https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O7VTw1E3b4

>>45129263

>Let's Rock Edition

...that's just painful.

>>45129316
For the enemy.

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>>45129263
You come back to the war council a little before the end of the recess, so you can share some quick, quiet hugs with Nathan and Amy and enjoy a cup of coffee.

Silence has returned, conspicuously attented upon by what has to be the most cowed and submissive goblin you have ever seen. Every now and again Korl glares daggers at the soldier, who swallows and somehow shakes /even harder/ in her boots than she already is. You're still not sure what the fuck happened - and face it, if it's resolved it's not your problem - but the look on the goblin lieutenant's face says his subordinate Done Fucked Up.

The others filter back in, and you finish your cup before lighting one of Lark's travesties against nature. You take a deep (steadying?) drag and begin.

"We're going to go with Larry's plan," you start. "Our forces will advance behind a wall of stone made and maintained by himself and Silence. They're gonna be more or less useless after that, which means the medics will need to be a bit further back until the perimeter of the mansion is secured. So let's talk formations..."

The Labyrinth Tribe /volunteers/ for the front lines, which actually gets some objections at first until Silence and Lista point out that crossbowmen can shoot over the goblins' collective heads. The Rose Cultists and their shield wall follow up, with the mix of Miners and Militia to sustain the attack after.

It's rough. It's essentially 'throw bodies at them until they die'. But given the constraints - and, admittedly, the porous nature of the mansion itself - it's what you've got. You and yours will be behind the Rose Cultists, leading the attack into the mansion itself.

It's imperative that you get to the Baron more or less immediately, because you do /not/ want Lora unleashed on these people.

>>45129520
so I guess I was too late for >>45128808

>>45129558

It's probably the time limit thing - check the last line of the post.

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>>45129520
As things move down into nitty-gritty details, you excuse yourself from the table go on a hunt for a large, empty bottle. You can find and prepare smaller ones later; right now, something big works better than something portable. Some hunting gets you a gallon-sized stone jug that was once the home of some very shitty whiskey. It still contains the disappointed betrayal of everyone who drank from it expecting to have a good time, mind.

You find a quiet spot to begin preparing the bottle to contain the death you're going to reap from the battle. The work is somewhat grim when you think about it, but it's practical in a way you don't have to feel defensive about, which is in itself oddly comforting.

Amy finds you, and sits next to you without disturbing the quiet. She takes your hat off of your head so she can stroke your hair, chirping softly.

"You can talk," you murmur, at length. "This is tedious, but not hard once you know the trick."

"Oh. What're you doing?"

"Making a death bottle," you inform her. "It'll help me save on my life force, down the road."

"Neat," the half-harpy says brightly, still stroking your hair. "...You feelin' okay? About the battle coming up?"

You move your cigarette to the other corner of your mouth and exhale through your nose.

> I don't like battle.
> It's needful work.
> Justice needs to be done.
> Write-in?

>>45129520
We should have a plan to scatter and tar-pit Lora. Maybe get her to take an excessive amount of time killing each person if it comes down to it, trying to do it as slow as possible?

Horrifying, yes, but possibly effective. I swear I'm not trying to give us more trauma.

>>45129610
>> It's needful work.

>>45129610

> It's needful work.

>>45129610
>> Write-in?

It just seems like the weekends aren't long enough. And that death is likely going to be the only solution to most of our problems with the chain holders. On both sides.

> Justice needs to be done

It doesn't mean I enjoy it though.

>>45129610
> Justice needs to be done.

>>45129586
Yeah, that's why I expressly left in tactics to stall for time. Ah well.

>>45129610
>We're making too many bets. Baron's far from the last.

Not sure if I'll be able to update again tonight. I'm kinda crashing hard.

While I'm trying to figure that out, have a song that I tend to associate with Bri.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgoz3XkW1UM

>>45129610
>Write-in.
>"On one hand, I don't /enjoy/ killing or violence. But on the other, the Baron is a sonuvabitch who needs to die very badly. I just hope that we can end things here quickly and with as little life lost as possible.
>..And Ames? Thanks for asking."

Because Reluctant Heroism is a shitty profession, with few benefits.

>>45129797
I like your taste, Lord Vox.

>>45129882
I did say the soundtrack was nineties as fuck. I didn't even do it on purpose.

I'm gonna hit bed and update in the morning. Votes remain open.

As always, questions, comments, discussion, feedback, & critique remain welcome and appreciated.

Thank you all for reading and participating!

>>45129610
>> Justice needs to be done.

G'NIGHT VOX!

>>45129610
>"On one hand, I don't /enjoy/ killing or violence. But on the other, the Baron is a sonuvabitch who needs to die very badly. I just hope that we can end things here quickly and with as little life lost as possible.
>..And Ames? Thanks for asking."

I quite like this.

Bri is practical, for all that she tries her best to be heroic.

>>45129882

...yeah, this seems like a decent thing to say for Bri. It is indeed Needful work, all in all.

>>45129610
> It's needful work.
I don't think Bri can let herself enjoy her work beyond a quiet, professional affection for doing horrible things well. The same as Lora with killing, incidentally.

If she *did* let herself feel she was doing righteous work or having fun or anything else... well, does it matter whether you hate everything or think you're doing the world a favor when zombie armies are a thing you can do?

>>45129882
>"On one hand, I don't /enjoy/ killing or violence. But on the other, the Baron is a sonuvabitch who needs to die very badly. I just hope that we can end things here quickly and with as little life lost as possible.
>..And Ames? Thanks for asking."
Seconding.

>>45129610
> It's needful work.

>>45129610
> It's needful work.

Also should we mention that we might need to kill ourselves if lora gets called out and explain why we'd do that?

So guys, elaborate ways to commit suicide if need be, like attempting to shove our head inside a cannon to ruin the damn thing when it kills us, or suicide bombing something important. Or should we stick to committing Sudoku to not ruin our equipment?

>>45133769
>>45133807

... Can we avoid suicide until we absolutely have to? I mean, we have a means to at least slow down/inconvenience Lora.

I mean, worst come to worst, we engage her directly. She literally can't kill us, but just about anybody can kill the Baron.

>>45133807
>committing Sudoku

A slow, math-laden, and very tedious way to die.

'm alive.

Handling morning shit, getting coffee, will call vote after. .

>>45133922

The strategy she suggested was throw Fetch and Kat at her, because they're extensions of us and thus she can't hurt them either.

>>45134987
More specifically, have Kat and Fetch act as shields for Amy and Nate.

Would the Baron /trust/ any of his goons in his private sanctum? It'll make a big difference if there's a bunch of minions to deal with in addition to the BBEG and Lora.

We could always go straight for the Baron's throat when we see him. It doesn't matter if the wounds he gives us are fatal if we can cripple him enough for the others to finish him off with little difficulty.

It may also give us more information on how things are affected by our death. Maybe we hop forward more than a day this time. Maybe people forget we haven't been there, like how the town forgot we were sent down to the dungeon already.

We can wait on deciding that until we've seen what he's personally got, as far as weaponry is concerned. I'm sure it involves a chaingun, or explosives.

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Called, writing.

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>>45129610
You smile softly at the bird while you work. Your hands move steadily; the actual incantation will happen at the end, when you're done preparing the jug.

"I don't like violence," you tell Amy. "Which, I realize might seem a little odd to you, considering. I'm good at it, for a given value of good, and I'm not afraid to use it when it's needful, but honestly if I could go from now to my deathbed and kill no one else? That'd be great. But the Baron and his men aren't exactly offering me a choice in the matter. And what he's done to Lora..."

"What /has/ he done to Lora?" Amy asks quietly.

"...Something I was afraid had been done to you," you murmur, frankly.

Amy chirps quietly and puts an arm around your shoulders. "It wasn't," she tells you quietly. "...I was afraid it would too, honestly. But the Vintner wasn't interested in me /or/ Miles. I...am beginning to suspect why."

"Yeah," you say bitterly. "So am I. So while I'm not looking forward to it, it's gotta get done. We'll spare the people who surrender and try not to leave behind any more hard feelings than we have to."

"I can get behind that," Amy agrees.

"...Ames?"

"Yeah?" the bird asks, icy eyes bright and attentive.

"Thanks for asking. Give me a minute here."

You hold the mouth of the jug to your lips and murmur to it, completing the enchantment with a small shiver through the stone. The whiskey jug will harvest some of the death it takes in to maintain its own sorceries, which means that as long as you stay near things that die - not hard, considering the circumstances - you never have to worry about maintaining it.

You smile, a little wistfully. It's nice to know you still do your job well.

> You're ready. Time to rest up (Skip to the battle)
> Do something else? (write-in)

>>45136588

> You're ready. Time to rest up (Skip to the battle)

>>45136588
May want to confer with Nate and Amy about the fact that Lora can't materialize if we die, since she *must* take care our rebirth.

So, if we *do* decide on something absolutely suicidal, they aren't to waste energy on trying to save us and instead get ready to exploit whatever opening we're about to make.

>>45136588
>> You're ready. Time to rest up (Skip to the battle)

It's time to clear the floor.

>>45136588
>You're ready. Time to rest up. (Skip to the battle)
We've lingered on things here in the Mine. Some of it's been good (fixing things between our Hero and Best Bird, for example), but its time to finish this.

>>45136588
>e]
Seconding >>45136716

> You're ready. Time to rest up (Skip to the battle)

No point in stalling now.
(But then again, I feel like I've forgotten something clever that can be done beforehand. I always do.)

>>45136588
>Do something else? (Talk to Scribbles)
[stalling intensifies]

>>45136588
>> You're ready. Time to rest up (Skip to the battle)
Plot, yo.

Called, writing.

Fight time. At long last.

Or real life can fucking swallow me.

Okay folks; I need to be to work in an hour or so and I won't have time to write the update. Given that, I'm gonna open up to Q&A; once I hit work (at 5 PM EST or so) I'll be there until midnight EST, at which point I will return home blitzed on caffeine and hit this update like it stole some shit from me.

Thank you for your patience.

>>45138310
>Life fucking with our favorite dead guy.
She's such a bitch.

But seriously, we'll be here. I myself will be stuck at work till 2am. I feel your pain.

Something I'm worried about is where we'll respawn if we die.

Are we going to show up in Glen again? The Basement?

And given that we've spent longer than a day down here, will anyone remember us (and how close to our death will their memories extend)?

Things to ask Lora, I suppose.

>>45140082
We get pushed a day forward, and with our memories intact. I'm assuming that everyone we'll remember Brianna, and that if she gets taken out/kills herself to remove Lora from the board, she'll be returned somewhere nearby. Probably in Lark's barn, right next to the sin against God and nature he grows.

We don't want to push our luck, but at the same time, Vox would never so cruel as to make Nathan and Amy forget Brianna. Now, if anons make a shit decision and, say, Lawrence or Diving Shadow dies...
That's just the consequences of bad decision making and a bit of character drama.

>>45141136
While time moved forward, we still lost a day's worth of progress (for us and those with us) last time we died. I'm not convinced something like that won't happen again. While I sincerely doubt Nathan and Amy would forget us entirely, there was some memory/event resettery going on last time, and that's not really something we want.

I also don't really want to inflict our death on Nathan and Amy. Even if we sat them down and explained to them, in no uncertain terms, that we would be coming back, I cannot imagine that being anything but traumatic for them.

>>45134987
Why just them, though? Bird, Hero and Army can handle everything else just fine. Once Lora's on the scene, there's no good reason for any part of the Heritor, including Bri herself, to be doing anything other than containing Lora.

This is why we have allies. We have our own job to do, /let them do theirs!/

>>45142486
Her feeling is that with Nate and Amy busy not dying, Bri would be the one on deck to fight the Baron.

>>45142811

And mine is that I'm not seeing why that's the expectation. Yea, the baron's got a lot of allies, but so do we. Let Bri, Kat and Fetch all contain Lora. Nate or Amy either one should be a match for the Baron, but we should be able to afford to put both of them on that job. They won't be too busy dealing with Baron's army because that's kinda the point of us having our own army, to make sure they're not.

>>45143057
It depends on what the Baron himself is carrying. Remember, he had access to the forges of New Hell, and they invented guns. He might have some fairly impressive weaponry that may force us to play defensive with Lora also on the field.

We'll figure that out when we fight him, though. No use trying to plan around something with this little information on it.

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>>45143297
>Remember, he had access to the forges of New Hell, and they invented guns. He might have some fairly impressive weaponry

>>45143057
>>45143297
The potential worry is that even slowed down, Lora is gonna be a handful; the current plan involves your friends keeping her busy so you can get the killing done. Bri may not be able to contain her by herself, which would end in Amy and Nate fighting both Lora and the Baron.

Three hours and change to call.

>>45144852
It's part of why I'm keeping a blitz in the back of my mind; if things are going poorly due to Lora, going for a kamikaze assault on the Baron will end with one of us dead *very quickly*, and we win something even if we die.

Also, I'm assuming that if we have Amy and Nate pull back, the Baron could order Lora to keep us at a distance or restrain us while he hurts us himself. As far as we know, that wouldn't be in violation of Lora's restriction against hurting us, correct?

>>45145039
>As far as we know, that wouldn't be in violation of Lora's restriction against hurting us, correct?
I think it's likely. Otherwise they couldn't get any use from her at all with Bri around. Then again, it's not like anyone so far has had a lot of luck with summoning her...

>>45144852

All the more reason for everyone who Lora can't attack being focused on keeping her contained.

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>>45143769
found a neat voodoo necromancer pic in another thread.

Thought you guys might be interested.

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>>45145494
Oh that reminds me, I found a something that I thought looked a lot like Bri while I was poking around the net for roll20 art. Been meaning to post for a while, but I kept forgetting.

>>45145494
>Those teeth
Is she also a vampire?

>>45145858
if we get a necro snake minion and change the bird into Fetch, that could very well be Bri.

We need to get a snake now.

>>45146136
We do need a snake

>>45146152
>>45146136
What, Nate's isn't enough?
jk, jk

Although that got me thinking. We're going to make a Wraithsteel replacement leg for Nate, right?
What if we can make it transform into a snake? Nate can finally become Nate the Legged Snake.

>>45146441

Remember, he's now the Two-Legged Hero.

>>45146441
I believe the Wraithsteel is going to Amy. Nate gets the iron elemental.

Incidentally, folks should check the back area of the webcomic site for something new.

>>45146975
Ha, that's cute

Thirty minutes and change to call.

>>45146463
I thought it was Peggy and Shankbird?

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Alright folks, home and writing. I've got coffee roasting and food in my belly.

You'll be needing this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcoqR9Bwx1Y

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"I understand your position," Richard says sympathetically, "but any forces I can attempt to spare will not arrive in time. The others are preparing their own defenses. Natalia -"

"Natalia is clearly uninterested in my life or death," you sigh. "I understand."

"If there were another way -"

"No, it's fine. You've been a good...friend, Richard," you murmur. "I will stand or fall here. It was always going to come to this. Though Brigette's defection is shocking. I would have thought the angel to hate her above all others."

"Maybe a mystery to inquire of her about," Richard muses. "Best of luck, Taylor. And may the gods be with you."

You are the Baron, and you have been abandoned to die by your allies. Fucking. Typical.

You drop the small silver bell through which you were communicating with the Master and crush it beneath your heel. You're certain the Poet's have been disconnected from the network, but you were never a sorcerer and you can't risk it falling into the heritor's hands. That out of the way, you join the angel by the window of your third-floor ballroom. Her robes have been replaced by black mail, woven of death-in-steel and reinforced by plates of something much like, but not enough like, bone. She stands with her arms folded, regarding your defenses with a cool gaze.

"You sense it too," she says, frankly. "They're coming."

"Yes," you agree. You pack a pipe and offer it to her; she lights it, with quiet gratitude, and takes a small puff. "...I had wanted to give you more time to recover."

"I am quite capable, Baron," the angel snaps. "If you were so concerned for my well-being, you should have done something to stop them."

"I -"

"You are /weak/, Baron. Weak and craven, but loyal. Your courtesies will not spare you my wrath. Take comfort only in that their torment will be much, much worse."

"...As you say," you growl, under your breath. You light a cigar and stare down the tunnel. "What's their play?"

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>>45149799
"I have no knowledge as to their preference of theater," the angel says, mildly.

You sigh, count back from ten in your head, and let your mutual vigil lapse into silence.

Then you see the wall of stone spring up in the mouth of the tunnel and begin grinding, far too quickly, towards your emplacements. The forward cannon fire a trio of shots that bury themselves in the rock, but it keeps pushing, bowling over the guns and heading for your defenses.

"Sound the general alarm," you order the angel, and she makes a small gesture. Ringing bells call your forces to battle stations.

> Order the tunnel defenders to rig the cannon to blow
> Pull the tunnel defenders back

>>45149868

Ooh, we get to choose how to fuck ourselves over.

> Pull the tunnel defenders back

>>45149868
> Pull the tunnel defenders back
WELP, that was an unexpected perspective change.

>>45149868
>> Pull the tunnel defenders back

>>45149868
>Order the tunnel defenders to rig the cannon to blow
UTTER CHAOS

>>45149868
> Pull the tunnel defenders back

>>45149868
> Pull the tunnel defenders back

I wonder when the offer to surrender will come down the pipe

>>45149960

Presumably once all the Baron's forces are trapped within the mansion itself rather than spread out on the front lawn.

So, since this is decided, while we're in a writing lull, just wanted to direct you guys to an amusing 5-minutes over where some anon is re-writing scenes from the pirate of the Caribbean as RPG stories:
>>45146238

>>45149992

Shill harder, jackass.

>craven but loyal
how disappointing

>>45149868
> Pull the tunnel defenders back

It's always nice to see the Chain Holders as not being complete and utter jackasses. They're intelligent, capable, and for all that they've done terrible things, they're still people.

There's also the interesting comment here. 'Weak and craven, but loyal'. Loyal to who? Whatever Taylor's loyalty is to, it's apparently sparing him from the worst torment.

... Which probably isn't much, given that how pissed Lora is in general, but still.

There's also the question of 'recovery'. I imagine that prior to his 'summons' Lora was probably enjoying some choice 'ministration' at the hands of another Chain Holder. He cleared her out of it and bought time enough for her to recover some, but he's probably had the chance to do so in the past. Or just to try and convince the other Chain Holders that it's not productive, and senselessly cruel. But he hasn't.

... Hum. The recovery comment in general is worrying, and actually makes me wonder some more about just what Richard's goals are, and what the other Chain Holders are up to. They effectively had control of the Dungeon, so what are they after? About the only thing I can think of that's about on par with the Dungeon in terms of things I would want absolute control over if I were an amoral super-villain would be Lora. Or more accurately, her powers.

Heh. Here's a crackpot theory for you. The Master is trying to take control of Lora's power directly. He'd more or less be a god. Not a 'real' one, mind you, but considering Lora's raw power and ability, that's still more or less the ability to do whatever the hell you want. Or maybe he's after the power of a god, and is using Lora as a sort of backdoor to try and break into their divine realm and steal their power.

>>45149799

Sounds like the Baron's not the rapist, after all. Richard, maybe?

>>45150335

I think the recovery comment might be in regards to the rape that we saw the aftermath of earlier.

>>45150335
>There's also the interesting comment here. 'Weak and craven, but loyal'. Loyal to who?

This may be a good time to remind you that Lora claimed he (the Baron) willingly collaborates with the Master and isn't after anything in particular for himself.

>>45149868
I was so confused I thought I had missed a post

> Pull the tunnel defenders back

>>45150335
>There's also the interesting comment here. 'Weak and craven, but loyal'. Loyal to who? Whatever Taylor's loyalty is to, it's apparently sparing him from the worst torment.
Loyal to the Master, duh.

>>45150335
>Heh. Here's a crackpot theory for you. The Master is trying to take control of Lora's power directly.
He wanted Poet's research very very much.

Also, at some point we should ask Nate if he knows his mom's name.

Oh, and a vote:
> Rig the cannons to explode.

>>45149868
> Order the tunnel defenders to rig the cannon to blow

>>45150392
Yes, but why would loyalty to the person who coordinated her bondage mark as a /positive/ in Lora's book?

Or is this just a general respect thing? 'Well, you are a terrible person, but you are one because it is your job' kind of deal?

As for weak and craven... hum. The Traitor was originally demanding ore and such from him, right? Pushing him harder and harder for such. Making him more and more desperate until he's forced the Mine into the state it was when we arrived? I think Lora did say that he had his current... I don't remember the word. Megalomania? Whatever. Either way, even his 'big evil things' weren't really his own, but were forced on him by the Traitor.

>>45150625
>Yes, but why would loyalty to the person who coordinated her bondage mark as a /positive/ in Lora's book?

Not really all that positive, but he's doing it out of loyalty to his poorly-chosen friends, whereas most of them are in it cause they find cruelty fun or cause they want a universe-ending weapon just to sell it for some pocket money. He lacked the courage to defect or sabotage the other bad guys, but he's apparently not participated much in the "who can be the most cruel to Lora" contest, either. After Brigette, he's basically the second-least-bad of the bunch in Lora's eyes.

I hope you fuckers aren't starting to feel like the Baron doesn't deserve death.

Not even if he's a cute bishie.

>>45150455
It was in the letter she left with his sword.

>>45150625
>>45150668
Pretty much this, yes. Loyalty is a virtue it's hard to be mad at someone for. Having shitty friends or shitty causes? Sure. Being faithful and true? Not so much.

Called, writing.

>>45150771
No no anon, cute bishies always deserve death if they are the bad guys.

Off the top of my head, Sephiroth.

>>45150810
>It was in the letter she left with his sword.

Was it "Natalia"?

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>>45149868
You take the cigar from your mouth and weigh your chances, briefly, before speaking to Lora.

"Signal the defenders in the tunnel to retreat, on the double."

A pair of trumpet blasts echo into the tunnel, and your men pull back in good order, joining their compatriots behind low barricades, rifles pointed at the ongoing wall of stone.

Down below you hear your Overseers taking command of the battle; cries of "Steady!" echo through your cavern.

The wall of stone halts partway through the tunnel, and a clear, female voice calls out to your men.

"Throw down your arms! Amnesty will be offered to those who surrender peacefully, as well as transportation to other levels of the Dungeon. I repeat, /throw down your arms/."

You open a pane of your window, fury seething through your veins. "Any man caught abandoning his post will be torn to shreds by the angel."

Your men swallow hard, but maintain their positions.

"How noble," the armored celestial drawls.

"Be quiet, slave," you snap. "Your life isn't on the line here."

"I'm going to enjoy watching her kill you."

The wall resumes its grinding advance; the cannon closer to your home blow holes through it, but in the end there's only so much you can do.

The heritor's forces come spilling forth in a tide of fury.

"Shame you can't use that escape tunnel you paid so handsomely for," the angel notes. "/So/ sad that the Traitor barred you from her level, isn't it?"

"I'm not out of cards to play," you growl.

> Blow the charges
> Roll out the Defectors

> Roll out the Defectors
this sounds more interesting. Do that.

>>45151061
> Roll out the Defectors

>>45151090
> This sounds more interesting
> More interesting
> While we're fighting ourselves

>>45151115
well, we wouldn't want it to be too easy, right?

>>45151061
>Roll out the Defectors

>>45151061
>> Blow the charges
>> Roll out the Defectors
both, at the same time

>>45151061
>> Roll out the Defectors

>>45151061
> Roll out the Defectors

Called, writing.

>>45151061
>You open a pane of your window, fury seething through your veins. "Any man caught abandoning his post will be torn to shreds by the angel."
>"Be quiet, slave," you snap. "Your life isn't on the line here."

Hahaha, oh wow.

Weak and craven indeed.

> Blow the charges

>>45150771

Brigette got a pass because she felt genuine regret and tried not to be a monster, and even helped us out knowing that we were trying to kill her. The Baron on the other hand press-ganged people, broke the truce of the Company Store, warped Death on the level, and did a bunch of other rather unpleasant things. He's loyal to the end, but in the name of that loyalty he's done terrible things.

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>>45151061
You pick up your rifle from next to the window, check to ensure that it is loaded, and point it towards the oncoming enemy.

"Signal the Defectors," you tell Lora. A series of trumpet blasts echoes from the mansion.

You hear the windows open in the first floor, to admit the barrels of your Defector crank guns.

It takes a moment for the bark of the four guns to sound, but when it does the effect is immediate. The goblins at the front lines are, infuriatingly, too short to be immediately affected, but the shield wall behind them staggers as rounds rip into them. Even the shots that flatten against shields or armor break arms and ribs, and many more find weak spots that let them bite into the tender flesh beneath.

Like wheat before the scythe, your enemies fall.

"COWARD!" a voice calls, and you smile grimly. The stone wall parts like water, admitting the tall form of Miss Silence. She raises her golden spear and flings a spike of stone at one of the guns, crushing it - and its crew - to a bloody pulp.

There's your shot. You squeeze the trigger, sending an iron round from its place in the barrel. A spray of blue blood shoots from the fairy's collarbone, and she goes down hard.

You load a new round and consider your options.

> Order your men to retreat under the covering fire
> Order your men to hold the line

And

> Finish Silence
> Look for other targets of opportunity

>>45151225
I can just imagine what kind of creative punishment Lora and Brianna can come up with.
>"You committed great evil against not only myself, but the people of the Mine as well. Your punishment and redemption shall be to serve them, their descendants, and the Mine. Forever."
>400 years later, and he's an immortal serf, set to dig out jagged, flesh-tearing shale and lung-clogging coal, that replenishes itself every morning, with his bare hands.

>>45151263
>> Look for other targets of opportunity
> Order your men to hold the line

>>45151263
it would make sence for the barron to end silence but i like her and you are giving us the choice so
> look for other targets of oppertunity
> order your men to hold the line

>>45151263
>Order your men to retreat under the covering fire.
I was /really/ not expecting some goddamn Gatling guns.
>Look for other targets of opportunity.
Sweet Jesus, I really hope Silence survives. And please, Lord Vox, don't kill off Diving Shadow or Lawrence.

Korl. Let Korl go down in glory, as a good goblin leader should.

>>45151263
> Order your men to retreat under the covering fire
>> Finish Silence
UTTER CHAOS

>>45151263
> Order your men to hold the line
> Look for other targets of opportunity

The more that go down out here, the less that act as meatshields in the house.

Also, interesting. I'd nearly forgotten the Traitor's tendency to name her weapons after various forms of treachery.

From a tactical standpoint, Silence is out of the fight. Time spend killing her would just be time not spent shooting at people charging at the mansion. From a Doylist perspective, I just don't want Silence to die.

Also...

>>45151276

We're not into torture or endless suffering. Brig's punishment is a punishment, but we're not ripping gobbets of flesh from her every day.

>>45151263
>Order your men to hold the line

And

>>45151263
>Look for other targets of opportunity
Silence is apparently out of the fight for the moment. He's got his own life to try to save, he can't be wasting shots on threats that are already neutralized just to make sure they're all the way dead.

>>45151263
> Order your men to hold the line
> Look for other targets of opportunity

Alright folks, I need to go to bed. Work tomorrow and all. The thread has been archived.

Also: on the same site as the webcomic you'll find a text story by the name of Circle of the Force. If anyone's got an interest in Star Wars, a friend of mine writes it and lusts for feedback the way I lust for caffeine.

As always, questions, comments, discussion, feedback, critique, & theories remain welcome and appreciated. You folks help me improve.

Thank you for reading and participating!

> Order your men to retreat under the covering fire
> Look for other targets of opportunity

Hm... it will be hard for Bri to convince anyone to give up, under threat of Angel.

>>45151318
We aren't. But Lora is.

Brig also surrendered, the Baron is Loyal to the Master.

>>45151263
> Order your men to hold the line

> Finish Silence

>>45151263
>Order your men to hold the line
>Look for other targets of opportunity.
This is what we get for choosing the more interesting options for our enemy

>>45151318
I know Brianna is not one for cruelty, but justice must be done, for the Dungeon and for Lora.

Maybe, like Bridgette, he can eventually earn forgiveness. However, he's committed much worse offenses, and not even in the hopes of accomplishing something selfless.

A harsh and ultimately pointless Sisyphean task is the most merciful thing I can think of. If you've got better ideas, share `em.

>>45151526
Indeed. Bridgette had aspirations for good. Her crime was negligence, believing that trying to stop the Master and his allies would be impossible..until she discovered the language of creation. She's on her way to earning redemption, and that's a road that has only just begun. The poor Poet has a lot more trials and obstacles to come.

>>45151488
vox...you can't keep doing this to us...leaving us on a cliffhanger like this?

...

i expected better... :D

>>45152294
Oh pshaw! He's been running this quest non-stop. If the man wants to take a fucking break, he gets to take a fucking break. Whining gets you nothing.

Besides, I'd rather see a high-quality story told by a well-rested and caffeinated Vox than a shit one told by a man half-dead from sleep deprivation.

>>45152294
Wow, I just got up in arms about (what had better be) a joke.

Sincerest apologies, anon. I'm just gonna crawl back under my bridge now.

>>45152724
it was a joke obviously

Bump for the lich.

>>45151263
>Order your men to hold the line
>Look for other targets of opportunity
Voting late.

Baron needs to die, a lot.

>>45152724
>>45152717
keep sucking that dick

'm awake. Votes called, writing.

>>45154362
So you're telling him to keep polishing Vox's bone?

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>>45151263
A movement catches your eye - a Miner, rushing to Silence.

"Not dealing with this today," you growl, taking aim. You see him begin mixing a potion, but it's never to be finished; when you squeeze the trigger he jolts, like a puppet with its strings cut, and slumps atop the fey with his life's blood leaking from a chest wound.

"Hold the line!" you call. "Fire the guns until they /melt/ if you have to!"

The enemy isn't pulling back, and you have absolutely no faith that it's because they're idiots. Having a stupid enemy would be too easy. What's their - hold up, something's flying.

You raise your weapon to point at Diving Shadow and squeeze off your shot - there's no time to do it /right/. You see her wing crumple with a spray of red blood, but she still flings her passengers - a goblin and a minotaur - through the front windows before she goes down in a heap.

Glass breaks amidst the loud cries of "KORL ME!" and "LABYRINTH!".

"There goes your guns," the angel comments.

"I sincerely hope you spend the rest of your existence with festering boils on your ass."

The angel quirks a smile and moves with you as you step away from the window and begin your preparations to defend the chain.

"Promise me that Natalia is going to suffer," you growl as you work, channeling your anger and fear into energy.

"Aww. Does she offend the last dregs of your morals, Baron?" the angel mocks.

"/Yes/," you snap. "She's filth of the lowest order. Call me what you like, judge me as you will, I was never a waerloch. /Never/. My word is my /bond/!"

There's something like pity in the angel's eyes. "Yes. Yes it is. Thy bidding?"

"...Now we wait," you admit.

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>>45155086
The heritor doesn't make you wait long. You stand in the center of the ballroom, next to the angel, with your long coat over your mail and your arms folded across your chest. Her crippled companion forces the double doors open; the woman herself is present, along with a dark-haired girl with a surprising resemblance to Diving Shadow and a red-haired elf.

Both sides pause as you take each other in.

> "Let's get this over with."
> "I surrender."

>>45155115
>> "Let's get this over with."

>>45155115
>"I surrender."
he's a coward, but loyal. We all know he's going for the sucker punch.

>>45155115
>> "Let's get this over with."

>>45155141
has a point, but

> My word is my /bond/!

He's not going to go back on his word like that—(probably) not even for Richard.

>>45155115
> "Let's get this over with."

> "Let's get this over with."

Let's not kid ourselves here. Sucker punches is all we can expect of him. He'd toss down the chain and let Lora take him if he were to surrender long ago. That ain't happening.

>>45155115
>"I surrender."

Let's be tricky.

>>45155115
I wonder how offended he would be if Brianna asked if he was Lora's rapist.

>>45155115
>> "Let's get this over with."
As interesting as it might be to see what happens if he surrenders, I think everyone involved knows the Baron isn't getting out of this alive.

Besides, that would be abandoning his post, and by his own words he'd have to be torn to shreds by Lora.

>>45155115
>"Let's get this over with"

Called, writing.

>>45155115

> "Let's get this over with."

Also

"I was never a waerloch"

The Traitor betrayed the WAERLOCHS?!

Does that make her better or worse than them?

>>45155817
I think Waerlochs are just so shitty even the badguys think they're dicks.

>>45155817

Wait, it was mentioned that she thinks the people she betrayed are dead or something along those lines, right?

She might've been a waerloch who betrayed her hometown to them or something.

>>45155817
>>45155868
>>45155918
Gentle reminder; the Red Waerlochs are /a/ group. "Waerloch" is a term meaning "oath-breaker" and is more accurately translated as "betrayer". It's also the root form of the modern word "warlock".

If you recall, those breechloader rifles are named waerlochs.

>>45156030

Ah.

So the Baron was just saying that Natalia was bad because she broke her word.

In other words, that the Traitor is a traitor.

...well, tautological or not, at least he's consistent. Weak and craven and LOYAL.

>>45156030
Get a twitter.

>>45156086

Why does he need one? He's never stopped running.

>>45156080
*Ahem* WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU TRUST SOMEONE NAMED THE TRAITOR!? THATS LITERALLY WHAT THEY FUCKING DO FOR A LIVING, GIVE THERE WORD AND SHAFT YOU ONCE ITS NO LONGER CONVENIENT TO WORK WITH YOU! HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY EXPECT ANY OTHER OUTCOME!

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>>45155115
You know you're a coward. Your lack of courage has been your longest and most persistent flaw.

But here, at death's door, you've finally found your valor.

"Let's get this over with," you say, meeting the heritor's gaze. "Angel, kill her friends."

"Kat, Fetch!" the heritor snaps; her shadow and one of the chickens lunge for the angel, who passively lets them latch onto her. You stare in faint disbelief as the tiny bird hops up to the back of the angel's neck and clings while pecking her furiously, yelling "ENVENOMED WITH JUSTICE!"

You look back at the heritor - neither of you have reached for your weapons or moved yet - and /stare/.

"You get used to it," she says, almost apologetically.

"The /fuck/ is /wrong/ with you?" you ask in disbelief.

"I had some bad times recently," she says with a shrug; she unsheaths her sword cane, and two undead hands drop from her shoulders onto the floor, next to the other two skeletal chickens. "Are we gonna fight or what?"

"I'm fucking waiting," you drawl.

"Oh yeah, like I'm just gonna rush you," the necromancer condescends.

"...While you have a point," you concede, "I think you're forgetting that all of my weapons work at range."

"...Fuck."

"Yeah, that's one of those think-it-through problems," you note.

You throw your coat open, revealing dozens upon dozens of your favorite weapon - the Backstabber pocket pistol. The men who'd brought them to you had said that in the Traitor's visions it was a low-power weapon, due to some mysterious technical limitation they'd accidentally sidestepped with their witchlock breakthrough.

Inefficient? Yes. But by the gods, if you're going out, you're going out in style.

You snap two out from their clips and open fire. One-two-three-four; the necromancer ducks, weaves, and takes a shot in the shoulder that jerks it back and soaks her coat with blood.

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>>45156363
You throw the smoking pistols aside and take a single step back, clicking your toe against a plate built into the floor.

"I'm not out of play /yet/," you snarl. The necromancer stops up short, just in time to avoid the scything blades that swing up from the floor. You draw another pistol and snap a shot that bites into her arm, making her curse and drop the cane-sheath in her left hand.

> Take out the minions, they can work their way through your traps.
> Retreat across the killing ground and make her pay for every inch. You need to buy time for the angel to kill her friends.

>>45156417

> Take out the minions, they can work their way through your traps.

...the one that hopefully leads to fewer dead people?

>>45156417
>> Retreat across the killing ground and make her pay for every inch. You need to buy time for the angel to kill her friends.
I get the feeling you guys've kinda picked the bad choices for us for this fight. So I'ma gonna choose this one.

Playing from a meta perspective, Bri is 'immortal' and our minions are what are keeping everybody alive at the moment.

> Retreat across the killing ground and make her pay for every inch. You need to buy time for the angel to kill her friends.

Ignore the minions that can work their way through your traps. It's gonna be fine~

(Talk about going out with style... jeez.)

>>45156417
>>> Retreat across the killing ground and make her pay for every inch. You need to buy time for the angel to kill her friends.

>>45156363

"ENVENOMED WITH JUSTICE!"

Why is Fetch so based

>>45156417
>> Retreat across the killing ground and make her pay for every inch. You need to buy time for the angel to kill her friends.

Hes about one or two more shots away from desummoning lora.

>>45156417
>> Retreat across the killing ground and make her pay for every inch. You need to buy time for the angel to kill her friends.

Not that the minions aren't a threat, but two hands and a couple skeleton chickens aren't gonna kill us nearly as fast as a necromancer with a sword.

Although I'm trying to figure out why Bri hasn't blinded him yet.

>>45156146
Master got em chained good.

Not good enough for others benefit, but for his own, I bet he has rolling.

>>45156541
... after I posted this I started to wonder about the immortal thing.

What happens to our body if we die? Could we like walk over to it after we come back and look at ourself?
Do we keep any wounds we take before/during our death? Like if our arm blew off but died later, would we come back missing it?
When we died last time, nobody remembered anything that happened. Is that phenomenon gonna happen again and if so who all would forget what? Like would 'everybody' forget our entire existence in the dungeon but everything we did still happened?

>>45156805
We got eaten by an alligator and respawned unscathed.

>>45156792
>Although I'm trying to figure out why Bri hasn't blinded him yet.

She's operating under the (completely correct) assumption that the Baron had Lora shield him from most forms of direct necromantic assault.

>>45156417
I've got this awful feeling that one of our buds is going to eat it during this battle.

>>> Retreat across the killing ground and make her pay for every inch. You need to buy time for the angel to kill her friends.

Oh fuck

What happens to Kat and Fetch when we die

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>>45157015

Votes called, writing. I was eating breakfast.

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>>45156417
You fire the second shot from that pistol but it was too good to last; the necromancer is already moving around the blades. You toss the Backstabber aside and draw two more.

You're not retreating, exactly. You're just spooling more rope for her to hang herself with.

You're forced to use one of your traps to stop the advance of the crawling hands, but the necromancer's distracted order to them gives you the chance to shoot her again, and she clutches her ribs with a snarled curse.

"Pay attention," you chide. "The angel's going to kill your friends, heritor. Even if you take me out, you won't have any allies left."

"When I get over there," she snarls; you tap a trigger and she manages to throw herself back from the blades.

So you shoot out her knee.

The necromancer goes down with a pained cry that only gets worse when her leg hits the floor. The elf is yelling something, but you can't hear her - the thrill of victory is pounding through your veins.

You toss your pistols aside and raise two more. You're not going to throw this away by trying to move in to savor the kill.

Then the quills hit you in the neck. You slap at them without thinking, reeling in pain and shock. Down at your feet, unheeded in your fury, are the skeletal chickens, wings spread and bony darts protruding.

"Brianna!" the peg-legged one shouts; he whirls away from the angel's blade and throws the necromancer something glimmering that you can't quite make out with your swimming vision.

Then she raises it. A revolver.

Fucking typical.

You outrun her aim on the first shot, but you've got two sets of enemies to dodge now, and you're only slowing down. You lose the chickens behind another wall of blades - the expense on these was /worth it/ - only to have to throw yourself back on instinct just before another shot splits the air.

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>>45157521
You weren't expecting the follow-up, which flattens against your armor and breaks the ribs on your right side. You hit the floor with a snarled curse and roll away from her next attack, which ricochets off of the floor.

You pull yourself up to your knees and level a fresh pistol at her, and find her revolver aimed at you in turn.

Damn it. But at least you had a good run at it, and no one can ever say you didn't do your job.

"Angel, cease your attack," you croak. She takes a step back, immediately, and earns a stab from the dark-haired girl for her trouble; she looks up at the angel's face and takes a few steps back, looking guilty and horrified.

It's almost worth dying to see the Death Choir pull the demon knife from her ribs and offer it back to her attacker, looking like an annoyed mother giving a toy to her toddler.

Your eyes go back to the heritor.

"I won't beg," you tell her. "I lose, fair and square. Your iron was stronger than mine."

"So what happens now?" she asks, her clothes soaked in her own blood.

"There's an escape tunnel in the basement that the Traitor doesn't know about. When you kill her, make it painful and slow. Angel, disarm the traps."

The Death Choir makes a gesture, and the blades scatter to dust.

"What are you doing?" the heritor asks.

"Making my final act of fidelity. I won't die a waerloch and I won't live long enough for you to torture what I know from me."

You press the barrel of your Backstabber to your temple, and ignore the necromancer's cry of protest as you squeeze the trigger.

>>45157651

Shankbird best brid

>>45157651
Fucking damnit baron, let Bri kill you!!!

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>>45157651
You are Brianna la Croix, journeyman necromancer, and you see the Baron slump sideways, a puppet with no strings, and hit the floor with no life in his eyes.

You hear, rather than see, the rattling of the chain before it shatters and releases Lora. The angel, wounded but seemingly unconcerned, turns and raises her blade to claim his soul. The Baron's ghost rises from his corpse, arms folded across his chest in defiance, and is drawn in silence into her weeping blade.

You hurt everywhere.

"You have a choice to make, heritor," Lora murmurs. "The weapons that the Traitor and the Baron brought here were made, in part, by abusing my power. I can destroy the ones here in the Mine, if you wish."

"Pretend I'm suffering from shock and blood loss," you groan, "and explain further why I might want to do that."

"The Traitor's ultimate goal requires the mass export of these weapons."

"Will they never be invented if I ask you to destroy them?" you ask.

"Who knows? In the fullness of time, perhaps something like them will come forth, or perhaps they will be invented again. But you will delay them, presuming you destroy the rest when you assail New Hell."

You hear Nate say something to Amy, and the bird appears at your side. She sets her pack on the floor and starts digging out medical supplies, but right now you only have enough focus for one thing.

> Destroy the guns
> Do not

>>45157779
> Destroy the guns
Fuck it

>>45157779
> Destroy the guns

>>45157779
If it's just the mass export that's dangerous, keeping a small stockpile should be safe.
Destroy, say, half of them. Leave enough for a small sharpshooter cadre.

>>45157779
>Destroy the guns
The world has enough ways for people to kill each other as is, guns can wait a while longer.

>>45157779
>> Do not
> If New Hell still has these things, and we don't, that puts us at some disadvantage when we attack them. Unless there's a reason that destroying the ones in the Mine is now or never, let's hang onto them for long enough to use them against the Traitor, then destroy them all.

>>45157857
Mostly that if you don't smash 'em now you may not be able to track the fates of all the weapons. Any of those that make the surface can be studied and replicated.

>>45157779
These guns are partially magical, right? It's what makes them so goddamn easy and effective straight out of the gate?
>Destroy the guns.
Modern day firearms took /centuries/ to perfect. And if part of the Traitor's plan is starting a world war, we have to halt that shit as quickly as possible.

I'm torn between admiring and hating the Baron. On one hand, he's an enslaving asshole who works for /very/ bad people. On the other, he's stubborn and loyal to a fault.

>>45157779
>> Do not
We can do it when we capture New Hell.

Also they are not directly fucking with death, they are just a result of extra labor.

I really hope that Silence will survive. From what I gather, Diving Shadow has a messed up wing and maybe some other wounds from falling. She can be fixed. The Fey? This may call for some of Brianna's necromancy.

Unless of course River was able to stabilize her with Robert's help. Can we check on this?

Also, Sir Fetch is just so fucking based. I can't even begin. If I didn't have a job and responsibilities, I'd spend all my time making plushie replica's of our favorite familiar.

>>45157779
>>> Do not

If the concern is mass export, we can deal with that. If the concern is the idea getting free . . . well, too fucking late there anyways,

>keep The guns for now

Destroy them after new hell

Alright folks, I have to go be Gainfully Employed for awhile. I'll be back a little bit after 7 PM EST. Votes will remain open in the meantime.

Thoughts and feelings on this non-standard bossfight? Other questions, comments, discussion, and criticism remains both welcome and appreciated, of course.

Thank you all for reading and participating! I'll be resuming once I get home.

> Destroy the guns

...hrm. Made by abusing her power. So that is one more thing to be undone. Destroy 'em. We'll do without.

>>45158023

Putting agency for the players' casualties into the players' hands makes for terrified players

9/10 would play again

>>45158023
I liked it, it was a fun gimmick to try out. I feel like it did a good job of making the Baron into an interesting character in only a few paragraphs, when usually quick characterization just makes people think "why should I care about this guy?"

>>45158052
>>45158147
Here here! *adjusts monocle*

I love that, with how much anons have been worrying about Lora's presence on the field, the Baron was just as dangerous. That rifle and revolvers of his are nasty.

OH! Holy shit, brilliant idea! If there are any leftovers when we have Amy's wraithsteel wings made, can we have Isoldt craft a Witchlock pattern Wraithsteel revolver?

>>45158023
It made me want to kill him more and more through out.
Not sure how I feel about it yet, but it made him more of an interesting character.
How dare the little shit act deviant after all that he's done.

>>45157983
Necromancing Fey is hard due to them not having any of ye soul shit; and may also lead to cthulhus.
Which is another thing aspiring and experimenting necromancers should be on the look out for in addition to zombie armies.

>>45158328
We shouldn't do the Wraithsteel gun. Two reasons, the first is that the essence of the shape is currently associated with betrayal. The second is below.

>>45157779
>Do Not

We could use them on the next level. We'll clear them later. As has been said before, it is /way/ too late to contain the idea. THAT SAID handing one to Isoldt is just asking for problems, since she'll have millennia to recreate it.

>>45157779

> Do not

After New Hell. We should fight guns with guns.

>>45157779
> Destroy the guns

Now that they have appeared anywhere word will get out, and everyone will scramble to make them on the surface. Someone did it and made it work down here. Give it time guys.

Could you describe what the Baron looks like Vox? Or gimme a picture.

>>45157779
>Destroy the guns
there's no time to take full advantage of the guns on our side

>>45157779
Can we destroy all the guns except for some specific caches?

>>45159646
When I get home, aye. Two hours and change.

>>45157992
Remember, it took ten years - and Lora - to make these. Surface attempts without an example to work from may not be as successful.

>>45157779
> Destroy the guns
The /idea/ is out of the bag, but the /design/ is not. Let's do our best to not accelerate things. And yeah, sure, it'll make our job harder, but when has "it's a bad idea for us, personally" ever stopped us?

>>45157779
> Destroy the guns

>>45158049
I wonder what might be accomplished with attempts at this WITHOUT abusing her power? Perhaps something to ask about later.

>>45161530
Yes, but someone made it work, and people know it can work, now that its been done people have a rough idea of what to do and what to look for and try. I'd give it 30 years max.

>>45157779
> Destroy the guns
Fuck guns

>>45161957
Tenderly, and with lots of foreplay.

>Keep the guns

Genie is already out of the bottle

>>45161866
I can't help but feel you're used to a very modern rate of technological progression. Which is understandable, but there's no reason to suspect this world has anything close to that without Lora breaking the rules and the Traitor having whatever visions she's having. Reverse-engineering is one thing, just having a direction to work in is quite another.

>>45157779
Destroy the guns.
New Hell has the advantage of making and probably having more guns than us even though we have more raw materials. We should take that away from them.

>>45163066
how does us destroying the guns we have now hurt new hell?

>>45163321
It keeps them from getting dispersed into the world, slowing whatever the intent of mass producing them to begin with was.

>Don't

>>45163066
Please green text votes my friend.

>>45157779
>don't
People know they can be made now and one of the big advantages of fund is the relatively short time it takes to learn how to use them to effect

>>45157779
>> Do not

Why would we destroy something when we could use it?

The other team has guns too. Gotta fire firepower with firepower.

>>45164253
>Why would we destroy something when we could use it?
Pretty sure this is zombie armies logic, anon. Not to say there isn't a good argument for keeping them, but this particular line of reasoning is dangerous.

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>mfw quest is running right as I finish archive binging
Yisssss. Now I will subject you all to my hot opinions. None will be spared, not even the children.

>>45157779
>destroy the guns

>>45164309
>Pretty sure this is zombie armies logic, anon.
That's a great idea! We can teach the zombies to use guns! I bet we can rig the tiny ones so that Fetch and his brothers can use them!

>>45164309
>using guns is like using the repurposing the corpses of the deceased

Let me guess, you hate the 2nd amendment?

Hands off my guns, commie.

>>45164504
Zombie army isn't literal, remember.
or it is, but not entirely.

>>45164504
Not saying that in the slightest. I'm saying "why destroy something when we can use it" is zombie armies logic.

Home, called, writing - to a narrow victory for destroying the guns. If anon would like I can hold forth a bit on the logic of doing so (it's non-political, I promise).

>>45164340
Welcome to the quest, anon! I'm always glad to see new readers; if you have any feedback or critique to offer I'd be happy to snag it from ya. Anything in particular stand out on your journey thus far?

>>45164776
Sure go ahead

>>45157779
> Destroy the guns
Dunno what I can add to this. On the one hand, guns are cool, and >>45164432 is even more awesome.

On the other hand, I can the 'zombie army' perspective of just because we *have* access to easy power doesn't mean we should use it.

>>45164776
Ooooor not.

I assume it limits the ability for weapons to make their way into the hands of secondborn and smiths on the surface, who will use it to jumpstart military tech in ways that haven't been properly prepared for?

What I'm curious about is how exactly they were abusing Lora's power. By the sound of it, the Traitor can do divination and was using that to bootstrap firearm development. The magic in the guns themselves is kinetic, not necromantic, and any kind of divination/paradox stuff should be a different choir entirely. Unless the Traitor is using some kind of divination that should normally kill her? Or they're, I dunno, scrying for whatever will bring the most death?

>>45165070
Contacting the future dead?

>>45165207
...the unborn?

>>45165207
>>45165222
Ooo, that could be it. It's been a big theme that _no one_ knows what's really beyond the veil. That also makes it a bit hard to speculate on, of course, since anything even vaguely thematic is almost equally likely.

>>45164776
Mostly that you're adorable.
I'm pretty shit at feedback beyond "iz gut shet, mon" when I'm thinking straight, never mind after work, so I'm not even going to try right now. Iz gut shet, mon.

>>45165207
>"Hey, dude I'm going to murder. How'd I do it?"

>>45164340
Heh, you say this like you were lucky or something.

Not so: the quest is ALWAYS RUNNING.

>>45165399
Well there's a difference between "running" and "on the board", you know. I got here right about when Vox came back.

>>45165399

Which, paradoxically, makes it much easier to catch.

(.....I'll show myself out.)

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>>45157779
You give the matter serious consideration.

Distantly, the dry little voice in your head that notices shit like this muses that you have far too much practice thinking clearly while bleeding to death.

"If I kept them," you murmur, "what would that mean to you?"

"It would mean that you, given the power to make a choice for the world, chose one thing and not another," Lora says frankly. "The misuse of my power isn't of interest to me. Their existence, or lack thereof, is."

Your mind goes back to those horrible crank guns, and the screams of your cousins as they were cut down in their ranks like wheat.

"Maybe they'll exist on their own later," you decide, "but the future can deal with that when it comes. Destroy them, please."

Lora nods and swings her blade in a slow, wide arc. You hear the ringing sound of steel, like a chorus of bells, and the surprised yelling and muttering of people through the mansion.

You look down at the revolver next to you, and see that it has returned to raw materials.

"...Huh," you note.

"Indeed," Lora comments, a little wryly. "Be well, heritor."

And then the angel calls her freezing mists, and fades away into them, leaving you with Amy's worried commands.

You take the wooden cylinder that she offers you and slip it between your teeth.

You really should attend on that whole 'dying' thing, shouldn't you?

END PART IV: IRON, COLD IRON

Oh hey the poem

Gold is for the mistress -- silver for the maid --
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade."
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
"But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all."

>>45165692
>that rhyme
>Baron killed himself with an iron bullet

DAT SYMBOLISM

VOX YOU MADMAN, YOU'RE A GENIUS!

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>>45165521
I feel like you stumbled a bit on that one; it was pretty strained. You shouldn't have to chase your puns. Start with your best foot forward and you'll never get the boot.

>>45165753
Hey, step off, man. He walked the line pretty well, y'know? It's hard to just run with a joke like that and balance it perfectly.

>>45165692
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/cold_iron.html

I want to point out that even with all the guns in the Mine destroyed, there are still guns in New Hell.
Which can be smuggled to the surface and dispersed all the same.
Destroying the guns in the Mine makes this only more difficult, but not even close to impossible.
Also, they could have already taken guns to higher levels or outside of the dungeon. This operation is not new, as we already know.

We've effectively put ourselves at a disadvantage for no gain, or least no way to confirm we gained from it.

>>45166342
Exactly.

And again, it's not like these things were powered by the souls of dead orphans.

They're fucking guns.

I'll just claim to think the other voters are playing to the very luddite nature and resistance to change humans generally exhibit when technological advances happen.

"Ook Ook, firestick bad!" - Brianna la Croix

>>45166342
That's assuming that New Hell can access the surface directly. Currently we control the only known way from New Hell to the higher levels.

>>45166435
Right after all it wasn't mentioned in text that the guns were a recent thing and noone from the higher levels had never heard of them.

>>45166466
Are you trying to be sarcastic on the internet and failing or was that a type or are you just incorrect?

>>45166517
>type
>mispelling typo
lel
Irony -- Cold, Irony

>>45166441
One person sneaking from New Hell into the Mine wouldn't be impossible, and neither would posing as a miner and smuggling a gun up to the surface.

This would be a -major- effort for the only reward being to spite us, though.

>>45166342
>>45166435
>>45166441

We're trying to keep unnaturally created guns from being sent across the world by new Hell, when they're developed, they'll be developed legitimately, without soulfucking an angel.

>>45166744
Y'know, I hope you aren't saying that positive technological advances brought about by tragic means should be disregarded.

There's no reason to re-invent guns "in nicer conditions" when we have guns. Like, what's to stop anyone with brains to just re-invent them two weeks later?

I'm not sure "luddite" is totally fair here, though. Weapons are useful, but is giving people better weapons actually super helpful? Thinking about it, it might be a lot _more_ utilitarian in a fantasy setting, given ye average peasant is going to shit all to a dragon with a sword.

(glossing over the fact that ye average peasant is also probably not going to get a mid-level magic item)

>>45166868
>giving people better weapons actually super helpful

Seeing as we're about to go into New Hell against enemies that will most likely have guns, yeah, I'm thinking giving some of the back up we bring guns could be pretty useful.

I guess we will just have to stick to naturally created weapons now.

Like bottled death, undead chickens, andweaponized shadows.

Y'know, normal, natural weapons.

>>45164840
>>45164859
So: on Earth, the invention of the gun vs. the rise of the gun are two very separate events, and it has to do with a lot of factors. I'm not gonna pretend to be a gun historian (I'm not) or an anthropologist (still not), but the very short version is that we as a species were already very good at killing shitloads of people all at the same time, even at distance. The crossbow introduced ranged attackers that could be fielded in formation with /much/, /much/ less training, and did a lot of the things that people mistakenly credit firearms for - including pierce armor.

What enabled the /rise/ of firearms was a combination of frequent wars over relatively open ground (see: Europe), their ease of use & training, the already-present decline of armor, and a little bit of England And Everyone Else Starting to Run Out of Wood For Arrows (that last one also gave rise to coal and steam - fun times).

Right now, DLQ's universe is still in a place where crossbows rule the roost. They hit the sweet spots needed to be popular and efficient. The mass export of these firearms from the Dungeon wouldn't mimic the rise of guns on Earth - it'd /skip ahead/. Gatling guns alone would be a game changer as long as they could be fed ammunition. An uneven distribution - such as one faction or client being given all the guns - would be a huge advantage until their enemies and then the rest of the world figured out what in the fuck it was dealing with. An /even/ distribution would still change the face of war all at once, without any of the developments or history involved. Consider for a moment how much shit /we/ invented searching for something that made war shorter or less bloody, only to make shit worse - and then imagine folks who skipped right to the horrible shit with none of the experience.

>>45166957
>An /even/ distribution would still change the face of war all at once, without any of the developments or history involved
So basically WWI, except nobody even thought to dig the trenches first and marched up in formation.

Jesus Christ, if we were a less ethical necromancer we could be ROLLING in bodies.

>>45166910
eyy, I see that sarcasm. I don't really care that the guns aren't natural -- Lora's already said as much that the ship has sailed on that. The key thing is that guns are really accessible. If guns get out, some part of the world gets a lot better at killing each other. Are the benefits in terms of self defense a net win? Who knows!

Basically
>>45166957
this. Sorcery is also a really effective way of killing people, yeah. But it's a) not wide-spread, b) not mass-producible, c) has interesting applications besides combat.

>>45166957
The circumstances that might one day enable the rise of the firearm are quite possible, maybe even inevitable, in DLQ. But in destroying these - and possibly the stockpile in New Hell - you're choosing to let things develop on their own and/or leave behind some notes and history of your own to try and advise the folks that will one day revolutionize warfare.

People kill people. We're good at it, and guns didn't start it. But they did change it.

In terms of more immediate tactics, one should remember that in close quarters - like, say, a series of forges and foundaries - guns have a lot less of an advantage than they've displayed in the long, narrow tunnels of the Mine or in more ideal, outdoor circumstances. While firearms are definitely all over the place in New Hell, they're ironically going to be easier to deal with simply because you're going to be close enough to get stuck in and beat the shit out of the people holding them.

>>45167029


>Walking down the street in The Company Store.
>Stumble upon a weird necromancer
>See her chop the hands off a corpse
>. . .the fuck?
>She sees me staring
>Starts explaining she's just going to turn them into some cute pets
>Whatever. I start backing away from this weirdo
>She notices the pistol in the holster on my hip
>This triggers (lel) her for some reason
>Starts yelling about how an angel was raped in the creation of my gun
>Tell her to calm down, it's just a tool
>Starts ranting about the ethics of how mass producible guns will lead to countless deaths and massacres
>I point out how the greatest atrocities in recent days in The Dungeon are because of sorcerers and necromancers
>Mention how guns give us more mundane individuals a fighting chance against crazy casters with god complexes
>She begins to convulse
>Her poultry defense force jumps to her aid
>An undead chicken tries to steal my gun
>A harpy attempts to kick me in the testicles
>A cripple hobbles after me with a fucking sword, the dumbass
>I shoot him in the peg leg so he falls over
>They all start calling me an oppressive, ableist shitlord
>They start crying and cuddling together in some sort of pity pile
>I finally manage to back away as I hear the phrase "Let's start shankbird day early" behind me
>Fucking degenerates

How are you all doing, Dwellers?

>>45167256
I'm sorry I triggered you. That fanny-panic looks uncomfortable.

>>45167256
>>45167295
...I'm genuinely uncertain if this is comedy or an actual argument but since it's hilarious I'm gonna go ahead and still laugh.

Gonna start the interlude in about an hour. I need more coffee.

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>>45167256

>>45167315
I dunno. I think I panicked someone with deep-seated issues with tumblr? It's pretty confusing.

>>45161380
>>45159646
My headcanon sees the Baron as some slightly pudgy guy with moustache and beard worthy of Henry the 8th. Actually, he's sorta like Henry the Lite, a bit more fit but still have that pudgy look.

What's your headcanon of the characters like, before the wonderful visual depictions of them surfaced? I thought Bri would have short hair, Amy had long hair, and Nate not so bulky with short-cropped hair.

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>>45167364
>My headcanon sees the Baron as some slightly pudgy guy with moustache and beard worthy of Henry the 8th. Actually, he's sorta like Henry the Lite, a bit more fit but still have that pudgy look.
Accepted. I was imagining a pointier beard and mustache arrangement, but either way I like the idea of this dramatic, doughy bastard in a coat covered in guns.

I couldn't find a good image for the kind of beard I was thinking of, so have the worst example I found.

>>45167361
>>45167295

Nigga, you're just upset because I'm styling on you so hard I made the QM laugh.

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>>45167435
Yeah, the beard's like that and the rest of the facial hair looks like this guy from Cowboy Bebop.

>>45167048
>>45166957
Couldn't we just keep the guns from leaving the dungeon though?

>>45168106
Not anymore, thanks to Captain Brianna "Hypocrite" la Croix

>>45168106
>implying gun control ever works
Not even with magic can you stop it. Somebody, somewhere, is going to get the bright idea to take a few topside and make bank.

>>45168150
You need lora to make the guns though

>>45168106
theoretically, Lora could just set a trap near the entrances that does the same deconstruction thing to all guns that pass through.

At least, that's what I THINK she can do now that she has control over all upper floors.

>>45168227
Lora has perception problems. She was able to grab /these/ weapons because she has a direct relationship with them - to wit, her power was involved in the process of conception and design. They stand out to her the way elements of the Dungeon itself does.

There was a /lot/ of cheating that happened to design these.

>>45168269

So she could do the deconstruction trap with any of 'her' guns, then?

>>45168301
Correct. More accurately, any of the guns the Traitor helped design. If any of the other chain-bearers were designing weaponry in this fashion the same principle would apply.

>>45168269
oooh, I see. So she could set that trap, but if someone reverse engineered the gun, made a new one, AND THEN left the Dungeon, she wouldn't be able to do a thing about it.

yeah, I'm glad I voted to destroy them. If we want guns, it can wait for after New Hell. When we pass them along to Her Grace

>>45168325

Hmm.

Methinks we should ask her to do that, then.

Set one up at the New Hell / Mine border, keep them from making an assault like that.

>>45168385
That is a very good idea. Won't help us attack New Hell, obviously, but it /would/ help make sure the Traitor doesn't just smuggle guns out and make our disadvantage totally pointless.

>>45168349
Someone is already reverse engineering the gun. It's going to happen. You can not stop the progress of technology.

>>45168485
I think you need to chill. People vote for different reasons.

If you hadn't noticed, I didn't say anything about stopping the progress of technology. Quite the opposite.

>>45168485
More importantly just knowing something is possible dramatically increases the odds of it being made again.

>>45168549
Not trying to stop it from being made. Trying to slow it down enough that we don't just dump a ton of power in one place and destabilize everything.

>>45159646
The Baron is/was tall and broad of shoulder; if someone described him as big-boned they'd be fucking accurate, though it's true that he's gone to seed some, with soft fat over the hard muscle. He has short-cut black hair and a goatee and moustache kept neatly trimmed, and dresses and presents himself as a man of business. When ready for battle, he favors mail and a large, cape-like coat that contains his Backstabbers.

In all, imagine an athlete about two years after retirement - still cunning, still fit, but clearly enjoying the finer things in life at this point.

>>45168535
Your opinion is shit though.

"Yeah, let's destory all the guns we could use to help us win this war, but give the guns after the fight to some duchess we don't know?"

You're the one who's helping make WW1 happen.

I just want us to be a strapped necromancer, on the edge with nothing to lose.

>>45168678
>guns we could use to help us win this war
yes, the guns that are terrible for use in New Hell, as has been explicitly stated by Vox.

>strapped necromancer, on the edge with nothing to lose
what are you even talking about?

>>45168778
>yes, the guns that are terrible for use in New Hell, as has been explicitly stated by Vox.

/Terrible/ might be a stretch. Not as effective, sure, but it's not like they'll kill you less dead just because they don't have the distance advantage.

Torn between trying to kill the thread and start the interlude on a new thread, or starting the interlude now and letting the beginning of it kill the thread.

>>45168778
>>45168814

A tool with any amount of use, is worth not destroying. Unless there's something reaaaaaaaally fucked up about said tool. And seeing as how we're a fucking necromancer, looking at guns as 'icky' seems hilariously hypocritical.

>>45168814
How much kick do these things have, anyway? Considering the Baron was able to snipe and get reasonable accuracy with handguns, these seem pretty damn good for early guns.

>>45168855
It's not about ickyness. Why do you think it's about ickyness? It's about how our entire character is based around using dangerous powers in a responsible manner, and allowing guns into the world /in this particular way/ would not be responsible.

>>45168906
>allowing guns into the world /in this particular way/ would not be responsible.
How?

They've already been invented.

They've already been used in multiple engagements.

Fuck, Bri has used one.

And the ones we destroyed were guns that the miners and our own forces already repossessed.

They were being used responsibly already.

>>45168855
I wasn't trying to convey any amount of 'ick'; Bri made a call that she felt would preserve lives, especially considering that having a stockpile of these weapons is evidently something desired by a person she's heard nothing but horrible shit about (see: the Traitor). The guns themselves are just a weapon, admittedly one whose wounds she's still learning how to treat but WELCOME TO MEDICINE HOW MAY I HELP YOU.

TL;DR if ick was communicated on my end you have my apologies 'cause that wasn't my intent.

>>45168886
Remember, these aren't early guns - they're cheatyfaced attempts to design "late" guns. The witchlock mechanism means they don't have some of the constraints of powder; it also means they only have a few reliable sizes of boom because they're still experimenting with the blasts on the runes. Those pocket pistols (you'd know them as derringers) pack more punch than the real life versions because they don't have to deal with powder problems. At the same time, they have to deal with a lot more quite-possibly-needless design problems because the people making them were mimicking something they saw rather than actually developing the weapon from the ground up.

This is the source of a /lot/ of the current design features, actually.

>>45168989
Yeah, but our odds of collecting every single gun on the floor and making sure none of 'em reach the surface is relatively low.

Guns are coming, yeah. But jumping the world from 'no guns' to 'gatling guns and cannons' would probably kill a whole lot of people. And maybe cause a war or two. It's going to happen eventually, but it doesn't have to happen now.

>>45169068
Honestly, that info makes me wish we kept the guns more.

Playing defense is a lot easier than playing assault as we've already experienced.

>>45168989
The concern is not the dungeon. The concern is them leaving the dungeon. Suddenly, the part of the world near the Dungeon has guns, the rest of the world does not, with no time to even try to catch up before someone is shooting them in the face. That would be massively, unimaginably destabilizing, and I would argue extremely irresponsible. A more natural tech progression, even one accelerated by the /idea/ of guns, allows people at least /some/ of the requisite time to adjust so that everything doesn't immediately go to shit.

>>45169098
>Yeah, but our odds of collecting every single gun on the floor and making sure none of 'em reach the surface is relatively low

Seeing as how we could just pull that whole "gate" thing at the entrance to disintegrate any being take to the surface, I doubt it.

And like you said, it's going to happen eventually. Sacrificing the lives of our own troops in this battle when inevitably our lack of firepower forces us to take casualties, like it already has, is worse than the inevitable loss of life that's coming from technological progress anyway.

>>45169133
>Sacrificing the lives of our own troops in this battle when inevitably our lack of firepower forces us to take casualties, like it already has, is worse than the inevitable loss of life that's coming from technological progress anyway.

I realize we don't exactly have precise numbers, but I would estimate you're off by several orders of magnitude on this one.

>>45169133
New Hell may not be an army sort of problem, anon.

>>45169068
>Remember, these aren't early guns - they're cheatyfaced attempts to design "late" guns. The witchlock mechanism means they don't have some of the constraints of powder; it also means they only have a few reliable sizes of boom because they're still experimenting with the blasts on the runes. Those pocket pistols (you'd know them as derringers) pack more punch than the real life versions because they don't have to deal with powder problems. At the same time, they have to deal with a lot more quite-possibly-needless design problems because the people making them were mimicking something they saw rather than actually developing the weapon from the ground up.

>This is the source of a /lot/ of the current design features, actually.

... This is weird, and quite interesting.

If they're focused on copying and they still don't have perfect understanding of everything, I wonder if they have rifling? The cannon's designs are probably also limited because there's only so much space in the dungeon and finding a giant range to figure out how your cannon shells arc is a mite bit difficult.

>>45169156
You're trading people we can save with people who were going to die anyway is the crux of my argument.

Whether now or later, some force is getting mowed down by gatling guns.

This battle, this individual person, this one goblin. That's a person we can arm to save himself.

>>45169068
...so they're designing the guns based on, what, magically-divined images of 'modern' guns?

>>45169197
That's not a terrible argument, but everyone dies sooner or later. I'll take delaying the deaths of thousands over delaying the deaths of a few.

>>45169225
More or less, yes. And they're missing a fuckton of the information that gives context to what they're seeing, and having to try and invent mechanisms blind that they can't piece out. This was the source of the witchlock firing method; they couldn't figure out what the fuck was making the bullets go, so eventually they gave up and made this instead.

>>45169068
Wow, amy is really going to be the gamechanger here, with the weight magic and lack of giant wing targets.

Can she learn stealth or how to disguise as a demon?

SOLID BIRD

>>45169230
And I'll take letting technology flourish over stunting its progress.

And that's what makes me the noble, progressive man of the future and you the caveman.

Bang your rocks together, neanderthal. I'm busy exploring the stars!

>>45169254
Wraithsteel cardboard box.

>>45169133
That would work... except what happens when someone just makes a copy that doesn't rely on Lora twisting reality to work, and then walks it clean out, setting the whole ball off anyway?

It's a complicated question, and I can respect that there's different opinions on what we should do. But in this case, I think the smarter choice was just to close pandora's box a little bit longer.

>>45169273
>what happens when someone just makes a copy
That copy is coming already.

I mean, we're not talking delaying this by ten generations or whatever.


We're talking delaying this by maybe 1 generation at the most. That's not enough bought time for the innocents of the surface world, imo, to severely hamstring our side of this conflict.

>>45169272
To be fair, with a name associated with hiding/camo, and a past as a snake with control over SOUND, it would not be bad at all.

>>45169317
No, its been delayed by at least 2. They lack the chemistry and have picked up bad design habits due to ignorance. The early copies are going to suck ass compared to cheatyguns

>>45169341
Can I negotiate you down to 1 and half?

Forgive me here, but I can't believe that an entire force of people have been using and operating these weapons for months on end and would be that bass ackwards about how to reverse engineer their way back to around where they were before.

>>45169341
>>45169383
This could also depend on what you do with the Traitor's engineers & smiths when you're done in New Hell. The Baron's forces were soldiers given weapons; those that survive can certainly spread the idea but the Mine is not necessarily a hotbed of invention.

New Hell on the other hand...

>>45169271

Whoa there, getting a bit SCIENCE HO up in there, are ya?

This isn't science they're doing, by the way. This is just really weird industrial espionage. They're stealing pictures of weapons they don't understand, and doing their best to copy them. Their ignition system is what it is because they can't figure out how it's supposed to work.

>>45169317
>That copy is coming already.

That copy is being constructed either from memory or secondhand information. Which is, as you know, the most reliable type of info for precise engineering. I'm not saying guns won't get out. Somewhere on the surface, there's probably someone dicking around with prototyping one.

But this is jumping from 14th century weapons to 19th century ones.

They can probably get some neat ideas and jump ahead, but they'll have to start from scratch and build the tools to build the tools to build the guns. Which will take time and money, and other people will get interested in that. And the idea will spread out because people will hear about these tests and take a look, and then push their own program.

Yeah, they're still getting a boot-strapped program.

But it's the difference between having to learn how all the shit is supposed to work, or copying the design and selling to a band of mercenaries so they can carve out their own dukedom.

>>45169427
Great, now you're encouraging the luddites to kill the inventors and thinkers to stop the evil guns from ruining the world Vox.

>>45169466
I encourage nothing. I'm saying the manufacturing is a level down and that this question gets to be revisited again at that time.