>>24261562
First task is to actually catch up to our prey, gauge their remaining numbers and gear. They're on the march in the open, they won't be warded, probably more than a little demoralised. We can do nightmurders, cause some paranoia and hopefully infighting via delusions, possibly reinforced by horrible, horrible fleshshaping murders during the night. Anything ASIDE from engaging a golgoth army head on in the open, really.

>>24261759
Afternoon OP, gonna go ahead and side with this. Mari can definitely help us with our terror tactics. Problem is since they wont be stopping much she probably wont have a lot of time to rest and replenish all the energy she uses to cast that. Still worth the addition though.

>>24261759
Forgot to add, if we have an idle moment, we may want to ask Mari how she's actually doing. She seemed a disturbed after Golroute, maybe because it's a lot of killing for a child, maybe because the sacking and murdering civilians poked at bad and very recent memories. In either case, we don't our murdermachine to turn out as a suicidemachine.

>>24261990
Yeah I'm on board with that as well, also want to ask her if she's noticed anything different when using her power lately.

>>24261759

Mari rides off to the side of the road in order to get a good look at the situation without provoking any sentries. This slows her down a bit, as she's not a very skilled rider, but the forest is thinning out as you move west, so you still make decent time. The refugees are traveling about three or four miles behind the Golgothans, but that distance grows by several miles every day. The Golgothans are traveling at least half again as fast as the refugees, and on top of that the refugees are slowing down as they put more distance between themselves and Golroute. The refugees are a motley band of two or three hundred civilians, over half of which are women, children, and elderly, and many of those left over are fat merchants or the like. It seems most of the able-bodied men (and probably the bolder sort of women as well) stayed behind to try and defend their home from the Dorriki army. That doesn't seem to have worked out too well for them, but there'll probably be a few more casualties to account for come morning. Oh, well.

The Golgothans have only about a hundred and fifty men left, the rest having been killed, deserted, or too wounded to keep up. They're moving at a standard pace, probably to avoid leaving even more of the injured behind with a forced march. Though clearly demoralized, discipline is still maintained and a few blood guards are still about, looking as inhumanly rigid as ever. If those guys aren't magic, their training regimen must be Hell. You're not a thaumaturge, so you're not really sure what the exact limits on their summoning blood golems is.

>>24261990

Alright, then. How exactly do you plan to bring the subject up?

>>24262580

Damn, that response took three times longer than it should have. I apologize.

>>24262580
Our target is the soldiers. If we want to kill the civilians as well, that can come later.

Regarding Mari:
"You seem like that battle has you shaken up a bit. It WAS a close one. Are you holding up well?"

>>24262580
Striking at the soldiers, we should have Mari pick off a blood guard or two with her magic. Taking out their leaders is as sure of a way as any to make them break morale. Meanwhile we can move amongst them at night and use delusions to make them all start distrusting each other like we did the people in the battle.

>>24262987
If she can, she should definitely be sniping blood guards I agree, though they are not actually officers or leaders. Those guys are pulling tricks out of their sleeves like they were magicians lately.

>>24262887

"You're shaken," you say to Mari as she rides through the woods at a moderate pace, "is everything alright?"

"I'm fine," Mari says, in a tone that makes it clear she's not.

"Tell me what's wrong, Mari," you insist.

"We have a job to do, can't it wait?" she asks.

"We'll reach the Golgothan camp in about an hour," you say, "and you need to be focused when we do. So get this off your chest now."

"It's nothing," Mari says, sighing, "it's just...Stupid."

"It's bothering you. Now quit being evasive and tell me what it is," you say.

"I..." she starts, and hesitates a moment. "Well, what's the difference between us and them?" she asks finally, her voice growing louder. "What's the difference between what we just did to Golroute and what they did to Summberbridge and...And to me!"

>wat do?

>>24263394
Shit, I know what argument I want to use but cannot into wording right now. And I know how important wording is in this quest. I need a minute, hopefully other anons are having a better time.

>>24263394
"The difference is that you hated it. Your leaders did too. Did you see How Vierre looked back there? Didn't like it one bit. They gave the order because Olberek demanded it, and they can't afford to tell him to fuck off, but they didn't like having to at all. It may not seem like much, but there really is a difference between doing something bad because you have to and doing it because you just find that kind of thing to be fun.

I've listened to a lot of Golgothan soldiers, and they were quite happy about doing the things they did. You weren't happy about it. That's the difference."

>>24263777
Is this okay?

>>24263777

It'd probably be helpful to just spew out whatever you've got for other anons to try and rearticulate more better. And I've done the rearticulating myself on occasion if the general thrust of the response is good.

>>24263808
Yeah this more or less reflects the major facet of my argument, so it sums it up well enough that I dont have any complaints. If she asks why we still need Olberek, that should be obvious. Help comes at a price, and we need all the help we can get.

>>24263808
>>24263869

"Stop lying to me!" Mari shouts in response. "Do you think I'm stupid? I've talked to these people. I know what they're saying. They fucking loved butchering that town! It was just more gold and glory for them! Vierre fucking cheered me on for offering to go chase down the survivors and murder them too!"

>>24264149
"But she wasn't out there herself, and if you've seen her in battle you'll know it's not because she was wounded. As for this trip, well, she wanted to push on to Deeprock right away because she's concerned that the survivors will escape there to reinforce the place. Basically you just waltzed in there and offered to solve that problem for her.

Oh, and those refugees back there, I don't really see any reason we should kill them. They're not a threat."

>>24264149
"War makes people bloodthristy Mari, these people see this as an opportunity to improve their own standings while accomplishing a common goal. That's human nature to exploit whatever situation people can. You have remarkable restraint compared to most, as do I.

Perhaps I didn't mention that I don't intend to have us slaughter the civilian survivors, we are moving ahead to fight the soldiers. You know, the ones that take pleasure in causing all the hell you've been through?"

>>24264803
>>24264814

So which of these are we going with? There are some important differences between them.

>>24265319
I still stand by >>24264814

I prefer my own >>24264803
I'm concerned about the the other that by defending the behavior of the soldiers, we're also defending the behavior of the Golgothans.

>>24265436
>>24265370

Well fuck. Roll for it, then.

Rolled 10

>>24264803
Rolling.

>>24265436
>>24265516
I'll concede to you on that point, so no need to roll. I hadn't considered that glaring flaw in my reasoning. Tough luck on the roll though, either way.

>>24264803

"I didn't offer to fight the soldiers! They wouldn't have given me a horse if they thought I was going to go and fight the soldiers. They don't know I'm with you, what is one brand new warrior going to do against over a hundred Golgothan soldiers, are you kidding? They think I'm out here to murder helpless Dorriki merchants for their stuff, and they're cheering me on for it," Mari says.

>>24266110
Alright I'm just gonna pull some temporary mending here because I cannot into arguing again.

"Mari, if you have that much of a problem with our allies, we can have nothing more to do with them after Westercoast has fallen.

You need to understand it is human nature for people to exploit others for their own gain when the opportunity presents itself. That holds true whether you're some rich baron or peasant in the dirt. The Golgothans as a society have been groomed to accept that exploiting others and making them their slaves because they dont embrace their own ideals. Their masters exist only to manipulate and control everything, everywhere.

They are a greater evil than anything a small army of red-visioned villagers could possibly commit. The wars and subjugation the Golgothan people have committed over the past couple centuries cannot be equaled like this. Innocents will die in the process, but there is a price to be paid to win wars, Mari. I'm not defending their practices, but understanding why such things happen is crucial and unavoidable."

>>24267037
Yea, I had a lot of trouble trying to come up with anything too, mostly because I don't even agree with it and do think these people are complete jerks and have thought so since, like, thread 2. In the first line, what you call "our allies", that's basically her own people, isn't it?

>>24267270
Heck I don't either, and its very unlikely the army is going to retaliate beyond kicking Golgoth out, so once we're done here Mari won't ever be putting up with these people again so, why not just tell her yknow?

>>24267426
Mari may not be particularly interested in going anywhere else after the war, or more likely, hasn't thought that far at all. Her original motive is vengeance, which we claim we just want to help her with (pretty sure we've never admitted that we have our own grudge), but how far is she thinking of taking that vengeance?

>>24267505
Depends on how much we stoke that fire, honestly. She might like the angle of becoming an assassin to take out corrupt Golgothan leadership (while we fuck up some daemons on the side), so innocents dont have to die all the time like full scale uprisings create. I dunno, just a thought.

>>24267561
Well that's certainly something that could be fun. That's basically teaching her the kind of tactics we already employ quite often. Anyway, in case OP is waiting, I'll support >>24267037

>>24267037

"I guess," Mari says, and then "I told you it was stupid."

Now. The Golgothan army. As mentioned previously, they're marching fast enough to reach Deeprock within three days, giving you not too much time to get rid of them. They have the usual pairs of sentries with torches at night, and a small blood guard contingent with them still. Looks like their leader is one of the captains from Golroute, but not the leader of the cavalry. What, exactly, is the plan?

>>24267956
Well before I suggest anything concrete, I'd like to bounce an acceptable plan off the wall and see if anything sticks with the other anon here atm.

I'm personally of the opinion that killing the Blood Guards is going to terrorize these soldiers far more than just simply removing their leader or killing a handful of soldiers would.

Now, they have been shown to be vulnerable to fleshshaping in the past, so I think Mari picking off two or three from the sidelines after we plant some delusions about the Blood Guards' lack of effectiveness against the enemy spirits being the cause of defeat in some soldiers heads. If we spend some time before she strikes making them mutter amongst each other in that regard, it might draw enough tension that when one dies others see it as someone having had enough of their shit and full blown melee. We can take out their regular leader in the process for added confusion.

Or if you have something more devious, I'm all ears.

>>24267956
I was thinking that something that may be fun to try would be to have Mari creepy-murder a handful of soldiers here and there, then placing a delusion on the captain that the blood guards have turned against them and are responsible for the creepymurders. That should get rid of all blood guards in one nights work.

>>24268094
Well we seem to have somewhat similar plans, basically turning the soldiers against the blood guard (it worked once, after all). Both plans are cool with me.

>>24268137
I like this, its probably more likely to work and even more so at a faster pace than spreading discontent via delusions. Using this plan we can spread delusions to just bolster the outcome.

>>24268284
The weakest link would be finding the captain alone so we can place the delusion unnoticed. Golgoth seems to have taken a particular liking to the buddy system these days.

Oh shit, forgot to add that we should be using Hidden Party to hide Mari if they go searching when people drop dead. That part is important.

>>24268137
>>24268284

Over the course of the day, Mari picks off a soldier from great distances, hiding in the trees, and then rests up, following at the pace of the army on her horse, before doing it again. Thus she's able to pick off soldiers with teeth through the throat, the skull expanding into the brain until it's crushed, bones grown through the heart, a very sudden and extreme case of lung cancer, etc. etc. Between the range of her attacks and her being Unnoticed, she goes undetected, and the soldiers soon begin to whisper about being harried by the spirits of Dorrik, which the blood guards certainly aren't doing much to repel. One of them makes the mistake of whispering it a bit too loud and one of the blood guards cuts his head off as they begin making camp.

Despite the obvious cracks in unity and discipline within the wearied battalion, the guard is still pretty strict. Infiltrating the camp to get the delusion planted will take time, but the hard part is going to be getting that delusion planted without anyone else taking notice.

>wat do?

>>24268734
Time to make a manly sized distraction. Let's find someone who's alone, hell even someone taking a leak would be fine, and delusion them with "A horrifying abomination just killed several of your friends and will kill many more if you dont cause a scene."

Bonus points if we can repeat this one or two more times for maximum distraction. Then we go in for the good stuff.

>>24268734
Does the captain have blood guard around himself, or regular guards? If he has a private tent, we could try to sneak in there and plant the delusion when he is alone.

>>24268872

It's regular guards. The blood guards have their own separate place. Also, a thing has come up and I must go for like an hour. We'll see if there's still people around when I'm back.

>>24269035
Well, if it's just a single non-blood-variety guard within hearing distance of the captain, then he should be far more likely to write off what he heard as something he just imagined, rather than going "a daemon is clearly placing delusions, I remember learning about all of its powers in boot camp and how to counter them".

If there's more than one guard, perhaps one can be lured away as in >>24268866

Oh, and really can't promise I'll still be awake when you come back, but I can at least leave this here.

Alright, I'm back. If someone can confirm they're still around, I'll write up a response for the attack on the camp. Otherwise, we'll open with the camp attack tomorrow.

>>24271108
Well I'm still kicking, I'll see if any folks from the skype group are still here.

>>24271255

It takes a while to find someone alone, but while the Golgothans are cautious, they aren't robots, and eventually you're able to find someone off guard duty who drifts away from his comrades for a few minutes. It's all you need to send him into a panic about the monster that's attacking the camp. Normally, his shouts of "monsters! Monsters in the camp!" would be ignored, but given recent events, the camp scrambles to find the mystery monsters and fight them off, almost glad that the enemy supposedly attacking them is at least corporeal this time, instead of whatever ghostly creature is passing through their bodies and killing them from the inside (the blood guards do not appear to be very well briefed on the details of how various Talents work).

"Sir," one of the soldiers says, nearly collapsing over himself as the captain emerges from his tent, "it's an attack, an attack by one of the spirits!"

"It's not Dorriki spirits, you idiot," the captain says, "the blood guard have turned on us! Else they'd be protecting us from exactly this sort of thing. Find them and kill them and we'll see the end of these horrors." The soldier looks confused for a moment, but then the captain barks "that's an order, soldier!" The soldier nods and runs off. You don't keep track of whether he, specifically ends up attacking the blood guards, but certainly the camp explodes into strife as the Golgothans begin fighting their own. The blood guards, unspeaking as always, aren't really able to plea their case and are horribly outnumbered. They aren't going to turn this one around.

>>24271719
Well that went swimmingly, lets drop some choice delusions on regular soldiers in the midst of the infighting to make them kill the guys next to them. If we can take out a bunch of regular troops at the same time as they slaughter the BG's, all the merrier.

>>24271835
Oh right: "The men around you are sympathizers to the blood guards and will kill you." should do the trick if I needed to specify.

>>24271835

What choice of choice delusions were you planning on?

>>24271857

It's pretty easy to overhear you spreading your delusions around. But this doesn't stop the deluders, with battalion unity already shaken halfway to pieces, from turning on their comrades and attempting to cut their way out. Once you get the ball rolling, the camp devolves into a general chaos until the captain rallies the loyal troops of Golgoth. At which point you spread a few more delusions around and get things rolling again, and the captain suddenly gurgles up blood and keels over.

Without an officer to rally them and entirely uncertain of who can be trusted, the Golgothans flee in all directions.

>now what?

>>24271991
Huh, either Mari's having fun or that was more description. In any event, let's see where she is and check in. I'm sure there's some half decent gear she could loot from all the stuff left behind too.

>>24272089

Mari is, as usual, hiding in a tree, though the hiding spot is somewhat compromised by the presence of a horse tied off nearby. After you tell her that the camp is well and truly clear, she eagerly runs in to find herself some sweet loot. And find herself some sweet loot she does. The blood guards, hacked down in a hurry, have left their mobile shrine pretty much completely unguarded, so she takes the santa sack she brought along (this was, after all, a looting mission) and begins stuffing it with gold and silver holy symbols, what looks like a copy of Golgothan scripture (Mari can't even read it, but it's a book and books are worth a ton), and a bunch of incense besides. More pragmatically, she yoinks one of the blood guard's scimitars. She tries on some of their black, banded armor, but unfortunately it's too big for her and, unlike standard chainmail, too cumbersome and rigid to move in when it's a few inches too big. So she settles for the captain's chain shirt instead. Plus there's enough food here to last Mari for basically forever, but she can only pack so much of it into her saddlebags.

After about forty-five minutes of looting, a few of the Golgothan soldiers return. One of them steps on a tentpole, snapping it and drawing Mari's attention. Eyes widening, she fleshshapes one to death and the rest bolt as soon as she does so. This convinces her it's time to saddle up and ride away before any other stragglers decide to return and recover supplies or regroup or whatever these guys were trying to do.

>wat do?

>>24272348
I was afraid of just such a thing happening, but at least they didn't manage to sneak up on her. Let's just head back the way we came to our forces, off the main road if possible to avoid being easily seen. "Mari, keep an eye out for other soldiers until we're a ways clear. They ran away in all directions so there could be others."

Looks like this venture paid off quite well after all, and at least the others cant call her a coward with all the high grade bling she'll be sporting.

>>24272429

Mari nods and turns back towards Golroute, heading through the forests off the road. Along the way, she finds the refugee column again and sets off towards it. The wary refugees nearly bolt when she arrives, but her relaxed pace, tiny frame, and the fact that she's alone prevents them from fleeing immediately, and instead she trades a bit of the gold for some medicine before riding back towards Golroute.

It's only been two days since she left when she returns (making it May 21st, for those keeping track at home; spring wanes, summer approaches). "Back so soon?" one of the Estercoast villagers asks as she heads back into the part of the town Estercoast has claimed for themselves, "what happened? Get scared?" He sounds more uncertain than accusatory, though, looking at her bulging sack of spoils.

"That had better not be a sack of laundry," the old warrior who'd lent Mari his horse says as she rides into the side square around which the Estercoast warriors gather to train and boast and drink and etc.

"Nope," Mari says, turning the bag out on the ground and letting the gold clatter down. The book and medicine she's wrapped up to avoid damage.

"Where the devil did you find all this in two days?" the warrior asks.

"Does it matter?" Mari asks in return.

"Aye, it right doesn't," the old warrior says, "I cut, you pick?"

"Sure," Mari says. The warrior splits the loot in half, placing the sword, the medicine, and a few gold trinkets into one pile, and then placing the lion's share of the loot into another.

"Yeah, I think I'll take this one," Mari says, grabbing the sword and medicine.

"What? Why would you take the smaller pile?" the old warrior asks, dumbfounded.

"You know what, maybe I didn't think this through," she says, voice dripping with sarcasm and holding up the medicine, "how about I trade you this for your share, then?"

"What...I...All of it? Of course not. I'll give you no more than half of this for just the medicine. Why don't we just switch shares and call it a day?" the warrior says.

"Because I can walk out of this with no gold," Mari says, "but you can't walk out of it with no medicine. That shoulder's infected."

The warrior scowls and shoves the pile of gold towards Mari, who hands over the medicine but hangs onto her shit-eating grin.

>now what?

>>24273030
Our apprentice seems to be quite well versed in the art of trolling. Good on her, hopefully it'll raise her spirits till we can deal with Westercoast. Meet withthe leaders and ask them how the restocking of our forces is going and how soon we'll be marching.

>>24273225

The four leaders haven't actually called council since they aren't planning on moving out today, so you have to go speak to each of them individually. Meanwhile, while Mari has technically made a fair deal, the freemen of Estercoast are entirely within their rights to beat the shit out of her and/or slit her throat for making them angry, because laws don't really exist in Dorrik. Fortunately, she knows how this works and hadn't really planned on sticking around Estercoast anyway. She moves to the Elmwood camp. Elmwood was at war with Greatoak last year, and your meeting with Dekker is delayed as he is personally called to arbitrate the matter of whether Mari, who still claims to be from Greatoak, should be allowed to stay. Dekker's decision is that Mari can speak on behalf of all free men of Greatoak because she IS all free men of Greatoak, and thus makes an official peace with her on the spot, at least until next spring. When Dekker does arrive to meet with you, he informs you that Elmwood is still ready to march. Jens can tell you similar about Deepwell, which is ironic, since both Dekker and Jens were seriously wounded despite their villages being spared the brunt of the fighting (or in Deepwell's case, because they fought smart instead of running like little bitches). Norfin has taken such a beating it's scarcely more than a remnant and their morale has imploded, while Estercoast has a lot of wounded men who'll need at least two weeks to recover. Vierre plans on taking the healthy ones along with Elmwood to fight liberate Clarbel in a week's time, while Deepwell and the Norfin remnant hold Golroute.

Looks like we're done here for today. See you guys tomorrow.

Well, this thread is still around, so let's just bump this.

>wat do?

>>24279021
Afternoon OP, hopefully there will be some others around today. Have to go to work in a bit.

Well, since we have a week to mess about and nothing of real importance to take care of, let's spend some time training Mari in swordsmanship like we were a little while back. That is, if there's an area of camp that's secluded enough to train in without being seen. If not let's check in and see if she's noticed any improvement in her power use.

>>24279096

The town is big enough to hold over a thousand citizens and is currently playing host to about 600 warriors, most of which stay congregated together near the center of the town. There's plenty of back alleys and abandoned houses where you'll be properly secluded.

Mari's training in swordsmanship is progressing reasonably well. She doesn't have any exceptional talent for it, but she's not bad either, and with her friendship with various Estercoast warriors basically over and the Elmwood warriors somewhat distant (if nothing else, because they just met her), she's happy to spend four or five hours a day training without any complaint. Although her swordsmanship would at best be described as "decent" and probably more accurately as "mediocre," she's still making fast and steady progress, so that's nice.

Since she doesn't have to be on guard for ambush or anything anymore, she's free to wear herself out practicing powers instead. Of course, she's already somewhat worn out by the sword practice. Still, her stamina continues to improve even though her precision is getting nowhere. Maybe she'll be better at that when she can try more than two or three times a day before nearly blacking out.

>is that all for the week?
>if so, anything you plan to do when the march on Clarbel begins?

>>24279506
I'm fine with just making sure Mari continues to sharpen her skills, nothing ventured nothing gained after all. Something else we could do is check in with Girdin and see if he's come to terms with the favor we owe him or if that's still in an IOU state.

Once we start marching for Clarbel I suppose we'll do our regular shtick and move ahead a day or so to assess the situation.

>>24279589

You move ahead to Clarbel to scout the area. Down south the place is somewhat boggy and marshy, which would no doubt make it very slow going if you weren't incorporeal. Shadows don't get stuck in the mud, fortunately.

The sight you see on arrival is less fortunate. The village's walls have been breached and hastily repaired, and Golgothan soldiers stand guard in the watchtowers. There's no sign of any Dorriki at all, but from a distance you can't see inside the village.

>wat do?

>>24279751
Let's sneak into the village with shadow form and assess the status of the villagers, and the respective strength of the Golgothan force stationed here. What sort of layout and defenses does the village have compared to say, Golroute?

>>24279751
Not particularly uplifting, but I do think Clarbel were basically going guerrilla, so there might be a good bunch of them sneaking around in the area. Can't really just say "find them" and magically run into them if they are out there though, so we should get into the village, gauge the enemy numbers (blood guard and not) and look for natives. And as always, keep an eye out for blood guard concentrations and their mobile shrines.

>>24279800
>>24279822

You slip into the village. The walls are undermanned, so it isn't too difficult. There's about a hundred Golgothans inside, with a typical number of blood guards around (about one for every twenty regular Golgothans, so, five or six). No mobile shrines. Unfortunately, no sign of any Dorriki or civilians either. You poke your head into a few of the buildings at random, but all of them are deserted, several have been ransacked. Towards the edge of the village, near the docks, there's a large square where a massive pile of burned corpses can be found.

The village is much smaller than Golroute, probably a little under half the size. Its got an outer wall with a few watchtowers, but the wall is a palisade, too small to actually walk on, and the main gate is just a pair of large wooden doors. The wall reaches into the sea about fifty feet, but you could still swim around it if you weren't wearing metal armor. Or if you're Girdin you could just walk around, 'cause you don't need to breathe. Not that the wall would be much trouble for Girdin either.

>wat do?

Is anyone else getting horrible connection errors?

>>24279978
>>24280060
Nope. Let's set to work on gauging what the mood of the soldiers are and see if there's any weaknesses in their trust we can exploit like last time. Eavesdropping and such. Also try and identify if there's a regular leader for these guys too.

>>24279978
Silly Golgoth, this isn't subjugation. So a hundred soldiers, fortifications barely noteworthy. The thing here that concerns me most is that there are 4 or 5 blood guards too many. Because if I see another blood golem I will personally go door to door and flip every shit I can find.

Are all patrols in groups of two as usual?

Also, completely unrelated: Do we breathe? Do we also breathe in shadow form? And if the answer to that is yes, I absolutely don't want to know how.

Been awhile actually, last time I saw this quest I was trying to convince a little girl to orgasm to people's screams.

>>24280179

Yes, you do need to breathe, including in shadow form, though like with sleep you can go without breath for much longer than a mortal. It'd be about half an hour before you started drowning, and even then you never actually completely drown, you just go into the "panic, need air" thing and then when you reach the surface you're fine after a few seconds of gasping and maybe vomiting once or twice.

And yes, patrols are in pairs.

>>24280166

You lurk about the camp for a while. The soldiers are certainly sick of being here. Sick of being in Clarbel surrounded by bloodthirsty savages who hide in the swamps, sick of being in Dorrik in general on some search and destroy mission without nearly enough troops to actually hold the place because the real armies are all in Margell, and some are complaining about things in general. The bad weather. The bad food. The management.

Speaking of, there is indeed a captain, though he's down to just two lieutenants from the usual three or four.

>wat do?

>>24280197
You mean that's what you were doing in-quest or what you just happened to be doing when you saw it?

This is important to me.

>>24280307
Although I have a hobby of doing that in real life, I was doing it inquest at the time.

File: 1366139451887.jpg-(60 KB, 1553x872, TDQ Map + Town Names.jpg)

60 KB JPG

>>24280301
Oh yay, another low morale force. Guess they need to be spooked some. If this place is half the size of Golroute and their force is only a hundred strong, the individual patrols are bound to be out of sight of each other now and then. If so, we could try the blind, trip, steal weapon and murder procedure on a few of them to begin riling them up some more.

Posting map due to mention of Margell.

>>24280499

So is this the actual plan?

>>24280821
Since nobody is posting anything else or objecting, I suppose it is. That is, under the assumption that there are spots where a patrol can be caught out of sight. It's more scary without witnesses.

>>24280906

It's not too hard to find patrols on their own, and there's almost always enough shadow lying around to blind two people at once, so you're able to chew through a half-dozen Golgothans before anyone even notices something is up. Once the corpses are discovered and an alarm is raised, however, the captain immediately orders his troops to form wolfpacks and search through the village. Seems he's convinced some of the Clarbel remnants have got inside the village and are picking off patrols again. About twenty archers head to the docks and begin watching the waters, hoping to pincushion them while they retreat.

They're in larger groups now, about eight a piece. By now the shadows are growing long as the sun sets, so you can still usually blind all of them (and when you can't, you can just wait for them to walk to some place shadier, the shadow of a watchtower or beneath the wall or somesuch). That said, even blinded that many soldiers could end up hitting you with a blind swing. Not to mention, you make noise when you're stabbing people in corporeal form. Want to risk it? If not, wat else do?

>>24281116
Nah, was never hoping we could kill them all that way, the point was to get them to want out of here even more than they already do. My next step is to again find the patrols in somewhat secluded spots, but this time just yell at them: "You are not welcome here! Leave or I'll kill you all!"

>>24281363

The soldiers instantly whirl around to confront the source of the sound, firing arrows in your direction and running into nearby buildings to search for insurgents. End result mostly being in a bit of time and a few arrows wasted.

>now what?

>>24281575
Repeat a good number of times, for separate groups and in separate locations. Want to make sure a good number of them can tell the same story. Nightfall should make it easier to make good on our promise and, hopefully, another batch of murders in the night will get them talking enough that they'll be demanding to leave.

>>24281815

Okay, you continue spooking the Golgothans until nightfall. The Dorriki army will be here in the morning. How do you plan to set about murdering the Golgothans in the meantime? They remain on high alert since no one's seen the insurgents leaving and multiple soldiers have heard them lurking about. No one has realized that an incorporeal shadow daemon is responsible for the murders yet.

>>24282016
Well I suppose that depends on their sleeping arrangements. Do they sleep in the village buildings, in tents, under open sky? Though in either case, unless the sleeping soldiers have someone constantly looking at them, we should be able to sneak our way over to them with shadowhopping and Unnoticed, go corporeal, grab the nearest weapon (surely they must sleep with their weapons close if they're on high alert) and kill a few in their sleep. And if they do have people looking over the sleeping soldiers, we should be able to blind the nearest ones, which, even though it alerts them, would give us more time for stabbing before we'd be in any immediate danger.

Being seen before running is fine, since apparently we've been way too subtle. Adding an "I told you to leave" in our creepiest voice after being spotted and then running off in shadow form should send the message much better.

>>24282290

They're sleeping in the village buildings, with windows boarded up so that the doors are the only way in, and those doors are guarded. They've been fighting a guerilla war and they've gotten pretty paranoid. The guards aren't looking *at* the sleepers, but they are in the same room as them, just facing the other way.

>>24282372
Well, we can move under a shoddily constructed swamp village door in shadow form, right? If we can do that quickly, find a dark corner and go Unnoticed there, even if they saw a shadow move, they'll probably think they were just imagining that it looked to be the shape of anything at all.

I think that should work.

>>24282466

Well, yes, getting into the room is not the problem. Killing a half-dozen sleeping people without the posted guard impaling you on his spear is the problem.

>>24282494
Guards in immediate can be blinded to stay safe from their spear. He's facing away though, so that shouldn't be done until before we actually need to make noise, such as by drawing whatever weapon we can find. Even if we only get one or two this way, we're presenting them with the fact that we can strike at them anywhere, anytime.

>>24282693
Don't forget our paralysis delusion, grab spear and shove through throat trick we used to kill the guards for the sleeping captains at Guille.

>>24282836
That'd work too, though really I was trying to go as high profile as possible while still actually getting something done.

>>24282693
>>24282836

You slip in through the door and draw a sword out from one of the sleeping soldiers' sheathes. The guard at the door turns around to investigate. "You can't move or speak," you say, and the guard stops, staring in mute horror as you move from one of his comrades to the next, covering their mouths and slitting their throats one by one. "I told you to leave," you say, and then slip outside the house and release the delusion. The guard sounds the alarm, telling everyone what's happened, nearly panicked.

"Spirits," one of the guards says, "spirits of the Dorriki."

"Hardly," the captain says, "more like an insurgent who's found himself a defector. No doubt they've promised to spare him in exchange for helping them kill all his comrades. Paralyzed by spirits of the woods in the middle of a town, with a half-dozen blood guards present?"

"Yes, sir," the guard says, "shall we arrest him?"

"We don't have the men to spare guarding prisoners. Cut his head off," the captain says.

>wat do?

>>24283157
Making sure we're standing in a visible spot: "Your stupid guards can't stop me! Leave now or die!"

>>24283442

The response of a volley of arrows is not entirely unexpected, nor does it make any difference. Left without any real options to the alternative, the captain orders an immediate retreat to Golroute, and for the village to be burned down on the way out.

>wat do?

>>24283762
That sounds great. Without a village to return to, any Dorriki still sneaking around out there will have even more reason to join the army and move to Golroute. The Golgothans will be leaving their slightly safe base in the village and moving into the swamp that we believe still contains sneaky and angry (perhaps not even angrier?) Dorriki, as well as an army of Dorriki moving straight at them.

>>24283908

So, just waiting until morning arrives, then?

>>24283941
Well I'd like to give any potential anons out there who might feel strongly about this some time to object, seeing as letting a village get torched is a somewhat large decision, but that's my stance.

>>24283993

Looks like that's not happening, so let's go with >>24283908.

The Golgothans trade arrows with unseen marsh-dwelling assailants for hours as they march towards Golroute. The army gladly accepts a forced march pace in the hopes of getting to more open lands, or at least lands the Clarbel warriors don't know as well. Ultimately this just means they run into the advancing Dorriki army that much faster.

The Golgothans are outnumbered three-to-one and are already demoralized and retreating. The resulting battle is extremely one-sided, the Golgothans breaking and fleeing into the marsh (where they're picked off by Clarbel) almost immediately.

Clarbel Village itself is half-destroyed, however. The Clarbel warriors run to retake and attempt to salvage the village. The Dorriki army comes up behind them and makes camp in and around the ruins. Left with no home, their leader, a scrawny, rat-faced man named Lent, quickly agrees to join in on the march on Westercoast. The Clarbel warriors number a little less than a hundred, but each of them is a battle-hardened veteran, so that's something. The Dorriki Army plans to turn around and head back towards Golroute in the morning.

>wat do?

>>24284625
Well, objective achieved and personally I had lots of fun trying something a little different. Doesn't seem there's much more to do here, though, so let's head back to Golroute, make sure it's still standing, ask Mari and Olberek (no reason to bother the leads just to ask for trivia) what they know about the rest of the path, mainly Deeprock I suppose.

>>24284948

Mari can tell you that the people supposedly live in houses carved out of solid rock, but she's never been before. When you arrive back in town a few days later, Olberek confirms that yes, they carve their houses straight out of the rock and sleep underground, making their village basically invisible when they're all inside. Not to mention the village is built into a pair of hills that the road winds between, turning the whole place into an excellent kill zone for ambushes. Eventually caravaneers going between Westercoast and Golroute agreed to just pay a toll for passing through Deeprock, since that was cheaper than hiring the small army needed to get through that deathtrap and more convenient than making a new road that avoided their village.

No one's really sure if they were wiped out by Golgoth or if they're in league with them or what. Trade has mostly dried up since Golgoth landed in Westercoast in March, and with it, what little communication the Dorriki have.

On a related note, Mari migrates again, this time to the Clarbel warriors, who more-or-less accept her as someone whose village was also razed by Golgoth.

Now that Estercoast and Elmwood are back, the Dorriki army's is divided as to what to do next. Again. Dekker and Gant advise marching on Deeprock to use it as a chokepoint. If Golgothan reinforcements are coming, they're coming within the next week or so. Deeprock might actually have a chance of holding out against them. Jens, however, finds this unlikely. It's clear by now that Golgoth is capable of marshaling much greater armies than the one they sent to Dorrik and they might have sent for reinforcements long before the fall of Golroute. Deeprock is both unlikely to be able to hold out against a full Golgothan attack and in any case completely unnecessary to marching east. While marching around Deeprock would definitely be much slower than taking the road through it, it's something an army could totally do. Including the Dorriki army, which is why Jens, Vierre, and Lent are in favor of going around and hitting Westercoast immediately.

>wat do?

>>24285213
"Westercoast must be taken, the head of the beast severed. Do that, and Golgoth will know that the people of the land won't bow to their rule. Fail, and they will see nothing but a minor uprising and send a larger, more ruthless army. Westercoast is all that matters"

>>24285545
I'm of the same opinion. We need to kill off the leadership on this side of the fight asap or things will get worse.

>>24285545

"If we don't take Deeprock, we won't control the roads. No retreat," Dekker says.

"Perfect," Vierre responds, "men with no option to retreat can only fight. It will strengthen our spirits." She glances towards Gant, who says nothing.

Dekker and Gant were outvoted to begin with, and in any case it's long past the point when either can afford to abandon the campaign. Looks like you'll be cutting through the woods to make an attack directly on Westercoast.

The army will march in the morning but won't make it to Westercoast for over a week. It's a fair ways to travel and without a road it'll be slow-going. It's a good thing Dorriki warriors are like 60% hunters, elsewise getting supply wagons out here would be nigh-impossible.

>wat do before/during trip?

>>24285987

Help Mari improve her fleshshaping powers.

Scout ahead for any Golgothan patrols. If we're fast enough, we should also recon Westercoast itself.

>>24285987
I would have loved to check out Deeprock on the way, but I'm concerned that we would have a lot of trouble finding the army again in the woods. We should probably stick them until they're past Deeprock, perhaps helping lookout for enemy scouts.

Once past Deeprock, move ahead to check out the status of Westercoast.

>>24285987
I'm not sure if we've done this, but have we chatted with Mari about her connection to her powers before? Like if she feels anything in particular when she uses it, seeing as we might have a better understanding with how it works. I guess we understand the sort of stuff behind that right? Or is it an instinctual subconscious thing that just triggers?

>>24286205
Past conversations were basically "she just does it, not really knowing how or why she can", as far as I remember. If we wanted concrete info, we probably need to be interrogating Golgothan "gods", since they're likely the ones who called for the hunt on "cursed children" in the first place.

>>24286275
Oh no that's still a mystery, I just wanted to know in case we could give her a little thought process training to increase the efficiency of invoking powers, if that makes sense.

>>24286205

It's just a thing she can do. She wills it, and it is. And then she's really tired. Though less so lately.

>>24286146

The amount of help you can provide to Mari is pretty limited. You don't actually know any Fleshshaping. You're only vaguely aware of what exactly it can do.

>>24286170

Everyone okay with checking out Deeprock when you pass (relatively) close to it, before heading on to scout Westercoast?

>>24286390
Fine by me. my break's over so back to work for two more hours. If things are still kicking then I'll be back in the game.

>>24286390
Moving without rest and such, we should be able to do it pretty quickly, right, probably not more than a day or two spent? I think it's worth it to get quick intel such as who is actually in control of it and how many they are.

>>24286499

Yeah, the only real cost is being away from the main army for a few days. You can move much faster than they can, both because they as an army have to move at the pace of the slowest soldier and because you need almost no sleep, so it'll be easier to catch up.

Of course, from the outside, Deeprock looks like two hills with some weird caves cut in them. You can't really see inside, though people do occasionally move from one building to another. The place is covered haphazardly in entrances, which should make it easy to infiltrate even though storming the place is a nightmare.

>going inside?

>>24286725
Sure, what could possibly go wrong? Let's see what's going on in this place, who's running it, maybe listen to any gossiping people we run across. Try not to get lost too badly.

>>24286908

Inside the place appears to be staffed in equal parts by Golgothans and by black-hooded Deeprock warriors. They're alarmingly stealthy bastards. You often get snuck up on, though fortunately you're a shadow underground which means you aren't actually spotted. Nevertheless, it's bothersome when you realize they're halfway through the room and you didn't even notice. Every single one carries a longbow of some kind, and usually only a dagger besides.

The Golgothans are primarily archers as well, though unlike the Deeprock they have a fair number of melee soldiers and most of their archers have at the very least a shortsword as backup. You'd guess that a lot of the Golgothan archers are actually infantry who picked up a bow because the terrain favors it. In any case, they look a bit uneasy in the stone corridors, while the Deeprock warriors are...All wearing masks, so fuck if you know.

You can't find any civilian population, or any Deeprock soldiers out of their masks. Sleeping chambers, mess halls, all missing. Nothing here but armories and guardhouses and labyrinthine tunnels some of which seem to have no purpose but to confuse.

You're really glad you aren't trying to storm this place.

>wat do?

>>24287636
Look for any kind of command post where we could catch a glimpse of what intel they have, pay attention to any indication of them preparing to move out from the place. If we can't find any signs that they're aware of our army or its movements or even worse that they're preparing to attack, they're irrelevant to the campaign and we can move on to Westercoast.

>>24287784

It takes some searching, but you're able to find a Golgothan command post. There are no Deeprock warriors present in this post, however.

After hours of eavesdropping, you learn the following:

-Tensions between Golgoth and Deeprock are high after some incident a few days ago.

-Golgoth is aware that Golroute has fallen, and because of this they're very much unwilling to forsake Deeprock despite...Whatever it is they did before.

-No one knows exactly what happened at Golroute, but it's clear that spirits and a united Dorriki army are involved. This message has been sent to Westercoast, but reinforcements are not expected any time in the foreseeable future.

-The captain of this unit has been ordered to hold Deeprock and refuses to retreat to Westercoast and leave the defense of this pass to the locals. He thinks they'll switch sides if the Golgothan garrison leaves.

>wat do?

>>24287990
Tensions between Deeprock and Golgoth, huh? We definitely still do not want to march an army in here, but perhaps these people may be inclined to rebel on their own if we poke the right guys, gather the right information and so on. After all, it'd be in their best interests to be on the right side of this war when the army DOES come marching. We probably shouldn't spend more than a day on this, though.

I, however, am quite done for tonight, so I'm just leaving my thoughts here for anyone else.

>>24288178

If you're done for tonight then that's probably it for the night, since we only ever have one or two players these days.

Maybe I need a better opening pic. The one I have is kind of generic.

>>24288178
Spread the right delusions and it will solve itself.

>>24288368

Exactly what sort of delusions did you have in mind?

>>24288408
Okay boss, back from work. Give me a moment to catch up and I'll see what we can do here.

File: 1366169897217.jpg-(102 KB, 566x1000, Shadow Girl.jpg)

102 KB JPG

>>24289272

Cool.

Meta note: I'm going to try tomorrow's thread with pic related instead. Hypothetically it is supposed to be Anomaly. I think it's better than what we've got now, though I'm not extremely satisfied with this one either.

>>24287990
Alright, lets set to work killing a couple of the golgothan soldiers, even if they travel in pairs we should be able to handle them with blinding darkness and paralysis delusions. Then we just shadow form/unnoticed away. Hopefully it makes both groups pissed as hell.

>>24289304
I like the pic gives the right vibe

>>24289304
Neat pic, but yeah a drawfag would benefit this quest for a title OP pic greatly. I kinda like the pic we have but its not super fitting.

>>24289394

You lurk about some of the twisted corridors until you find a pair of Golgothan guards on their own, and then blind and shank them. The sounds of the battle echo through the stone corridors, but you're shadowed and unnoticed by the time Golgothans arrive to investigate the attack. Neither of the two know what to make of it, though suspicions as to Deeprock traitors are floated freely. They take it to their superior officer instead.

>intervene, or let things unfold?

>>24289778
Let things unfold, I've got some popcorn for the occasion ready to go.

>>24289929

The news quickly goes from the lieutenant up to the captain. He is not pleased. He thinks on it for a moment and then says "it must be Deeprock. No one else could get in without their notice. At the very least, they allowed this to happen."

"It might have been a few troublemakers acting alone," the lieutenant offers.

"Hrm," the captain says, "perhaps. Send a word out to the men. Travel in larger groups, so that we will not so easily be ambushed, and arrange a meeting with the Deeprock leader. Either he brings me the heads of the perpetrators or we'll have to clear them out of this godsforsaken rock."

>intervene, or popcorn.gif?

>>24290227
Can we run out the direction the messengers aren't going and pick off another pair of guards before word gets around? If so lets do it, then resume eating popcorn metaphorically.

>>24290448

Well, that depends entirely on how long it takes word to get around, and you don't really have any idea how long that'll take. Want to go for it?

>>24290616
Lets try for a pair that seems far enough away to be safe, but if the opportunity isn't there no big loss.

>>24290637

You scour the area nearby, but the nature of word getting out means that the closer they were to begin with, the faster they're informed. The Golgothans are more familiar with this labyrinth than you are, so you aren't able to outrun the spread of the command. Oh, well.

Regardless, it takes nearly an hour for the leader of the Deeprock Village to show up (of course, if he's anything like the rest of Dorrik he isn't really the leader, just some popular dude, but he's speaking on their behalf so whatever).

"We've found two of our men dead in the halls," the captain opens with, "who could possibly have done this?"

"Only your men or mine," the Deeprock spokesman says, "it wasn't mine."

"Wasn't it?" the captain says, "perhaps not on your orders, but my men would not turn on their own. And after your...Attack the other day, I question your commitment to keeping your swords sheathed."

"Those who pass through pay a price, one way or another," the Deeprock man says, "this is how it has always been, will always be."

"We paid your damn toll already, and my men still dropped," the captain says.

"And it weren't mine who killed them," the Deeprock man says, "we do not tolerate those without honor amongst our ranks."

"Then who killed my men?!" the captain shouts. "Listen here, you say yourself that those who do not honor your agreements are without honor. Well bring me the heads of the honorless dogs what have violated your agreement with me, or else the agreement is over! We shall leave and we shall return with an army you cannot match."

"The army in Westercoast won't move with the armies of Dorrik on the march," the Deeprock man says.

"That army gives us all the more reason to have our flanks secured," the captain says, "if I don't have at least one head in return for the two you've taken by this time tomorrow, we'll secure our flanks by force."

>wat do?

>>24291081
Wait wait, by reinforcing flanks, what exactly does he mean in plain english. I think I get it but I want to confirm.

>>24291184

I gave you exact words. What you think they mean is up to you.

I seem to have lost my audience anyway, but it's time I left. We'll pick up tomorrow with the infiltration of Deeprock, and hopefully by the end we'll have started the final battle of Chapter 2, the attack on Westercoast City.

>>24291900

Damn, really should've saged that. Oh, well.