gust of hatred, revulsion, anger was driving it forward, correcting its path. These emotions swelled in the shaft of the black arrow and radiated outward, making it appear like the arrow was flying in a swarm of phantom arrows. And then they stuck. Arrow pierces body, hatred pulverizes chitin. Arrow goes through the phlegm of the spider's body, revulsion makes it boil. Arrow wounds; anger kills. Khargem opened his eyes. The bow had turned bone white and ash wasn't falling anymore. “Power is not to be toyed with, for it can destroy you. Save me for those whose need to die is indeed dire”  A goblin settler stopped his wagon almost at the edge of frozen tundra. The Mysterious Probably Magical Wall was shimmering so close, you could almost touch it – and some will, once the city of Gold of the Lich (“I didn't want them to have illusions about the reason why they're there”) is established. “Why da boney king send us here, Gork?” “Because dere be gold in them thar hills, Mork” Meanwhile, some more pressing inquiries were going on in Lichopolis. “M'lord, these are prisoners I asked you to pardon” said Lucius after he arrayed a line of filthy men, gnome and goblin in front of the king. “Smilin' Ole Rob. Killed a widow, ate her children. Glorg Left Hands, stole from the rich and then stole from the poor. Hookfinger Jorge Potbelly. Used to loan money to other gnomes, then cut out their fat when they couldn't give it back. He used to make soap, although we have no idea why. And then there's George the Maremaker. He's not a criminal per se, he just a big horse gelding enthuasiast”. “Charming bunch. And why do we need them?”. “Well, with Gold of the Lich established, we're probably going to see an influx of gold. And where there's gold, there has to be...”  “...taxation”.  Yet not all was bad in the Kingdom of the Lich. Emerah used her time flying on the combat broom to shoot healing spells left and right on the peoples below. And with such repeated training, and happyness seeing people be healthy again (even if they were lonely wild domesticated pig herders and dwarves with hangovers out to take a leak), Emerah's healing power grew ever stronger.  “M'lord, you have never heard of Sol de Torvega?” Lucius asked incredulously. “I was quite indisposed for some time, you now” answered King Lich, irritated “Self-assembly doesn't leave much time for great gossip, you know!” “Sol is almost the pinacle of werewolf aspirations. Why, he's even a mage, and that's a rare feat among my kind! Sadly, his father isn't really among us. He was a also a great were, but...” “But?” “Well, he tried turning into dragon. Or fusing with one. The details are kind of sketchy, but the fact remains. Still, Sol de Torvega is a great leader, and not nearly as crazy”. “So, I just sit and wait for him to inevitably ask me for alliance, right?”  King Lich V sat and waited for a new diplomatic proposal (or someone to remind him that it might take some time) while prince Snoop Jim-s was up for action. Invigorated by his success in fending off the ogre or maybe driven crazy by a combination of ogre blood and toe fungus, he ran into the middle of the brute's territory. “Figure dar where eva' I strike, I gon cap a foo', ya dig?” - he said to no one in particular.  A little to the east, Emerah spotted a burnt clearing full of slightly singed werewolves and turned the combat broom towards them in stunning maneuver for someone who never had any flying practice. She landed in the midst of the wolves and started shouting orders. “By the power of Agrella and by the authority of King Lich V, I will keep you sods alive! You there! Sew up that ear! You too! Administer some ointment! Hey, short tail! Clean that wound with boiled wine! I don't have long canines or pointy ears, but I do know that your bodies will heal faster after you take the pine cones out of your wounds. Yes, I was referring to you, cone-chest!”  “Ah, but you see, m'lady, even with your healing gifts, we wouldn't be able to take down the accursed elemental. Especially now that he took position on top of a hill – we'd be blasted to giblets before we even get close!”  Emerah thought about it for a minute, got back on the broom and flew up above the trees. She could clearly see the Greater Fire Elemental perched on the hill, doing nothing much besides emitting a slow buzzing sound. The creature wasn't native to Ardania, this much was certain. And it was almost impervious to any sort of native magic. Well then, there was only thing left to try. As werewolves attacks imbue some of the primal vicousness of their soul into their claws, as goblin shamans try to eat their targets even on spiritual level, so did the healers of Agrella use the strength of their spirit as a tool in combat. Emerah started focusing on her wand...  Yet while the hammering blows of the healer's spirit where chipping away blocks off the fire elemental and goblin arrows were miraculously cutting down ogres, a new foe presented itself. Skeletons. "These animated bones are moved by dark magic of unknown origin." From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor. Unlike ogres, which could eventually be crushed under the weight of arrows, skeletons were almost immune to them, what with having neither flesh that could be pierced, nor complex internal mechanisms that could be broken.   This meant that Snoop Jim-s, still flush with the blood and gold of freshly slain ogres, was to be shifted North, where he'd easily deal with skeletons as they charged him. Almost a waste of his talents, if not for the fact that he spotted boundaries of a probably neutral city down at the south west.  A werewolf clad in shining bronze armor fell to one knee in front of King Lich V. “M'lord, my liege, great wizard Sol de Torvega, has a proposal for you highness” - he said and extended a scroll as Lucius rolled his eyes. Lich started reading, muttering some words, but mostly making a chilling rattle of teeth. “Your undead highness... trying times... difficulties besetting all Ardania... obligation of all great powers... loving monstrous spiders... Dremer... I propose a truce... Ah, a spell of summon Imp! Lucius, this spell is always fun. You see, Ghost Wolves are always fun, but imps actually resent serving you! They think that as imps they are above you and you should cover before their terror. Not much of a terror they are, being summoned that easily. Bunch of wimps! This only makes sending them to their demise even more fun. Oh, this is the most entertaining of gifts. Tell his majesty Sol de Torvega that there will be peace between monster kingdoms in his lifetime!”  Captain Duckwinson wasn't very happy. The map laid before him only had information on the waters that he just crossed and even that wasn't helpful because of his crippling illiteracy. His father died when a book fell on his head, so Duckwinson junior wowed never to read a word. It was a stupid promise, one that could be expected from a six year old, but growing up, he based all his development as person on it. It was so intertwined with his personality that he could learn reading no sooner than he could pluck his eye or start respecting cabin boys. Fortunately, his gloomy thoughts about letters and people who use them were cut short by first mate Bile Gruffstone barging in. “Capt'n, I found a still below th' deck. The lads are brewin', but the swill isn't fit fo' no man ta drink”. “So? Nothing special about it” “Aye, but have an idea! The swill's like to catch fire real fast an' burn real 'ard. How 'bout we take the gunpowder outta the cannon balls an' replace it wit' this stuff? Boom an' th' enemy is full o' metal an' on fire!” “But what do we do with the powder?” “Use it fo' cannons? Bake cakes? Let th' boys snort it? Fill a few barrels, put it under an elf town, make it rain pointy ears fer five days? Don' care, capt'n, just let me use th' swill” “Fine, permission granted! But I better see some flaming spider bits real soon!” However, it wasn't a cannonade of flaming balls that shook the ground around the world. The horizon flashed red, there was light, a bang and a tremor.  “M'lord, a Dremer gate... has exploded!”
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Nov 3, 2013 19:27
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Mzbundifund posted:Really? I always thought they were one of the worst, with their relatively low, easily-resisted damage type, and their bad special ability. Their range is 2, same as any archer. I'll grant you the accents though. I'm sure that's the case with most ranged temple units. And the only monster temple unit worth a drat are rat paladins. Also, is gate-eexplodey-land too destroyed to teraform?
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Nov 4, 2013 03:47
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Torrannor posted:Your writing style is quite impressive, I don't know where you get the creativity to write all these small stories and jokes. Thank you for the praise! As for the temples... well, Bad Things can happen if you fall on the really bad side of a god, but in general, build whatever temples you want! Or whicever give you the best units. For example, Grum-Gog is basically useless. Pyromancer posted:They fall over themselves being cooperative one turn, then declare war the next, even if they have no chance of winning or don't even know where your cities are. Probably very trusting you'll stick to pact, but paranoid you'll attack them if you don't make a pact. On my difficulty level (Normal), AI is mostly retarded,I think. How else would the elves have lost two cities to the monsters? And diplomacy was never the strong suit of the game. Also, if anyone's interested, I writing a series of articles about The Perfect Hypothetical 4X game. It has two parts and teeny tiny bit of good art. Might help pass the time till next update!
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Nov 4, 2013 15:57
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Glazius posted:Interesting how the AI lords are still kind of falling over themselves to give you stuff. Taking out those Dremer must have been really impressive. Well, the only other gate just exploded! As it goes, I claim all the gates kills to have happened until now. So yeah, I'm impressive!
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Nov 4, 2013 15:59
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In addition to my general laziness, my laptop started giving VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE which, amusingly enough, let me finish the entirety of XCOM: Enemy Within (with infrequent "You're running out of memory" messages, but BSoDs after 1-2 turns of Warlock. Strangest thing is that apparently I can play Warfare and this brings me delusions of video LP (not gonna happen). Anyways, here's a small update, hopefully I'll find a computer repairman who speaks gaijin enough to understand my woes and fix my poo poo. Lesson learned: "gaming" laptops, never again. Chapter 5.1: Even The Smallest Of News The last beastmaster fell, strength of his divine patron leaking out of his many wounds. He tried to raise hand and curse the city that killed him, but only a rasping “yiff” escaped his lips before his spirit departed for the Great Hunting Lands.  YOU HAVE DONE WELL LITTLE LICH. SMITING UNBELIEVERS AND ENEMIES OF ORDER GIVES YOU ANOTHER DAY Dauros' booming voice cought King Lich V by surprise and he nearly lost his jaw . I CONICIDER YOUR QUEST FULFILLED. HERE ARE YOUR JUST REWARDS. As soon as the roaring of voice of Order personified subsided, Lich saw before him a pile of gold and, on top of it, a scroll detailing “Longuard's Magical Shield Of Protection”. Said mage researched and cast this spell to protect his wife: for he was a man who liked shapelier women and his wife bosom could only be described a “heaving” before veering into territory of geographical terms. Thus many old and nearsighted witch tried to give her the evil eye, aiming to spoil the milk “of the biggest biggest udder their eyes had ever seen”. Loving husband that he was, the wizard had no other choice...  M'lord!” exclaimed Avgustus with a certain hint of pride in his voice. “you call and your loyal werewolf servants answer! Witness as we raise the second unit of our young! These are the purest of blood, sharpest of teeth, the quickest of claw! M'lord, we entrust you with the best of our sons, brothers, cousins and nephews! Take them and use them well” The lich nodded with approval and turned to face the lined up you werewolves “My Warriors! Go forth into the untaimed land and may peace follow you as the foe is struck with awe as I am now struck with pride to have such soldiers under my banners!” And so the the unit of werewolves joined the army of King Lich V.   Rrat prince Snoop Jim-s was, however, far away from the revelry and fainting werewolf damzels that accompanied the new troop. He and his retinue were too busy outflanking a band of skeletons that had taken positions near some spider nests. “Yo, homie o' ma lev'l shouldda neva get t' fight inna place like dis. Fuckin' skeletons inna god-drat spidah nest, dat poo poo ain't natural”.  “Squeeky-G, you jive pheasant how'd ya manage to git stuck up dere?” “Squeak! 'Tis not me foult, me prince! I was just smashin' spider eggs like you said and saw some gold up here in these webs. Please let me out!” “Gold, ya say? Dis needs investigatin. Yo, Fat Tail Ratso, git Two-Nose an get Squeeky-G outta dere, then check fo' gold!”  But while rats were pillaging spider nests, more important things were happening to the east. After a relentless barrage of life magic, the Fire Elemental was cut down to size and dislodged from its defensive position. Werewolves, sensing their chance, leaped through the ancient temple ruins and, disregarding the quiet whispers of the divine in their ears, ran after their smoldering prey. And so in the plains between the temple ground and the foot of the mountain did the man-wolves run down the alien elemental. Its fiery fury lashed out against the attackers, but they were not dismayed and charged through the fire, regrowing charred flesh almost at the blink of an eye. A leap and a strike and claws meant to rend spirit as much as flesh cleave through silicate being like it was was butter. Pack leader Trailstalker leaps onto the elemental's chest, digs his claws deep into its mass and rips out the monster's face. The day is won.  Melchior almost tripped over himself as he hurried to unfurl a map before King Lich. “My lord, with the reports of elemental being banished, we can truly begin our expansion into the Wild Lands. If you so please, some of my fellow scholars and better educates werewolves made this plan so that we could advise you on the most prudent action”. Lich turned his ghastly eyes to the parchment. “This might be the colorful map that I have ever see. So some of your 'fellow scholars' include children” “Oh? What, this? No, my lord, this is an example of how scarcity and need combined can yield great results. You see, having a lot of quality ink is never easy in goblins filled with goblins. Having ink of the same color is harder. But then we had an idea: what if we used the different colors to mark different objects on the map?” “Hmmm, an interesting idea. Carry on” “Ah, well, my lord, look at these red hexes. They mark the potential sites where we should establish more cities. Most of it easy to explain. You see, the yellow circles and arrows mark resources and which city would get them, so it's pretty obvious. But we have difficulty deciding how to best use the temple grounds. It's a very, shall we say, fertile region, with an iron vein, a dwarven settlement and a ruin being in close proximity. Trouble is, that putting the city closer to the temple grounds might make it easier to get a temple of our own, but that would leave other resources out of reach. And the ruins could be swallowed up by the Gold of the Lich real soon”. “This is an imoportant matter to be sure, but our settler caravans haven't left their home cities yet. Leave it for later and tell me about the other markings”. “Ah, well, sir, the green arrows shows the probably route of attack for the werewolves. With the healer's support they should be able to run over the two former elven cities with ease. Then I suppose they could turn to the west and destroy any monsters that wander the coast. I think it would be prudent to task the new werewolf company to join them”. “And the pink?” “That's Khargem, Snoop Jim-s and the sole surviving company of goblin archers. They are currently in pursuit of an ogre and scouting reports a town in their direction. If they can't take it, they should at least scout it out for us”. “This seems like a reasonable plan. Carry on, then! I'm begging to be very glad that I didn't explode you with a shadowbolt”. Color drained from Melchior's face “P-p-pardon me?” “Oh, it's not a big deal. It's just that you weren't the first scholar to come. Only you proved to have useful skills. Your predecessors wanted me to institute marriage between man-goblin and man-goblin. Their bits took some time to clean up”.  Of course, the wilds weren't totally free of monsters – yet – nor is any place in Ardania ever truly safe from various horrible natural or supernatural critters. But it didn't matter for Snoop Jim-s as he was making slow circles around an ogre. Many a goblin arrow had been stuck in the giant's flesh, but the oaf didn't seem too perturbed by it. For Snoop Jim-s, the hardest part was that the fight took place in a pumpkin patch and he kept slipping on the blasted things. By the time the ogre had been forced to retreat by savage bites and mighty blows, the prince was covered in orange pumpkin pulp.  In the mean time, orders arrived by magic pigeon and werewolves broke camp to set out for the now-monster controlled town of Gnomewall. Surely it's monstrous inhabitants will be happy to finally belong to a real monster kingdom and to forget the woeful days of uncertainty that independence gives.  Bits of burning giant spider carapace were gently falling into the coastal waters. The intensive bombardment had finally paid off! “All right, men, set course east! We sail now!” bellowed captain Duckwinson. “Wot about dem spider ova dere?” asked first maste Gruffstone. “Forget them. If we tarry any longer, our liege might think to use US for target practice”.  And way back in the west, a young, undisciplined pack of werewolves finally tore out the ogre's throat. Even while they celebrated victory, the hungry eyes of a dead king gazed at their realm and longed to take them by force.
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Dec 15, 2013 07:51
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If I'm not mistaken, the VIDEO_TDR BsoD can be dodged by turning down particle related options in older games. Probably. I turned down shadows, clouds, water, effects and... well, see if you can spot difference. Good look with that! Chapter 5.2: Hateful Universe  With the matters in the Near West somewhat settled, King Lich V finally had time to lean back with a good book. Or a scroll. „Pendulum's Dark Swing Or The Projection of Deathly Shadow Powers And Their Use In Acquiring The Admiration Of Pale Morbid Wenches“. While King didn't have much use for wenches – having no flesh on one's bones will turn one's interest in women into a purely academical or, in freak cases, platonic thing – he was a great fan of using death magic. Especially since it was very useful in killing the living, which comprised the biggest part of the world's population, which also fed the groups that hated necromancers. Shadow Bolt would help deal with them and look stylish at the same time.  The King's joy with a new tool to smite goblins (and people who generally weren't his subjects, too) had little impact on the expedition on the west coast. Specifically, the Rrat prince had run into some minor werewolf nobility, which was of little concern by itself and even of lesser concern when backed with archers. „Away with you, you rat peasant! We the werewolf szlachta rule here! We have convened in our Sejm and voted not to have any king rule over us or infringe on our noble rights!“ „Whoa, who you callin' peasant, busta? I'z Snoop-Jims, da Rrat-Prince 'n' I ain't gonna be disrespected by yokel“ „Yokel?! I'm no yokel! You will address me as Sir Brother Furrishch Wokowski! My forefathers ruled Sarmatia („Whisker-O, ever heard o' dat?“ „Just a fable for the academics, my prince“) and voted – voted – to go and take these lands! We szlachta rule here, away from kings or any sort of strangling central government...“ „Quit yo jibba-jabba. Yo little punks rear end hood iz gonna be incurporat'd into our kingdom. King L sez so and I bust caps in asses o' dose who dissent, know wut I'm sayan'?“ „Brute! I shall show you! I'll lead the levee en masse and drive you back!“ „What, dis sorry posse of posers?“ asked Snoop-Jims, pointing at the war camp full of rowdy, drunk, undisciplined weres „we gonna take you fast, tailz, and we gonna be sackin' yo town soon“.  The land was strewn with corpses of werewolves: whoever wasn't cut down by the deluge of goblin arrows, the rrat swords and teeth got them. Snoop-Jims didn't even bother looting the camp and so the grey host scurried to swarm beneath the walls of Bearling.  The path of the second werewolf company lead near Lichholm – but a gnome was barring their way! „Gnome, what's the meaning of this?“ snarled Crozius van de Paw, the lead wolf of the vanguard. „We're on official crown business, away with you!“ „Yes, yes, kind sir wolves, but I have something to share with you! You see, I'm but a lowly armor smith, but even we have ambitions! I wanted to improve armor of our noble troops, so that they could defend the realm better. I tried changing the straps, curving the armor, reducing decoration to increase thickness... everything! But it didn't help. That is, until one day I accidentally drank some of the pure used for leather and I had an epiphany!“ „So, what did this vision entail?“ „Why, I came up with the brilliant idea to add armor to the back, too!“   With gnome out of the way, the werewolves marched on to encircle Gnomewall which, by the intelligence report from goblins tied to really strong pigeons, was defended by an Ogre and simple militia that could be found in any town.  Now that was a sight. A diplomatic procession of goblins was a thing as laughable as impossible. Most monster rulers tried to send, at the very least, gnomes and those didn't even have gnomes to spare were most likely rulers in a sense that they „ruled“ a dung hut or particulary large cesspit outside a real monster city. Yet here they were, trying to appear important in their shoddily made tunics and holding misshapen, dirty pieces of parchment. The largest of them cleared his throat, spewed out a glob of phleghm and announced „Hear ye all, our lord Ash-Haar the Wisest, First of Goblins, Biggest of Goblins, Mouth That Swallows the World, The Green Wizard, proclaims greeting to Litch King V! What say you?“ „There's no 't' in 'lich'“  There might not be a 't' in 'lich', but smelly goblin militia was still in Bearling. Snoop-Jims led the assault on the walls: it might have gone quicker if giant walking rats had not deemed eating through the walls to be beneath them. So, in the mean time, they scurried along the wall, throwing stones and knocking out the occasional goblins, and dreaming of day when some smith would make bows that had a handle and could be fired with one hand, preferably sideways.  However, they only had regular goblin bows and regular goblin archers. After they had fired enough arrows to hit the town (and some defenders) by saturation, it was Khargem's turn to show real skill in archery. The Bow spoke once more: “I am power. Use me” whispered the weapon and slid into his hand. Khargem notched an arrow and cast his spirit outward. The town wasn't exactly ripe with targets – goblins were ruled by the biggest and smelliest of their rank and there wasn't one warchief whose death would cause immediate rout. There was, however, a cesspit, probably used by the late szlachta. Khargem loosed the arrow and it arked over Bearling's walls. And while it coursed through the air, the goblin marksmen filled it with all the anger and fury and disdain that a goblin felt to his lesser brethren. When the arrow hit cesspit, the hatred burst outwards. For a moment, there was a pillar of sevage meters high. And then it started to rain down upon Bearling, a fetid rain of scalding manure. Militia fell of the wall as dung burned off their faces and many a poor sod on the street level was boiled alive in the wave of searing poo poo that washed down the streets. The Bow was satisfied with the sacrifice.  Happyness, however, was not to be found in Gnomewall. The once independent town had been conquered by genocidal elves, than taken over by rowdy independent monster. But today, werewolves rappidly approached it's walls, formed living pyramids to propel the best among their ranks over the parapet. There, they disemboweled stomachs, ripped arms, tore throats, snapped necks and showed militia off the wall until they opened the gates and the remaining forces poured in.  Gnomewall changed hands for the third time! Any trace of independent, elected government was snuffed out under the secret orders of the werewolf primarch.  Meanwhile, the fresh, young company of weres was engaging the ogre outside the city. The wolf men jumped on it, tore at his skins and ripped out haunches of flesh. But the monster was very large and the fight dragged on...  “Golddale Duck” was, however, quickly avoiding a fight. “Bile, I wasted too much time firing on those spiders” remarked captain Duckwinson to his first mate” “Right you are, sur. I recon you don wanna to blow dem serpents up?” “No, lets just map the shore. If our lord sends an expedition here, they will be equipped to handle a few flying snakes” “Aye, aye, capt'n”  No sooner did the first mate open his flask of rum, than the first barrage of serpent fireballs reached the ship. “Damnation! Bill, see to the repairs and douse the flames! We will maintain our course and outrun these filthy animals”  But that was easier said than done. Swarms of serpents now flocked over the shores, each belching a small ball of fire. Splinters flew everywhere as they impacted the ship, the smell of burning wood and charred flesh hanging over it like a grim cloud. Captain Godwinson hid behind a mast and wondered how long would the repair take at the harbor.  Alas, even more flying snakes appeared and sent the “Golddale Duck” and her crew to its final port: at the bottom of the sea...  Yet these weren't the only lives taken by the sea. Thankfully, those that died later weren't the people under the yoke of King Lich V, so they mattered little. But the manner of the way some settlers from the Elven kingdom died was very troubling: a sea serpent appeared and with its scalding watery breath slew the whole caravan while it was still ashore. The sea, at least for the moment, was lost to the kingdoms of wizards.  And if the sea was a harsh mistress, the sky showed no mercy neither. A huge ball of fire, bigger than any fireball, screamed through the heavens and crashed into the frozen tundra near Gold of the Lich, obliterating everything around it on impact. “M'lord, I'm happy to report that we didn't lose anything. Mayhaps a few villages of the northern people went in flames as well as some wild goblin dwellings, but nobody of actual importance”.
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Jan 9, 2014 11:24
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Torrannor posted:Nooo! Not the Golddale Duck! Those serpents are living on borrowed time. The meteorite might be part of the whole endtimes thing, considering I've never seen one before (and got a pair of Dremer gate 'splosion messages even before that)
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Jan 9, 2014 15:07
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I sense a lizard extermination program in our future.
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Neruz posted:I think that's a high level spell actually. Nope, totally a naturally occurring meteorite. If you squint, you can see the orange-red announcement circle on the right. It didn't have a text screen to I didn't take a picture of it.
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Jan 10, 2014 05:03
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Gosh darn it, folks, I have to finish this LP before they release Warlock 2, so I could be ready with a follow up once the three month term passes! For those who haven't seen it yet, here's a single player preview: http://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive/c/3637108 On the other hand, my computer started crapping out even further the past days, so the future of this LP is quite uncertain. I still have a few more images for an update, tho! Chapter 5.3: Even Worse Tidings Mysterious flaming fireballs or no mysterious flaming fireballs, King Lich V had a realm to rule and the only way to strengthen his hold was to expand. And that required scouting, for losing settlers to random monsters was never a fun occurrence. And if there ever was an expendable scouting asset, summonable imps fit that role perfectly.  Too bad they got summoned near an ogre hideout. Well, King Lich V marked their location on map (even though it's hard to scribble down notes while half of your mind is engaged in keeping demons on a leash). Still, wanting to get most bang for mana, he decided against sending the imps to their certain deaths and turned them towards more prosperous and probably less dangerous lands.  Galarcarn was an elven city that monsters had taken over a while ago. Since it was now neutral, all grand mages considered the city to be free for all to take – after all, one can't really care about claims of „freethinking“ or „anarcho-naturalism“when he has an army of magically ehanced minotaurs. On the other hand, the demons felt strangely elated as their neared Galarcarn and that didn't bode well, because demons fed on misery. And lo, on the horizon, great fires lit the pillars of smoke rising over the city. Something was amiss.  It all became clear when an ogre's head, still whispering something about “free association”, landed near the imps. In distant Galarcarn, elven flags and gallows rose over the city walls – Amberon had retaken the dwelling and culled the resisting population. This was unpleasant, but bearable, and King Lich V decided to use the imps to finally get a sense of the overall outline of the continent.  But matters back at home required his immediate attention. Trumpets blared and pillars shook, and into his hall marched a procession of werewolves sent by Sol de Torvega. Their normal linen clothes and golden sun medallions were accompanied with strategically placed furs – after all, the north is awfully cold for southern weres! “Your majesty King Lich V! Our liege, Sol de Torvega, ruler of monster kingdoms by the will of Helia announces that, in light of recent alien invaders, he proposes a pact of alliance! Let no ill will mar the cooperation of the two realms and let their full powers be used to stop the terrible Dremmer who'd dim the light of Helia and sink the world into darkness!” “Does his majesty send something to sweet... I mean, to show his willingness and generosity?” To the diplomat's credit, his ears barely moved in confusion and he quickly gathered his wits, whispered something to his aide and, after some crowding from the Helians and sounds not unlike coins being dropped in a canvas bag, produced a silken pouch of gold. “Of course, you highness! This bag of gold contains a modest, symbolic sum, to show that Sol de Torvega both follows custom and knows better than to insult your majesty's honor by sending a bribe” King Lich chuckled, the action inaudible save for clanking of his jaw. “Very well, I accept his majesty's proposal!”  Also symbolic was the trading post built near the freshly liberated Gnomewall. Now, trade always happened in monster kingdoms, although it had a major impediment (besides the lack of any solid math skills): the main means of transportation were goblin women. Hardy, yet as stupid and immune to education as the males, they made for cheap if risky beasts of burden. While they required little food and upkeep, they were notoriously prone to wandering into swamps or jumping off the thin roads in mountain passes. This usually meant that about a third of all goods would not survive any sort of trade trip. Trading posts, on the other hand, employed the dire donkey, which gnomes could domesticate by putting a lump of turf on their heads, heading to donkey and then slowly walking away as the creature munched on the grass. Unfortunately, this meant that only bald gnomes could handle donkeys, as the dumb beasts had hard time distinguishing between turf-hat (a turfban if you will) and a gnome's hair. The fact that average gnome probably had something growing in his hair didn't help either. In any case, the citizens of Gnomewall could enjoy an increase in trade stability – that is, if anyone ever wanted to trade with a city surrounded by swamps and frozen mountains, and thus producing mostly misery and suicides.  Yet not all lands in the monster kingdom were dominated by doom and gloom (just the most of them). Citizens in Mealburn, distracted from worshiping strange interdimensional gods by a sea serpent strike on elven settlers, had an idea: what if we tried eating the monsters of the sea? I mean, sure, those were big and hard to kill, but at least they weren't haunted by queer energies that made pumpkin stalks sprout from one's wounds. And so did they build big, sturdy boats, put some gnarly speartips on straight-ish poles of the hardest wood they could find and set out to hunt the ultimate prey: sea monster young that are too small to properly defend themselves. That evening, everyone ate heartily and anyone who complained that is was morally wrong to go after the monsters' young, were driven out of the city. The exiles soon found out that moral superiority does nothing to contain horrible hunger pains.  “Khhhhhiiiing Liiiiich...” a voice not unlike hot desert breeze sounded in the undead Monarch's head. “What? Who's there?” “It is I... Heliaaa... The lady of the sun... aaaand the saaands” “Great, more gods!” “...siiilence, you impudent foool... My sssservants passsed through here.... aaand you caught my attention... Yyyyou will serve!” “drat it, what do you require?” “Ssssome scum of Lunord.... peeeeeople away from the light... hiiiding in shadowsss...running from the sssun” “Criminals or tax collectors?” “Assassins... kill them... and the power of the dessssert will be yoursss”  And thus, werewolves were dispatched, to go over the mountains and kill some heretic Assassins.   "The Father's welcome, Your Darkness. This moon we have accomplished two missions and, if relations between the Great Mages remain strained, we will receive three more next month. The neophytes are thus far performing well. Olephia did forget that she was no longer a thief, so I sent her to collect night dew for the ritual as a punishment. I do hope she will learn her lesson, for I see great potential in her. Lunord needs more servants like her." Source unknown Werewolves were stunned: they could usually smell humans (especially since many of them rarely washed themselves). Assassins didn't smell like anything and the weres had to basically march over the stealthy zealots. But before they could act...  King Lich V opened with the first strike, unleashing a death bolt! Assassins were scattered and wounded, but still in the fight, all thanks to their legendary training and endurance.  Meanwhile, Bearling was in the process of becoming the eastern most city in King Lich V's realm. Whatever defenders remained after torrents of somewhat crooked, a little blunt goblin arrows were over run once Snoop-Jims and his posse clambered over the walls. Quickly all the resistance was gone under a torrent of greyish bodies and audacious gold jewelry.  After looting the last rebelous person that had the gall to think he could live free of Wizard overlords, Khargem set out to the west, where lay a problem ideally suited to his skills. Flying serpents. While they were dangerous to those who couldn't shoot or, in great numbers, to certain wooden flagships named after certain water fowl, the serpents were no match to the power of a dedicated bowman. And Khargem was nothing if not a dedicated bowman. Soon, the sea started washing up myriads of flying serpent corpses, all pin-cushioned with arrows.   And even though more and more of the critters rose from their horrible nests, their fire breath was wasted on the heroic goblin who would soon knock them down from the air with well placed arrows!  Soon the beast were vanquished and their lair was scattered to the winds, their nests – broken, their eggs – scrambled and eaten with some roast cockroach.  At the same, the throat of the last Assassin found its way into a werewolve's jaws and all of the offending servants of Lunor were vanquished. “...goood...youuu have proven... proven to bee a fffaithful... ssservant. Youuu... haaave my blessings...a bit of my power...” “And this sack of gold really doesn't hurt” murmured King Lich V as Helia's presence retreated and he felt a phantom need to shake sand out of his ear.  Back where the corpses of the Assassins laid, Emerah had just received enough experience healing blunt trauma, poisoning and burns (remember the elemental!), that she had a writen a treatise on healing such wounds... in werewolves. For that she has been nominated to receive an award from the Wulfen Academy For Study of Body Humours and Phrenology, marking her as a Star of Medicine. To be fair, she didn't have much competition: goblins mostly ignored wounds (and no hostile organizms wanted to live in them anyways), gnomes would drink their troubles away, werewolves regenerated while Elves treated wounds via a process that could generously be called “post modern trigonometry”, whatever that meant.  Meanwhile, the imps were pushing deeper into the territory of the Elven realm until they came upon a discovery: live Dremer troops! They must have guarded a dremer gate that eventually exploded and now were left with nothing else to do.  However, this upset Amberon somewhat (probably because of the shame that someone saw the signs of his military weakness than the actual incursion) and an arrow flew through one of the windows in King's tower. After it was dislodged from a goblin, a scroll was discovered, stating that Amberon was canceling the alliance between the two kingdoms.  However, there was no time (or actual willingness) to mope about it Gold of the Lich finally completed the gold mine it was established to build. Many goblins worked and perished in the dreadful conditions under the mountain, suffocating, drowining in noxious alchemical purification concoctions, dieing in cave-ins... Fortunately, nobody seemed to care about it.  Back in the elven lands, the combined fire of the Galarcarn garrison and a two companies of archers finally managed to down the alien beasts.  And werewolves tore one of the ogres to pieces. Unfortunately, something really, really bad happened... 
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Feb 4, 2014 17:15
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Torrannor posted:Oooh, the plot thickens. Also, justice for the Golddale Duck! Rajas of India are incompatible? I'm a bit sad that Randomerica is incompatible with CKII save imports, but it's not like I have those. but yes, go Paradox!
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Feb 4, 2014 18:23
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Tithin Melias posted:That one actually started off with a lot and then just lost steam, I'm not sure why. I know I've got about a page or two to catch up on there too. Thank you and the other guys! I have a few screenshots left over, but I don't know if they're enough for a "full update". And my computer is finally crapping out. Still, I'll try to cobble an update tomorrow (Thread locking dodging) and maybe finally send out my craptop for maintenance. So, next month would probably see a new patch of screens. And hey, I have to finish this before Warlock 2 comes out and becomes LP legal. Maybe I'll even be a good player by then... probably not.
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Mar 3, 2014 12:19
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Sorry, lads, can't say when the next one would be - hopefully, I'll have my laptop fixed by then (only need to translate the instructions how to submit it!). I know that once-a-month updates are suboptimal, but that's just how I (sadly and slowly) roll. Enjoy! Chapter 6: Anchored To The End of the World  King Lich V was deeply troubled. The Dremer threatened to destroy the world, killing him in the process. And avoiding death was one of the major, if not THE motivation to become a lich in the first place. The truth of the matter was that King Lich V had to destroy all Dremer forever, untold goblin casualties be damned. He was in the middle of such musings when a polite cough interrupted his train of thought (how does one cross goblins and fireballs, anyways?). „Lucius? How did you get up my floating tower top?“ „I jumped. Being a werewolf has other perks than just being attractive to the ladies, m‘lord. My liege, your presents is requested downstairs. We have a visitor“. „A visitor“ was short selling in. In the throne room stood a pile of writhing pumpkin vines, with few intact pumpkin heads and a mostly overgrown goblin up top. Another one was gnawing on a wine while two werewolf guards tried to pry him off, saying something action unbefitting to a palace guard. „Hill o'Winn, I presume“ said King Lich, placing his cloth covered bone sternum on the throne (or „sitting down“, to use layman terms). „What happened to this subject of mine“ The goblin‘s mouth moved a voice came out, chilling everyone present to the bone (which was basically all that King had) „He‘s very faithful. And clumsy. Once we set out for the trip to the capital, he tripped on a rock. And just kept tumbling down, into rocks and whatnot, sometimes even at incline. It‘s a mystery, one that I have never encountered in all the countless eons of my life, but I did what I could to heal him. At one point, it became apparent that this“ goblin‘s hands gestured at the mass of vines „was the only way to bring him here alive“. „So, what made you come here in the first place“ „The Anchors, of course. You need a way to defeat the Dremer, do you not?“ „And do you have a suggestion how to do that?“ „Simple. Well, not really“ the goblin‘s smile, even with vines and baleful eldritch energies doing the best they can to make it look like on, was still very reminiscent of a puckered rear end in a top hat „You have to destroy a number of these Anchors. Then you‘ll be able to correct certain key stones and, by their magical vibrations, determine where there Dremers come from and send a force there“. As the envoy left, the King motioned the werewolf guards to let go of the goblin. The replacement wouldn‘t be hard to find anyways.   And so, while the great ruler pondered the destruction of the Anchors (Goblin catapults?), life continued on in the south east end of the continent. Khargem finally found the ogre hut and looted it, taking anything of value he could find, half-heartedly making GBS threads in the pillow (as a hero, he felt such actions, customary as they be, were beneath him) and the whole place ablaze. The Bow of Ash quietly hummed and waited for new victims, because magical weapons seemed to be single minded like that. The smoke of the burning hut slowly rose over the mountain, but the now-homeless ogres didn‘t see. They had other things in mind, like werewolves. Unlike most smaller things that they met, the weres dodged quite a lot of their hits, and even the ones they bashed didn‘t stay flat for long, which was a grave insult to what ogres perceived to be immutable laws of the world: ogre meet thing, ogre smash, thing remain flat. The wolves, however, were having a great time, dancing around the gargantuan creatures, slipping a claw here, a bite there. „Say, Hindrich, this is quite the sport! This is also my most favorite kind of buffet – it‘s so fresh, it‘s moving!“ „I know what you Beowuf. I imagine we could have quite a feast if they had the power to regrow flesh like we do!“ „Ogres? Regrowing flesh? Preposterous! What other fancy powers could they have? Burning up on death?“ „Or maybe very specific – oh, had to dodge one here – spots on their back that we would need to kill them?“ „Hah, surely you jest! That would make as much sense as them eating humans for fun“ „Beowuf, your endless mirth is bad for my shape! I almost got squished there!“ „Aye, but Heimlich did!“ „Guffaw!“  Up in the north, scryings, divinations and would be settlers shouting „Isn‘t that pillar of blood rising to the sky“ indicated, that the location of the first Dremer anchor had been uncovered. Unfortunately, that didn‘t give much information besides „remote“, „ugly“ and „taking place of a future city“. Some recon in force was in order.  And nothing is as expendable and easy to transport as summonable imps. Locking onto the emissions of a group of wild donkeys, King Lich V opened a group of micro rifts that discharged a number of imps. Their eyes were put to good use and the King got the information he wanted.  "The Evil Sorcerers Society (not to be confused with the Order of Black Mages) was founded soon after the creation of the Great Council to: Maintain the balance of forces, and create evil in an effort to reduce entropy." (From "The Overall Description of Everything" by Master Alfus Bumblegate) „What is the matter with these fools?“ King Lich threw his hands up in confusion „Evil? Entropy? What does evil have to do with anything?“ „Sire, they might be potent mages, but they are pretty stupid“ suggested Melchior „Ancient scrolls said that among the wizards there was a group that liked to brood, listen to grim minstrel songs, write dreadful poetry and claim that none of the conclaves invited them because „they couldn‘t understand their deep pain“. In the end, they declared that their evil was done for the good of the world and that they are the unsung heroes of Ardania“ „Any truth to that claim?“ „None whatsoever, m‘lord“. [img]]http://lpix.org/1616421/2014-01-10_00039.jpg[/img] Angst ridden or not, they were powerful and destroyed the imps easily. Luckily, nobody ever worried about imps dying, so that wasn‘t a big loss. Mana never stopped flowing, even if it meant that goblin children born near mana collectors were born with severe, painful deformities.  Yet there were other citizens than the highly expendable goblins. Humans, for one thing, showed to have some more uses that producing martyrs that would never be forgotten by the Navy of the Lich Kingdom. A Halberdier encampment near the newly liberated (from the shackles of free will and voter franchise) Bearling was transformed into a war university. The need for such institution was apparent after the Halberdiers sent a letter to the king detailing the myriad shortcomings of the goblin forces (small surprise, they were trained by goblins). The letter was so long, they had to flay five sheep to write and it took flock of pigeons to carry it. The King gave his approval to build the university and so it was established. Veteran halberdiers tough classes on slicing, piercing, crushing, collecting payment, looting, pillaging, whenching (the old king was very much against raping), looking good in a cuirasse, looking down on regular spearmen and beard grooming. Books upon books and treatises about killing people (and goblins) were written. Countless gallons of bear were drunk by the freshhalberdiers. A score of sorority girls had been bedded, oblivious to the fact that university doesn‘t really offer classes to women, and so setting the tone of knowing very little about your alma matter to countless sororities that would later spring up in Ardania. The early result of it all was a huge manual called „Stick it with the pointy end: Masters of War Upon the Finer Points Of Disembowelment, Decapitation and Maiming“, usually just called „Masters of War“.  Another, much different, but no less bloodthirsty institution sprang up in in the frozen wastes to the north. A bank was opened in Lichship Down and was run by the fattest of gnomes and grew rich on fourth hand mortgages on goblin housing (goblins understood the value of money only very dimly). The bank was created by the fishing magnate Angus Jaw, master metal trinket peddler Hieronymus Rust and mine owner Sheimus Lime. While the plaque in front of the immense building proclaimed „Jaw, Rust, Lime: Merchants and Bankers“, most goblins were really bad at pronunciation and called the place „Jawruslame“. This was not the only injustice that they brought on the poor goblins: soon, the clerks of the bank were known by their black clothing (it was white before they started doing rounds in dirty goblin settlements), hooked noses (goblins are stupid, violent creatures, prone to both attacking strangers and throwing random things and offspring through windows, breaking few noses) that grew meaty (from all the pollutants), curled hair in the front (the stank inside goblin huts could do that to anyone, that‘s why werewolves never visited poor neighborhoods) and bald spots that they tried to cover by close fitting hats (harder for goblins to steal and use as a night pot). Yet they persisted, dreaming of one day themselves becoming the masters of „Jawruslame“.  Imps, of course, never cared for such things. After repairing a beached ship, they left the elven realm to explore the seas, where they spotted a volcanic land that showed traces of Dremer infestation.  Snoop Jim-s was, unfortunately, a lot closer to the damned invaders. A magical attack by the evil sorcerers left quite a few of his number dead. „Yo, yo jive turkeys think you can mess wid me? I show ya who ya fukkin wid!“ howled the rrat prince while holding the lifeless paw of a favored hoodrrat.  Yet while death reigned in the north, life sprang forth in the south. A new settlement was built in the plain between an elven village (full of elven women) and minotaur caves (full of minotaur). An uneasy peace settled as the King promised to keep the elven women safe from possible depredations of minotaurs and the minotaurs safe from roaming bands of elven feminists. „M‘lord, might I inquire why did you elect to call it Dremo?“ asked Melchior. „Why, to mark our inevitable victory against the alien invaders!“  And Dremo‘s position was relatively safe at the time. The ogres had been whittled down to such level where King Lich saw it fit to relocate the werewolves to the anchor and left goblin archers to mop up. The last ogre tried to run into elven territory and maybe star a life of a revolutionary, much like his brothers before him.  Meanwhile, the Imps finally discovered the lands of Sol de Torvega. „Nice to finally see architecture that doesn‘t make my head hurt“ remarked the King.  Speaking about peoples with non-Euclidean outhouses... another arrow flew into the great hall in the capital and pierced another goblin. On it was the declaration that Amberon, the Elven king, had broken their Non-Aggression pact. Lucius had a suggestion as to why. „You see, m‘lord, having failed to court them themselves, elves are very angry when someone comes to friendly terms with elven women“.  Luckily, most other rules were far more reasonable!
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Mar 4, 2014 17:31
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Veloxyll posted:You are now able to pre-order Warlock 2: The Exiled and gain instant access to the game! Well, there you have it. Once my Laptop gets back (@end of April, graphic card replacements are rarely ever hasty), I'll have to finish this LP before July, when Warlock 2 will become LP legal. A little easier to do since I'm going to have monetary incentive to say at home more. I'll also have to play Warlock 2 at the same time to be ready when time comes! Until then, let's hope nobody locks this thread  . As for my faithful readers, you can have a look at my aborted Medieval II LP on this other site (I also do game reviews there when, you know, have a game capable PC) that I used to do before getting an SA account. People have referred to it as "not bad" and "it's certainly not syphilis".
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Mar 30, 2014 15:27
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Neruz posted:To go on a brief Warlock 2 tangent; wow. They've certainly decided to increase the scale of the game and the two new 'races' you can play as are certainly interesting although I'm not 100% sure about what I can only call 'rocket powered jetpack infantry with guns' that the 'Dwarf' Svirfs or whatever the hell they're called can deploy. I was not expecting dudes in hovercraft with magical firearms, not at all. Well, the elves did have flying ships that looked like they're made of stone, so anything's possible. I just hope people will vote me to play a race wi thout obvious butt monkeys like goblins. And after Jetpack Dorfs, I think I know what they'll choose. Also, perchance you could direct me to a place where I could read up on the new races? I only saw the Dorfs in that 40 minute Twitch video.
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Mar 30, 2014 16:23
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Well, one thing I can promise you, lads (and probably some very lost lass), is that I'm gonna tackle the campaign, so that's not going to be up for vote. But since you can use any mage/race for that, that's gonna be for grabs. Unless I manage to convince that heavy dorf (plane)gatecrashers is a conceptually awesome idea. Here you are, a goblin in a goblin village near a stone-y, swirle-y structure, eating offal (a meal and a cultural activity) when there's a FLASH. Stunty, armored, bearded guys start pouring out of the structure, gunning down everyone in sight. Finally, with the village ablaze and all the goblins thoroughly shot, a fancy looking dwarf poses with one foot on a goblins head, takes off his helmet, wipes the sweat of his brow and, lifting a crystal to his lips, says "Gate secure. I need a drink" Humbug Scoolbus posted:I love it when my goblin spearmen gank Greater Fire Elementals. I can just imagine the elementals reaction..."What the gently caress!?! Those are goddamned goblins!" That must have taken wave upon wave of goblins! Also, as I understand elemental lore, his thoughts were mostly "lava lava lava, fire, magma..."
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Mar 31, 2014 06:12
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Well, hopefully, I'll get my laptop back in the near future, and then I'll coax Warlock 2 out of my handlers (and Wargame, but that's not important for ya'll). By the time the three-month quarantine period passes, the game will probably be already patched enough. Hooray!
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Apr 13, 2014 15:36
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 I HAVE AWOKEN Yeah, this is Warlock 2, and it runs pretty sweet. Give me a few days and we'll have a regular Warlock update Give me three months and some chucklefucks will vote for a Warlock 2 LP where I'm playing monsters again. Seriously, I was hoping that they would mess around with existing units. So far, monster and human stuff looks all the same. Hopefully we'll get to play as Plane people or dorfs.
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Apr 17, 2014 09:20
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Don't know how steampunk the dwarves are yet, but I beat somewhat steampunky. Just like in all non-LOTR (and non Witcher) media, I guess. Planespeople are mostly notable for adding "of Planes" to end of unit names, making the whole faction sound like a 14 year-old's fanfiction. And technically, those aren't floating islands, they're what's left of the worlds that Dremmer omned and nomed. So, not exactly Erador.
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Apr 17, 2014 11:51
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Well, keep up all of this excitement till July comes, then get everyone to vote for Svarths. Been playing Planestriders (review purposes) and they're kind of meh. Basically rolling around with heroes, summonables and such. Also, the new Kuatl guy is hilarious. Used to be that he demand for a spell and shitload of money,I would refuse, then he'd start war, send a few goblins through the gate, I'd crush them with my Warriors (sentient skeletons?), then a lot of turns of nothing would pass and he would offer peace along with a spell and some mana. Lately, he just skips "send goblins" part. But yeah, I'll try to do an update for next week!
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Apr 18, 2014 08:18
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 That's the reason why I'm so late with the update, and nothing else. Not Wargame, not Battlefield, not painting 40K miniatures and not the lack of ability to concentrate on one task. Nope. Really not looking forward to doing the Exiled campaign again. Maybe they'll patch the poo poo out of it in three months Chapter 7: Anchor Crisis  New in Ardania! A cog full of imps passes a cog full of rats. Seamen everywhere baffled, claim that it ‘sthe result of taking women on board.  Yet even worse things were happening up north. An impetuous regiment of young werewolves charged in too far into the Dremer anchor containment area. Not even their fabled regeneration helped against the dread powers of the alien structure and fell sorcery of traitor mages.  The more experienced (wolf) men mourned the passing of their youthful peers. Yet among the many howls of sorrow one voice spoke up. A humble serjeant offered an idea: while they were stationed on the perimeter, the werewolves should try to harness their heightened agility to avoid the blow of the enemy, rather than taking them and hoping that their werewolf bodies will handle the rest. To that end, many a frozen day was spent dodging blows, running zigzag among the trees and generally learning to appear in an another position once their target loses sight of them.  King Lich V felt a chill go down his spine, which was strange, since undead never felt thing like that (or felt that much at all). After a brief moment, a ghost materialized in a shower of red sparks. Tall and gangly, it looked strange with this un-un-natural coloration and a skull-like head. “Hark, intruder! Who are you and what are you doing in my tower?” “M’lord Lich, I’m Arthfael the Forgotten. Ages ago, I was a great wizard and scholar!” “I don’t think I remember you – and I have been around for ages, you know!” “Hence my moniker. Nobody remembers me anymore… So sad. Anyway, I came to offer you my services at war. I don’t think you’d mind having an experienced ghost at your beck and call. Of course, they come at price”. “Name it, wraith” King Lich spat out impatiently. “Seven hundred gold pieces” “Seven hundred? For that much money, I could drown the Dremer anchor in goblin corpses! Why would a ghost need money anyways?” Ah, you see, I have ambitions. In this day and age, universities don’t really accept women nor provide lodgings for their students. I intend to change that. I would start a university of my own name, probably even hire some of your wayward alchemists. And I would erect bunkhouses for the students, one for boy and one for girls. Three per room they’d live, each having a table and a bed. Why, I’d even hire gnomes to provide hot communal baths….” “So, this is all about vanity and long lost ambitions?” “No, no, no. Well, partially. Mostly it’s about watching nubile maids soap their breasts in a hot tub, fight each other in pajamas and with straw pillows, as well as shyly discovering the first touch of feminine gentleness” King Lich slowly raised his boney hand to reattach the side of his jawbone that fell loose in astonishment. The sound of it sliding in place sounded like “What?” “You see, m’lord, other ghosts moan about their pain and rattle chains. I have been a ghost far too long to that. Actually, I find it cliché. I, I like to haunt lakesides and watch maids go do their washing or taking baths. Unfortunately, hard work in villages is really bad for their slender physiques. And I must flit around many villages to get my fill in a day. So ineffective. My way would be a lot more elegant: a lot of young girls in one place, all them intelligent enough not to spoil my haunting with stupid conversation, all of them spared the indignity of physical work”. “This is the most maddening idea I’ve heard in this post, and I had goblins poisoned with mushrooms speak about casting votes to choose their leader. On the other hand, I could probably use your talents” “Excellent. I’ll wait for a few days till scrounge up the gold. Goblin maids are so homely they should stay home!”  Lucius pried open the mouth of the goblin head that flew in through the window and unrolled a damp scroll. “Ash-Haar the Wisest, leader of all monsterdom demands that you pay a sum of mana and as well as hand over a spell. These will be used to protect Ardania and the monster nation from Dremer threat. Refusing would mean that you are on the side of the alien interlopers and, thus, war” “To hell with this. Pay him, Lucius, I really don’t have the strength to fight on two fronts. Do I need to be concerned with the insult over the goblin head?” “No, sire, it’s accepted that dead goblins, no matter who they belong to, don’t warrant an insult”  Khargem didn’t like this one bit. Soul vision blurred when he targeted the Dremer anchor. The bow wobbled when it loosed and the twang of string was wet somehow. The arrow flew ill and eventually landed stubbing on the of the patrolling evil mages in the toe. The bow hissed.   “My liege, I’d claim, with all my academic background, that at this point, it would behoove to call Ash-Haar the Crazier-Than-a-Goblin-Shithouse-Rat.  The retaliation of the mages was fierce. Pooling their foul energies into a huge blob of evil, they hurled it at Khargem. Flesh boiled off Khargem’s skeleton, then his bones were pulverized, and the dust scattered in the wind. Only the bow remained.  Yet there was no time for mourning. Sensing another Dremer gate through his magical senses, King Lich send word to the Anchor isolation troops. They had to abandon their posts and fall back to destroy the gate and any Dremer that followed.  Sir Flangorn’s Touch of Cold was usually agreed to be a fairly simple enchantment, usually cast of weapon, that made the touch of the now magical item, to be freezing cold and cause instant frostbite. It a lot less clear, however, how and why it was made. The most reputable sources suggested that the spell channeled Flangorn’s feelings towards his red-headed son, who decided to become a bard and married a catamite.  Another goblin head flew in through the window. “That’s it, I’m ordering those barred. Avgustus, could you pick it up?” “M’lord. This comes from Amberon. Says something about the Truth – that’s with a capital T – Dremer and so forth. The point is, he wants mana and a spell”. “Or he attacks?” “Or he attacks, yes.” “Fine, give it to him. But if he does that again, I’ll have werewolves tearing elven heads off in a minute.” “A wise decision, my lord”.    Killing Dremer was never as easy as just ripping the brutes apart. Some magic had to be expended to clean the tainted land that harmed the friendly troops and bolstered the beasts. However, once that was done, and sufficiently trained forces were, killing Dremer was no harder than taking down ogres.  The invaders were still repulsive and all sorts of wrong. And nobody felt that wrongness as well as a person devoted to Agrella. Emerah detestation with foul creatures was almost palpable and tinged the air green. Some even claimed that this righteous wrath even warded away deathly spells employed by sorcerers under Dremer command…  “M’lord, are you sure it’s a good name?” “Lucius, it’s a town filled with gnomes and goblins. The only significant thing about it are the ruins and the mana springs, both of which they’re incapable of using. So yes, Ruin Springs is a well enough name for it!”   “Melchior, I don’t understand this at all. He threatens me, breaks alliances, burns down perfectly good cities… What’s wrong with that damned goblin?” “Maybe he tried to eat Dremer, m’lord? Goblins are notorious for trying to eat something. That’s how they become shamans, really: one must eat something so foul and inedible that they start communicating with the gods” “I’m starting to miss the days when all of my subjects were skeletons”.  Back in the south-west, werewolves prepared and launched the last attack against the Dremer gate. No tool made by mortal hand rends Dremer as well as a werewolf claw does and so the gate was taken down in an orgy of blood and gore and ichor. Luckily enough, living amongst goblins made the werewolves mostly immune to such foul contagion.  “It is most unfortunate that we couldn't place the new city closer to the holy grounds, m’lord” “Bah. It’s all my own fault, Melchior” “Your own what?” “My own fault. You might not be used to kings admitting mistakes, but there’s no way around it. I might have mastered life and death, but planning cities is still beyond my grasp. One day… One day!” “Well, sir, this will probably help us get the dwarves, and they have some sturdy, if stunty, fellows to offer. I hear that they actually wash themselves, too!” “The more I hear about them, the more I like them, Melchior.“  Gentleman’s Coat was spell borne out of greediness. One ancient mage liked to ask noble ladies and young maids out for a walk. Unfortunatelly, he was somewhat niggardly in that he never lent them a coat if it got cold or started to rain. And since he was a mage, creating a spell that would get around this issue seemed to be a good idea. Small surprise that he died alone and unloved.  “So tell, me Lucius, why are we not at war?” “Well, Master Avgustus, like they say, cooler heads prevailed. And nobody has a colder head than a lich”  King Lich was touring the new shipyard in Golddale. “So you built all this why?” “Vengeance, m’lord” answered Clubfoot John, the stocky harbormaster of Golddale “ Lotta good folks died on the duck. A lot folks missing luvd ones. Some say that ol captain Duckwinson comes to them in da dreams. Shakes his fist at the sky, he does, shouting ‘Serpentssss’. All that hissing’s no good for sleep. And they say Bile’s wraith has been seen in the inn. Even caused a fight, it did, claimed he slept with th’ inkeeper’s wife” “Did he actually do it?” “Well, yes, he did, but it’s still unkind to say so”. The king gave the shipyard another glance. “So, vengeance?” “Aye, m’lord. A much bigger ship… maybe a few. We saw a few corpses wash up. Elves, sir. Looked like they were gnawed by th’ serpents. Those are ripe to be a problem. Not much shipping after the king disappeared!”  Used to be that halberdiers would guard the Kings castle in his re-conquest of Ardania. Heroes went on their well-paid quests, tax collectors would collect money and halberdiers would patrol around, fighting back the attacks of giants rats and what not. After the disappearance of the King, they had no duties, but the suit of armor and the halberd was still there. So, to spite the Warrios’ guild, they set up the Halberdiers’ Guild. The prices were a little steep, but the quality of the troops was commendable. The local waif also liked their beards better.  Another new institution that drew the ire of the menfolk and was a source of joy for the women was the Minotaur Palace in Dreno. Here, instead of chasing would-be troops around a labyrinth, minotaurs trained all day to sell their service to the highest bidder, preferably a grand mage. The Palace was maintained, in part, by the money that noble ladies and idle merchantmen wives paid to look and the minotaurs sweat and flex in training.  Money exchanged undead hands and, almost faster than in a heartbeat, Artfael’s Academy of Magical Arts and Lucius Rendclaw School of Philosophy opened its door. “You managed to talk one of my advisors into helping you, ghost?” “Well, Lucius showed interest in an academic subject near and dear to my own immaterial heart…” “Wait, don’t tell me. It’s comely young maids, isn’t it?” “How did you know?” “Well, when I first met him, he had just eaten a gnome drunkard. And he talks when he drinks”.  “Never the less, my lich lord, this is a reputable place of magic sciences. We won’t be giving away diplomas to just anyone!” “So that’s why you’re tryng to fleece Emerah for a hundred gold pieces?” “Well, she wants us to teach her over a distance. Balderdash! Especially with the prices of ink and imps these days. She can pay!”  The bridge loomed over a chasm, huge and imposing. “So you say the trolls built it themselves?” “Yes. All from the stones of city walls. They like destroying fortifications, m’lord”. “Excellent”.
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Apr 25, 2014 19:19
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victrix posted:They're like a hair off of being amazing games too, but I think the MoM curse will continue for all eternity No thank you, I had enough Majesty 2 when I played Majesty 2. It was kind of frustrating, especially with ballooning quest prices. I would be interested in doing Fallen Enchantress, just to see if they managed to make it into game.
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Apr 26, 2014 18:47
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victrix posted:Stay away from FE Yeah, but, say, doing an Eador LP would be suicide. A very slow, boring suicide. I mean, the game would be good by itself, but the campaign structure kills it. But Fallen Echantress is a mystery. I mean, they had such lofty promises when they made Elemental and released a barely playable wreck. For no reason, really, it's not like there's much competition in 4X fantasy. And they weren't all... Kerberos about it afterwards. The director/lead/boss even released a statement that it was his own fault, that he like the game too much and thought that it was done, when it was pretty obvious that it wasn't.
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Apr 26, 2014 19:27
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