Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Iituem]

Worlds of Magic is an indie game aimed at becoming a spiritual successor to the old classic Master of Magic.  I don't know that they've hit the mark perfectly, but they aren't too far off.  The game is cursed with a horribly clunky interface, even by the standards of the 1990s, but that shouldn't show up too much during the LP.

In Worlds of Magic, you play one of several Sorcerer Lords seeking dominion over the world of Caldrean.  Said world is split it into up to seven planes (Prime Material, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Paradise and Shadow) each with their own distinct geography (although lacking in real special effects) and bonuses and penalties.  You achieve dominion either by conquering the world and banishing all of your opponents (the 'easy' way) or by casting the Spell of Domination and mind-controlling all the other sorcerer lords instead (the 'magical' way).  This is a direct take on MoM's Spell of Mastery, which just gave you all the mana in the world and therefore de facto ownership of magic.

We'll be playing with all seven planes on, on 'Medium' worlds (which are fairly dinky, but there are seven of them) with seven opponents to crush.  We'll be playing for my personal Domination victory, in which we crush all but one of the cities of each Lord and then Dominate them, just to drive the point home.  Because I'm awful at this game, we'll be playing on Normal ('Wizard') difficulty, however.

There are a few suggestions before we start, then:

Name: What is our sorcerer/-ess called?
Appearance: What sort of a being is he/she/it?  There are a few portraits with the game, I'll try to pick one that fits.
Starting Race: There are several races in the game.  We can choose one to start with a city of, and more can be conquered and absorbed into our glorious empire.

Spoiler: Races (click to show/hide)

High Men: Humans.  These particular humans are the most advanced culture of humankind on Caldrean, capable of high medieval technology and magic.  Humans have a little bit of everything, except offensive wizardry.  Despite being the 'vanilla' race, I actually recommend we play humans because they can build great temples, research institutions and mercantile institutions to make lots of wealth.  They also have a decent breeding rate, which helps expansion.  That said, what they lack in weaknesses they lack in strengths.
 - All around civilised race.  Balanced.

Grey Elves: Pretty much wood elves.  After the great schism that tore the High Elf civilisation to smoking, tattered ruins this sect of elves decided they'd had enough of the follies of civilisation and returned to the woods.  They now live in tree cities amongst the forests and do rather well there, with bow and arrow and magic at their disposal.  Mobile, ranged units are the mainstay of this race, and being elves they provide magical power from population.  Unfortunately, they don't really do roads and have a notoriously poor breeding rate - they're squishy, too.
 - Rangers, lots of mana, few children.  Hit and run tactics favoured.

Draconians: A long time ago, a dragon and a human - never mind.  Draconians are descendants of dragons and the first race to walk the surface of Caldrean, and they are all the better for it.  They tend to be strong, sharp and wise - and they can fly!  Like elves, their draconic heritage gives their master power based on the population of their cities, and they train talented mages of their own.  Unfortunately, while a dragon-human cross does produce a race that lives hundreds of years, it doesn't produce a fertile line of offspring, so draconian births are rare.  While all their units can fly, each has three 'figures' per unit rather than four, so they get less attacks in per round of combat.  They have also inherited their draconic ancestors' greed, independence and bloody-mindedness and they really do not get along.
 - Flying wizards and melee, lots of mana.  Fractious, terrible population growth, smaller armies.

Orcs: Waaaagh!  Orcs don't live long, and they like to shorten that lifespan with bloody violence.  As a culture they place high value on pillaging and low value on retirement plans.  They breed like rabbits and send their children off to die like lemmings, so their armies are cheap to field and quick to train.  Because of their prevailing warrior culture, all orcish units can raid, gaining bonus gold when capturing or razing cities.  Unfortunately, they consider books, scrolls and all ranged weapons un-orcish and tend to eschew them, so there is a noted paucity of scholars and a complete absence of archers in orcish society.
 - Cheap, plentiful shock troops that make lots of money in war.  Breed like rabbits.  No ranged units, terrible research and magic.

Dwarves: Booze-fuelled sociopathic craftsmen.  They live and sleep by their forges and make excellent craftsmen, and their meagre talent for spellcasting is instead fuelled into enchanting things with magic runes and building constructs to fight in their stead.  Unfortunately, dwarves tend to be somewhat overly focused on gold, alcohol and metalworking to care about stopping their children from just jumping in the forge, and large numbers of their nobles suffer 'unfortunate accidents' alongside the many citizens who are beaten to death for insufficient production of adamantium nose-plugs.  They are also, frankly, short and cannot move quickly, and this is reflected in their units.
 - Craftsmen and engineers, excellent production bonuses and powerful, tough units.  Poor population growth due to callousness and carelessness caging GCSs, and slow units.

Dark Elves: The other surviving side of the High Elf schism.  When everything went to hell and the High Elven Empire was nothing more than a glassy wasteland pock-marking Caldrean, the Dark Elves fled to one of the other planes and hid amongst foetid swamps and caves.  Needless to say, everyone went a bit crazy and ended up worshipping giant cave spiders.  Then the slavery started.  Then the gimp masks for the slaves.  I wish I was kidding.  Now that things have died down a bit, the vast majority of Dark Elven society is actually made up of slaves from other races, primarily human, who are pressed into service to build the roads and cities of the elves and to serve as cheap, expendable shock troops in their wars.  The actual Dark Elf population is tiny, and their already poor elven birth rate is further hampered by all the violent blood sacrifice to the giant cave spiders.  Their units are fragile, they have barely any population growth and their cities are plagued with unrest.  On the plus side, all that brutal sacrifice of the weak and the underclass has turned the surviving Dark Elven population into a race of arcane demigods, extremely magically adept and able to provide you that power both indirectly from population and directly through spellcasters.
 - Brutal dominatrix society.  Huge slave underclass for cheap shock units, minimal population growth, violent revolts common, and fragile units on the field.  On the other hand, god-like mana production and plentiful spellcasters.

Myrodants: Insect people.  Long ago, a termite and human - never mind.  Actually, not very long ago a wizard actually created the Myrodants in some sort of freak magical accident involving a maiden and what was probably an ant queen, and since then they've been an absolute plague upon the world.  Each hive is ruled by a sentient queen, assisted by a small circle of sapient advisers and generals, and served by a massive underclass of mindless drones.  The lack of identity and single-minded purpose has its upsides in terms of vast production capacity and strict obedience from the underclass, but because the drones can't really follow complex orders their ability to construct complex structures is limited.  The complete lack of original thought stifles research and spellcasting, and expecting other races to mindlessly obey the way drones would is a recipe for violent rebellion.
 - Hive society.  Myrodant cities have very low unrest and high production, but if the capital is Myrodant all other race cities will suffer violent unrest as they are forced into slavery.  Excellent production, cheap armies and fast growth, but little magic and they cannot construct advanced buildings.

Unhallowed: The legions of the dead.  Sometimes spirits pass through the plane of Shadow on their way to the life beyond.  Sometimes the shadow gives them a second chance.  The Hallowed play a very different game to the other races.  As anathema to life, they are in constant war with the living races and cannot even take them as slaves.  They cannot even live on the same land; in order to survive they must found their cities on corrupted tiles, twisted until they produce negative energy instead of food.  At the start of the game, only the plane of Shadow begins entirely corrupted (and the surrounds of Unhallowed cities), so they have to fight hard to claim usable land.  On the flip side, the dead are all aligned behind the same goal - sustaining their immortality - and so suffer no unrest.  They also do not care for gold and therefore do not collect it - instead of gold and food they gather negative energy and use this to support all of their units.  The dead are also necessarily rather potent fighters, having already been through death once as is.
 - The undead.  Powerful units, eschew gold and food for negative energy and no unrest.  Stuck in constant war with all other races, cannot have slave cities and need corrupted tiles to survive.

Style: What sort of magic will our sorcerer wield?  There is a lovely character creation system in which you decide your disciplines and magical circles.  I'm just going to offer you a limited selection of builds instead that I think might be interesting to play.

In the magic system in WoM, there are two circles of six Schools of magic; the Elemental schools and the Effect schools.  The six elemental schools cover the magic of Life, Death, Fire, Water, Earth and Air.  The six effect schools cover magic relating to Biomancy (screwing with life), Destruction, Mentalism, Protection, Summoning and Augmentation.  Nearly every spell in the game belongs to two schools; one elemental, one effect.  Thus while the Death school contains a mixture of different effects powered by negative energy and the plane of Shadow, including summoning the undead, the Summoning school just focuses on summons from all six elemental schools.  Each of the twelve schools also has three unique spells at the highest level of each (9th).

Spoiler: Builds (click to show/hide)

The Cleric: The Cleric is a master of Life Magic, devoted to the gods she serves.  Her magic, while light on summons and direct damage (save against the undead), offers healing and protection that few other schools can offer.  Her strategy relies upon having potent armies that she can back up with healing, supported by a healthy network of fertile, fecund cities.  Her spiritual focus inspires others, and the gods have blessed her with more power from worship, both from temple worshippers and the laity.
Up to 9th level Life spells, Pious (100% more Power from religious buildings), Mystic (+0.1 Power per 1000 population.)

The Necromancer: The Necromancer is a master of Death Magic, spending his hours in crypts and libraries.  His magic draws upon the power of the shadow plane and is often about negation, whether it be curses, damage, death spells or raising twisted mockeries of life.  His experience with the dead has given him a practical knowledge of animation, and he can often recover suitably intact corpses in the field.  Additionally, his long hours in the libraries have made him an efficient researcher.  His strategy is one of the attack, converting his foes into more fuel for his army, supported by masses of cheap summons and a core of powerful elites.
Up to 9th level Death spells, Necromancer (10% chance to raise any slain enemy unit as a unit of Zombies), Sage (10% bonus to Power spent on research).

The Hydromancer: The Hydromancer is the undisputed master of Water Magic.  Her magic draws more from ice and waves, includes a healthy amount of meta-magic and an excellent mixture of summons, direct damage spells and enchantments.  Quite a balanced school, her strategic is one focused on developing her magic.  Lots of libraries and siphons to collect research and magic will help her out.
Up to 9th level Water spells, Mastery: Water (15% cheaper research and casting for Water, harder to resist, more starting spells).

The Pyromancer: The Pyromancer is a master of Fire.  His magic draws power from destruction and flame, and his spells are second to none for sheer destructive ability.  He can also muster several other offensive spells, some nastily damaging summons and some mind and body-altering enchantments, but even his boons come at a violent price.  His experience is hard-won, often on the field of battle, and he has developed ways of casting at a distance that are more efficient than his fellows, but the hardships of his life have dulled his sense of the suffering of others, burned up in his quest for glory.  His strategy does not depend upon a strong army so much as a hardy one, able to carry his focus to the field where he can obliterate them with limitless arcane power.  For this sorcerer, lots of mana is vital as he will burn it away as fast as his foes.
Up to 9th level Fire spells, Mastery: Fire (15% cheaper research and casting for Fire, harder to resist, more starting spells), Battlecaster (50% less distance penalty for casting costs in battle), Butcher (100% more population loss when conquering cities).

The Geomancer: The Geomancer is a master of Earth.  Her magic draws power from rock and stone, and her spells focus a lot on resilience, endurance and sheer stopping power.  Her summons are rarely interesting, but make up for it in sheer violent capacity, while her master of the land lets her shape and terraform it to her will.  Her experience with valuable metals and minerals has also left her very experienced at seeking them out, and she has spent more than a little time at the forge shaping them.  Such is her connection to the earth that she has mastered the secret of turning mana into gold - and back again!  Her strategy is a patient, defensive one; building up a small, powerful army that can be bolstered magically, especially one of heroes that can be equipped with magical artefacts, and waiting for her enemies to come to her before crushing them.  With the power to shape the land to her will, she can afford to wait - all the time her foes delay, her lands grow only more fruitful.
Up to 9th level Earth spells, Geologist (20% more production bonus from mineral ores), Alchemist (can transform gold into mana and back again at 100% conversion), Artificer (magical artefacts are 25% cheaper to produce).

The Aeromancer: The Aeromancer is a master of Earth.  His magic draws power from wind and electricity, and his powers focus on mobility, speed, flight and storms.  He can summon aerial creatures, and benefits from hit and run tactics.  The Aeromancer suffers from a terrible sense of pride and vanity, spending vast sums on his appearance and day to day care, to the point of neglecting spirituality.  His relationship with the gods is a sour one, and a sourer still with his treasury, but he more than makes up for it with supreme magical prowess - his brilliant studies have unlocked in him true oracular vision - the power to see all the planes, all the time.  His strategy is a light-footed one; engaging the enemy far from his home cities, striking at them where they are unprepared and using his advanced mobility and perfect sight to balk his enemy's plans before they can begin.
Up to 9th level Air spells, Cartographer (Map of the starting plane), Planar Cartographer (map of all the planes), Omniscient (can see all the planes, all of the time), Opulent (10% penalty to Food, Gold and Production), Heretic (50% penalty to Power from religious buildings).

The Biomancer: The Biomancer is a master of manipulating living things.  She is a transmuter of flesh, healing and supporting or cursing and weakening, and she holds the power to transform the land from a desolate wasteland to a blooming paradise - or vice versa.  Her strategy depends upon her armies, as she has almost no ability to perform direct damage upon a foe, but excellent abilities to transform or empower her own troops and cities.
Up to 9th level Biomancy spells, Mastery: Biomancy.

The Augmenter: The Augmenter is a master of support.  He strengthens things through magic, be they armies, cities or himself.  His spells are about improving existing abilities or adding new ones.  His long practice with enchantments has left him skilled at their application, and his cities are well-run as a result of his blessings, being especially wealthy.  His strategy favours a large, magically supported empire that has the production capacity to support powerful troops that he can empower further.  With little damaging ability again, he must rely upon troops to win his wars.
Up to 9th level Augmentation spells, Merchant (+1 gold per 1000 population), Enchanter (research and cast enchantments 20% cheaper).

The Destroyer: The Destroyer, apart from having a cool title, is a master of sheer violent destruction.  She lays waste to all in her path, not discriminating by element but simply picking the most devastating spells from each.  She is brilliant, potent and unbearably cruel.  Twisted far worse than the hardships the School places upon its students, the Destroyer has suffered horrors no woman was meant to bear and has come out not only merciless but enamoured of torture.  She is feared by her enemies and despised by her subjects, and she doesn't care.  All they are to her is more fuel for her spells.  Her strategy is simple enough - acquire mana, lots of mana.  Rain death from above, below and the next plane on.  Nothing matters but fuel and the capacity to spend it.
Up to 9th level Destruction spells, Mastery: Destruction, Battlecaster (50% less distance penalty for spells in tactical combat), Archmage (10 additional spellcraft and 50% bonus to all power spent on improving casting skill), Butcher (100% extra population lost on conquest), Tyrant (10% more unrest in all cities except the capital).

The Guardian: The Guardian is master of protective magic.  He focuses on defense, casting spells that protect troops and cities from physical harm, guard them against the influence of magic, conjure guardians and even interfere with enemy spellcasting.  As might be expected, his strategy is a defensive one, turtling up and building high-walled cities while strengthening armies and perhaps sending a handful of carefully picked, bolstered champions to do his dirty work.  He is a simple soul, devoted to his people and thus eschewing material wealth.  He has spent his years educating his eventual replacement, a champion who fights in his cause, and has developed some skill producing artefacts to assist her.
Up to 9th level Protection spells, Mastery: Protection, Mentor (start with a low-level Hero), Artificer (25% less cost for producing magical artefacts), Ascetic (can only stockpile up to 1000 gold).

The Mentalist: The Mentalist is a master of the mind.  He can use his skills for aid or harm evenly, inspiring troops to fight harder and citizens to work for longer, while rendering foes unconscious or simply enslaving their minds.  His strategy is as balanced as his school; build up a reasonable number of cities, build up a reasonable army, inspire them to fight - and then seize control of their foes and add them to his ranks.
Up to 9th level Mentalism spells, Mastery: Mentalism.

The Summoner: The Summoner is a master of the planes.  She doesn't need armies - she can create them with a thought.  With her powers, the summoner can bring creatures from other realms to her own - everything from slimes and pixies to terrible lizards and genies - and binding them into her service.  She doesn't need to worry about spending gold or food on footsoldiers.  All she needs to worry about is having enough mana to crush the world beneath her army's scaled feet.  As a mistress of the planes, she has seen wonders far beyond gold and jewels, and such things have little appeal to her now.  She can find routes between worlds that others would miss, both for travel and for summoning, and she can pluck the magic from the very hearts of her subjects.  For a summoner, her strategy is to focus all domestic matters inwards - all production devoted towards more magic, more power - and where conquest is concerned, her magic will manage the rest.
Up to 9th level Summoning spells, Mastery: Summoning (15% cheaper spells and research), Summoner (10% cheaper summoning spells), Mystic (0.1 Power per 1000 population), Gate Master (can travel between worlds via nodes, not just gates).


The General: The General is a sorcerer by convenience, not calling.  She is a noble of her kind, raised to rule and to conquer, not to sit around waving a magic wand.  Instead of focusing on magic, she learnt how to manage estates and troops.  Her troops gain experience slightly faster, can attain a higher level than those of other sorcerers and gain more loot from pillaging, her cities are better at organising colonial expeditions, she can get more out of her land, her cities produce more wealth and she has a loyal protege that she is training to command.  Unfortunately, a martial upbringing her left her short on compassion and with little time for religion; her conquests are more brutal and the gods frown upon her.  She has a limited magical ability to alter, augment and protect her troops, and she is better at researching and casting enchantments as a result.  Her strategy is the one a mundane general would choose; build up a stable, heavily defended empire with conventional troops, and be ready to attack when the opportunity presents.
2nd level Augmentation, Biomancy and Protection spells, Enchanter (20% less research and casting cost for enchantments), Enlightened (5% experience gain bonus for troops), Expansionist (50% reduced cost for settlers), Geologist (20% more production bonus from mineral ores), Mentor (starts with a low-level Hero), Merchant (+1 gold per 1000 population), Pillager (100% more gold for razing cities), Warlord (units can gain 2 more maximum levels), Butcher (100% extra population loss when capturing a city), Heretic (50% less power from religious buildings).

The Artificer: The Artificer is less focused on casting as on empowering magical arms and armour.  He is completely devoted to his art, to the point where reason and mercy are beyond him.  He has lost all care for gold for himself, but the demands of his forge cripple his people, he turns a blind eye to the abuses of soldiers, pays no heed to the gods and is thought not even to believe in them and demands the same work ethic from his people to the point where any birth rate is off-set by emigration from his rule.  The benefit of all these prices paid and his single-minded devotion is a library of knowledge perfectly suited to artifice.  With years of training at forge work and the ability to turn his much-ignored gold into mana, he can produce very nearly any artefact he turns his mind to, given enough time and materials.  He also starts with one luckless test-subject, ready to be sent out into the world to see if the Artificer's creations get him killed or not.  The artificer's strategy relies upon well-protected settlements with an adventuring party of heroes sent out to deal with any real threats, armed to the teeth with magical equipment.
5th level Biomancy, Augmentation, Protection, 1st level Destruction, Alchemist (can transform gold into mana and reverse at 100% conversion), Artificer (25% reduced cost for forging), Mentor (starts with a low-level hero), Ascetic (1000 max gold), Butcher (100% more slaughter when capturing towns), Heretic (50% less power from religious buildings), Opulent (10% less Food, Gold and Production), Prude (10% less Population growth).

The Desperate Generalist: The hard mode.  This man professes to be an archmage.  In point of fact, he is a vile, twisted little imp of a man who couldn't claim such power if it hit him with a brick.  He is a godless fool, cruel, prudish and yet gluttonous to the point of bringing his people to the brink of ruin, so out of touch with bureaucracy that anything more than a modest treasury is embezzled outright by his advisors, cruel and petty, and universally despised by his subjects.  Worse, while he does have some skill with casting, he has spread all of his research out across the six effect schools, leaving him a poor jack of all trades and master of none.  Appropriately enough his worst skill is in mentalism.  This man's strategy is one of flailing around in desperation, trying to seek out more knowledge from the world to which he was banished.  [If this is chosen, we will play on a Large world, as the only way to gain more spell levels is by investigating dungeons, and this will generate more.  In theory, he could become a true archmage.]
4th level in Protection, Augmentation, Destruction, Summoning, Biomancy, 3rd level in Mentalism, Archmage (50% more effect to power spent improving spellcraft, 10 more starting spellcraft), Ascetic (1000 max gold), Butcher (100% more slaughter when capturing towns), Heretic (50% less power from religious buildings), Opulent (10% less Food, Gold and Production), Prude (10% less Population growth), Tyrant (10% more unrest in all cities save the capital).

[IronyOwl]

Name: Canter. Simple and brief, which is the only way to stop brutal sorceress elf matriarch gods from naming themselves Elegant Beautiful Vanishing Whisper In The Night Of A Poem Masquerading As A Name.
Appearance: A red-haired drider, of course! Good things happen when you mix unfathomable magical might with deranged spider worship.
Starting Race: Dark Elf. Would be fine with High Men, but leading a magical gimp empire of brutal suppression sounds too amusing to pass up.
Style: Augmenter, with Biomancer obviously being the close runnerup.

[Iituem]

Oh my.  Dark Elf Drider Augmenter, all things I haven't really tried before.  This should be interesting.

The Augmenter: The Augmenter is a master of support.  She strengthens things through magic, be they armies, cities or herself.  Her spells are about improving existing abilities or adding new ones.  Her long practice with enchantments has left her skilled at their application, and her cities are well-run as a result of her blessings, being especially wealthy.  Her strategy favours a large, magically supported empire that has the production capacity to support powerful troops that she can empower further.  With little damaging ability, she must rely upon troops to win her wars.
Up to 9th level Augmentation spells, Merchant (+1 gold per 1000 population), Enchanter (research and cast enchantments 20% cheaper).

Week 1, First Year of Canter

Finally, after years of careful plotting and arduous waiting, I have managed to kill all of my sisters!  Oh, how they laughed at me.  "Canter, why can't you learn a real spell school?"  Well, not all of us have to make up for our inadequacies with rains of fire, Xerxesephinia!  "Canter, why don't you just summon giant cave spiders?"  Just because I'm half spider doesn't mean I have to be a complete stereotype about it, Hellmoon Blossom.  "Canter, why have you got such a stupid name?" Because fuck you, Dances-with-giant-cave-spiders-beneath-the-blood-moon!

Didn't think I was so stupid when their food slaves turned out to have the strength of giants and skins of steel, did they?  Well, in fairness they didn't think much of anything with the blood being choked off to their brains.  With all of them taken care of, I am finally the undisputed (for a given value of non-dispute) queen of the dark elves.



Most of my spells, appropriately enough, are focused on strengthening my armies.  I can empower weapons to be blessed, cursed and to freeze simultaneously, I can sharpen blades magically and give my minions the strength of giants, and I can also bless the fields with more produce.  Not really a spell, but I'm also damned good at working slaves to death in order to get things done.  I can bless the skills of our craftsmen, gathering more gold to gild my throne, and I know a trick or two from the Grey Elves about how to sense the best path to take in rough terrain.



This is Thandthius, my city.  She is built over the caverns of the holy giant cave spiders, and while her housing is simple, it serves the needs of stopping the slaves from dying from exposure - most of them.  My own tower is decidedly more impressive, as you can see.



We have a builder's hall for educating our architects and disciplining slaves who do poorly at construction, a barracks for pressing slaves into service as shock troops, and smithy for tools and weaponry.  No where near enough, frankly, but my sisters were content to sit on their laurels.  I am not.  I won't rule over some two-bit hovel of a city, I'll make Thandthius shine as brightly as the High Elven citadels of old.  Our city does not lack for materials with which to grow - medicinal herbs, fertile fields and iron and silver in the swamps and hills.  To start with, I command the construction of a granary - right now the city is prone to famine, and that might even trickle up to my own table.

Scouts found a small human tribe living beyond the outskirts of the city, so of course I sent out some thralls and a warden to enslave them - the added slaves have increased the population of Thandthius by a welcome 500 thralls.


Week 3

I summoned a magical spirit today to help scout out the surrounds - the thralls move too slowly for my tastes, whereas the spirit pays no hed to the troubles of rough ground.  It has already uncovered an old library inhabited by an order of monks.  I will make arrangements to invade it and seize its scrolls.


Week 6

Found another tribe of humans, enslaved them, brought the population of Thandthius up to five thousand peons.  I also refreshed the enchantments on the surrounding fields, further increasing the slaves' yields.  I have issued commands to press-gang more slaves for the army, and begun enchanting the wardens overseeing them.


Week 9

A second old library was found today by my magical scout, as was the undefended abode of a supposed oracle.  I went to speak to her myself, intending to force answers from her.  Instead I found the tower abandoned, save for a store of mana crystals I appropriated and a scrawled note indicating the location of two apparent ghost ships at sea.

[The Oracle, when visited, sometimes gives you rewards and usually reveals distant map locations to you as well.]


Week 11

My scout spirit made two very interesting discoveries today.  The first was an ancient keep, dating back to the fall of the High Elven empire.  A militant order of grey elves has taken it over, and I stand little chance of taking it for now.  The second was a basalt archway crowned with a massive skull, leading to a shadowy realm beyond.  This gateway however is blocked by a dracolich and his servants, who rule that patch of land from their gate.




Week 12

Grey elves!  My scout located a forest town, Alduil, inhabited by our tree-hugging cousins.  Such an affront to the idea of a united Elven Empite cannot stand!  Once I have taken the libraries with my slave army, Alduil will be next up against the wall.   Speaking of the slave army, it is an impressive sight.  Not the thralls so much, although five units of meat shields do have a certain appeal.  What really stands out are their minders - ordinary wardens equipped with life-stealing dual whips, but with six mana's worth of upkeep in enchantments on their backs strengthening them, guiding, cursing and freezing their weapons any hits they land will be ruinous - and heal them at the same time.  I look forward to seeing their performance in the field.




Week 14

Today we struck at the Library of Whitepool, a battle I viewed from my scrying mirror in my tower.  The Order of the Velvet Quill it turned out was a coalition of draconian monks and scholars from Alduil, and between them they managed to muster two squads of spellswords and druids to oppose us.  To counter them, we brought the massed legions of our thralls.



[The tactical battle system in WoM is... interesting.  It uses the old Master of Magic system for movement, and having multiple 'figures' in each unit that both represent unit strength and get their own attacks and saves, but it also uses the d20 system for the actual crunch.  My thralls all do 2-7 damage per figure with a +2 to attack, but they are cheap and numerous.  My wardens would do something along the lines of 2-10 damage, but with all their buffs it's actually 7-15 per figure at +6, with a second attack doing 6-14 damage at +4.  Whether that really means anything remains to be seen.]

The druids went down easily enough, but the spellswords proved a problem for no other reason than they could fly!  We lost two units of thralls to them as our crowding strategy failed - on reflection, very foolish.  The life drain whips proved very effective in the end, as they not only utterly destroyed the spellswords in one engagement but also fully healed the members of the wardens who had been wounded.

With the city busy constructing a sawmill, I cannot easily reinforce the thralls.  Additionally, there have been several slave riots.  I think I'll move the army into the city for now to quell them.  Two units of thralls should be enough, especially if we give them special privileges such as sleeping time and the chance to beat other slaves.  We can send the wardens and a thrall unit to deal with the other library alone, as it looked to be inhabited purely by draconians.


Week 19

The scout spirit has discovered a portal to the plane of Water, well-guarded, as well as a camp of outcasts she investigated, whom it turned out were human engineers.  They have been pressed into service since.  Meanwhile, I decided to stress-test the capabilities of the Wardens against spellswords - two of them at once, in fact.  It was a complete disaster - the spellswords had plenty enough time to bless themselves with all manner of augmentations before they attacked and the wardens were completely annihilated.  Still, this is a lesson well learnt.  I am investing in something with a little more range next.


Week 21

This week we met a handful of humans soldiers on an expedition - apparently the king they swear fealty, Tangaroa, is a sorcerer as well.  They refused to elucidate as to his exact school of magic, but our interaction was cordial before they parted ways.  For now, we will sustain a peace with King Tangaroa.


Week 23

Fool!  Tangaroa is no king of men, but of another House of Dark Elves!  His city, Deimyr, is populated with thralls as ours.  We must take care with him, and crush him once the opportunity presents.  One Elven Empire!  One True Race!


Week 28



Our scouting spirit found a watchtower dating back to the High Elven Empire today.  From its magnificently high vantage point, she was able to communicate a map of the surrounding area to me.  Of particular note is a city of uncertain origin and an unguarded portal to the plane of Fire.  Exploration shall commence forth-with.


Week 31

Rematch time with the southern sect of the Order of the Velvet Quill.  This time we brought Enforcers, two units equipped with crossbows - and once again enchanted to the best of my ability.  This time around, there wasn't even a contest.

Annoyingly, Tangaroa has seized the neutral city we observed.  I am still sending a spirit through the portal.


Week 33

We have gained entrance to the plane of Fire!  As expected, my spirit is greeted by a hellish landscape of flames, magma and bare earth, but it seems entirely possible to scrape out a living here with enough murder of slaves.  Yrm crystals, emberslag and obsidian seem to be common here, making this place a potential goldmine for magical production.  I have also made contact with some local inhabitants - a race of insectoid humanoids living in a strict hive and caste heirarchy, ruled over by the sorcerer who created them - Markas.  Once again, we proceed with caution.  I have also taken the liberty of establishing the village of Lasthild back on the material plane, from which to breed and train more slaves.




Week 40

With our enforcers out in force (heh heh), backed up with some thralls as meat shields, I decided we would take the watchtower near Lasthild, which had long been held by a garrison of High Men as a priory.  As such, they had clerical support to back them up.  We lost a few slaves, so the whole experience was especially entertaining, and at one point the lead enforcer landed a shot in such a way that the Prior's head actually exploded into chunks of ice!  The whole experience has been great for morale, and a hoot to watch, too.

[At one point in the battle the enforcers scored three hits and a crit, doing a total of 54 piercing damage, 20 negative energy damage and 10 cold damage.  I'm pretty sure clerics only have 36hp.]


Week 47

Today we struck the headquarters of the Order of the Velvet Quill, a great library stafed with a combination of dwarven runecasters and grey mages.  Now grey mages have this particularly annoying trait - they are constantly protected by an enchantment that knocks away all arrows.  While attempting to claw them to death, our thralls were very nearly wiped out by a terrible gust of wind they summoned - but fortunately the enchantments to our enforcers' weapons still count when you use them to smack someone across the face with the butte of the crossbow.  Now that the library is ours, our Dark Elven scholars are busy cataloguing the scrolls there and re-establishing it as a functioning library of the arcane.  I've named myself Patron of the Arts as well, because why not?

As part of the records there I also found enough information to complete work on my latest spell - 'Fervour', as I call it.  It subtly alters the mindset of a whole city, pushing it towards restlessness, fear and obedience.  The result is a vastly improved rate of production, although the high levels of stress will cause a certain amount of rioting.  Nothing that extensive whipping can't solve.


Week 49

I have found a city of Draconians, Lamatae, in the plane of Fire.  They do not appear to have the protection of a Sorcerer, so I must prioritise their conquest once it becomes possible.


Week 52

It's been a full year since I came to Caldrean.  We have done acceptably, but I fear we are being overtaken by the progress of other lords.  The capital is now being struck by goblins and bandits, and while Fervent we are still getting to grips with the discipline problems.  The good news at least is that while clearing out a smuggler's cove we managed to find amongst their loot two spell scrolls - one that gave the secret of True Sight, the other of a Guiding Wind to assist missiles.  I look forward to putting them to use.

[ATHATH]

You really should have waited a bit longer before beginning. I was going to suggest either a Dark Elven Mentalist (Mentalism should help with discipline) or an undead Summoner (the undead would be able to focus less on food and more on mana and population).

Note that I haven't played this game before, so I'm not an expert. The concept for this game seems really cool, though.

[Iituem]

Week 54 (Week 2 of Year Two of Canter)

Markas and his Myrodants have appeared on Caldrean through one of the fire portals - there are two in Caldrean now.  Thandthius and Lasthild have been steadily increasing in population.  Not even half of this can be attributed to birth rate, of course.  Most of the gains are from freshly captured slaves, either travellers or from the various barbarian rural communities in the countryside.  Every now and again we find a lone minor House of dark elves and welcome them in as well.  Thandthius has 8,000 elves and slaves now.


Week 60

The attack on Alduil commenced today!  We underestimated their defenders, as while populated entirely by weak archers they were still able to concentrate fire on one of our enforcer units and eliminate them.  Replacing those enforcers will be costly.  All the thralls died too, but that's not much of an upside.  The Grey Elves are resisting our dominion, of course, but that's nothing that a little brutal subjugation can't handle.  I'm sending orders to gather more thralls at once.  As expected, the Grey Elves produce mana we can harvest as well, but at pitiful rates.  It takes 2,000 grey elves to harvest as much as a mere 50 dark elves (although I admit that for every 50 dark elves we have 950 thralls to do the work).  That's what comes of brutal sacrificial infanticide and selection for the most magically inclined for three hundred years!



[Fun thing about unrest.  Everybody hates the Dark Elves, so conquering any other race gives huge unrest penalties to those cities.  Grey Elves really hate Dark Elves, so that penalty is 40%.  There are three ways to fix unrest; some magical spells can dope your citizens into tranquility; religious buildings can placate them with religion; or you can just station units in the city to brutally repress them.  Why do the last one instead of temples (which generate power for magic and research)?  Because it's cheap.  It takes 2 units in a town to crush 10% of the population's unrest.  The basic Dark Elf unit, the Thrall, is also pretty much the cheapest unit in the game.  It takes a single turn to raise (compare the Grey Elf archer, which takes 3 in a developed city) and no gold to sustain - only a single point of food instead.  It has exactly the same effect upon unrest as using a spider wizard or a human spearman, which makes it ideal for its purpose.  The only cheaper unit is the skeleton summon, which costs 20 mana and no upkeep, but we don't have that spell.

How cheap are thralls?  Five hammers.  Even a 1 pop village can produce thralls if you purchase the barracks first.  In fact, it is a waste to build them in anything other than 1 pop villages because of how immensely cheap they are.]

In other news we established the village of Nythuar today, as Lasthild has reached maturity and become a proper town of 4,000 minions.


Week 63

Bloody Grey Elven partisans in the woods, forcing me to take them on!  Lost our perfectly good set of enchanted Wardens today.  Yet more magic and resources wasted, ugh.  Village of Tzethzalar is up and running, providing welcome food for the thralls.


Week 73

It's been quiet here in the Dark Elven Empire.  More thralls have been conscripted, wardens and enforcers trained.  I have now enchanted my enforcers with shocking bolts in addition to the freezing, cursing and blessing.  I also built a siphon on an undefended fire node, so magical output has improved considerably.  [As that enforcer already had Pathfinder, this got me the 'Pimped my Soldier' achievement for putting five enchantments on a unit.]


Week 75

Nythuar was captured by draconian bandits!  Four wings of trackers swooped down on the village, and despite the hasty enchantments I gave the thralls summoned to defend it, the village was taken.  I have dispatched a crack team to resolve this.


Week 76

The fools actually attacked Thandthius!  Well, perhaps not so foolishly.  Thandthius was defended by only thralls, but there were lots of them.  They could only attack when the Draconians did, but with a little enchantment they were able to pull the draconians down and beat them to death.  Nyuthar was retaken with no casualties - they had only left Thralls to defend the village, making the same mistake I had.


Week 85

We found another of the Order of the Quill's libraries via a teleport gate - this one had apparently been abandoned for some time, and a Marid had taken residence - an enormous genie from the plane of Water.  She struck down an entire unit of enforcers with a single spell, but fortunately we were able to riddle her with enough enchanted bolts that the Wardens could take her down with their whips.  The library is in apparently good shape, and we were able to recover some mana crystals from storage as well.  Elven scholars are en-route to see what they can learn from the library.


Week 88

One of my rivals cleared the path to a gateway to the plane of Earth.  I sent a scout through and discovered a land of high mesas and sprawling deserts.  Gemstones and Yrm crystals seem abundant enough, and I caught sight of a strange altar on the horizon.  Upon further investigation we discovered a cultist there, who explained that it was devoted to a great Titan by the name of Lamia.  In theory we could summon her to aid us, were we willing or able to spend thousands of gold and mana to achieve it.  We also met some dwarven elders who paid fealty to a wizard by the name of Merlin.




Week 91

After long months of work, we have finally pacified Alduil.  The majority of the elves are enslaved, with slaves acting as drivers in exchange for privileges.  A small number have come over to our side willingly in exchange for building a shrine to their 'force'.  There are always those who will sell out their people, and we have made them our puppet government.  As part of our research, I have also uncovered a spell to heighten the reaction times of our fighters, allowing them to get their strikes in first against the enemy.


Week 94

Last year we seized a watchtower that was being used as a Priory.  I didn't bother catching the name then, but apparently it belonged to the Order of the Steel Dawn.  I only know this because we found one of their keeps this morning.  Naturally, I decided it should be ours.  They were able to mount a resistance of pikemen and spearmen, equal in number to my small strike force.

Equal in number does not mean equal in power.  Their elite corps of pikemen, to their credit, were hard as nails.  Sadly, that counts for less than you think under a barrage of crossbow fire.  We ransacked the keep for gold and mana, but it turned out to have structural flaws that would not serve for a long term garrison.  We left it to crumble.


Week 97

With the recent construction of our Arachnarium to hold the growing sacred giant cave spider population, we have been able to once again convert elves into driders.  The first product of this, an arachnomancer, has joined our expeditionary force.  One arachnomancer, I note.  I wrote before how we assaulted the headquarters of the Order of the Quill, and we faced grey mages.  That day there were half a dozen of them to cast their spells.  A single Dark Elf arachnomancer is as strong as all of them put together.  Simply further proof if proof were needed of the inherent magical and racial superiority of our kind.

[The Grey Mages are the Grey Elf offensive caster unit.  The Dark Elves have two, and the arachnomancer unit is the meatier of the two.  Unlike the grey mages, which have four 'figures', the arachnomancer only has the one.  While this does mean he has less hit chances against foes with his mediocre physical or acceptable magical attack, he also remains at full strength up unto the point of death.  Their hitpoints aren't great for their level, but this is made up for my their capacious mana storage - and their selection of curses from which to cast; Weakness (reduced attack and damage), Bloodletting (blood loss over time), Spit of Bile (acid attack), Unholy Sacrifice (best use of thralls), Acid Arrow, Wither Wings (weakens fliers), Earth-To-Mud (slows movement over terrain).  These pair up excellently with the rest of the dark elf army, and I will be adding two to the strike team for best effect.

Additionally, as their primary attack is magical, I've discovered that boons to damage don't affect them.  This unit likely will not benefit from many of the enchantments I can give it.]




Week 100

I took some time today to optimise the empire a little.  Amongst other minor changes, Nythuar has become the 'bread basket' for the empire.  With little production capacity and excellent food sources from its coastal position and fertile soil, it seems the best place to obtain food in order to free up slaves from the fields elsewhere.  I also took the liberty of enchanting the countryside to increase crop production as well, just to enhance things a little further.


Week 102

It's been two years now.  Militarily, we are clearly centralised.  We have five 'armies' of thralls on 'police' duty, keeping the peace across the empire.  Two spirits scout, and a single unit of auxiliary engineers construct roads - those are the humans we enslaved last year.  The main punch in our army belongs to our strike force - two enhanced enforcers, one extremely enhanced warden and a pair of arachnomancers for magical support.  One band of thralls is moving to provide support as well - if primarily as meat shields.  The wardens are something of a study in enchantment on my part - enhanced strength, reflexes to allow them to strike first, a semi-liquid form to allow them to walk over water and provide a little damage resistance, and enchantments to their whips to strike true and deal additional negative energy damage along with frost and shock.  Right now their collective deadliness would put a hill giant to shame.

[For comparison, the normal average damage for a full set of Wardens (all four figures) who all hit is 8.5 damage.  For the uber-Wardens, it's 53.  Even the Enforcers do a comfortable 32.5 with their crossbows to their original 11, and that's just because some of the damage enhancements only apply to melee.  A hill giant does an average of 13.5.

It's not all about damage, mind.  The wardens attack at +7/+5 and the enforcers at +6.  The hill giant attacks at +13.  More actual hits in can definitely determine a battle as well as damage dealt.  The hill giant also only takes 6 mana/turn to sustain.  With all of their enhancements, the Wardens cost 13 mana, atop their 2 gold and 1 food base.]

Economically, we are in the black.  We have a net production of 33.5 gold marks a week, nearly 1.5k in the treasury and a grain surplus atop twenty tonnes of grain in storage.  I have a comfortable amount of mana stored (277 ounces of crystal) and produce another 18 each turn, although my spellcraft does suffer for my focus on fuel over ability.  In the coming year I will focus a little more on improving my spellcraft.  Research is at a comfortable rate, primarily from the Quill libraries we have taken and with support from the libraries in the capital.  The other sorcerers remain unwilling to trade knowledge of spells.

I still have a sense of our empire lagging behind, and I think in the next year I need to push forward on expansion.  There are quite a number of neutral cities in the plane of fire that we could take, and this is something that my expeditionary force is ideally suited to.  While these would be client cities rather than true elven settlements, they could give us much-needed footholds in the other planes.  Once we had that, we could expand more organically.  For the first half of the coming year, I will devote my focus to expansion, both militarily and colonially.  We currently stand at five cities, four Dark Elven, one Grey.  I want that number at twelve by the next year's end.

[ATHATH]

Question: do the enslaved population count as citizens for the purposes of perks?

[Zireael]

That's cool, I wondered how this game plays out.

[Iituem]

[Truthfully, the game doesn't distinguish between enslaved and free population in dark elf cities; they all count as the same 'population' stat.  The idea of a 95% slave underclass appeals to me for this race, though, so I fluff it that way.  There are more fluffed scale numbers in this update, particularly regarding how many people are really in a unit.  Enslaved cities of other races do count towards perks in their entirety though, yes.]

Week 103 (Week 1, Year 3 of Canter)

I spoke to Tangaroa today via magic mirror.  The conversation was... cordial.  Although he's not a Dark Elf himself, he's clearly under pressure from his subjects to unite the Empire, just as I would if I were them.  Nevertheless, tuition in the Shocking Touch spell and a chest of gold was enough to get him to return tuition of the Ghost Touch spell.  With it, I can enhance the Wardens even further, as their whips will ignore armour.  A shame it doesn't also apply to crossbow bolts.

Markas, for another chest of gold (I love being rich) and information on the Shocking Touch and Bless Weapon spells surrendered knowledge of the One with Earth spell, which allows one to merge with the ground and re-emerge elsewhere.  Sadly, I only had power to enchant the Ghost Touch spell this week.

I sent the strike team to a node of Paradise, which took the form of a pyramid of ethereal glass spouting bluish-green light from its apex, where they discovered an impromptu garrison before it.  A pair of what at first sight appeared to be Grey Elves rode from the garrison on armoured black horses to meet the strike team.


"Halt, foul ones!" the male of the elven pair called out, raising a scimitar to the approaching Dark Elves.  "Only true elves may visit the node!"

Lysandra, the older of the two Driders accompanying the expedition raised a hand and scuttled forwards.  "I assure you, greys, the only true elves here... are..."  She paused and squinted, red eyes running over the elf's features.  "Wait, you're no grey elf.  You're a High Elf!"

"And you are not.  Now begone, foul corruptions!"

"Oh, and I suppose you'd let one of the greys through instead, would you?"

A look of distaste spread across the High Elf's face.  "No, those souls are as corrupted as yourself, though not as disgustingly visible.  They have turned from the high cities of the Empire and become as the beasts in the woods, living in the trees as they do.  Their culture is as perverse as your flesh.  No, only the Empire may pass."

Lysandra hissed at the elven hussar.  "We are the Empire.  One Elven Empire, One True Race."

"I do not recognise your authority, twisted one.  Now begone, or we will put you out of your misery."

Lysandra's nostrils flared and she spat at the Hussar - halfway through the air the spitball turned into a morass of shadowy black tendrils that struck the High Elf hard in the chest, though the elf barely seemed to register the attack as it began to scour his breastplate.  Her second quickly threw a ripple of energy to the ground, turning the field before them into sticky mud that would barely hold the horses' weight.  The wardens held at the end of the field of mud while the enforcers knelt into position to fire two barrages of bolts at the hussars - one went down, but the second, riddled with holes and bleeding freshly, raised his scimitar and called out a war cry.  He charged forward, horse struggling through the mud, ready to cut down the wardens before him, when Lysandra flicked her fingers and cast a gobbet of acid into the elf's face.  He died screaming in a pit of mud.

Lysandra looked up at the pyramid.  "Right, then.  Let's get to work building that siphon.  Myrandis, I want you working out the energy flows, I'm going to investigate that guardhouse."

The guardhouse was nothing special - by High Elven standards.  It was still a flawless structure of shaped marble, too small to maintain as a serious fortification but enough for the needs of the Hussars; armoury, stable, gardens, living quarters, study.  Investigation of the study turned up a scroll on blessing weapons against the undead, folded into a somewhat out of place religious text, authored by some group called the Order of the Unyielding Law.  The text was a rather dry treatise on charity, so Lysandra left it be.

She was all but ready to leave when she heard a faint scraping from the walls.  After a little careful listening to the location she managed to find a hidden catch behind the study fireplace, and pulling it revealed a hidden chamber shielded by thick steel bars.  Behind it was what appeared to be a human, in the midst of practising sword manoeuvres (sans sword, or any clothing save a long tunic).  He had his eyes shut and seemed to ignore the grinding open of the secret door until he had finished his set of moves.

"Well then, Hyapto, what torture will it be for today?" he asked.  He opened his eyes and, seeing Lysandra, jumped in surprise.  Lysandra hid her own surprise at the deep blue glow within the man's otherwise intact eyes.  The man frowned, then straightened up.  "Very well.  Is today finally the day you are to kill me?"

"Can you even die?" Lysandra asked.  The man pursed his lips.

"No, but if I am cut to pieces, unable to move, that is as good as death.  A living torment, unable to move or speak, or perhaps even see.  Did Hyapto send you here to take me?"

"Hyapto... big High Elven fellow?"  The man nodded.  "No, I just killed him.  Not that I care, but why are you in this cell?"

"I'm afraid I don't know.  A crime I committed in life, I suppose.  I have no memory of it, nor anything else about my living days.  I don't have many interesting memories of these days, beyond twenty years in a cell.  I have a name, Izzir, unless that is some elven slur my captors were calling me instead of a name."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm pretty sure it's just your name.  Well, it's been nice chatting, but I have a node to siphon."

"Wait," called Izzir.  "You said you killed my captors.  Are you at war with them?"

"I guess."

"Release me, and I will fight for you against them."

"Why?  You've been stuck in a cell for twenty years, you're no fighter."

"I cannot remember my life.  I still have the skills from it, and I was a great soldier then, it seems."

"Alright, let's test that."  Lysandra flicked her fingers again and a gobbet of acid shot forth at Izzir.  The man ducked expertly to the side.  Lysandra grinned and fired seven more.  Each one he ducked in turn, and at the last he struck an arm forth from the cell bars and gripped it around Lysandra's throat.  He squeezed once, to make a point, then released it.

"Now.  Release me."

"Fine.  Step away from the bars."  Lysandra began smearing acid at the ends of two of the bars.  Five minutes of searing later, they came away.  Izzir emerged and bowed.

"How may I serve?" he asked.

"Get yourself equipped, there's some old armour and a sword in the armoury.  Then meet me outside, we have work to do."


[We've gained our first Hero!  Izzir is an undead paladin.  Heroes are generally pretty squishy, but unlike normal units you can give them arms and armour to make up for their deficiencies.  Enough enchantments and they become one-man tanks.  Izzir isn't loaded up with special abilities - he has an ability which lets him deal more damage but less efficiently, and his attacks curse when they hit (less damage and attack for enemies), but beyond being undead that's pretty much it.  Being undead he's going to be a bastard to heal.  I'm not if I even can.]





Week 104

We took another Steel Dawn Priory today, a watchtower to the north.

Our scout spirit found a tribe of uncivilised orcs living amidst the wastes of the Plane of Earth.  I made the pretense to them of being a god and they fell into line - they scouted out a site with access to Yrm Crystals and ample coal, and named their first city Wikitahula, although right now it is more just a collection of huts in the desert.  A new addition to the Empire is always welcome, but upon reflection I am regretting founding that city.  Whereas generally I have few plans to make other racial cities a mainstay (more than one Grey Elf ruled city would be foolish, but all races can come under the Dark Elf umbrella in our own cities), I think I can certainly make more use of orcs.  It turns out that combined with their high breeding rate and large rural population to subsume into cities and their proclivity for harvesting the fruits of the sea, orcish towns will make excellent centres for farmland, especially on the coast where their aptitude for fishing can come into play.  By comparison, putting an orcish city in the desert was a terrible idea.




Week 106

Today I received a supplication from one of the Grey Elven lords, Elwyn Thorn.  He prostrated himself before me (very appropriate) and begged permission to speak, so I gave it.  He pleaded for the release of his people, not from service but simply from slavery, that it was unbecoming for any elf to suffer bondage, even elves who were so divided in principle since the Fall.  "Let the beasts and men be slaves," he begged of me, "but let all elves have the honour of freedom."  He wished me to stop pacifying the elves through constant violence and brutalism and instead pander to their religious beliefs to gain their acquiescence.  He offered the loyalty of his people in exchange.  I told him that it wasn't enough, that I wanted a more personal sacrifice from him.  He offered me the service of his daughter, Autumn Leaf, a ranger in their service, for as long as I wished.  The idea of getting his daughter killed in the field amused me, so I accepted - over the next two years, I will reduce the 'police' in Alduil in favour of religious structures.  I doubt, mind, that I can completely eliminate it.



[Autumn Leaf is not the most exciting unit, but we're short on Heroes.  She has a rapid shot ability that lets her fire two shots at once, and she's a Pathfinder, so she can guide units through rough terrain, but that really only saves us the 60 mana and 1 mana/turn we'd spend on enchanting a unit to have that ability instead.  Still, with some good weaponry she might yet shine.]


Week 114

Wikitahula was attacked today by troops from the Steel Dawn, likely in retribution for our more recent attacks.  It turns out that orcs are a little more... militarily prepared than thralls.  Even though it was just their basic militia, they were at least able to grab some axes and basic leather armour.  Against swordsmen and spearmen, three to one, it might not seem much, but when you enchant their reflexes and let their axes pass through armour...



We still lost, of course, but the orcs took down two of the human number, so recapturing it should not be a problem.


Week 115

It's funny, I've been hounding Tangaroa for weeks trying to negotiate access to his research on the Flight spell, and he just gives it to me along with a bunch of other spells, gold, mana and magic items in exchange for a defensive alliance - which is something I wanted anyway!  Apparently he's getting really nervous about Markas and the Myrodant presence in his lands.  I took the offer, and the equipment was not a bit unwelcome either.



The Northern Coast, Caldrean

Autumn Leaf exhaled, her breath frosting in the air.  Izzir exhaled too, but his breath wasn't warm enough to frost.  Up ahead a huge monolith of sandstone spouted yellow light from the cracks running up and down its surface.  A horde of beasts clustered around the base, drawing life from the node's magical energies; a slumbering hydra, an earth and an acid elemetnal, two owlbears and a slime.

"How are you finding the scythe?" Autumn Leaf asked.

"Acceptable," replied Izzir.  "It is well balanced and its edge is sharp, and light as well.  I miss my shield, mind you.  Your new armour?"

"Fantastic.  Lysandra tried stabbing me earlier and the blade didn't even mark it."

"Very nice of her to test that for you."

"Test?"

"Never mind.  I am surprised you switched out your rapier for the dagger.  The sacrifice of range cannot be welcome."

"No, but it does this cool thing where it bursts into fire and frost at the same time when it strikes.  You would think those would cancel each other out, but apparently not!"

"Magic," said Izzir, rolling his eyes.

"Tell me about it."

"Will you two shut up already?" shouted Lysandra, her eight limbs shivering in the cold.  "Take this seriously, this isn't like facing off against the Steel Dawn.  There's two elementals to worry about down there, and the earth one is going to be a bastard.  I don't even know if we can take on the hydra without needing to retreat.  Either way, get your act together.  We're moving."

The force advanced quickly, and when they were within a hundred feet of the beasts they began to react to their presence, forming a rough line to face the elves.  The hydra, who had been curled up for sleep, roused itself and arose, unfurling to its full size, three heads roaring in fury at the disturbance.  It towered, titanic, over the assembled foes.

"Holy mother of spiders," murmured Lysandra.  "Attack!"



As the various forces seembled themselves, Lysandra struck the ground with a wave of energy and the land before the beasts turned to thick mud.  The wardens melded into the ground, emerging ahead of the slimes and striking them down before they could react with a dozen strokes from their ridiculously overpowered death whips.  A barrage of crossbow bolts took down the owlbears and the wardens and Izzir made short work of the acid elemental.  Only the earth elemental and hydra remained.

"Now for the real fight," said Myrandis in her silky, sultry voice.  Lydranra murmured irritably and held up her hand.

"Hold on the salvo," said Lysandra.  "Let the others finish off the walking rock, save your mana."

A barrage of bolts, an arrow from Autumn and a few strokes from Izzir later and the earth elemental was on its last legs.  Lysandra chewed her lip.  STart on the hydra now, or finish off the earth elemental and wait until the enforcers had reloaded?  Wait, there was a better option.

"Wardens clear the rock, then enforcers reload and hold position!"  The earth elemental went down, shattered by cruel lashes.

The hydra reared its heads and roared, trapped in the mud and unable to move.  When the roars ended, there was a long, terse silence from everyone on the field.

"Fire!"

Orbs of foul energy streaked across the sky from the driders, slashing against the hydra's skin with little effect beyond shaking off a few loose scales.  The enforcers fired, and the bolts seemed to be streaks of ice, shadow and lightning as they struck the hydra's flank, tearing flesh and scale from its side.  Izzir moved up to engage the creature, but just as it prepared to strike at him the wardens sprung up from the ground behind the beast and lashed at its three heads, their whips coiling around the necks and searing through the flesh, thrice decapitating the beast.  Crushed under the sudden assault, unable to regenerate, the hydra collapsed to the ground.

A great cheer rose up from the army, even the thralls who had stayed back this whole time, there for reasons beyond their ken.  As they picked through the battlefield towards the node, Myrandis called.

"Lysandra, come over here!  I think there's a grave over here!"

Sure enough, someone had piled a series of stones into a cairn before the towering node.

"Well don't just stand around, Myrandis, get the thralls to dig it up."

Unearthing the grave, the driders found the long-rotted skeleton of an ancient elf, buried with three possessions - a huge chunk of mana crystal, an intact silvery shield and a book bound in what appeared to be dragon leather.  Lysandris picked up the book and opened it.  She started, then thumbed through the pages quickly.  She then let out a long, low whistle.

"I think the boss is going to want to see this."

[We just gained a circle in Fire!  Some of our spells are already duplicated in that, so we can't learn them, but this does mean we can learn the first circle fire spells!  Very nice, especially the direct damage spells.]


Week 123

I really have to start guarding my villages better, at least with more thralls.  Shargnum just got conquered by mummies.  Urgh.  On the bright side, we found a gate to Paradise via the plane of Earth, so that's positive.  As you might expect from a place called 'Paradise', it is all rather pleasant, like an idealised pastoral version of Caldrean.  There are rich, blooming fields, plentiful fertile earth, forests that more more like orchards.  Haven't seen a wealth of minerals, but any cities you founded here would certainly be populous.  This might be an ideal ground for orc client cities and lots of food.  Or lots of dark elves and lots of power.  Tricky choices.



Meanwhile, the strike team decided to inivestigate a ruin where we'd heard rumours of a small orcish militia called the Red Hand using as a base.

North-Western Caldrean

The ruins were not the most defensible, but they did offer a relative abundance of intact rooms and buildings for High Elven ruins.  Examination of the structures had suggested that they had once been a large temple and its surrounding outbuildings, but any valuables had long since been stripped and the shrine and iconography so defaced there was no clue as to whom the worshipped god had even been.  All the dark elves knew for sure was that an orc army was camped somewhere within.

Ardustra floated back to the ground, a slight blue shimmer around her limbs and torso as she did so.  The shimmer vanished as she settled on the ground.  "Looks like two, maybe three groups of orcs down there, axemen mostly.  A hundred orcs total.  Light armour, nothing to write home about."

"Shouldn't be a problem then," said Lysandra.  "Say, how does that flight spell work?  Never had it cast on me."

"It's strange.  It's not like I have wings, it's more like there's a gentle cushion supporting my arms, legs and body at all times.  When I think 'up', or rather when I have the intent of up, it lifts me up.  Takes a bit of getting used to, but it's an invaluable trick."

"As if you wardens weren't overpowered enough," noted Lysandra.  "Still, should be easy enough.  We're what, two driders, Izzir and Autumn, twenty wardens, two groups of twenty enforcers and two bands of fifty thralls.  So, seven units to their two, discounting Izzir and Autumn, who frankly have about as much impact on the fact as the thralls."

"Thanks," called Izzir from across the field.

"You're welcome!" Lysandra called back.

"Problem is, you're wrong," said Izzir, walking over.  "There aren't two regiments here, not by a long stretch."

"Two's all I've seen," said Ardustra.  She frowned, looking down.  Was her stomach rumbling?

"Look at the ruins.  There are tents, there are burnt out campfires, stores and equipment.  This isn't a camp for a hundred orcs.  This setup would cater to six times that."  The ground began to tremor.

"Well where are your supposed half thousand?" asked Lysandra.  She frowned at the growing sound of the rumbling.  "And what is that noise?"

Izzir turned around and pointed.  Just over the crest of the hill, half a thousand orcs charged towards them, axes raised and bellowing warcries, shields painted with red hand marks.  Two hundred axeorcs, two hundred more in leathers, two hundred with spears, chanting magical support to the rest of the army, a hundred frothing berserkers, a dozen orcs mounted on huge wolves and twenty elite warriors, bellowing for battle.

"Holy mother of - Form up!  Form up!" Lysandra yelled.  The troops quickly rushed into ranks adjacent to the ruins, so as not to be flanked by those inside.  The two driders both sent out ripples, turning the earth ahead of the charging army into thick mud, halting their progress long enough for one of the enforcers to get a barrage of shots in against a quarter of their healing skalds, butchering them with elemental quarrels.  Ardustra and her wardens shot down into the ground and burst up beside the charging warg riders, pulling them from their mounts one by one and crushing them with their whips.

The orcs changed through and around the mud, the manslayers enchanting themselves while the skalds shot bolts of ice at the enforcers, blasting holes in their ranks and killing or downing over half of them.

"Well, at least the thralls can finally come in use," murmured Lysandra.  She gestured to one of the bands of thralls and flicked her fingers - as one they exploded into ribbons of black light, their energies infusing the fallen enforcers and dragging them back up to their feet - their wounds and frostburns healed before them.  "Take down those skalds!"

Two barrages of bolts and the sudden appearance of the wardens later, the remaining skalds were broken.  The manslayers fell next, and as they attempted to slog through the mud the remaining orcs were cut down with surprising efficiency.  The wardens plunged into the ground and up into the air, weaving amongst them and always immune to the attacks of any save their targets - who died in droves before they could ever respond.  After twenty minutes of brutal slaughter, the field lay silent.  Lysandra stared at the hundreds of corpses and let out a ragged breath.

"That was lucky."  She glanced at the splattered parts of the thralls to her left, some of which had managed to get onto her carapace.  A waste, technically, much more could have been healed, but absolutely worth it to preserve the enforcers in a crisis.  The only problem was, now they would have to send back to the capital for more.

Nothing much to report from that ruin.  A decidedly mundane battle axe, a rather nice chain shirt (but nothing to write home about) and two hundred gold and mana from their hoard and the skalds' supplies.  Not a bad haul from the expeditionary team.

[So when you see the preview screen for a dungeon it tells you what kind of monsters and foes you can expect in the dungeon.  In this case it flagged up orcish skalds, wolfguards, raiders, berserkers, manslayers and warg riders.  It does not tell you how many until you are about to engage, so you can imagine my surprise when I got this screen.  Four raiders, four skalds, four wolfguards, two berserkers and a warg rider and a manslayer to cap it all off.  That said, orcs are all melee save for the ice bolt spell from their skalds.  With no flyers and my wardens having first strike and crazy damage output, they were completely outclassed, and the mud allowed the enforcers to mop up the main body of grunts.  Earth to Mud is a fantastic spell, but as we'll see it doesn't cover all sins.]




Week 128

In Paradise, my spirit was met by soldiers in the employ of Drakhis Skycaller, a draconian sorcerer specialising in Fire magic.  Their meeting was far more peaceful than those of the roving Myrodants who destroyed my scout spirit in the plane of Fire.  Meanwhile, the strike team cleared out an Old Elven ruin that was being inhabtied by basilisks - nasty creatures who can turn you stone dead (puns notwithstanding) with a glance.  For these beasts, I recommend heavy ranged fire.  For once I did not engage the wardens, either - while ludicrously powerful in one sense, they lack the fortitude to resist the basilisk's gaze.  In the fullness of time, such tasks will be best accomplished by those such as Izzir and Autumn, but for now they remain barely competent weaklings (or perhaps just not single-handedly comparable to units of twenty men).  We also rescued some human engineers and their guards, who we then immediately pressed into service.  One of them had a very nice crossbow, which was confiscated for Autumn Leaf to use instead.


Week 132

The expedition team attacked the draconian town of Ymeth this week, on the far northwestern edge of Caldrean and under the protection of no sorcerer.  The battle was so hilariously one sided it does not even bear mentioning.  They are about as magically inclined as the Grey Elves, though, so their population of ten thousand produces a welcome bounty of power for me (about six mana crystal's worth with their temple, which is acceptable).  I will need to ship in thralls to manage the population, however.




Week 133

Some time ago, I contracted the services of a band of dwarven forefathers who were squatting at an inn.  In exchange for handsome pay they agreed to journey to the plane of Earth and settl there - they have now done so, creating the dwarven village of Fark-Anur.  They are already chafing at being under the dark elven yoke, so we can expect 'police' to be incoming soon enough.




Week 136

I had a monument to my glory erected in Ymeth.  Oddly enough, there is a long history of great leaders erecting monuments in draconian culture, so the very visible reminder of my power has actually served to quieten some of the dissent in that city.


Week 139

Northwestern Caldrean, near Ymeth

Perched upon the broad plains, the node of Air speared up into the sky, an impossibly tall spindle of clear glass giving off a bluish-green effervescence at its peak.  Standing at its base were a pair of giants reaching nearly half way up the spire, their flesh crackling and in places their limbs connected only by storms of electricity.  Winging about the spire were a bird with the face of a woman and the majestic silvery form of a sky drake, accompanied by a cyclone of living air and an enormous moustcahio'd fat man levitating above the ground; a djinn.

"Truth be told," said Lysandra, "I think we're in over our heads.  All out enemies can fly or can shoot lightning, so mobility isn't a massive factor, and let's not forget the sky drake.  We should pull back and -"

The drake swooped down, screeching and ear-splitting scream and breathing a cascade of lightning across the ground.

"Fuck.  Concentrate all fire on the drake!"  The enforcers, Autumn and the wardens all struck the sky drake at once, peppering the dragonkin with hails of bolts - those enchanted with lightning did little to damage its hide, but the cold-infused and shadow-infused bolts pierced all the same.

"With me, ladies!" yelled Ardustra, plunging from her hover iinto the ground.  The rest of the wardens followed suit and shot back up beside the drake.  The wardens landed on the creature's back, driving their whips into the creature's flesh until they caught.  "On my signal, pull!  ...Pull!"  The wardens tugged at their lashes, cutting through the sky drake's neck with lines of dark force and cold, carving a circle around its throat until with one final tug the drake's head was torn away.  The decapitated beast careened to the ground and drove itself into the dirt, throwing up piles of turf in the process.  The wardens landed gently upon its back, whoops and cheers coming from them all until they noticed what else awaited them - two storm giants, a harpy, an angry djinn and an air elemental nowhere to be seen.

"Oh hell," said Ardustra.  She shut her eyes, waiting for the inevitable barrage of destruction.  Several cracks signified the strokes of lightning on the field, followed by screams and the smell of burnt flesh.  She opened the eyes to witnes the damage, only to find the field untouched.  Bewildered, she looked about to find the ranks of thralls decimated and smoking.  She let out a peal of relieved laughter - the giants and djinn had gone for the most numerous, easiest target, not the most dangerous!  She signalled, and the rest of her unit swooped up and struck the giant head of them, felling the terrible foe with a thousand cuts.

Behind the falling giant, more bolts made short work of the second, and the huge figure was finished off by the sudden appearance of a dozen grey elves emerging from the ground and clambering up the giant's torso to stab it in the heart - the Faradax, the elite grey elven stealth unit.  The dark elven empire's first true auxiliary unit, the faradax had been following the strike team for weeks unseen.  As the giant fell, the faradax captain flipped a salute to Lysandra before descending back into the earth.

Another bolt of lightning struck, this time amidst the wardens.  Ardustra was thrown to the ground, but most of her unit remained unaffected.  The rest of the wardens ganged up on the djinn, supported by ranged fire as they cut the genie to pieces.  The air elemental emerged to strike Izzir while the harpies were taken down by Autumn and the remaining enforcers.  Lysandra polished off the air elemental with a blast of magic and with that the battle was done.

As the thralls moved about the battlefield, clearing space and looting, Lysandra scuttled over to where Ardustra was floating above the ground, nursing her scorched arm.  The warden gave a salute with her good arm, whip clutched in hand.  "Arachnomancer," she greeted.

"Captain," said Lysandra.  The drider shoved one of the thralls towards Ardustra.  The warden nodded thankfully and in one swift motion took the thrall's head off with her whip - the rest of the thrall's body crumbled to dust, but as the power surged back through her whip the burns on her arm sloughed away, revealing freshly healed skin.

"Since I have you," continued Lysandra, "this seems as good a time as any.  You have fresh orders from the Empress.  You are to return to Thandthius at once."

Ardustra raised an eyebrow.  "A punishment detail?  For this?"  She nodded to her arm.  "Has the Empress been that displeased with my service?"

"Your service has been stellar, but those are your orders.  You are to pick a dozen of your best women from the wardens and enforcers and return to the capital post-haste.  Promote a lieutenant before you go to serve in your place, you will have new priorities after this."

"Vasmuris would be my recommendation for that, then.  May I know what the mission is?"

"You may not.  I will inform Vasmuris of her promotion.  Pick your women and be on your way."

Ardustra frowned but gave a stiff salute anyway and flew away to select her dozen.  Lysandra turned to the corpse of the djinn and examined the two objects of interest recovered from its corpse - an enchanted handaxe and a spellbook.  Examination of the book revealed information about manipulating the forces of the seven planes - at least enough to start working on spells.  There were also several hand-written notes on spells unrelated to the text stuffed into the back.  The Empress would definitely want to see this.



As a result of recent battles, Izzir has proved his worth and is displaying more skill in combat.  Autumn Leaf as well has been working on her marksmanship skills and become more accurate.  I am now reaching the point where enchanting them might be worthwhile, although I have other priorities at present.  A very interesting spellbook on Summoning was retrieved from the air node this week, and tucked into the back was information on how to cast the Alacrity and Wind Walk spells, as well as a very useful spell that would allow me to teleport my tower to another city entirely in an emergency.



[I didn't know this, but when Heroes level up you can pick their progression to an extent.  Izzir got better to-hit in melee and Autumn Leaf got better ranged to-hit and increased crit chance.  Damage I can increase by spells.  The new level in Summoning is very interesting, if only because it can give us access to Skeletons - the cheapest spam unit in the game.  As a bonus note, clearing that Node got me the 'Temple of Doom' achievement for taking on a level 6 dungeon.]

[Iituem]

Week 140

Took and burned another ruin belonging to the Red Hand today.  While the battle was not of note, we were able to capture their leader; Grogar the Horned.  I was all set to have him publicly executed, but apparently some part of orcish warrior code means that since we beat him, he serves me now.  I can't say I'm thrilled, but I suppose he can tag along for the meantime.  No promises that the execution won't un-stay.



[The game is in a rather unpolished state, even after release.  Grogar here doesn't even have a backstory.  We'll keep him around for now, but the chances are he's getting dropped at the first opportunity - part of the reason for this is that we cannot have more than four Heroes at any given time.  If we get someone more interesting to fill in his slot, that execution is being re-scheduled.]


Week 141

After eleven weeks of careful casting and preparation, my spell is complete!  At a regrettably phenomenal cost in mana, both in casting and maintenance, I have artificially strengthened my connection to the flows of magic itself!  I am now twice as capable at spellcasting as I was when I first took the throne, in part from careful and constant development of my own abilities, but mostly because I just screwed around with my own chakras with this spell.  Everything is going to be that much quicker to cast, including what I have planned next...


Week 142

The High Temple, Thandthius

Ardustra stood alongside her chosen dozen, thirteen dark elf maidens dressed in simple black shifts amidst the opulent majesty of the temple.  As one might have expected, there was a definite spider theme to the structure, from the web-pattern walls to the numerous images of giant cave spiders in the stained glass windows and statuary.  At the very forefront of the temple, behind the altar where they now stood, was an archway that stood out for its simplicity; a rectangle of stone upon a dais with steps leading up to it.  Before the gateway stood the Empress Canter, a drider in the ceremonial dress of a high cleric, cut to imply royalty.

"Chosen of the Spider Mother!" the Empress declaimed.  "You have been chosen for your dedication, for your reverence and for your strength.  You were selected because the Spider Mother saw in you a spark to be nourished and birthed into a flame.  Indeed, the blessing you shall receive is one that even I cannot partake of, having already been transformed by our Mother.  Not driders shall you become, but a thing both closer and further from the Spider Mother."

The Empress gestured towards the archway behind her and a yellow fild of light shimmered into being within it.

"Step into the Gate of Ascension, my children, and face the greatest child of the Mother.  Not all of you will survive, but those who do shall ascend.  Go through, and may the Mother carry you home!"

The other chosen glanced towards Ardustra and she just managed to avoid outwardly rolling her eyes.  Of course the captain had to go first.  She stepped around the altar, ascending the stairs towards the thrumming yellow gate.  She admitted to herself a sense of trepidation at stepping through - the three weeks of 'purification' that had followed had stripped her of all her enchantments, even flight, and she felt suddenly and terribly mortal before the Mother.

"Mother guide me," she whispered to herself, then stepped through.

'Pain' did not cover it.  In her time as a warden, Ardustra had survived the destruction of her first two units and captained a third, and in the course of her career she had been shot, stabbed, crushed, set on fire, electrocuted and frozen half to death.  Before that, she had been born out of the protection of a House and survived as a mere slavedriver, and that had brought its own privation.  This felt like a roaring fire had managed to alight her flesh, bones and thoughts simultaneously.  The searing agony worked its way through every fibre of her being, unmaking her, tearing her down to the absolute simplest form she could be.  It felt as if the process had lasted a week already.  Then she somehow felt the magic re-writing her, putting her back together differently, stronger, faster.  New limbs, new senses, new awareness and coordination flooded her being and only as the pain began to recede, replaced by a cool awareness of her entire being, that she realised she had been screaming the whole time.

The last of the pain washed away, and her compulsion to scream came to an end.  Everything was dark, but she was vaguely aware that this was because she had yet to open her eyes.  She flexed her fingers experimentally, rubbing them against each other.  All there, but with a slightly chitinous quality to them, and sharpened at the tips.  She could tell exactly where they were, as well as her arms and legs and... other things.  Her proprioception, her sense of herself in space, had sharpened considerably.  She tried flexing her toes and found that she only had three claws instead, two at the front and one at the back, and all very small.  She tried lifting a foot and found that there was a small amount of resistance, enough to easily overcome but potentially enough to grip to surfaces.  She felt that she had another pair of legs behind her, helping her remain stable on the stone floor, and another two pairs emerging from her back.  These ancillary arms had only tiny claws at the end, but the edges of the limbs were sharp and slightly serrated, enough to act as independent weapons.  She raised an eyebrow at that; ten limbs, not eight.  A break from the pattern of the driders.  Four limbs for balance and movement, six for attack and manipulation.

Ardustra opened her eyes and saw the shocked faces of her companions, the proud and greedy yellow eyes of the drider empress.  How unfortunate she looked, almost ugly, and how weak and pitiful the mere elves looked by comparison.  Ardustra looked upon her own body with delight, seeing the black chitinous extremeties of her hands and feet, the sleek spider limbs and the plates of chitin that seemed to segment her more elven skin.  She knew at once that she would have those same yellow eyes herself.

"Welcome Ardstra," said the Empress.  "Welcome, Cutter."

The altar of ascension is complete and I have now transformed a dozen elves with the power of the Spider Mother; wardens, enforcers, even one of the faradrax who wished to ascend.  Only one of the thirteen to enter the gate was killed by the transformation; the rest have become beautiful.  Now all that remains is for me to begin the process of enchanting this dozen with the appropriate spells.



[Cutters are very nice, and one of the two top-tier units for the Dark Elves.  They are unlocked by the Altar of Ascension, which requires the University and top-tier religious building for the elves.  They only have 16 AC, which is acceptable compared to other armies but not to monsters, and their to-hit is +7/+5/+5, but they do get three melee attacks per figure per round (and they have 3 figures, which compares favourably at 9 attacks per round to the 8 per round of wardens) and each of those attacks I can enchant.  They can scale walls, they have a little bit of spell resistance, and they negate the First Strike abilities of other creatures that attack them.  Since I plan on First Striking them myself, this will make them the perfect anti-cavalry unit.  Cutters are high upkeep at 7 gold and 1 food, but we have no shortage of gold.]


Week 145

A horde of werewolves and a hill giant came to strike at Thandthius today!  Apparently the altar of ascension had really pissed off some of the Powers That Be and they send the giant and his companions to end us.  For now the band seem to be ignoring us in favour of other targets.

[Bloody random events.]


Week 151

Northern Caldrean, The Circle of Ogthar

"Sweet mother of spiders, what the fuck is that?!" cried Vasmuris.

"That would be an enormous earthworm capable of devouring whole armies in its cylindrical, tooth-crowded mouth," said Lysandra, deadpan.  "You know, your predecessor was much more blase about this kind of thing."

An enormous three-headed hydra trampled the sacred grove of the druidic order of Ogthar, towering above the dark elf army, but it paled in comparison to the giant sand worm that reared up from the ground next to it, fully half the beast still in the ground.  By comparison, the acid and earth elementals, hill giant and basilisk were dwarfs.

"So the bad news is," said Lysandra, "that worm is large enough that it can bite as high as you can fly, so it can attack you.  The worse news is that it can do the same merging with the ground trick you do, so it can attack me as well.  The even worse news is that while muddying the ground might slow down the drake and basilisk, it will do sweet fuck all against the worm.  Upshot?  Worm is priority."

"Do we really need to bother with this?  These aren't even our lands."

"Well, apparently something the Empress did utterly fucked off the powers that be, so sorting this out should hopefully put us back in their good graces.  In any case, it's an order, so shut the fuck up and get ready to attack."

Lysandra opened the battle with her usual transformation of part of the battlefield to mud, although it mainly targeted the hydra, basilisk and hill giant while leaving the elementals untouched.  Two barrages of elemental bolts tore through the giant worm's flesh and the faradax leapt up from the earth and scaled the beast's back, stabbing their long knives into weak points across its body.  Autumn leaf shot a power-infused bolt into the exposed nexus of nerves that served as the worm's brain and the monster collapsed to the ground, shaking with its violent death throes.

The wardens emerged behind the exposed earth elementals, dragging one down, when there came a distinct whistling sound from above.  Spearing down from the sky at speed came a dozen strange beings, ten-limbed crosses of spider and elf.  They hit the ground hard and drove their attacks into the second earth elemental, cutting it to pieces with scimitar and bladed limb.  As the creature fell, the captain of the ground flipped a quick salute to Lysandra.

"Ardustra?" said Lysandra, barely recognising the cutter as the warden she had known.  She could only spare that moment before her attention returned to the fight - the enforcers had just taken down the basilisk and Vasmuris' wardens had just killed the hill giant.  A moment of quiet fell as everyone hesitated, save the frustrated roars of the hydra.  Then a barrage of bolts and both wardens and cutters descended on the beast, ending it.

With the beasts slain, the terrified little dwarven druids emerged from their hiding places to give their thanks.

"Hail to thee, champions!" the smallest one said.  Since he had a white robe instead of brown, Lysandra took him to be the leader.

"Don't bother with the grovelling.  Listen, whatever nonsense is getting the forces of nature pissed off with us, you take care of it and get them off our back, you get it?"

"Ah, yes, mistress elf."  The chief druid seemed a little lost at the lack of ceremony.

"Now, do you have anything more material you can reward us with as well?"

"We have eschewed all material possessions-"

"Right.  Myrandis, burn the grove to the ground."

"-but there are several useful techniques we could teach you!  Secret knowledge!" the druid hurriedly finished.

Lysandra raised a hand to halt Myrandis' imminent destruction.  "What kind of knowledge?  Spells?"

"No, I think there is little we know of spells that could help.  However, I believe you are the ones who slew the sky drake of the north-west?"

"What?  Oh, back at the air node, yeah.  What about it?"

"Well, there was a genie there who possessed knowledge of summoning -"

"Yeah, we killed him, took his spellbook.  What's your point?  Talk or I start burning things."

"Yes, yes, of course.  If you but spare our humble grove, I will teach you techniques to make the channelling of planar energies more efficient - the cost in mana of summoning creatures will be reduced."

Lysandra chewed on her lip for a moment in thought.  The druids all looked nervously between themselves.

"Yeah, that'll do.  Teach me what you know and we'll be on our way."

The chief druid nodded gratefully and launched into a rather in-depth lecture on the alignment of the planes.  After about two minutes, Lysandra had a thrall start taking down notes.



[We received the Summoning discipline after saving those druids.  Druid circles are pretty cool because if you clear them of monsters you get a new positive discipline.  In this case, it reduces the cost of initial summoning by 10%.]


Week 152

Drahkis Skycaller, whom I now share a border with in Paradise (a friendly tribe of Dwarves decided to join my empire) has offered me a defensive alliance as with Tangaroa.  As before, he has offered me a wealth of magic items and two spells for something I wanted anyway.  I was all set to agree when he found out about our treatment of the grey elven population in the empire and pulled out.  Typical.



[I really wanted this, but I clicked the wrong bloody button!  I chose 'no' instead of 'yes' by accident and lost out on a sweet package of loot.  Offering him the same deal gets a no from him, so I'm going to have to wait for him to maybe think of offering me all that again.  Urgh.]


Week 154

As if the failed negotiations weren't bad enough, our village in Paradise was conquered by owlbears and slimes.  I'm sending a small force to retake it.


Week 156

The expeditionary force has finally reached the Plane OF Fire, after something of an extensive detour through Caldrean.  They took a ruin filled with dwarves today, who notably had a pair of powerful golems animated by runic magic.  Not quite powerful enough, mind.  Amongst their possessions notes were found on a way to make one's eyes vessels of the plane of Shadow - and acquire a murderous gaze.  I'll look into that one.

Still, this marks the end of three years of rule.  We have ten cities, although twice this year we have had eleven, so if we can recapture those we will have the twelve we wished for.  For the next year, I will aim to reach twenty cities total.  It has certainly been an eventful year - lots of dungeons looted, lots of beasts crushed, and my army only grows more powerful.  Soon enough I shall need to split my expeditionary force in two.  Gold and food income are excellent, and we have only grown magically stronger, even with the heavy enchantments upon myself and my armies.  Research capabilities are limited, mind you, so that's something to fix in the future.

Still, all in all a good year.

[ATHATH]

Is this game on Steam? If so, is it getting updated occasionally?

[Iituem]

It's on steam and they're rolling out patches every week or two.  Still buggy as hell, though.

[Iituem]

Week 160 (Week 4, Year 4 of Canter)

This week the expeditionary team investigated a literal ivory tower in the plane of Fire.  Apparently this is one of dozens belonging to an ancient master of magic, a sorcerer named Arronax.  The name rings a bell, as if I heard of him in a story somewhere a long time ago.  The tower had been inhabited by a circle of Quill druids and a pair of marids, whom they dispatched readily.  Amongst the debris of the tower were a couple of useful spells; the Well of Misery and Holy Arms.  The former is a rather useful spell, if a dark one - while sustained, I will draw upon the energies of everything that dies in battle across the planes.  Only a pittance of mana, but from -everything- it might add up.  The latter would serve as a Bless Weapon spell across the entirety of my armies.  Neither are quite worth casting right now.


Week 161

Sometimes this job gets weird.  My expeditionary team actually found a gateway to Hell.  Fortunately, it was only one-way.  On the other hand...



Demons.  Actual, honest to the gods, demons from hell being supported by cohorts of fire elementals and gargoyles.  I can only assume that they were the ones responsible for chaining that efreet to a rock.  The battle was short and brutal, without casualties on our side save for some nasty burns on Grogar.  We released the efreet, who wisely chose not to pick a fight with the expeditionary army and even taught us a couple of useful spells; Mana Short, if I ever want to hamper the long-term casting of another sorcerer, and Haste, which grants extra attacks and movement.  Sadly I can only cast the latter temporarily, not as a long-term strategic effect.  From the demons we collected a rather nice ring and a sword whose blade was partially ethereal, which was gladly welcomed by Grogar.


Week 167

News has reached me that one of the ancient Titans of Fire has awoken and is now roaming Caldrean.  Lovely.  Let's try to stay out from underfoot of that, shall we?

Northern Fire!Caldrean

The heavy stone slabs of the tomb loomed ahead, given a ruddy glow by the flames of this strange alternate Caldrean.  The writings, in Ancient Elven, was barely legible as much from age as antiquity.  Lysandra squinted at the markings.

"You think this is it?" she asked.  Myrandis made a non-committal grunt.  "Would seem a little unlikely.  Still, ancient High Elven architecture, eternally burning braziers by the entrance and still intact given where it is, it looks promising.  Let's head on in."

Teams of thralls cracked open the heavy slab that was the tomb's entrance and shifted it aside.  Dry, spicy air wafted out from the interior and the gathered fighters descended down a long corridor with intact murals depicting the achievements of the tomb's occupants.  They passed through several antechambers filled with stone caskets for the ancient sorcerer's servants until they finally reached the great open chamber of the sorcerer's own tomb.  Raised on a marble dais above the floor was a sarcophagus of silver, still shining from some ancient anti-tarnishing magic.  Myrandis knelt on her forelimbs and inspected the inscriptions on the sarcophagus' lid.

"Mmrh.  No, not Arronax.  One of his apprentices, by the look of it.  First High Elven Patriarch, lots about a golden age of wealth and commerce, not much about magic."

"Damn," said Lysandra.  "Well, it's not so bad.  I was sure by now we would have been -"

There was a chorus of heavy grinding noises as the stone sarcophagi in the antechambers were drawn open by their occupants.  Lysandra groaned.

"-attacked."

A legion of silent figures emerged from the entrance to the main chamber; mostly simple skeletons, but also a handful of mummified, incorporeal and armoured skeletal warriors.  One of the armoured skeletons, a wight, gestured to Izzir.

"Betrayer of Shadow..." the wight hissed from a lipless mouth.  "Breaker of the Law, shadow of the Dawn.  The dust calls to you, and we shall aid your passage."

The undead horde spurred forward to the attack, and the elves turned to their defense.

While clearing out the tomb today, the expeditionary team found that their weapons were dangerously less effective against the undead - the negative energy that infuses many of their weapons actually heals the dead at the same time as the rest of their attack damages them.  This is something to bear thinking about in future.  The team were not able to recover much from the tomb beyond some general treasure and a rather nice rapier.


Week 170

The expeditionary force found a magical prison today, guarded by a fire giant, a fire elemental, two herds of nightmares and two wings of gargoyles.  They fell easily enough, revealing the captive - a young necromancer by the name of An Mani.  Apparently he had been found guilty of perverting the course of life in a failed attempt at lichdom that killed off several dozen people.  He was imprisoned indefinitely.  I don't have the qualms his former masters did, and I was looking for a wizard anyway.  I decided to bring him on board.




Week 173

Seized the orcish town of Risby in the plane of Fire.  Ten thousand citizens, reasonable power production from nearby emberslag, altogether a good acquisition.


Week 180

The draconian town of Lamatae in the plane of Fire is now under our control.  It sported an excellent palisade, but palisades do little against enemies who a) fly and b) burrow underneath them.  With its 11,000 citizens it brings 15 extra mana crystals' worth of power per turn.


Week 182

Our scout found a gateway to the plane of Air via Paradise.  It seems to be a land of floating islands, stuck in a perpetual ice-strewn autumn.  The spirit has encountered the servants of two other sorcerers there as well; a dwarven runecrafter called Varkin and a terrible eyebeast called (without irony) Eyegor the Tyrant.  Eyegor and I actually get on quite well, from our initial conversations.  He even sold me a spell to recall a hero to my summoning circle for a chest of gold.




Week 184

While clearing an Air node today, my scouts uncovered a spellbook belonging to the former occupants on the magics of Destruction.  This should prove very interesting.


Week 186

I sent a very small team of some unenchanted enforcers, some dwarven arbalesters and a handful of weavers (priests) to recapture Tild today.  Overkill, really, they only had the one squad of militia defending.  Nevertheless, the weavers decided to show off by casting their doom bolt spell.  The doom bolt is quite entertaining as spells go.  It's expensive, and a squad can only really cast it once per battle, but it essentially just fires a bolt of arcane force.  It is incredibly reliable and can one-shot quite a number of units as well.  Very nice.

[The Doom Bolt does 60 points of arcane damage, straight up, no variation, no resistance.  Costs 35 mana, so the weavers can only do it once per battle, but guaranteed damage is nothing to sniff at.]


Week 193

Took another of Arronax's ivory towers today, this time on the plane of Earth.  We also found a preserved spellbook on Air spells amongst the libraries there.  Also captured a human city on said plane, very welcome.


Week 208

We cleared a water node, found a spellbook on Water spells and a spell which screws with the physics of a battlefield (Realm of Chaos) such that only Fire creatures prosper.  Other than that, the last few months have been dead.  It's been a really quiet year overall here in Caldrean.  I certainly haven't reached my target of 20 cities, even with the conquests we've made.  One of the big problems there is research - it's been slow, and there haven't been clear signs of ways to fix it.  On the other hand, we're filthy rich (nearly 5000 gold in the treasury), so why don't I just mass-purchase slaves and dedicate them to being test subjects for the mages?  We've cleared at least two of Arronax's towers, and while they're short on reading materials they have unparalleled technical equipment for research.  If I just dumped fifty units' worth of disposable slaves in there for testing, it should double the current research output - and we're hardly getting the most use out of our grain city anyway.  Let's see, fifty slaves to a unit, five times five times a hundred, okay, so two and a half thousand slaves, at 20 gold a batch... about a thousand gold.  Yeah, I can afford that.  Let's see if it works.

[ATHATH]

Bump?

[Iituem]

Week 212 (Week 4, Year 4 of Canter)

I recently researched an enchantment I call the 'Eden' enchantment.  Placed upon a city and its surrounds, the enchantment doubles the output of the city's crops.  Added to Nythuar, our breadbasket, we gained a pretty massive food boost, which allowed me to support the two and a half thousand thralls I bought next.  There isn't space enough in a single ivory tower for them all, so we're splitting them up into three and putting a couple of spare units to work as assistants in one of the old Quill libraries.  It will take several weeks for them all to arrive, but once they do we should see a marked increase in research output.

I split the expeditionary force as well.  The 'heroes' and an arachnomancer are heading out on their own to deal with threats while the main augmented army fights separately.  They engaged a sky drake and its minions today, who had taken over another druid's grove.  The cutters nearly all died, so I am making a note to provide a healing enchantment for them in the future.  The drake itself was so terrifying most of them could not even land a single blow.  As a reward for saving them, the druids gave us a lucky charm.  What a rip-off!  I had them torch the grove to make a point.

[So I ran into the stack cap today.  You cannot have more than 16 units in a single stack, and therefore in an Ivory Tower or Great Library.  Even so, that will net me 32 extra Research per Tower, so we should end up only just off the +100 research a turn mark.  Again, this is something you can only really do when you're playing Dark Elf, because of the low cost of thralls - you can buy a unit outright at 20 gold a pop.  Also, we gained the 'Lucky' trait from saving the druids.  Hopefully this will negate some of the bad events we seem to be getting all the time.]


Week 214

Aleph Tower, Earth!Caldrean

Myrandis lounged across her cushions, taking a sip of wine from a crystal glass.  She wished she could say that she missed adventuring - actually, no, she didn't.  She hated adventuring.  Lots of sleeping in tents and roughing it, minimal servants, nothing you could call cuisine.  She was glad Tenoctris had taken her place with the adventurer team.  This research post was vastly superior.  The tower was chock full of slaves, and she had been able to move her furniture into the master bedroom as well (which was suitably palatial).  She had quickly discerned that the tower had not been Arronax's own, but rather one of his servants.  Quite possibly the same one whose tomb she had uncovered.  Nevertheless, the equipment was top notch.  There were tools to monitor planar frequencies, mana expenditure, mana 'flavour' (for want of a better word), ripple effects, pretty much all manner of things.

Especially now that she had test subjects in the hundreds.  Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed.  "Hrmph," she thought, "probably got in the way of the incinerator.  Well, at least there's a bit of light entertainment for the day."

The first of the tower teams has moved into place, occupying our ivory tower on the plane of Earth.  Two more teams are incoming.


Week 215

Dalet Tower, Paradise!Caldrean

Lysandra wiped draconian blood off her carapace.  No less than four genies had guarded this last tower, along with a horde of druids and draconian spellcasters.  To her credit, after these last two years her team was now a crack squad, capable of taking on nearly anything.  Yet they still had problems.  The empress had summoned a little extra aid - after so much experience of the hardships of the march even the thralls had become halfway decent fighters (although no effort had been wasted on enchantments - they were still an emergency healing supply).  Now they bore a sort of strange ethereal snake that could provide healing to others.  It was currently sinking its fangs into Ardustra, healing her from the injuries she had sustained in the last battle.  The cutter saluted.

"I think this was actually one of Arronax's own towers, ma'am.  Can't say that it was his primary one, but take a look at this."

Ardustra led Lysandra past teams of working thralls and relaxing enforcers to a strange sort of chamber filled with glowing balls of light.

"What does this do?" asked Lysandra.

"Not sure, but there was a bit of literature left in a secret nook here."  Ardustra handed Lysandra two scrolls, a spellbook and a small, hand-written notebook.  Flipping through the notebook, Lysandra found mostly gibberish, but one page displayed an illustration of the chamber she stood in, with several notes in an unfamiliar script.  Penned at the top in High Elven was the legend 'Spell of Mastery'.

Lysandra frowned.  "Boss is definitely going to want to see this..."

After clearing another tower, the team uncovered a couple of spells (Wind Mastery and Magma Surge, both too expensive or impractical to summon just yet) and a spellbook on Destruction.  More tantalisingly, we found equipment relating in some way to an unknown 'Spell of Mastery'.  I'm going to set Myrandis onto this for now, it bears investigation.


Week 216

Earth!Caldrean

"Die, foolish waves!  Sunder beneath the might of Grogar!  Raaaargh!"

Grogar swung his runic greatsword through the form of the towering living tsunami, shattering some of its form even as the creature drove its mighty fists into Grogar's chest.  A pair of flaming arrows shot into the creature's side from Autumn's bow, and behind the elemental the hidden form of Izzir shimmered into being, driving his handaxe into the creature's rear.  The elemental let out a choked, gargling roar before collapsing into a flood of water.

The party stumbled out of the cave, dripping wet and clutching a soggy scroll.  Autumn was busy wringing her long auburn hair out.

"Ugh.  Why did it have to be water elementals?" she complained, screwing her mouth up in distaste.

"Ha ha!" laughed Grogar, blood streaming from beneath his chainmail.  "Even the tides cannot stand in the face of mighty Grogar!"

Izzir rolled his eyes and looked Grogar over.  "Are you badly injured, my orcish companion?"

"Tis but a scratch!"  Grogar swayed slightly.

"Scratches don't bleed quite that badly.  Hold still, I will tend to your injuries."

An Mani held up a hand.  "Don't think we have time, Izzir."

He pointed to the plains, where a small army of human soldiers approached, bearing the emblem of the Steel Dawn.

"Those guys again?" asked Autumn Leaf.  "Why do we keep running into them, anyway?"

"It matters not," said Izzir.  "They will fall before us as the elementals have.  Hopefully with less injury on our part."

"A great day!" exclaimed Grogar.  "First the tides fall before Grogar, now the dawn shall bend the knee as well!  Aha ha ha haa!"


Week 218

Tower Bet on the plane of Fire is now fully operational.  We have vastly increased our capacity for research.  There is some measure of sad news as well...

Earth!Caldrean

The dark, obsidian spire of the shadow node cast an eerie darkness over the grave.  Grogar stepped out of the freshly-dug pit and Izzir and Autumn Leaf both lowered An Mani's wrapped body into the ground.  Sadly, the necromancer had not been quite quick enough to escape the banshee's scream.  The three heroes and their drider handler, Tenoctris, stood in silence around the grave.

"I feel I should say something," said Autumn Leaf.

"What is there to say?" asked Izzir.  "His life has ended, and now he will pass on."

"Have a mite more compassion that that, Izzir," snapped Autumn.

"He died well," said Grogar.  "To die in battle, head held high, there is no better way."

Izzir gave a non-committal grunt at that.  "Well, I shall say this my friend.  I hope, An Mani, that we never meet again.  I wish for you to pass on beyond the Shadow and find what peace you may.  I hope that your plans for undeath were unsuccessful, as there lies no peace in the vale you hoped to find.  Goodbye."

"Goodbye," echoed Autumn and Grogar.  Grogar picked up the shovel and began the work of burying.


Week 222

Tower Gimel is now up and running.  Our total output of research is now near that of two hundred independent scholars.


Week 224

The Empress' Study, Thandthius

Empress Canter reclined upon her cushions, studying the most recent haul from the expeditions - a spellbook on Mentalist magic.  She had long abandoned chairs and recliners - the demands of an eight-limbed body better suited cushions.  Her sanctum was at the top of her tower, through which one would have to pass seven layers of both bureaucracy and security to see her, including a pair of enchanted cutters - so she felt both surprise and resigned annoyance when a pair of blades rested on her throat.  Her fingers laced reflexively, and a sudden, blinding light burst from her carapace.  Her assailant flung himself backward, and the drider spun around, a wand of power flying into her hand from her desk.

The dark elf who had assaulted her sheathed his blades and assumed a deep bow.  He had a dark-stained burlap sack at his belt.

"Forgive me, your imperial highness," he said.  "I, your humble servant, merely wished to present my credentials."

Canter opened her mouth to call for the guards.

"I was hired to kill you," the assassin hurried on, "but I found cause to renegotiate my contract.  I simply wished to bring you proof."

Canter studied the assassin for a few moments, frowning.

"Which House?" she asked.

"Nythuar," said the assassin, and moved to empty the blood-stained bag onto the ground.  Canter raised a hand.

"Not on the carpet," she said, then nodded to a silver platter on one of the nearby tables.  The assassin carefully plucked out the head of the traitor and placed it on the platter, using the sack to mop up some unfortunate oozes it produced.  The empress harrumphed.

"If they had problems with the farm taxes, they should have spoken to me.  It wouldn't have made the blindest bit of difference, but then I wouldn't feel obliged to murder several more members of their House.  Remind me again, why shouldn't I have you executed too?"

"Because I was hoping you might offer me a job."

"I'm not in the habit of hiring people who try to kill me, or taken to the idea of attempts on my life as a job interview.  How many of my men and women will I need to replace now that you've gotten in?"

"None."

The empress raised an eyebrow.

"I am, your highness, a professional.  No guards were harmed during my arrival, nobody else in the Tower is aware of my presence."

To that Canter nodded her approval.  "And why would I trust you given your relationship with your former employer?"

"Because you are not a skinflint, highness.  I was offered a paltry hundred gold to kill you.  A hundred gold!  Your imperial majesty spent ten times that amount on slaves not half a year ago.  I confess to being a man of taste, and that tastes can become expensive.  All I seek is remuneration commisarate with my abilities.  I assure you, so long as I am suitably rewarded, I shall remain your highness' most loyal servant."

"Name?"

"Dohar, majesty."

"Your House?  Nythuar trained you?"

"Houseless, ma'am.  Self-taught."

"Hrm.  I can offer you this, Dohar.  I can take you on a retainer, at a rate of six gold per week - " Nythuar pursed his lips at that. " - with equipment and magical enchantment provided.  No other monarch will make you that deal, no other House.  If you serve me well, and loyally?  Perhaps there will be a House Dohar."

"Why, thank you your -"

"Silence."  Canter made a dismissive motion.  "Visit the quartermistress on your way out and she will sort out your wages.  I also have a couple of things for you now."  The empress scuttled over to a standing wardrobe and searched through it for a moment.  She tossed a gilt-handled rapier in a sable scabbard over to Dohar, who caught it handily.  "Enchanted for balance," she remarked.  "Found it in a tomb.  You'll want this as well."  She threw Dohar a simple gold ring.

"This, my lady?"

"Ring of invisibility.  Now, I have a mission for you right away.  Head to the plane of Earth, I'm sure you know the gate, and catch up with my secondary expedition team - they're full of individuals like yourself.  Lady Tenoctris is in charge there, so you'll be under her watch.  Questions?"

"No, majesty."

"Then get out of my sight."

With a grin, Dohar slipped on the ring.



[Dohar's pretty cool.  He has Sneak and Sneak Attack, like the Faradax, so he can hide himself and then attack for crits on all his attacks.  With the ring of invisibility I just handed him, he should do especially well.  The ring is apparently one of Planar Travel as well, but plane shift appears to be bugged.]


Week 225

Southern Earth!Caldrean

The party approached the pyramid of glass, spouting blue-green light from its apex.  Izzir frowned at the unfortunate familiarity of the situation, especially at the appearance of a pair of High Elven hussars riding out to greet them.  They had all but approached with the intent to blather on at the party to ward them off, when one of them pointed at Izzir, shocked.

"The defiler!" the elf screamed.  "Breaker of the Law, destroyer of the Dawn!"

"Grogar thinks you'll find Grogar is destroyer of the dawn.  Tide, also," said Grogar.

"What do you speak of?" challenged Izzir.  "What law have I broken?  Is it that we have fought the Steel Dawn?"

"Not always were the champions of Light the dawn," proclaimed the other elf.  "Once they were an unyielding law, 'til their heart was defiled and the law was broken."

"Speak not to the defiler!" hissed the first elf.  "Defend the node from such a one as he!"

"Stand aside, puny elves!" called Grogar.  "Grogar will pass, and you may yet avoid Grogar's blade!"

Autumn Leaf rolled her eyes.

"They are too strong!" said the second elf.  "We must call in our debt, though our lives be forfeit."

"So be it!" said the first.  He raised his scimitar in the air.  "In the names of Aldrael, Borael and Vithgulis and his kin, we summon thee!"

A terrible crack resounded across the shifting sands.  The ground began to rumble, footing growing uncertain, and the winds picked up into a terrible storm.

"What sorcery is this?" demanded Grogar.

"Kneel, mortals!" came a deep, booming voice from the sands.  "Kneel and tremble before the might of Vithgulis!"

From the sands emerged three beasts of vaguely human form, red-skinned with horns and flames licking from their skin.  Demons.

"Crap," said Autumn Leaf.

"No, mortals!" came another voice from the heavens, lighter but terrible in its fury.  "Kneel before the grace and power of Aldrael!"

From the storm above descended a humanoid figure, resplendent in white robes, golden armour and with four mighty white wings.  An archangel.

"Crap," said Izzir and Tenoctris together.

"Nay still, mortal beings!" came a third voice from the depths of the sandstorm, like a tremor in your soul.  "Bear witness to the fury of Borael!"

Stepping forth from the sands, garbed in flowing robes of white with four wings came a second archangel.

"By the beard of Greystaff!" said Grogar.

The three demons and two archangels paused and looked at one another.

"Wait, why are these guys here?" asked Aldrael.

"Attack!" screamed the hussars, and charged.  Grogar bellowed and charged to meet them, cutting down one of the horses in a single stroke.

Izzir flipped his handaxe in the direction of the first angel and disappeared into thin air.  Autumn nocked, drew and released a pair of arrows right into the archangel's chest, tearing two holes that spilled golden blood.  Izzir reappeared in the air behind the archangel and drove his handaxe into the celestial being's throat, nearly severing the head.  A blast of magic from Tenoctris carried it the rest of the way, decapitating him.

"Aldrael!" cried Borael.  He stretched a hand to the sky and it was struck with a golden beam of light, seeming to charge him with power.  When he opened his eyes again, they glowed with light.  Vithgulis and his brothers gestured to Tenoctris and a torrent of flames swept down from the sandstorm to incinerate her - in a desperate flurry of arcane skill, she managed to break the spell carrying the flame just before it struck her.  Grogar cut the legs off the second hussar's horse and finished both of them with downward strokes to the back.

Autumn shot two more arrows, each one into one of Borael's eyes.  As the archangel screamed in pain and rage, Tenoctris fired off another blast of magic and Izzir finished by decapitating the divine being.  Grogar drove two mighty strokes into the trio of demons, each one severing a hellbeast in twain even as its brothers clawed and seared at the orc's flesh.  A final swing from Izzir took Vithgulis' own head.

Everyone, even Izzir, dropped to the ground in relief and exhaustion.  After nearly a minute of silence, save the ragged breathing of the party, Grogar raised his sword into the air.

"Ah ha ha ha haa!  The tide and dawn have fallen before Grogar, and now heaven and hell have been laid low by Grogar's sword!  Truly, can anything best Grogar in the field of battle?"

"How about first person pronouns?" said Autumn.

"Even first person pronouns cannot defeat Grogar!  Grogar is perfectly capable of using first person pronouns, but Grogar prefers to refer to himself in the third person to irritate puny elves!"

"Oh, go boil your own head, Grogar."  Autumn harrumphed and folded her arms.

She shortly became aware of a snickering sound, then an actual laugh from Izzir.  Grogar added his own meaty laughter, and soon enough Autumn was laughing along with them.  After all, it wasn't every day you fought heaven and hell together.

[First time I've seen spell resistance work for me.  Flame strike should have ended my arachnomancer there, but she resisted.  Sadly, forgot to take a screenshot at the start of the battle.  But yeah, archangels are pretty terrifying.  I also really need to enchant Grogar with flying, he can't take on half the stuff they're facing yet.]


Week 226

We gained the allegiance of some druids today in exchange for doing them a favour or two.  As usual for druids, they eschew material possessions, but I was able to get them to teach me an incredibly useful trick - the ability to traverse Nodes to get between planes, without the need for Gates.

[Gained the Gate Master discipline.  Lets you use Nodes as gates.]


Week 228

Earth!Caldrean

Up ahead stood a vast triangle of stone, rippling with water.  Water flooded out from the base of it, turning the ground around the portal into mushy silt.  Three snakelike women, a living cyclone of water, two great marids stood before it, and towering above them was a massive blue serpent.

"Great mother of spiders," breathed Tenoctris.  "I've never seen something so huge."

"That's because you weren't with us for the giant sand worm," said Autumn Leaf.  "This should actually be easier."

"Than our last encounter?" asked Tenoctris.

"Than the giant sand worm."

"Which speaks not of much," added Izzir.

"Fools!" cried Grogar.  "Has not the tide fallen before Grogar and his companions before?  They shall be sundered again!  Take heart, and strike with fury and decision."

"Right," agreed Izzir.  "Autumn and Grogar should take down the first marid, I shall handle the second.  Tenoctris, muddy the earth further that the great serpent cannot advance.  To arms!"

Izzir lifted his recently acquired scythe in salute and flashed out of sight; he reappeared behind the far marid and decapitated it in a clean stroke.  Next, Autumn shot at the second marid, but her attacks were to little avail.  Grogar followed through with his own mighty strikes, but the marid kept standing.  Tenoctris, panicking, let loose a flurry of magic that still failed to drop the genie.

"Fool!" cried Izzir.  "Muddy the land, leave the genie to us!"

The sea serpent lunged ahead for Autumn, while the marid showered itself in a ripple of magic.  Grogar raised his blade to strike -

"No!" called Tenoctris.  "That enchantment will return your own blows against you!"

"Gods damn it," muttered Autumn, who ducked away from the sea serpent's jaws but still received a nasty gouge from one of its teeth.  She drew and loosed an arrow upon the marid.  The genie's throat was punctured and it fell, gurgling to its death.  She screwed her eyes shut, awaiting the pain, only to find that none had come.

Izzir appeared behind the serpent, a moment too late for Autumn to realise - as he drove the scythe blade into the serpent, half-killing it, an equal stroke clove him nearly in two.  He collapsed to the sands, with Grogar cleaving the serpent the rest of the way, despite the wounds it forced upon him.  The nagas and water elemental were crushed with little effort.

Tenoctris fumbled with the serpent wrapped around her waist, preparing to cast its healing spell, when Grogar grabbed her by the hand.

"Do not," he warned.  "The noble knight is not of living flesh.  Your healing will destroy him for sure."

"Then how can he be healed?"

"Send for thralls," said Grogar.  "Your spells can heal him with their sacrifice.  No other way."

"Very well, then.  Let us to Rirne, and we will heal him."

Dispatched a thrall to serve as sacrificial blood for healing Izzir.  Bloody knight got himself nearly killed.

[Undead cannot heal over time, and healing spells that channel positive energy kill them.]




Week 229



The adventurers reached the plane of Water today, having rested and been healed of their injuries.  Thus far, they have reported lush jungle and wetlands, although I can expect plenty of sea to follow.


Week 234

I have completed research on one of the pinnacles of my magical achievement.  This spell will be expensive to maintain and ruinous to cast, but its enchantment will stretch across the entirety of my people - making them work harder, enriching the land, encouraging immigration into the cities and making them calmer and more pliable.

[We just finished researching 'Cities of Gold', one of the apex Augmentation spells.  As an apex spell, it is limited solely to the 9th circle of Augmentation and is not replicated elsewhere.  Costs 1120 mana to cast (presumably more without my Enchanter discipline), 30 mana per turn to sustain and enchants all my cities to grow 20 extra people per turn, have 20% less unrest and 20% more food and production.]

Water!Caldrean, Tower He

"I received a missive from the Empress this morning," said Tenoctris.

"Yes?" said Izzir.

"She informs us that she is devising a 'workaround' for your condition, as she put it.  A method of healing for you."

"Well, that is very kind of her.  I thank the Empress for her efforts."

"Grogar is thankful for your news," said Grogar, diving behind the boulder for cover, "but feels there is something else we should be doing."

In answer to his complaint, one of the fireballs from the draconian elementalists crashed into the boulder, fracturing it.  Another of the wizards, an elf, poked his head out of the ivory tower to examine if the shot had been effective.  A djinn floated above the tower, taking pot-shots with lightning bolts.

"Can you shoot the mages?" asked Izzir.  Autumn shook her head.

"Not the elves, grey mages are enchanted to turn away arrows.  The djinn maybe."  A bolt of lightning struck the rock.  "Preferably before he fries us."

"Very well.  You take the djinn, Grogar and I will focus on the elves."

Autumn nodded and stepped out from cover to fire a shot at the djinn.  The arrows hit true, but it was not enough.  Izzir frowned and vanished, reappearing behind the genie to slash it through the lower back with his scythe.  The cut spilled the djinn's innards, and Grogar leapt up, magic carrying him a ridiculous distance until he landed on a window sill and cut down one of the grey mages.

The wizards struck back with gusts of cold and ice, enchanting their spellswords with more and more layers of protection and fury.  Izzir flashed into being behind them, slashing them apart despite the ice dragging at his movements.  Grogar ran through the corridors, laughing as he butchered elves and draconians alike, while Autumn sniped at their occasional appearances in the windows.  The spellswords fought back, scoring a few deep cuts but Grogar shrugged them off, laughing maniacally all the while, and drove blow after blow into their fragile forms.

A short while later, Izzir was busy cleaning the blood from his armour.  Tenoctris tutted at the bloodstained halls.

"I wish we hadn't needed to kill all the thralls," she said.  "A handful on bucket duty would have been ideal right now."

"Or on meals!" called Grogar from down the hallway.  "Grogar has had no luck finding a larder, but he has discovered a chest!"

Grogar brought a heavy chest, sealed with adamantine bands, with a strange glyph in place of a lock.  Tenoctris' eyes lit up.

"Aha!" she said.  "That's an Old High Elven lock, Myrandis showed me some samples from the tomb you excavated.  You need to use the right magical frequency to open it, like a combination lock.  Now, if I remember correctly Myrandis did record the frequency used in the tomb..."

Tenoctris levelled her wand at the 'lock' and murmured beneath her breath.  With a click, the chest sprung open.  Contained within was a gold-trimmed cloak, three scrolls and a spellbook.  Tenoctris carefully opened the scroll cases and scanned them, one by one.  With the last one she stared at the contents for a full minute before passing it to Izzir.  Izzir looked it over and shrugged.

"I'm not a mage," he said.  "What is it?"

"A solution to your healing problem.  With enough magic and the right tools?  We can turn you into a vampire."

Good work from the adventuring party today.  As well as clearing out another Tower and finding a spellbook on Life, they were able to find a scroll which summed up everything I was looking to research about vampirism.


Week 240

Water!Caldrean

"So what's a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?" asked Dohar.

"Getting away from you," snapped Autumn Leaf, stepping several paces away from the dark elf.  "What are you doing here?"

"Why, the same as you I imagine."

"I am here to defend the honour and future of my people!  What cause can you claim, wretch?"

"I'm here to defend the honour and future of my pocketbook, which I think is a noble cause indeed.  After all, I want to make sure I can live in comfort, with the company perhaps of a fine lady like yourself."  Dohar reached forward to take Autumn's hand.  She spun around, drawing her dagger and slashing it at him - he caught and deflected it with his own.  Dohar grinned and winked, and Autumn threw her hands up and marched on ahead.

The going was slow enough, even on the plains.  Here on the plane of Water, everything was sodden, even the firmer ground, and Autumn and Dohar's boots were uncomfortably clogged.  Tenoctris' spider legs were waterproof and without shoes, and Izzir and Grogar abused their flight enchantments to hover slightly above the ground during the march.  Up ahead of the party, Autumn signalled a halt.  The others caught up to her.  She pointed.

Further along the plain was a node, different to the others they had seen before.  Again, yes, the node took the form of a spire, but this one had clearly been built of stone blocks, rather than shaped into being like the others.  A pure white light emanated from its peak, illuminating the army gathered below.  Autumn quickly signalled the party to take cover in the thick, wet underbrush.

"Grogar is displeased with the mud on his armour," Grogar muttered once he had settled down amongst the ferns.

"Really?" said Dohar.  "I would have thought an orc would be at home amongst the muck."

Grogar raised an eyebrow and gently patted the hilt of the huge sword strapped to his back.  Dohar grinned and patted the rapier and dagger at his belt.

"Let me see," said Izzir, crawling forward for a better look.  "Six platoons of archers, two with better equipment; a unit of druids; two platoons of polearm infantry; two lancers on horseback - no, unicorns - and four teams of grey mages.  Fourteen units total, then."

"No," said Autumn, "sixteen.  There are two teams of faradrax in the bushes there, see?"  She pointed.

"Very well then," said Izzir.  "We'll start with the mages -"

"Start with the unicorn riders," said Autumn.  "I grew up in the forests, I've encountered unicorns before.  They can do a similar teleporting trick to you, so you should take them down first.  Then faradrax, then mages, because if the faradrax move position we've lost them.  Dohar, if you can get into position you should be able to pull the same trick on them they'd pull on us, I'll provide ranged support against one of the faradrax units.  Tenoctris should keep to the back, try to stay out of range - "

"No need," said the drider.  "I have a standing enchantment that protects me from arrows."

"In that case, muddy the ground and stop the glaiveguards from reaching you, they're the ones with the polearms.  Then it's a case of survive the inevitable return fire and mop up.  Sound good?"

Izzir thought about it for a moment and nodded.  "Good.  You have your orders, let's go."

Tenoctris opened with a ball of rippling energy which reduced the already sodden ground about the node to mud.  Autumn fired a few shots at one of the hidden faradrax teams, but only succeeded in downing a single elf.  Izzir and Dohar both disappeared, and Izzir reappeared next to the unicorns, taking both down with a pair of well-placed blows.  Finally Grogar leapt into the air and crashed down amongst the faradrax, butchering several of them with his opening swing.

The grey mages began enchanting faradrax and glaiveguards while the archers began launching volley after volley at Autumn and Tenoctris, the former of whom deftly evaded each and every shot while the latter simply shrugged them off, gusts of wind pushing each projectile away.  The surviving faradrax snuck forward, intending to catch Autumn by surprise, only for Dohar to appear behind them, slitting the rearmost faradrax's throat before leaping forward and putting his dagger and rapier through the backs of the other two.  He flipped a leering salute to Autumn before vanishing again.

Izzir and Grogar drove themselves into the massed enemy force, wading through bodies as they reaped them, quite literally in Izzir's case.  The mages struggled to empower their glaiveguards even as the archers fell in swathes beneath the arcs of Grogar's sword.  Just as the last set of wizards prepared to execute a lightning strike, Dohar appeared in their midst and began slitting throats in a frenzy of murder.

When the last of the fighting was over, Dohar leant against the block walls of the node, panting.  The others joined him.

"So, pretty hefty fight there, right?  Five of us took on an army." he asked.

"Eh," said Autumn.

"It happens," said Tenoctris.

"Grogar has worked up an appetite after this light killing!  Where is the ham?  Grogar will start the meal."

"I confess this to be a perfectly ordinary day for this party," said Izzir, straight-faced.

Dohar stared at the four of them.

"No way is six gold a month enough for this..."

[I forgot to take a screenshot at the start, so this picture of the battle is from part-way through, just after our opening moves.]




Week 243

The adventuring party took the draconian city of Dialaine on the plane of Water.  Now that we have a foothold, casting spells on that plane will be much easier.  Vastly more importantly than that, however, the main expeditionary force in Paradise managed to wrest control of a tree of life from the angels that guarded it.

An Mani breathed his first breath in half a year.  It felt thick, warm, filled with fragrance.  He opened his eyes to find himself naked, wrapped in the roots of a tree.  As he watched, the tree withered and crumbled, but he felt fresh life flood into his veins.  As the roots around him collapsed, he found the strength to sit and take stock of his surroundings.  A beautiful valley, with a bright sky above like a warm summer day, all the trees fresh with fruit and flowers at the same time.  Further down the valley, an army was camped.  Beside him were two figures he recognised; Lysandra, the drider, and Ardustra, the cutter.

"La-"  He tried to speak, but his voice was dry and rusty.  He coughed grave dirt from his lungs until he thought he was going to faint, then tried to speak again.  "Lady Canter revived me, then?" he asked.  His voice was rough and scratchy.

"Not exactly," said Lysandra.  "We came upon a tree with the power to bring back a life.  One life, and then it crumbled.  Be glad the empress felt you could be of continued use."

An Mani nodded weakly and stumbled to his feet.  Ardustra passed him a staff and a simple robe to wear.

"How long has it been?  My companions, where are they?"

"It is the thirty fifth week of the fourth year of Canter, mage.  Your companions are alive, and they have gained a member to replace you.  Let us hope they will welcome you back, as your orders are to rejoin them - and this time, not to get yourself killed."

"The plane of Water," Ardustra added, answering his second question.  "There is a node to the south of here.  Once you arrive, contact the empress by mirror and she will use it to transport you to that plane.  We no longer have need of gates."

An Mani nodded and gathered a bag of supplies from the cutter.  He tried to offer farewells, but the drider was already on her way back to the camp.  He shrugged and headed south, leaning heavily on his staff.  His strength had fled him - perhaps some of the fruit in this valley would restore it...

[The tree of life is a rare feature in Paradise.  Seize it and you can resurrect -one- Hero with it.  I only had one to bring back, and I couldn't really keep it for later, so I brought back the necromancer.]


Week 250

Cities of Gold has been cast.  It took fifteen weeks and well over a thousand mana crystals, but I have now locked into place the enchantment which will shape the society I have built.  More subtle, more refined than the crude methods I used in the past, this does not merely force obedience, it inspires.  As a welcome addition to the increased pliability, I have been able to double taxes.  We now bring in over 750 gold per week in tax, giving me unprecedented freedom with the direction of the empire.


Week 260

[Lost the picture for this, sadly.]

We were attacked by a Titan in the last days of this year!  A great mechanical man, vastly superior to the dwarven Golems we have seen, crushed one of our villages in Paradise.  Our classical expeditionary force responded, and despite the length of the battle they prevailed - if anything primarily by just mobbing the ancient clanking thing.

[Mark IV is Level 15, has 371 health and does up to 46 damage per strike in blunt force and acid, with +16 to hit.  He has massive fire and bludgeoning resistance as well.]

[ATHATH]

Yay! It's back!

It's getting quite hard to scroll down this page to the new turns. Have you considered putting them in spoilers?