Bay 12 Games Forum

:"You mind if we speak in private for a few minutes? I mean, it's an airship, so I guess as close to private as it can get, but I have something I want to talk about that... well, it sounds like you might understand it the best."

We could use them to improve our initiates, but not to replace them, which strikes me as probably the smarter action - we aren't exactly marching out with wide ranks of initiates so there's no fantastic reason to create a distinct training regimen design or training revision in order to just make better-trained initiates instead of make some form of new elite caster (which likely wouldn't benefit from the Avians if we want to make any sort of actual magical advancements, which, y'know, probably we do).

We have also just made multiple army-wide improvements and probably would benefit much more from turning to elite work or better magic work. Doubling down on what we just did as our area of main focus doesn't seem to make much sense.

Edit: (MoP has, in any event, confirmed that votes were previously locked before Tric's vote as he had already started writing, so it's a little moot, but I was actually starting to ponder a different train of thought that could have potentially led to me switching, haha.)

Kupros Deployment:
Swamps: (3) Powder Miner, Taricus, Twinwolf
Mountains: (0)

Species Contact:
Earth (Elves): (3) Powder Miner, Taricus, Twinwolf
Earth (Dwarves): (0)
Chaos (Infernal): (0)
Chaos (Undying):(0)

Enclave:
Orc Enclave (Steppe): (1) Powder Miner
Orc Enclave (Desert): (0)

I might be amenable to doing archery work a little later, but I
A: obviously want my own variation on the sound of silence revision, which I feel provides battlefield use for our initiates
B: want the useful firework spell which would incidentally also deal with the side effects of using a silence spell to then generate directional deafening waves on the battlefield (that is to say, the bubble of silence in the meantime)

OH FUCK WE'RE STARTING IN THE UNDERLAIR (AND DEEP SWAMPS FOR THAT MATTER)
I DO ACCORDINGLY HAVE A MILITARY REVISION THAT OCCURS TO ME

Archery Improvement - Close Terrain Preparation

You know, the mountains are on our continent, you Kaynan yokels. So we should have some ability to prepare for the combat down there (which, er, may not actually favor formations of archers firing in volley) by using the traditions of our proud people to anticipate some of the challenges of the Underlair and plan ahead - something that is likely to help in treetop environments in the Deep Swamp, as well, as a matter of fact.

This involves deepening the training of our archers, lengthening their training to the several-month period that we initially avoided and focusing that training primarily in two areas. Firstly, the accuracy of our archers is improved. Obviously, this should involve a general improvement in accuracy (a long training course that didn't do that would be pretty piss-poor) but the shorter-length of our composite bows is taken advantage of to particularly train our archers in how to use direct-fire from their bows in short-range combat, whether in the caverns of the Underlair or the more crowded spaces of the Deep Swamp's canopy. Our archers are also trained to break from formation into small, mobile units when there is not enough room for a formation of archers to operate en masse, and to be able to fire on the move while in these small, mobile units.

The archers are also given the dagger that the spearmen have as a sidearm.

(2) Arcane Fireworks: ConscriptFive, Taricus
(1) Garfunkel's "Orc-Friendly" Incantation: ConscriptFive
(1) Simon's Channeling Reformulation: Powder Miner
(1) Archery Permeation: Taricus
(1) Archery Improvement - Close Terrain Preparation: Powder Miner

Simon's Channeling Reformulation

The projected form of the Sound of Silence has a few critical issues to it. Firstly, its poor containment mean that the location of its effect is not necessarily predictable, which can be a life-or-death issue in places such as dragons' lairs. Secondly, exiting the mage's control means that when it goes, it goes - and once that bubble pops, the mage doesn't have control over what happens next, leading to an unpredictable interval of time before a deafening sphere of sound blasts out.

"Simon", a mage from the Mind District who will have you know that he definitely is no longer working with ANY linguists or orc experts and NEVER will again, has a solution to this. These problems can be removed by removing the projected nature of the spell, instead changing it to an actively channeled one, where the caster is drawing in sound to the central point of their sphere for as long as they are channeling the spell - fixing the location to the caster's position, but allowing for a predictable and potentially very long duration. As a consequence of actively channeling the spell and its manipulation of sound, the caster also has discretion over what happens to that sound (accomplished with hand motions as if one were literally shaping the movement of the sound, which they basically are, to ensure that this isn't a difficult process even for novice mages) - for example, they can distribute it slowly and quietly over a wide area for stealth purposes, or they can keep it contained until they push it all out in a sharp, deafeningly loud directional blast. This functionality is something our own Initiates could use in combat!

C5 brought up a potential tension between Kupros and Twin's island that I think actually works fantastically well with the way I've been thinking around Kupros' internal workings, after some thought.

Plane/Race Choice:
Earth (Dwarves): (0)
Earth (Elves): (0)
Fire (Orcs): (1) Powder Miner
Fire (Dragons): (1) Twinwolf

Avatar Choice:
The Vespoid King: (0)
The Good Mother: (0)
The Council of Nine: (1) Twinwolf
Kupros, the Cynic's Druid: (1) Powder Miner

Island:
The Hive: (0)
The Hearth: (0)
The Land of Plenty: (2) Twinwolf, Powder Miner
The Isle of the Fountain of Life: (0)

Base Location: The Isle of the Fountain of Life
If the traditional "Auran continent" is a land of somewhat stark desolation, then the island created by the god that came to the Aurans is the opposite of everything about that and more - a great hill of pure, unimaginably verdant lushness rising up from the sea. In terms of its shape, the Isle of the Fountain of Life is not just a craggy-looking hill or something, but hill that slopes upwards in a series of concentric circles - sloping upwards up to a flat ring, then sloping upwards again up to another flat ring, etcetera, all the way up to the top of the hill. Along the sides of this hill are large channels, not dug but naturally shaped into the earth, where water bright and sparkling with the very essence of life flows downwards to irrigate the farms and fields of the island - which are full of beautiful, delicious, nutritious crops. Strawberries red as desire, plump apples, golden wheat - the trees on the Isle even grow with ribbons of gold, silver, brass, or platinum spiraling through them, creating uniquely beautiful and most certainly distinctive wood.

For atop the Isle of the Fountain of Life stands the greatest gift of the god of the Aurans to the people of the Auran Empire - of course, the titular Fountain of Life. Bubbling upwards from the peak of the hill and spouting feet upwards before it moves downwards in its path, the water of the Isle of the Fountain of Life, so long as it is allowed to continue flowing from its source (in other words, meaning it isn't free plant potions without additional work), inspires such incredible vibrancy and growth in plant life that it reaches the level of the unnatural. Some even believe that while on the island, men become slightly healthier, move slightly easier - but, well, with a gift as incredible as the Isle, it may simply be that these are rumors created out of a sense of grateful fancy.

And, well, if this single stationary source of agricultural prosperity is something that keeps the Aurans totally and utterly reliant upon the grace of the Auran God... all the better for them, yes?

Avatar: Kupros - The Cynic's Druid

Kupros presents itself essentially as some sort of wandering druid-like figure - a being that straddles the barrier between clear ostentatious divinity and the humble, grounded, mortal-like ways of a folk legend. On one hand, the base form of the god is that of a hollow brown set of robes (and a brown, pointed, rimmed's wizard's hat!), trailing off into long strips of fabric at the ends of the sleeves, which Kupros uses in a prehensile manner to grip objects, such as the gnarled wooden staff clutched in the spiral wrapping of one arm. And on the other hand... this is no plain, ragged set of robes. Ornate filigree threads along every outer surface of the robe - silver, gold, brass, platinum, forming impossibly complicated patterns, or entire tapestries of scenes - patterns and scenes which change every time the viewer looks again at Kupros.

Kupros' presentation is also more than just his robe - it is the constant explosion of greenery and plant life around him at all times, the vines and roots that crawl up his robe if he allows them to when he stays still for too long at once, the flowers that burst forth in his footsteps, the way that tall grass seems to lean towards him in some sort of attempt to glean nourishment from his presence (so he explains). This is visible in the way he fights - sure, he can strike with his staff with unnatural strength, a staff of unnaturally durable wood which he can regrow if it breaks and reshape at will - but he strikes with violent spikes from roots which erupt from the earth, deeply toxic spores which seem to have appeared out of nowhere, or the nourishment of the soldiers around him with incredible fruits, or sometimes, an inexplicable withering of life.

Inside that hollow robe, occasionally visible, is a chaotic, overlapping mass of those same precious metal filigrees on his robe - amorphous and always moving, it seems to never tie itself into knots. This is the closest thing a god like Kupros has to a true "physical" form, the instinctual form he takes when he is not careuflly planning out and executing what it is he will look like, or when his more manicured presentation is torn away. When reduced to this, and this cloud of filigree turns out, it is gold, silver, and brass, and platinum, and scarlet, in incomprehensible shapes, as razor-sharp filigree lashes out at its foes in a way well beyond the shape of any mortal being, until the divine force animating withdraws and it collapses to the ground in a pitiful (if certainly expensive) set of ribbons of material.