Print

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

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

Avendor follow-up:


Using our new skills,  spring the trap in full.  During the security action, plunge the entire realm of Avendor into a waking nightmare, with the main terrors being a melange of the "desert raiders" with the face of locusts, capering, flaming dwarves, and rotting Spears of Carvana, along with any other horrors the citizenry can think of, only relaxed within our Civic Guard. This should provide an effective screen for their coup, and further serve to  highlight the "lunacy" of the status quo. Once the deed is done,  have whatever government takes power announce an alliance with the folk of Henord, and  continued relations with the "Lord of Southbend".

What do you mean by the security action?

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

Also, I would still like some more votes for traits.

[WyrdByrd]

Avendor follow-up:


Using our new skills,  spring the trap in full.  During the security action, plunge the entire realm of Avendor into a waking nightmare, with the main terrors being a melange of the "desert raiders" with the face of locusts, capering, flaming dwarves, and rotting Spears of Carvana, along with any other horrors the citizenry can think of, only relaxed within our Civic Guard. This should provide an effective screen for their coup, and further serve to  highlight the "lunacy" of the status quo. Once the deed is done,  have whatever government takes power announce an alliance with the folk of Henord, and  continued relations with the "Lord of Southbend".

What do you mean by the security action?

Since the Southbend Expose is being pushed, the Avendor City Council would effectively be enforcing martial law,  using this opportunity to get rid of any further rivals that might stand in our way.


Also, +1 for Void's proposals.

[King Zultan]

Master of The Land and Nightmare Walker

Soon dream and reality will be indistinguishable in our realm, a constant nightmare for all.

Avendor follow-up:


Using our new skills,  spring the trap in full.  During the security action, plunge the entire realm of Avendor into a waking nightmare, with the main terrors being a melange of the "desert raiders" with the face of locusts, capering, flaming dwarves, and rotting Spears of Carvana, along with any other horrors the citizenry can think of, only relaxed within our Civic Guard. This should provide an effective screen for their coup, and further serve to  highlight the "lunacy" of the status quo. Once the deed is done,  have whatever government takes power announce an alliance with the folk of Henord, and  continued relations with the "Lord of Southbend".

What do you mean by the security action?

Since the Southbend Expose is being pushed, the Avendor City Council would effectively be enforcing martial law,  using this opportunity to get rid of any further rivals that might stand in our way.


Also, +1 for Void's proposals.

+1

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

Mighty General
Speaker of Ten Thousand Lies

We have underlings to take care of the other things.

As for our next action, it is time to start putting the screws into Avar:

Create a large sack of wealth, enough to allow a man to live a life of opulence for several mortal lifetimes, but with each piece cursed to amplify the vices of the owner. Gold coins that bring out the holder's pride, Silver that amplifies envy, cut rubies that amplify wrath, emeralds that invoke greed, and sapphires that strike up lust.

Assume an inconspicuous guise of a wealthy mortal southern refugee who lost his family to the monster attacks, and travel to Avar. Use the cursed wealth to pay for goods and services, further corrupting the people of the city.

Spread the word that you are looking for a new wife (or Harem if that would be appropriate for the culture you are impersonating) and are willing to pay an exuberant bride price for a worthy woman. Send your personal foxcrow to spy on the noblewomen of the town, to try and track down the ones who might be interested in an illicit relationship with a wealthy foreigner.

While in town, seek the services of professionals who can be paid to spend time alone with you (doctors, prostitutes, ect). Once you have these people somewhere private, kill and raise them Lord Southbend style. Order your new peons to continue their everyday lives, seek out and serve the Avar Society without question, but to tell nobody outside the society what has happened to them.

Edit: Unless something else demands our attention, we should work Avar in this manner for several months until Lurrothel is ready to have her child, at which point we should travel to Southbend and use our power to ensure she survives childbirth and recovers quickly. We can leave the kid with Lord and Lady Southbend who are forced to raise it as their own heir, and bring our concubine back to Avar. The nightmares she weave will be the final straw for the city. After a few weeks of Lurrothel's handywork and months our corruption of the populace, a coup should be a simple matter.

I think you meant to say Avendor in this? Avar is already yours. I am writing the update with that assumption for now.

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

You gain in power, and your form shifts in two subtle ways to accommodate the sudden change. First, looking closely at you suggests you are made out of earth and plant life. Of course, anyone who looked that closely at you would be gibbering and babbling for the rest of your life, so that doesn’t really bother you. And you have gained an attachment to the land. Unless you will it otherwise, flowers die at your feet and the soil becomes poisoned. Some claim the king is one with the land.

In truth, the land is one with you, and as your might grows so shall its corruption. And the world will learn of this, as the skies and the rain and the very ground you walk on will praise your name and serve your will.

You also become slightly misty in appearance, like you aren’t really there. Like you are just a half-remembered figment of a bad dream. Before, you had to work to enter a dream. Now, stepping between them is as simple as walking and none can match your skill at dreams.

You revel in this sense of increased strength, although admittedly it is not as incredible as you first thought when you felt that first heady sensation and your forgotten knowledge and skill came rushing back. There are limits, but you can feel them stretching as your strength continues to grow.

You turn your attention back to your realm. Satisfied your orders have been understood, you leave the south. Several detachments from the Broken move to Canord, and refugees flock north, only to be greeted with cruelty and abuse. Members of your cavalry and your priests stabilize the situation, and the refugees work on farms and in the mines and forges, adding strength to your industry.

And meanwhile, the desert warriors find the land to be less hospitable than the sands of their home, even with a horde of monsters battling. The water burns their throats when they drink, the crops make their stomachs cramp and hearts slow, and they can find no beasts to hunt. When they sleep, they are torn apart by barely visible horrors, and as they die in their nightmares, they hear a voice saying a word no human tongue can speak. Klx-dryklfx…

Some flee, heading back to their home. Some turn east or west, and eventually find relative safety. A few push on north, and their corpses fertilize the fields they thought they would burn. But behind them come more, always, and so your people stay away from their farms and villages.

Earlier, you created the guise of a wealthy southern refugee. You take it again as you return north, your foxcrow perched on your shoulder, and in your hand you hold a large sack. Day by day, as you walk, you pour a little corruption in it and take a little from the land, and gradually coins and gems and all manner of treasures form inside it, each tainted in some subtle way.

And with that disguise in place, you slip into Avendor, distributing a few of your treasures to some scattered beggars, wincing inwardly at the act of charity even as you take pleasure in the knowledge of what those coins will do. You see a formation of guardsmen marching through the street, and sense a strange mixture of fear, resentment, admiration, and respect come from the surrounding people. Similarly, when you pass a Voice of Change, you can sense a mix of skepticism and belief. But there’s more belief than doubt, which bodes well.

You take a room in an expensive inn, tip generously, and attend a few balls and dances, meeting the lovely ladies of the city and regaling them with tales of your heroics defending the walls of Henord Crossing, riding to the rescue of refugees from Avar, and other such blatant falsehoods. You gift several with trinkets of various types, and send your foxcrow to listen to them in the night. Sending a hideous monster to eavesdrop on wealthy young women in a paranoid city proves ineffective, and some of the families leave the city…with your gifts in tow. You also have to persuade a patrol of Civil Guards that you aren’t a secret agent of the demon or the corrupt priests. Fortunately, enough of them are members of your cult that a whisper in their mind gets the point across.

Hiring doctors and courtesans proves much easier. You made sure to spread word of your painful wounds and horrid nightmares, so no one is confused by your constant need for two common treatments for both.

They die easy. Reanimating them takes only slightly more effort, and they follow your orders obediently. Several people comment on the apparent mass exodus, but very few manage to link it to you. That fact makes their ready acceptance of your brilliant lies slightly less impressive.

Still, the corruption of the city grows at a rapid pace, with literal hundreds of recruits joining the Civil Guard, and most of them going on to become cult members, slowly falling into evil without even realizing it. Laws become stricter, punishments harsher, and the city slowly begins to divide into two armed camps with several thousand caught in between.

You are eagerly preparing to “return to Henord” and witness the birth of your daughter, when you receive a note from Caliwick, delivered by some spirit of darkness which dissolves once you take the letter. It’s short, and hastily written.

“Army formed. Order of monks on the move. Very dangerous. Some desert tribes will ally. Orders?”

Name: Klx-Dryklfx

Time: 10.25 months

Physical Might: 199 +6 ( -24 leakage, -15 gems of corruption, - 10 reanimation, +80 worship)

Mental Might: 199 +6 ( -24 leakage, -15 gems of corruption, - 10 reanimation, +80 worship)

Cults

The Ceaseless Consumption
  Members: 7 seducers, 1 high seducer, 3 Shapers, 346 peons, 3 members of the city council in Avendor, 1096 Civil Guardsmen, 4 priests, 23 merchants, 29 mercenaries, 273 beggars, 24 thieves
  Resources: 35
  Power: 42 (5 spent recruiting, 5 spent training, 5 spent worshipping, 6 spent spreading rumors, 6 spent hunting bandits)

The Avar Society
 Members: 1 seducer, 27 peons, 27 merchants, 19 artisans
Resources: 12
Power: 8 (4 spent throwing parties, 4 spent constructing temple)

17 mutated spies, 15 Voices of Change

Fortresses

Canord
   Strong walls (45), Deep moat (25), Thorn Wall (25), Wards (20), Traps (25), Demonic crops, plentiful mines, Strong aura of domination.

Avar
  Basic Walls (25), Living Ward (15), Demonic Mud Moat (20)

Castle Southbend
  Strong Walls (35), Strong Wards (30), Moat (20), Gargoyle Guards (15), aura of reanimation (-4 slaves/week)

Henord Crossing
  Basic Walls (15), Moat (5), weak aura of domination, partially complete temple (16/20)

Demonic Realm
2200 Peons
1 Doom-Seer, 2 Doom-Seekers, 293 Slaves, 4 Dark Priests, 446 zombies
405 Light Cavalry
225 resources 
+28 power/week, + 40 resources/week (farms, mines, mills), -10 resources/week (upkeep)
Mild corruption, Road Network, Demonic Shrines

Demonic Armies

11 Reavers, 2 Doom-Seekers, 250 thralls, 100 zombies in Canord

100 zombies, 100 skeletons, 30 weeping sores, 100 Spear-Thralls, 1 Spear-Thrallherd, 50 Archer-Thralls, 100 deathless knights, 17 Greshspawn, 90 rangers in Canord/the south

The Broken – 791 chaff (243 thralls, 343 zombies, 128 skeletons, 17 wisp wights, 59 weeping sores), 675 light infantry (300 Spear-Thralls, 1 Spear-Thrallherds, 372 Sword-Thralls, 2 Sword-Thrallherds), 273 heavy infantry (27 Demon-Touched , 1 Demon-Touched Thrallherd, 199 wisp-wretches, 46 heavy swordsman), 279 ranged (272 Archer-Thralls, 2 Archer-Thrallherds, 17 slingers), 31 mages (3 Doom-Seers, 31 Doom-Seekers), 215 heavy cavalry( 5 mounted god-slayers, 210 deathless knights), 23 Infiltrators (18 Hunters, 5 Night-Stalkers), 28 support (15 Dark Priests, 1 Dread Priest, 12 Shapers), 10 siege (8 armored brutes, 2 crushers), 17 incorporeal(17 specters), 90 scouts (rangers)
Barrow Bows – 183 scouts (rangers), 67 light infantry (bandits) in between Avar and Southbend

Champions

Kreth Woemaker
   Physical might: 27 (+11 worship, - 8 corruption, -2 corruption)
   Mental might: 27(+11 worship, - 8 corruption, -2 corruption)
   Other: Magic Cloak, worshipped by the Barrow Bows

Duthrax Soul-Render, First of the Thrall-Herds
  Physical might: 9 + 1
  Mental might: 5+ 1
  Other: Duelist, skilled commander, zombie horse, Herald

Lurrothel, Weaver of Nightmares
  Physical might: 3
  Mental might: 8
  Other: Necromancer, skilled at wards and dream magic, pregnant with your child (2 months till birth)

Caliwick the Arch-Necromancer
   Physical might: 2
   Mental might: 11
   Other: Necromancer, Soulbond, Living Legend

Artifacts

Desecrator
  +6 physical, +6 mental
  Bringer of unholy rot, Reanimator, Focus of Power

Magic Cloak
  Unknown properties

Herald
  +2 physical, + 2 mental
    Inspiring song, crimson regeneration

[Detoxicated]

Ally with some tribes and prepare for the Monk Army by laying Out complicated traps throughout the lair.

[Detoxicated]

Also meet with Our troops but let them enter battle without us. We Strike them from Behind. Beforehand we demoralizr the enemy with visions of despair and Nightmare of betrayal.

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

I would like some more votes before I make an update.

[VoidSlayer]

Invade the dreams of the monks.  Leave normal nightmares but also specific demonic imagery and a battlefield where the dreamer will die.

Alter the land as they move north to include these things in the dreams, twisted hills, mutated plants and whatnot.  The arrange to meet their army with ours in an area we alter to both be to our advantage and match the dreams.

[Weirdsound]

Have our physician puppets cover for our absence in town by spreading word that they have advised us to seek the aid of an expert based somewhere else on our wounds.

Attend the birth of our daughter before dealing with the Monks. We should be able to use our powers to speed the process up, ensure our concubine's survival, and reduce her recovery time. This shouldn't eat too much valuable time.

Reward Lurrothel by joining forces with her to run amok across the nightmares of the Monk army. While doing this, try impregnating her with a child that will exist primarily within the realm of dreams. After a few weeks of this pleasure, send her away to Avendor with strict orders to deal the final blow to the compromised city and rule it openly in our name by the time her second child is born.

Invade the dreams of the monks.  Leave normal nightmares but also specific demonic imagery and a battlefield where the dreamer will die.

This. But also use the dreams to gather information on individual monks and their families. Build up a mental index of easily corruptible people for us to use at a later date. Also, go out of your way to cater to any dark sadistic desires Lurrothel might have while the two of you are together in somebody elses dreams.

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

You leave orders amongst your puppets to cover for your sudden, inexplicable absence, and you are gone from the city before the sun has set. You have yet another war to fight. Flying southwards, you arrive and begin to rush Lurrothel’s birth, pumping demonic magic into the child, accelerating its growth. A dozen slaves are shredded to satisfy Lurrothel’s ravenous hunger, and shrieks of agony begin to fill the air, rebounding off the stone walls. But at long last, your child is born, wrapped in a coating of sludge and ichor.

You hold your child up, and the coating falls away, revealing its gender, such as it is. The demonic energy you forced into it clearly had a mutagenic effect, changing it into a creature of midnight blue, its skin carven with nightmare creatures that seem to run along its flesh. It is also literally made of dreamstuff, and will die without regular access to nightmares.

What is its name?

Lurrothel lies in shock, barely conscious after the agony of the birth, but the prospect of serving you in nightmares proves the perfect motivator. Even though she can’t walk until she heals, she commands various servants and two Doom-Seekers to create a complex ritual circle around her bed.

And together, the two of you begin to dream. You dream of four hundred monks, sleeping in a temple they built out of sacred stones they carried from their distant homes. Around the temple is an island of purity in a sea of corruption, where the grass grows green and brave. And surrounding them, guarding their sleep, are several hundred fierce warriors skilled with shortbow and spear and crescent-headed ax. Around all of them lay wards forged with holy power and words written in a sacred tongue, protecting all who ask for shelter and demanding nothing in return.

It disgusts you. Its mere existence is an unpalatable insult, and it drives you into a frothing rage. Lurrothel, although tired and weakened, is angered by your wrath, and together you tear into the wards which protect their dreams, shattering them like glass. In the temple a dozen of the strongest monks wake with a start, fleeing from your presence, unable to resist.

The remainder find themselves caught within a panicked nightmare, where they are slaughtered again and again on battlefields marked with twisted symbols and hills oozing with decay, on the edge of pools full of noxious fumes and vile fluids. Some unlucky ones see you indulging Lurrothel, and their screams are loud enough to wake the dead…but not to wake the tormented monks.

After what feels like hours, the senior monks transform into living storms of burning sand, and scour their initiates. Many are burnt and abraded by this, but it is enough to shock them awake. Prayers that day are a nervous, tense affair.
They spend much of the day weaving additional dreamwards, but the next night finds only more blood and slaughter and betrayal in their dreams. But on the third night, their defenses are strong enough that their sleep is troubled only by ordinary nightmares, and after that you can never do more than make those a little worse.

Unfortunately, you don’t manage to impregnate Lurrothel again. Apparently, dream sex does not equal regular sex, at least in that sense. She is a little disappointed, although she brightens considerably when you instruct her to prepare for the conquest of Avendor.

The monks are astonishingly strong of will and heart and mind, and you find few who are open to your temptations. But amongst the tribesman who guard them, you find many desperate to protect or be reunited with their family, and many who wish to return home. And of course, there is the usual leavening of ordinary scum.

Even a few of the monks begin to weaken though, when the land around them twists and transforms, and various features from their dreams appear. Though they have formed an island of purity, the taint around it has grown all the stronger. They see this, and the weakest among them begin to despair. Fortunately, they do not see how this has cost you, for the strain of such acts greatly weakened you. It may have been part of the reason your efforts to attack their dreams began to weaken…

But it does not seem to have an impact upon your recruitment efforts. Entire tribes, driven from their homes, agree to join you in battle against the monks, although most are uninterested in truly joining you and would rather return to the desert, and perhaps engage in a bit of trade or raids now and then.

They do give you plenty of information however, including revealing something extremely important: The monks have a weapon that can literally scour away Evil with the light of the sun. It is how they made their little island, and it is what their order is based around. They also tell you quite a bit about the monk’s capabilities:

Most have unnatural grace and strength, thanks to training and ritual enhancements. The more experienced ones can shoot blasts of sand or flame, while the strongest can literally become sandstorms. Even four hundred will be a difficult foe.

But there’s good news as well. Caliwick arrives with some of the monsters he left buried, including another thirty Greshspawn and several lesser dragons.

In Avendor, martial law has been outright declared, but an army has been sent to reinforce the city and investigate the claims of treason.

And Henord Crossing has finished their temple, dedicating it to you with the sacrifice of several “criminals.”

But for now, those are relatively unimportant, compared to the threat these monks pose. They are shaken, and you have found many allies. But they still could be a deadly danger, especially with that weapon.

Name: Klx-Dryklfx

Time: 10.5 months

Physical Might: 167 +6 ( -12 leakage, -10 child acceleration,- 50 massive landscape transformation, +40 worship)

Mental Might: 167 +6 ( -12 leakage, -10 child acceleration,- 50 massive landscape transformation, +40 worship)

Cults

The Ceaseless Consumption
  Members: 7 seducers, 1 high seducer, 3 Shapers, 349 peons, 3 members of the city council in Avendor, 1127 Civil Guardsmen, 4 priests, 24 merchants, 37 mercenaries, 299 beggars, 29 thieves
  Resources: 35
  Power: 42 (5 spent recruiting, 5 spent training, 5 spent worshipping, 6 spent spreading rumors, 6 spent hunting bandits)

The Avar Society
 Members: 1 seducer, 27 peons, 27 merchants, 22 artisans
Resources: 12
Power: 8 (4 spent throwing parties, 4 spent dedicating temple)

17 mutated spies, 15 Voices of Change

Fortresses

Canord
   Strong walls (45), Deep moat (25), Thorn Wall (25), Wards (20), Traps (25), Demonic crops, plentiful mines, Strong aura of domination.

Avar
  Basic Walls (25), Living Ward (15), Demonic Mud Moat (20)

Castle Southbend
  Strong Walls (35), Strong Wards (30), Moat (20), Gargoyle Guards (15), aura of reanimation (-4 slaves/week)

Henord Crossing
  Basic Walls (15), Moat (5), weak aura of domination, desecrated ground

Demonic Realm
2200 Peons
1 Doom-Seer, 2 Doom-Seekers, 280 Slaves, 4 Dark Priests, 446 zombies
405 Light Cavalry
225 resources 
+28 power/week, + 40 resources/week (farms, mines, mills), -10 resources/week (upkeep)
Mild corruption, Road Network, Demonic Shrines

Demonic Armies

11 Reavers, 2 Doom-Seekers, 250 thralls, 100 zombies in Canord

100 zombies, 100 skeletons, 30 weeping sores, 100 Spear-Thralls, 1 Spear-Thrallherd, 50 Archer-Thralls, 100 deathless knights, 49 Greshspawn, 90 rangers, 6 desert drakes in Canord/the south

The Broken – 791 chaff (243 thralls, 343 zombies, 128 skeletons, 17 wisp wights, 59 weeping sores), 675 light infantry (300 Spear-Thralls, 1 Spear-Thrallherds, 372 Sword-Thralls, 2 Sword-Thrallherds), 273 heavy infantry (27 Demon-Touched , 1 Demon-Touched Thrallherd, 199 wisp-wretches, 46 heavy swordsman), 279 ranged (272 Archer-Thralls, 2 Archer-Thrallherds, 17 slingers), 31 mages (3 Doom-Seers, 31 Doom-Seekers), 215 heavy cavalry( 5 mounted god-slayers, 210 deathless knights), 23 Infiltrators (18 Hunters, 5 Night-Stalkers), 28 support (15 Dark Priests, 1 Dread Priest, 12 Shapers), 10 siege (8 armored brutes, 2 crushers), 17 incorporeal(17 specters), 90 scouts (rangers)
Barrow Bows – 183 scouts (rangers), 67 light infantry (bandits) in between Avar and Southbend

Champions

Kreth Woemaker
   Physical might: 27 (+11 worship, - 8 corruption, -2 corruption)
   Mental might: 27(+11 worship, - 8 corruption, -2 corruption)
   Other: Magic Cloak, worshipped by the Barrow Bows

Duthrax Soul-Render, First of the Thrall-Herds
  Physical might: 9 + 1
  Mental might: 5+ 1
  Other: Duelist, skilled commander, zombie horse, Herald

Lurrothel, Weaver of Nightmares
  Physical might: 3
  Mental might: 8
  Other: Necromancer, skilled at wards and dream magic

Caliwick the Arch-Necromancer
   Physical might: 2
   Mental might: 11
   Other: Necromancer, Soulbond, Living Legend

Child
  Physical might: 0
  Mental might: 0
  Other: Baby, living nightmare

Artifacts

Desecrator
  +6 physical, +6 mental
  Bringer of unholy rot, Reanimator, Focus of Power

Magic Cloak
  Unknown properties

Herald
  +2 physical, + 2 mental
    Inspiring song, crimson regeneration

[Weirdsound]

We shall call the child 'Firstborn' for now. It will earn a proper name in time. Check to see if it is capable of accessing nightmares on its own; If it is, we can leave it to be raised by poor Lord Southbend as planned. If not, Lurrothel will have to take it with her to Avendor for now until it is at least old enough to 'feed' itself or we can find/train a proper nursemaid with dream magic.

Avendor should be sufficiently weakened so that our concubine can take it without further intervention from us. A regular army stationed in town should prove no match for our dream warfare and intrigue based mythology; The new troops will bend like everyone else. Send the Foxcrow King to keep an eye on her, and to make sure all our other assets in town obey her orders as they would ours. Let her know that we will be disappointed in her if she is not ruling the place openly in our name within the next year or two.

Arrange for the tribesmen who will help us fight the monks (But do not want to join us) to be equipped with the best weapons we can find/make that are not evil or corrupted. They might have to do the bulk of the fighting with that weapon in play. Also, approach their leaders (donning some human guise so as not to scare the shit out of them), and assure them that we respect their independence and appreciate their aid. From the biggest tribe, attempt to secure a formal alliance by taking a wife/concubine from the leader's family, paying a generous bride price in the same sort of cursed wealth we have been using in Avendor.

Let us re-focus our efforts on the weaker monks and tribesmen who have failed to resist our dreams. Switch from tormenting them with nightmares to temping them with dreams of wealth, glory, and conquest. The corruption should not be a cause for despair, but a glorious destiny to celebrate. We only need to flip a handful to massacre the others in their sleep and/or sabotage the weapon.

Speaking of the weapon, let us gather more information on it. Have Caliwick send a few airborne monsters to harass the Temple from above, in hopes of goading them into using the device so we can learn more about its operation and weaknesses.

[Detoxicated]

+1
Though i would say Your second Last Paragraph about the temptations ist highly likely to fail. So -1 to that Part.
Besides that good plan...

[King Zultan]

+1
Though i would say Your second Last Paragraph about the temptations ist highly likely to fail. So -1 to that Part.
Besides that good plan...

+1