>>24400914
Agreeing with the last post of previous thread, we might want to check some nearby houses to see if anybody is even there, and to perhaps confirm what we're no doubt all suspecting already.

>>24401047
Yeah I still stand by my post, we should really investigate and possibly interrogate a civilian if we find one. We need to know what's been going on here.

Funny how "Asking what the fuck is going on" is the last option we take here.

Also, responding to a question asked in the last thread after I fell asleep

>Unleashing a vast horde of abominations upon an enemy fortress? Can't say I like but I've got nothing better. Might I presume we fall under Neutral, following D&D alignment?

The ethics and morality of our character is more than a little wonky, partially due to the fact that multiple people are playing, and partially because you've got to wonder what constitutes moral behavior for a daemon, rather than a human. I believe TM has pretty much stated that caring about mortals as more than simple tools is more than a little unusual.

As for our character specifically, at least in my head the prime motivation for doing anything, aside from us feeling particularly vengeful since escaping that oubliette, is simply fun. "Will this be fun, or help me do something that might be fun?" Morality doesn't even apply, though going out of our way simply to hurt someone, if it ever fascinated us, has probably become quite old. It needs that extra little something. I find that this also goes well with our fascination with Mari, since she is something we most definitely have not seen before, and therefore holds the potential to be very fun while she lasts.

>>24401047
>>24401090

You head into some of the denser residential areas near the heart of the city. Poking your head around the apartments reveals that nearly all of them have only a single inhabitant. Several of them are empty, but show signs of the same sort of limited habitation, so it's probably just that they're out doing stuff. It is the middle of the day after all, and probably the ones lying around at home are just the ones whose jobs no longer exist due to the city being on lockdown and depopulated.

Any of these guys looks to be in good enough shape to answer questions, if a bit underfed, but how exactly do you plan to ask?

>>24401340
"Mortal, do not be afraid. I am the shadow of a benevolent spirit that once walked this land before Golgoth's wicked spirits banished me. I have not seen these lands for many a year, and it saddens me to see the destitute conditions of your people.

What has happened to the people of Westercoast? Why are there so few of you? And, have you seen the spirits that have soiled this land?"

Stay in shadow form but pull off the act if we can. I'm sure drama is one of our easier skills.

>>24401340
Go corporeal, knock on door, delusion with "hi, remember me, I'm your niece Anna, can I come in?", then ask if he knows why the streets are so empty today?

>>24401525
Well see I'd go with this because its simpler, but I'm thinking if we can convince someone we're here to help them we might be able to secretly get some civilians to either not take up arms against us or even rebel within the enemy walls once we breach them. Just an idea though.

>>24401607
Unless, we're talking to some kind of high-up, I honestly think we'd be wasting our time trying to convert people. If the city even has a leader anymore, we could seek him out afterwards. On that note, I have to wonder if the general ever even approved of having a thousand monsters in those tunnels, and if he could be convinced they were NOT loyal to Golgoth.

>>24401732
That's a good point, I'm fine with >>24401525 then.

>>24401732
>>24401607
>>24401525

This seems most popular, so far as I can tell.

---

"What are you doing here?" the man asks, worried, the second you finish your delusion and before you've even finished asking the follow-up question, "you're supposed to be in the tunnels where it's safe! Rumor is the army of the east has been spotted on the road, they could be here tomorrow. They could be here today! You need to get back to your mother."

>wat do?

>>24401914
And there we go, suspicion confirmed very neatly. Now the question is just who knows what goes down in the tunnels at all. Also slightly curious about why this guy is here at all. No more room in the pus chamber, perhaps?

"But you're here too! Why don't you come?"

>>24402075
Pretty much this. Also not very comforting knowing they just turned over half the population into zombies. I'm starting to wonder if the general knows about this too. Could potentially cause a huge uproar among the troops if word got out about this.

>>24402118
Unless Golgoth really is that much of a jerk nation that they'd consider this acceptable treatment of an occupied foreign population. That'd be one hell of a nasty culture, but who knows what kind of social engineering Dominion and friends have been up to?

>>24402075

"I can't come, they need me up here in case the walls are breached," he says. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. The walls are strong, and even if the easterners do manage to get through them, there are hundreds of men here to beat them off. And the easterners will be exhausted from breaching the walls already. Now get back down where it's safe. And tell Aunt Kelsi and your mother that we'll all be together again soon."

>wat do?

>>24402444
"Okay, I will!", then back to the shadows, lift the delusion, and then it's time we seek out the war room I think, try to discover any hint on whether they know about this or not. Whatever civilian leadership there may have been would've been nice too, but I could imagine they'd already be in the tunnels.

>>24402726
Sorry I was away for a bit, agreeing with this.

>>24402726
>>24402851

Well, okay. The war room is right where you left it. What do you plan to do?

>>24403104
Find a soldier loitering around outside alone if possible, and delusion him twice with "There are a thousand abominations in the catacombs" and "The general needs to know about this threat no matter what or everyone will die".

It'll tax us to maintain both delusions for terribly long, but we can let go of the "talk to commander" delusion once he has already started talking to him. Hopefully this has the potential to work.

>>24403181
Do we still have a delusion on Eyeguy? How draining is 3 delusions?

>>24403266
Pretty sure we dropped that, if not we really should have and need to do so now.

>>24403266

You never said you lifted it, so yeah, the delusion is still active. You can't maintain three delusions for longer than a few minutes. It will wear you out very, very fast.

>>24403514
Yea, I'm not really sure if we got it do anything at all except hang out in the temple instead of a hole. Might as well dump it again.

>>24403521
Hey can We delude someone by saying "X is a good idea" without having to provide justification?

>>24403521
Dump the delusion then, and proceed with >>24403181

>>24403731

No. You can provide factual beliefs, but you can't implant someone with opinions.

>>24403775
Which means that the simplest thing we can do to achieve the same effect is delusions of the "if X then Y" type. The trick then is to find a Y that will actually get them to do what we want.

>>24403890
Well yes, that's pretty much what we've been doing with coercion delusions.

So is this >>24403181 the plan?

>>24404129
Yes.

>>24404129
Yep, roll with it.

>>24403181

Alright. You lift your delusion on the eye creature and instead find a soldier. It takes a while to find one alone, but as usual when you're behind the enemy lines you can find one not on guard duty who wanders away from his squad for five minutes, and then you hit him with your delusions.

And then begins the long crawl up the chain of command. He goes to his lieutenant. Stumbles and stammers for a bit before claiming that he's seen something in the catacombs, didn't look human and looked like there were a lot of them. The lieutenant takes the guy to his captain, where he makes his report and, given recent events and the fact that a few men were turned into lurching abominations near the wall, he decides to investigate himself. Unfortunately he reports to the commander of the town's defense from outside, and the commander of the town's internal defenses is someone else, so instead of leading a crew into the catacombs himself he has to go report to HIS commander in the war room. Fortunately you're able to drop down to just one delusion after the very first step of this process, otherwise you'd be exhausted by now.

Since they're all in the same room and have now roused themselves (though looks like all of them are operating on about four or five hours of sleep, tops), both commanders and the general are there to hear the report.

The general asks the commander in charge of keeping the peace if he's encountered any of the monsters in the catacombs, and he claims that he hasn't. Though he also admits that his patrols are mainly concentrated on the area where the civilians are, and there's plenty of catacomb left that they aren't really paying attention to. He'll send out more patrols, he says, but it's a slim force down there, and he wouldn't recommend pulling men from the walls to supplement it until after the army has passed.

>cont

The general is satisfied with the explanation and reassures the soldier that if anything's down there, they'll find it before too long. The soldier begins babbling about how there's a thousand of them and they're going to kill everyone, and has to be dragged bodily from the war room. This does not help his case. It's now only about 16 hours until your army arrives.

>now what?

Well, seems like they really weren't aware. Now, it would be interesting to see if we could provoke some of the monsters to chase us out of the tunnel, should send a nice panic through the soldiers, me thinks.

>>24404864
Yeah, we could lose them before so lets lure some of the shamblers up into the streets and make sure some soldiers see them if possible.

>>24404937
Oh and drop the delusion on the soldier that got dragged away.

>>24404981
I'm not sure we should. The longer he keeps insisting, the more people he may spread the idea to. If we need to use it elsewhere, we can drop it, but for now just keep it.

>>24404864

Worth noting the catacombs are locked down. Grates don't do much to stop a shadow, but the monsters will have more trouble getting through.

>>24405028
Fair enough, not like we're maintaining two at this rate.

>>24405079
They are full of acid aren't they? Wont they just beat on the bars until they start melting through? Or are these the dull zombie types that just sorta bump into things?

>>24405115

They've attacked things with a fair amount of ferocity before, but never so hard as to make their own flesh split open.

>>24405360
Alright, we might have to change tactics then. Have we noticed any blood guards on our journey through town? They mysteriously fucked off and I haven't seen mention of them since.

If I remember correctly, the entrance to the catacombs is only lightly guarded. If lightly guarded means something like two or three guards, we could make them believe that "there's trouble down the tunnels and many will die if you do not investigate"

>>24405458
That's the non-zombie infested parts though. Pretty sure as TM said the locked parts with zombies are unguarded. Unless I'm mistaken.

>>24405483
It's still down the tunnel, is it not?

>>24405458

The outside door that leads straight to the war room is an actual door instead of a grate, and has two guards outside it. Immediately inside is a mob of about a dozen more. There's a lot of locked grates that lead down to the catacombs which are completely unguarded, though. Don't really know why the guards on the door are an issue, though. 1,000 pus monsters>12 guards.

>>24405514
It might be, I'm not sure.

>>24405589
The problem is establishing contact between the two. Grates are in the way, and the guards ought to have keys that can open said grates.

>>24405589
Wait a minute. When we alerted the sentry before it summoned the pus thing to kill the blood golem. What if we alerted it again and made the pus monster melt the locked grates? Problem solved.

Let's go find the sentry and grab its attention by shouting at it, making sure we're the only ones around.

>>24406061

How do you plan to find the eye creature?

>>24406077
Start by looking in the temple, where we last saw it.

>>24406100
And if that fails head down to where it was patrolling before.

>>24406100

You head to the temple, but the blood guards have returned. There's a full thirteen of them again, despite their earlier losses to the blood golem. They must've pulled a few blood guard from standard terrify-the-troops-into-discipline duty. Regardless, you won't be able to slip past them in broad daylight.

>wat do?

>>24406278
Well, we could just walk right past them unless they've been hiding an actual way to stop us all this time. Or try to get to them to summon yet another blood golem, though I'm not sure they'd fall for it again. But in either case, we'd get pus daemons attention.

>>24406454
Well we delusioned them the first time to get them to summon the blood golem. We could try it again for the shits and giggles, AFTER we drop the delusion on that poor soldier though. Three delusions at once is a major no no.

>>24406490
Doesn't really matter if they're supposed to kill themselves, does it?

And now I need to go. I'll be back in about an hour and a half, hopefully we can pick up then. The late start means we haven't accomplished a whole lot this thread, and I'd like to hurry up and get the battle for Westercoast rolling.

>>24406538
Alright, I'll still be around at least.

>>24406538
Gah, we've barely managed to sway the odds at all yet. Seriously doubt I'll be able to stay awake until then, but I can leave some of my thoughts/notes for the battle here.

- We know the location of the tunnel exits, it should be possible to block them, possibly using Girdin to cause a cave-in or something
- We haven't been able to do anything about the catapults yet. If nothing else, we can at least blind the crew of one catapult.
- We also left a weak spot in the wall by one catapult, but the gate is most likely still even weaker.
- Once the melee begins, the soldiers with runed weapons and heavy armor are obvious targets for blinding. Mari should also be very effective against them.

I have no plan for keeping the pus daemon at bay during the battle. I'm uncertain if it will allow us to kite it around again, or if our delusions ever really influenced its behavior.

>>24406538
Is the quest still on for tonight?

>>24409476

Sorry, that took much longer than expected. I'll still be around to run for a few hours if people are still around, though.

>>24410335
Depending on how long I can stay awake, sure. I believe the plan was to delusion two more blood guards with the trick we did before to make a blood golem (after dropping our previous delusion on the soldier), and then blinding it.

Basically Round 2: Fuck The Fun Police Edition.

>>24410469
ya pretty sure that was the plan

>>24410469
>>24410528

Alright. You head back to the temple and delude a pair of blood guards into summoning a golem, which once again is blinded and begins attacking all of them nearby. As before, a few of the blood guards head into the temple while the others converge on the blood golem and try to keep it at bay. They are effective swordsmen, particularly one on one and against a blind enemy, but since that enemy is also invincible it's only a matter of time before he leaves all of them dead on the cobblestones.

>wat do?

>>24410866
Let's try luring this fucker where he can do some damage. Either to the walls to murder up some leadership or the catacombs and see if we can't get it to smash down a grate or three.

>>24410956
Its made of blood so I don't know how good it will be at smashing things, I think it'd be better to lead it on a troop killing rampage like last time and wait till ooze buddy shows up again. We would be much better off using it to dissolve the grates while pursuing us.

>>24410992
good idea

>>24410992
Wasn't so sure how much strength it has so was just throwing that on the table. But, we should lure it into the catacombs anyway and murder the patrols there. If the ooze homes in on the golem like last time then it'll do so again, and we'll get it into the catacombs quicker where we can trick it into dissolving the grates easier. Plus, murdering the patrols so close to the leadership opens up the opportunity to inflict paranoia against the blood guards amongst the common soldiers, which opens us up to the usual divide & conquer.

>>24411048
Good angle, alright formally redacting my previous suggestion reply to focus on the walls, and going with this. Just to clarify for TM.

>>24410992

It doesn't take long. This time he doesn't bother trying to attack you from below or anything else tricky, he just oozes out of the temple (apparently he was in the temple), down the stairs, and straight towards the rampaging blood golem, which he then dissolves within himself like before. He then immediately turns around to head back towards the temple.

>wat do?

>>24411198
Well naturally follow it, if its gonna ruin our fun again we're going to ruin its fun...somehow. Just don't get too close.

>>24411302
I agree, follow it for now.

>>24411302
>>24411440

You run up the stairs and follow the pus monster back into the temple. A pair of blood guards remain inside, along with the pus creature and the eye creature. The eye creature fixates on you and the two blood guard make an futile effort to slash you for a few seconds before backing off and resuming their stoic posture, but the pus creature ignores you entirely, just bubbling in a corner of the room.

>wat do?

>>24411504
So the two daemons are just sitting there?

"...I don't suppose either of you can talk? Or have a mouth?"

>>24411504
I have the distinct impression someone is coming to meet us shortly with how they are behaving. Lets try addressing those assembled lime anon said, and see if we get any reaction.

>>24411639
If they daemons can talk we might be able to negotiate with them. Or at least get some lore out of them, like what court they are or who they answer to. Though we might want to dispose of the blood guards before we start negotiating in earnest.

>>24411545

The eye creature begins stalking about the room, considering you. It is silent for a time. When he does speak, no part of him moves. The sound seems to come from his general direction, but not from anywhere in particular. There are daemons who can do this, speak without a mouth. Perhaps there are golems or other non-thinking minions who can as well.

"We're tired of dealing with you, Anomaly," the eye creature says. "You were once a worthy opponent. Now you are a nuisance, and if you were wise you would find someone less powerful to irritate. Too late now. You're trapped already, though you don't know it."

>wat do?

>>24411767
"You seem awfully sure of yourself. Tell me, who are you then,? You obviously lack the courtesy to introduce yourself since you already have my name. I assume this....thing of yours is an associate? I'd say I like what you've done with the place but red really isn't my color."

While we're mildly entertaining them with our speech keep an eye on our surroundings and be ready to act.

>>24411920
Oh, good. I was stuck trying to work out a good reponse.

Personally my instinct would be to book it but I assume that'll just spring whatever trap Sauron has waiting for us that bit faster, and deny us the chance to get information out of him.

Oh, but we need to bring up the "cursed child" thing and see if we can find out what that's about. The fact that we know about Mari and her fleshshaping talent might be enough to bargain our way out; it depends what they want.

>>24411998
I'd prefer not to use our acolyte as a bargaining chip for our own fuck up. But either way finding out more about this cursed child business is important.

>>24411920

"Oh, but I'm not like you," the eye creature says, "so quickly undone by impatience. If you'd bothered to maintain your Dementation effects longer than the five minutes it took you to get bored, you might have accomplished something. You were only ever a threat because of raw power, which you sadly lack now, and you'd never have had it in the first place if you were fueled by a concept that wasn't unassailable. I am not so incompetent. I see no reason to tell you anything you want to hear."

>>24412114
I'd also prefer not to but I'm also aware that we are in a very, very bad situation right now.

>>24412123
THAT FUCKING NAT 100

Do we not remember this guy like, at all? Giant eyeball in the middle of a face not ringing any bells?

If not, I suggest we drop the hint about the fleshshaping mortal child we found. But no specifics; we're just seeing if it hooks his interest.

>>24412176
I fucking knew dropping that delusion was going to get us in shit. I fucking called it. Ugh this is rage enducing.

Lets let on about this cursed child business and what sort of strange fascination Dominion seems to have with mortals now. Also tempted to try the paralysis delusion on this guy to see if we can risk incapping the blood guards and murdering this guy, but I have the feeling there's some power cancelling wards up in here.

>>24412266
He's confident that we're in his trap, despite our being in shadow form. So it's very likely he has some way to cancel it, or at least harm us while we're incorporeal. Trying to murder him is probably not an option, short of shoving him into the ooze and hoping he dissolves.

>>24412266
Oh, and I think we need some exact words to give to eyeguy, but I can't think of anything appropriate.

>>24412311
The ooze can harm us while in shadow form, if that's any comfort to his partial amugness.

>>24412176

You don't especially recall this guy, but back when you were fighting in Golgoth before he was way below your pay grade. You chewed through hedge and common daemons like these chumps by the dozen, and when you stopped it wasn't because they were winning, it's because you were tired. Give it another year or two of fighting this war and you'll be like that again.

For now, though, you're forced to humor him. "You talk a big game for someone who can't find a single mortal Fleshshaper even after burning down half the island," you say.

"You've proven an admirable speedbump," the eye creature says, "but you're only stalling. We have the numbers in this city and beneath it to sweep the east. Besides, now we know they're hiding out there somewhere. I'd pin my bets on that Deepwell Village. You seemed to go berserk after our pawns marched on it. Or maybe you found enough guile in you to attack before we reached our target. Either way."

>>24412344
So tempted to pull the old "Were surrounded by 50 black ops snipers, checkmate" bluff, but the humor would be lost.

Motion to one of the blood guards and delusion "doing a merry jig is the only way to save your boss from death" and see what happens. Getting ready to leg it in the face of failure is an option.

>>24412419

You fire off the delusion and feel it take, and then you're flung off the ground and into the air by a sudden pulse of power from the floor below, runes glowing hot. You collapse to the ground, corporeal once more. "Finally," the eye daemon says, sprinting towards you while the pus blob follows. You attempt to revert to shadow form immediately, but find yourself unable...This was an anti-magic ward. Your Talents won't function for another five or ten minutes, not long, but more than long enough to make a difference in a fight.

On the bright side, it doesn't seem to have stopped the delusion from working at all. The blood guard is doing an awkward sort of shuffle that is probably the closest approximation to a merry jig that he can manage.

>wat do?

Just woke up, and wow, this thread sure went on long. You still here, TM?

sage in case you're not