Bay 12 Games Forum

Know what, I've looked at these threads for several years but never had the goolies to actually commit to making a list. Let's change that, I think, even if I only end up doing a fractional behemoth.

1. Practice some form of qigong or internal kung fu every day this year, or as close as I can manage. The occasional day missed is fine, but no big stretches without anything.
2. Get better at fingertip pushups. Ideally be able to do 50 in a single set.
3. Finish the current arc of my quest and start the next one. Be more consistent with updates, dammit.
4. Put effort towards learning another language - Czech or Chinese, either is fine.
5. Get therapy (again). Address unresolved issues, figure out if I'm actually as autistic as I act, etc. General 'put effort towards continuing to better your mental wellbeing' slot.
6. Write one original, not consciously based off another person or corporation's material thing. A short story, outline and partial draft of a novel, but something other than Warhammer stuff, as much as I love writing about lizardmen. Doesn't even matter if it gets shown to anyone or not.
7. Learn the long form of any style of taijiquan. Whether it's from that dvd or live instruction, just get that done.
8. Attempt to come to an answer about what career path I might like to pursue. At least spend time considering it. Will likely intersect with #5.
9. Make one (1) IRL friend around my age that is actually in local meatspace. Part of getting over chronic detachment from and disaffection towards people at large is making conscious effort to connect with people. This one might be mitigated by covid and/or zuckerberg shenanigans.

Can't really think of any others right now, but I'll update this and/or future posts if I do.

Should probably add this before the thread gets buried.

Mayhaps enable the ability to send out migrations when your fort gets to a certain size? That way the excess population isn't hanging around reducing framerate and you can maybe eventually hear back about their success or failure.

Edit: whoops, evidently this isn't the DF board. Kindly read the word 'fort' as 'planet' and 'framerate' as ... nah framerate's still good.

Posting on Twinwolf's behalf with Plan A here, and my own variant where Heliel works in the Ostentatious Capital instead.

Plan Angelic Assist

Deployment:
Heliel: Fortified Frontier
Venerated Veteran: Fortified Frontier
First Warden: Xa-Nam
Silver Markswoman: Darrin

Special:
Attack the bridge.

Infiltration Plans:
Fortified Frontier: Hawk's Rise:

In the wake of the Inquisition's crackdown, many new people were promoted into positions vacated by "heretical" officers. As this continues, the Venerated Veteran will leverage his influence in order to make sure that the men and women promoted to those positions of power are both competent enough to do those jobs and also supporters of the Hawks faction.

After that, we'll push for a full unification of the army's leadership under the Hawks banner; with so many of our own people in such strong positions, this should be a fairly simple matter. After we have our supporters in position, the Inquisition will find themselves hard pressed to make any inroads against the Hawk faction - after all, they would hardly be inclined to politick against each other when they're all on the same side, and beyond that such cohesion is essential to a functioning military. If the Inquisition keeps taking every minor slight as a death sentence we'll be out of leaders altogether, and the army will collapse - and the king surely doesn't want that, does he?

Heliel, meanwhile, will actively root out the Inquisition in the camps; Inquisitors will soon find no friends or allies among the men as ranks close against them, and Heliel will prevent them from trying to take action against key members causing this to occur.

-----

Ostentatious Capital: A Smile and A Poisoned Word

With the Graduates returned to a semblance of sanity, we can now perform the complex political actions they were always meant for. Our intelligence gathering has always been competent, but up to now we've generally either had to rely on local authorities to act, or else simply had to solve the issue with a knife. The Graduates can be more subtle, and do more than simply upset enemy plans - though of course, they can do that too.

We can't let the Demon have the run of the Ostentatious Capital any longer, without having an answering force. The Graduates will manuever to properly implant both themselves and our faction allies in more potent roles within the court. At the same time, Graduates will coordinate information from Investigators and our other sources and use them to expose their demonic counterparts and their treasonous plots - conveniently, freeing new positions that will need to be filled.

The culmination of this will ideally be a crackdown on Demonic influence; if at all possible, we'd aim to have the paranoid king of Dolgoth see the increasingly clear and damaging influence of the Demon in his court as a threat to his power, leading to a purge of Evil sympathizers from anywhere close to the royalty.

Plan Don't Lose Dolgoth

Deployment:
Heliel: Ostentatious Capital
Venerated Veteran: Fortified Frontier
First Warden: Xa-Nam
Silver Markswoman: Darrin

Special:
Attack the bridge.

Infiltration Plans:
Fortified Frontier: Hawk's Rise:

In the wake of the Inquisition's crackdown, many new people were promoted into positions vacated by "heretical" officers. As this continues, the Venerated Veteran will leverage his influence in order to make sure that the men and women promoted to those positions of power are both competent enough to do those jobs and also supporters of the Hawks faction.

After that, we'll push for a full unification of the army's leadership under the Hawks banner; with so many of our own people in such strong positions, this should be a fairly simple matter. After we have our supporters in position, the Inquisition will find themselves hard pressed to make any inroads against the Hawk faction - after all, they would hardly be inclined to politick against each other when they're all on the same side, and beyond that such cohesion is essential to a functioning military. If the Inquisition keeps taking every minor slight as a death sentence we'll be out of leaders altogether, and the army will collapse - and the king surely doesn't want that, does he?

-----

Ostentatious Capital: Angel's In Their Corner

With the Graduates returned to a semblance of sanity, we can now perform the complex political actions they were always meant for. Our intelligence gathering has always been competent, but up to now we've generally either had to rely on local authorities to act, or else simply had to solve the issue with a knife. The Graduates can be more subtle, and do more than simply upset enemy plans - though of course, they can do that too.

We can't let the Demon have the run of the Ostentatious Capital any longer, without having an answering force. The Graduates will manuever to properly implant both themselves and our faction allies in more potent roles within the court. At the same time, Graduates will coordinate information from Investigators and our other sources and use them to expose their demonic counterparts and their treasonous plots - conveniently, freeing new positions that will need to be filled.

The culmination of this will ideally be a crackdown on Demonic influence; if at all possible, we'd aim to have the paranoid king of Dolgoth see the increasingly clear and damaging influence of the Demon in his court as a threat to his power, leading to a purge of Evil sympathizers from anywhere close to the royalty.

Heliel will play a role of damage prevention; there are undoubtedly demonic agents of high caliber present in the court, potentially those that may be too much for our more common followers. Heliel shall seek these agents of evil out and either drive them out if possible or prevent them from making headway otherwise. If there are none to be found, she shall lend her grace to the infiltration efforts, bending the wills of pliable mortals to whatever ends we may need. (Enemy champion hunting, if not needed then target influential figures for conversion/subversion)

Plan Angelic Assist:
Plan Don't Lose Dolgoth: Xantalos

Oath of Remembrance

The ancestors of the Monks of Minos killed thoughtlessly, without care, in the service of Evil causes. In an attempt to distance themselves from such thoughtless cruelty, they adopted their current system of meditation, nonviolence, and discipline. It has served them well over the years, but now times and circumstances are changing once again. The demon Magoc twists entire legions of its soldiers into inhuman abominations, and the twisted designs of its mind evolve further with every passing day. Though the Monks have assented to perform non-lethal violence in Heliel's service, it may no longer be enough.

Enter the Oath of Remembrance. Designed by elder Monks, senior angelic Acolytes, and collaboration with the Green University, the Oath is based in principle off of ancient magical vows taken by long-gone knightly orders and priests of certain gods who would ordinarily be forbidden from practicing violence. The Oath is essentially a vow that a person can take that charges them to remember and give acknowledgement to those killed by the holder of the Oath. Through supernatural means, they become aware of some characteristic of those they kill - they remember their name or their face or something similar - and compels them to spend time in contemplation of the dead after the fact, acknowledging their redeemable facets and the fact that their death, while a loss of potential Good for the world, is balanced out by prevention of the Evil they were committing.

In practice, this Oath will let the Monks of Minos put their full, considerable might towards annihilating the forces of Magoc, with the price being that they will have to spend time in meditation after battle is concluded. They can put this off if a campaign stretches on, but over time the pressure of the Oath and their guilty conscience will wear on their mind until proper acknowledgement is given to the weight and impact of their deeds. They can never again return to the thoughtless state of their ancient forebearers.

Curriculum Adjustments:
Brain-Soothing Beats: (1) Xantalos
Oath of Remembrance: (1) Xantalos

...props to Kore, that's a pretty good and straightforward way of getting around that trap. Course it assumes that the armor you use has enough strength to stand up to the saws, but hey if it works.

Coins of Cursed Charity

Despite the name, these aren’t special artifacts so much as a self-replicating enchantment that resides within valuable objects and spreads to anything valuable within close proximity, although it does work best with actual currency. If handled for too long or with a greedy mindset, the magic within the coin infects whoever’s touching it. The actual curse has a few stages depending on the victim, detailed below.

The first stage is one everyone experiences. The infectee becomes more generous over time as the curse progresses, more apt to give to the poor, share their belongings with others, donate to charity, whatever form it might take. Point being, they tend to spread their wealth around, wealth which is now doubtlessly contaminated with the same curse. The personality change is subtle enough that it’s hard to notice for most, this isn’t an overnight Scrooge transformation.

The second stage depends on whether the affected individual has been inundated with Evil energy or not. In some cases where no particular amount of greed or Evil is present, the curse will run its course in a few weeks and leave the victim somewhat more giving than before.

People who don’t recover, whether of our cult or just ordinary mortals, will eventually have the curse progress to such a degree that they give away all of their possessions and go through a forced epiphany about what truly is valuable in their lives, coming to a resolution to treat themselves better. With this increased value placed on themselves, of course, comes a vector for the curse, and these enlightened individuals become sort of carriers of the magic that passively spread it to valuable things around them. They tend to be happy and self-sufficient with their existences, and might even be of some use with further work. For the most part, the curse ends there, however.

For those Evil-inclined or suffused individuals the curse takes hold of, progression is slightly different. The increasing generosity continues as normal, but the affected also begins to develop a sort of allergy to Evil deeds, beings, and energies - in effect, the curse forces them to grow a conscience. Depending on how enthralled the victim is into Magoc’s cause, this might convince them to back out of the cult they were thinking of joining, cause them to be of less use to the demonic forces until the infection runs its course, or perhaps even outright betray demonic forces, whether to Heliel’s followers or the new Inquisition or whatever mortal governance is at hand.

All in all, the Coins of Cursed Charity should be a useful tool to hinder and expose demonic operations once sufficiently distributed among the cities. As a plus, the Good generated by the increase in charity might be of benefit, and those who get over the curse are more likely to be receptive to our cause anyhow.