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Good stuff!

Has that massive battle finally finished or is it still ongoing?

Quote from: Maloy on February 17, 2024, 01:33:49 pm

I was actually thinking on that a while ago, and I've come up with two draft scenarios so far. They're both very rough outlines and I'm open to criticism or fresh ideas on them, particularly from others who want to contribute heroes/villains to the final battle:

Spoiler: The Necromancer’s Return (click to show/hide)

Through some shenanigans involving her skull, a botched soul-binding experiment, and all the accumulated necromantic power of the Museum’s exhibits (all those corpses in one place work wonders) Oddom Girdergrove returns. Not the current, possibly-resurrected one – the original one, who waged a worldwide war of annihilation on the living and succeeded in other branches of the multiversal tree.

General plot events:

• Supercharged as a side-effect of her resurrection, Oddom promptly decides it’s time for Great War 2: Apocalypse Boogaloo and starts running around Orid Xem, resurrecting armies of corpses and intelligent undead in preparation for her attack. Goblin pits are found empty and their corpse-chambers picked clean, while long-abandoned battlefields become disturbed as dead soldiers are called back from their rest.
• The Abyssal Cult strikes a bargain with Oddom as she begins to gather power: her knowledge and expertise of necromancy as one of the first and finest of their kind, in exchange for command of their armies of thralls and Experiments. Oddom retakes her tower in the west of the Realm to serve as a rallying point for their armies, while the Abyssal Cult seizes control of Silverthrone and turns it into a death factory, producing new thralls and Experiments from the mortal populace.
• • Assuming death by old age leaves behind a body, the Gloryages and their friends  may get resurrected during all this; as intelligent undead if they’re lucky, as mindless drones if they’re not, and as intelligent undead enslaved to Oddom by spells if they’re *really* unlucky.
• • One POV character during this could be a previous or new human adventurer who’s returned to the Realm to lead a guerrilla resistance movement against the Cult, or to try and evacuate the survivors of the Blight and Cult to safer lands in the north.
• The Intelligent Undead Howling Freaks created by Maloy start running amok somewhere in the middle of all this, kidnapping travellers, trying to convert new spouses, and generally causing problems for the Confederacy.
• An army of angry ghosts rise up from the dead in Swordgleamed, ranging from victims of the Howling Freak nest there to the original bandit inhabitants. Large amounts of Fun result for anyone nearby as the spectral army decides to do some avengeance on anyone silly enough to get in their way.
• The Army of the Living reforms as the crisis really starts to brew, with the Realm of Silver guerilla movements, Dwarven/Elven forces, and the other human Kingdoms all uniting in an effort to stop Orid Xem’s oldest threat. Depending on how things are and whether they come under attack, the Goblin Hordes may join in with them or hang back and circle like vultures, waiting for the two powers to cripple each other before moving in to feast on the remains. (Maloy's angels may or may not also join in here.)

This eventually culminates in the big final battle with the undead – the Reborn Army of the Living versus the Undead Legion. While the regular mooks take each other down, the adventurers fight through Oddom’s elite forces (intelligent undead, Experiments, and a few former protagonists/evil NPCs) to confront the necromancer herself and end this once and for all. (Or they fail horribly, Oddom and her praetorians wipe them out, and Orid Xem is scoured of all life but the dead. Y'know, really go for the cheerful ending.)

Pros:

• Nicely dovetails with how Oddom and the Great War shaped the pre-Adventurer Orid Xem; we already know she could’ve succeeded in other worlds running on the same seed, so we could plunder a couple of those timelines for ideas as well.
• Intelligent undead loyal to Oddom and given equipment would be fairly strong, particularly if she learns more than the original necromancer secrets. Paralyzing, mist-raising skeletal berserkers clad in steel with a violent hatred of the living, anyone?

Cons:

• Since a lot of high-tier adventurers are some variant of undead or necromancer, the main intended threat of this scenario (undead swarms locked at No Quarter) is going to run into issues when engaged. Also no clue how we’d get Necromancer Experiments/Intelligent Undead to be loyal to Oddom in gameplay, shy of mass chargenning them in one party then abusing the "kill-resurrect-talk them down" trick.
• A proper undead army would require a good deal of preparation, both on resurrecting enough undead, getting them equipped, and making them loyal to Oddom. We can probably get around some of this with DFHack's tricks (create-item and force-equip in particular) but it'll still take some time.
• In fairness, I think the Abyssal Cult is getting a bit stale as an antagonist after several consecutive turns (on my part, admittedly) with them more or less in the centre role. Still got to write those turns up (me and my procrastination :<), but I think it still stands as a point.

Spoiler: The Circus Comes to Town (click to show/hide)

All Hell breaks loose. Literally. With the abandonment or destruction of dwarven forts that breached the adamantine layer in both the Old Kingdoms and the newer lands, there’s nothing to stop the clowns from getting out. Huge numbers of demons swarm through the open holes in the adamantine and out through the abandoned forts, led by a series of intelligent demonic warlords bent on conquering the surface world. Thanks to some resurrection/body-jacking shenanigans, our old friends Egu, Pis, and Dreamypuzzled might even among them - albeit in different forms than usual, either as outright demons or 'mortal' adventurers.

General plot events:

• The Realm of Silver degenerates into a free-for-all between the demon forces, the Abyssal Cult and their ghoul/Experiment armies, the surviving mortal populace, and a couple “fuck everything” factions. Old human adventurers such as Urus and his friends return to action (and a vastly changed world) to try holding the line, or go on the offensive and try to decapitate both threats by slaying the local Demonic Warlord *and* the Abyssal Cult’s ruling council.
• The Old Kingdoms of the Dwarves are essentially broken into a bunch of demon-ruled fiefdoms, while far-flung outposts like Deepvaulted or The Abyssal Sanctuary become open hell-gates through which fresh demons swarm and corruption blights the land. Small teams or individual adventurers could be sent here to close the gates and thereby cut off the demons, or try to take down the local rulers. Somewhere out in the foothills, a certain dwarven skeleton responsible for the birch pedestal with a tonne of demon corpses on it claws its way out of the depths and begins stalking toward one such fortress, gripping a pair of adamantine axes in its hands.
• The Goblin Hordes might go two ways; most will probably ally themselves with the demons due to being evil and suchlike, while a plurality could potentially realise (in their own way) that the demons winning means nobody else wins, including themselves. This leads to some – mostly individual adventurers and breakaway factions – joining the good guys and fighting against them. The remainder of the goblins comprise the rank-and-file fodder of the demon armies, while the demons serve as elite troops, field commanders, and generals.
• • On a related note, the Dark Fortresses would make excellent locations for final battles with the region’s "boss" character.
• During all of this, various Adventurers are running around the world, settling old scores or starting up new ones. Lonelythrall gets busy making boots out of demon asses when they come to the Museum’s gates, Avolition tries to finish the goblin population off once and for all, Dreamypuzzled II gets his long-delayed clash with Lonelythrall, Egu II kills off the Athama-Irthu-Grom trio who killed him (because screw them and I shouldn't have rushed their writeup), Maloy's and the Ear's schemes reach fruition and add to the Fun, etc.

Eventually all of this culminates in the “proper” final battle – the remaining demonic warlords versus the Adventurers of the Museum. Via some contrivance of fate, they all end up squaring off in a relatively open area of land - perhaps near the Museum, or somewhere out in the countryside - with all the Adventurers gathered in one party and the warlords either spawned on-site or brought over there beforehand as another party. Whoever has control either tactical modes all the way through the final battle, or switches to a third party via body-swap then sits back and records the resulting firework display.

Pros:

• Easy way of ensuring a massive “final battle” - just get a huge party of adventurers together from the unretire menu, then use DFHack to spawn a horde of demons through the spawn-unit script and let them have it out with each other.
  
  
• High-skill and gear-equipped (via DFHack’s force-equip) Demons are going to be one hell of a menace for most adventurers, fitting the whole “Final battle against evil” feeling.
• Plotwise it’s an easy way to explain all the adventurers/factions working together; also allows for it to be stretched out over several turns if people want to play it in successive parts.
  
• What better way to end a Museum game than everything going to hell?

Cons:

• Demon spawning may be an issue since their raws are in the world file and I don’t know whether DFHack plays ball with those.
• Demon spawning will need to be handled carefully; if the demon has some kind of ability like fire, webs, or dust they can one-shot adventurers without a hard counter, which isn't exactly great gameplay or storywise. (In turn most of the "hard counters" would make the fight too easy, such as repeated paralysis spellcasting followed by shots to the downed demons' heads.)
• Likely to require a bit of prep time unless we want to delegate spawning duties or do it “on the fly,” especially with the risk of demons despawning/wandering off to other sites.