>>4244815
You interrogate the lord a bit further. First of all, you need to know what to expect in his castle. According to his words, there are 4 above ground floors and 2 underground floors in the keep. In the upper floor is his personal room and rooms of his family, on the third floor is the Great Hall, the Chapel and rooms of the servants. Second floor is the armory and it houses a few workshops required to service the arms of his people. On the first floor is the “housing hall” which is apparently something like knight barracks. Below that is the treasury and stores while at the very bottom is the dungeon both of which are only connected with the barracks. It is done specifically in that way to make it more difficult for people to escape since the only way out is through the barracks that always have someone. You’ll need to figure something out to pull your people out of there.

Then you were curious about why the raid was done and who is responsible. The guy who is responsible for the raid is called Sir Lazarrus Girald. He is one of the middle-class nobles who prefers to run a military more than running his land, and since he has whole four of the Champions, he is very successful. This fortresses scouts reported the decrease in the quantity of monsters after the parasite threat was dealt with and that’s how slowly and steadily, they ran into Farsalos. Judging by the walls, it is supposed to be a very wealthy town which was protected from the border skirmishes by the monster population so it was decided that it would not have a permanent military presence in it. Girald decided that it would be a soft and juicy target and raided it, which was a massive success. It is not something unusual, the land that the border stretches across houses many villages which get raided on the regular and switch allegiances based on who has more troops on that side. Neither the lord, nor Girald considered it anything outside of the norm with the exception of the Cup Bearer interference.

>>4244827
Lightning fast attack to round up people outside of the walls and demand of the gates to be opened with them as hostages. The threat is only as good as the will to go on with your promises, so when Farsalos refused, random villagers were chosen and executed. After a few days it became apparent that they won’t open easily and with no siege equipment the force decided to return back. It is a normal situation for this time, but for you it sounds disgusting. These people have completely different opinions on the war and use of force which are very different from cushy modern dwellers like you. You see war as a horrifying tragedy, for these people it is quick acquisition of glory and wealth. Should you really project your views on them?

In any case, you tell the lord that you don’t wish to kill him, but you won’t let him interfere, after which you pull out the ropes. You gag and tie him up after which you leave him in a dark corner of the Chapel where he won’t be found for a while. Hopefully it would give you enough time to pull your people out of this mess before he is discovered. Now, how should you go on further. The people outside are mostly the men from the warband, the ones inside of the keep are local defenders and there are quite a lot of them, especially in the barrack level. You need a way to get past them, and you have a few ideas…

>Blow up the bonfire outside. The panic would be the best cover for you
>Go to the servant rooms and steal a disguise. As a maid you’d have a chance to sneak past the guards, but any social interaction would blow your cover as you don’t speak Holy
>Donk a guard and dress up as them. Kind of similar as the maid option, but you’d dress up as the keep guard
>Other ideas?

>>4244829

>Donk a guard and dress up as them. Kind of similar as the maid option, but you’d dress up as the keep guard

Kill if needed, these raiders are scum

>>4244829

>Blow up the bonfire outside. The panic would be the best cover for you

>>4244829
>Blow up the bonfire outside. The panic would be the best cover for you
And then we channel our inner Hulk Hogan and wrestlemania our way to our people

>>4244829
>Donk a guard and dress up as them. Kind of similar as the maid option, but you’d dress up as the keep guard

violence will probably be inevitable on the way out, let's hope we can finish off that lord asshole

>>4244829

>Donk a guard and dress up as them. Kind of similar as the maid option, but you’d dress up as the keep guard

A maid would probably not be given access to the dungeons, hide our woman features just to be safe since we don't know if they are like Ceno that has several women monster hunters
Let's go in quietly and use the bonfire as a distraction for the escape later, if we make too much of a mess now they may hurt the hostages before we get to them

>>4244861
+1 support

>>4244861
>>4244847
>>4244846
>>4244843
>>4244839
Dressing up as the guard it is, writing

>>4244910
You think for a few moments mulling over what you can do. Dressing up as a maid won’t work since there is a chance that maids are not allowed into the cells. Then there is the bonfire outside. It is going to be a nice distraction, but you don’t think that absolute chaos would help you with staying undetected. So, you decide on dressing up as one of the guards. That way there might be a chance to sneak through the entire keep without attracting attention. If you are dragged into a social contact though, you are pretty much fucked. You can’t speak Holy Language at all.

With your enhanced senses you detect a guard walking past the chapel door alone within just about 10 minutes after you tied up the lord. The door opens and the guard eats a telekinetic blunt trauma straight into the head after which he is sucked into the chapel, undressed, gagged, tied up and dumped in another dark corner. You have some minor issues with hiding your female features since the man ended up very skinny and somewhere around 16, maybe 17 years old. He only had the beginnings of the facial hair on his face. You wonder how the hell did he manage to get a job in the guard with that lack of muscles and you hope that there won’t be any lasting trauma from your TK punch.

The cuirass that the man was wearing obviously has signs of early mass manufacturing conforming to the late medieval period. It is designed to be worn with a relatively thin gambeson and it has similar shape to the heavy armors worn in Ceno. Historically, male medieval armors of medieval period focused on thin waist which is a bit surprising for the modern people. However, here the focus is placed on wide shoulders and overall “buff” appearance which allowed you to hide both your chest and both gambesons below it. The issue was that your waist is smaller than what the armor was intended for and your hips are wider. You managed to fill in the waist area with fabric, but you couldn’t do much with the hips. The pants are not too tight on you so maybe no one would notice? With the hair you just tied up a bun and put on the helmet. It is not a fully closed helmet, but it has a nose guard and it was too big both for you and the kid which puts your face in the shadow which should help somewhat. Well, preparations done, let’s go downstairs.

>>4245165
The six towers that constitute the edges of the keep all have staircases that head all the way from the top to the very bottom of the keep which allows you to bypass the two floors and get to the ground floor with the barrack. On your way you saw a similarly dressed guard performing the local version of salute, so you perform it to the guy standing guard of the door and he nods and lets you through, luckily with no conversation. He was looking tipsy and very sleepy. Inside of the barracks you can see no less than 40 people, all male guards in various states of sleepy, tipsy and dressed. The room is filled with a sea of primitive foldable beds, which is not the sight you easily associate with the medieval keeps. According to the lord, they should all be off the shift.

The stairs down to the dungeon are placed to the far side from you so you make yourself look busy and start making your way through the hall with purpose. There doesn’t seem to be a guard on this floor so you have a chance to get in… as a large hairy hand is placed on your shoulder from behind causing you to yelp quietly. “Hih vaevljoiieg, ka'aetk la'dizyisi?” you hear behind you as your heart drops to your feet as you stand stunned. “Riref, aen'l e ririmsenaea't! Hisi, yesti e vsaetg...” Before you can reply, a large wooden mug filled with some kind of ale almost slams into your face, you barely manage to catch it. The large guardsman laughs and says “Tyih esi erda'ln va'ti zaeny nyi ma'es, I'rr nirr nyid na' lesti ha'oi e vaeiri ephnis ha'ois lyaephn” after which he knocks on your armor where your stomach is supposed to be. You meekly nod, to which the man laughs again and slaps your shoulder pad almost causing you to lose balance. You take a large sip. Eugh, it tastes terrible, looks like Holies can’t make decent ale either. You pass the mug back to its owner who takes a massive gulp from it and says “Yiey, nelnil raegi vaell. I zaely nyih msa'oikyn la'di viritn zaeti aetna' nyael qa'aetn la'diveh...” after which he waves and leaves allowing you to make your way to the stairs.

>>4245167
You open the trapdoor, light a torch that has been hanging off the wall nearby and descend down into the underground. Inside you see a long corridor with six cells on all sides as well as two guards. Your villagers are packed like sardines into four of the cells on one side, each of which is around 10 square meters in size. Possibly it is a temporary measure and they’d get moved soon. They don’t look too fucked up so they were here for only a few hours. Most of the other cells are empty with an exception of a couple of the cells that have some extremely drunk guardsmen sleeping in them. One of the guards in front of the cells turns to greet you but both of them get ragdolled across the room with your telekinesis. You open one of the spare cells and dump them in closing the door behind them as your actions cause a lot of interest among your villagers. You gesture them to be quiet and open all of their doors. Now the question is how to get them out…

The issue is that the only access to this dungeon is through a room full of guards. You can fight that many guards, but it is likely that they’d sound the alarm. You could try to dig your way through the ground and lead your villagers outside that way but it might take a significant amount of time. You could also fall back to your “popping the bonfire” to cause chaos…

>Just fight your way out
>Pop the bonfire
>Dig through the ground
>Other ideas?

>>4245169

>Dig through the ground

>>4245169
>Pop the bonfire

And ragdoll across the keep anyone that comes near

>>4245169

>Dig through the ground

More because I fear some of our guys can get cought up in the ensuing chaos than because I pity the holy bastards, I still want to kill their leader

>>4245214
>>4245198
>>4245196
Digging it is, writing

>>4245257
After a short thought over your options, you decided to ditch the idea of heading through the existing paths. Instead you’d make your own. You have amazing telekinetic powers, so you should be capable of drilling your way through the ground under the keep and to the outside of the outer walls where you’d have a chance to extract your people with no interference. However, this needs time and you probably don’t have much of it. So, the dirt you excavate would go into the stairwell to thwart the pursuers after which it would close the path behind your people.

However, first you’ll check up on your guys. You have some of the factory workers and many of the farmers. Uhh… rebuilding factory work would suuuuuuuuck… None of them are those that you know which is both a blessing and a curse. Same could be said of the bodies that you’ve checked on back in Farsalos. No one you really knew. Quick questioning resulted in you learning that they were previously held on the surface tied up but they were recently transported here. They were told that they’d be shipped off into the Holy Nation proper tomorrow along with the returning warband where they’d be given a choice to convert or face consequences… of the servitude kind. HN have a form of indentured servitude which is not much better than slavery. You were lucky that you’ve returned on time, else you’d have to hunt for your people across half of Holy Nation. Luckily, they weren’t treated too harshly and the women were untouched by HN men. Apparently, that is considered to be a grave sin among their warriors. You sigh out with relief, that could’ve been worse. Well, time to dig.

>>4245367
You’d dig faster if you were allowed to make more sound. The soil has many stones in it at this depth and while using TK as a jackhammer would allow you to make your way quickly, you’d wake up the entire keep so your speed is limited to tens of meters per hour. You scoff and catch yourself at the thought that it is still pretty fast. A boring machine that drills subway pipes goes 10 meters per day. For you it means that you’d need… 8 hours to get just below the outer wall on this side. One of the bad sides of this idea is that you have no way to reinforce the tunnel outside of your powers which causes a constant and high drain on your energy reserves. You’d be half full once you make your way to the surface.

Several hours in your people form up in the hole you’ve made and you compress the exit behind you leaving a hole for ventilation. About 6 hours in you were finally discovered which meant you had to switch to the jackhammer mode. You’ve heard the shouts and digging noises from where you’ve started from, but you already had tens of meters of compressed rocky soil behind you so no one could really get to you. In another hour you pierced the dirt layer and you were finally on the other side… just below the wooden wall with people already prepared on top. Telekinetic forcefield was then activated to prevent bow fire from getting your guys and minutes later you were pulling all of the 34 of your guys tugged nicely in your amazing powers. In about ten minutes or so you were at the ships switching back into your gear and wondering what to do next…

>Just go home, you’ve got what you wanted. Your people are safe. No need for more bloodshed. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind…
>Fly up to the main gates and demand reparations or else
>Fly up to the main gate and start blasting people
>Fly over the castle and pop the bonfire
>Fly into the inner courtyard and kill Girald specifically
>Start bombing runs over the castle with some huge stones
>Other vengeance ideas?

>>4245368

>Just go home, you’ve got what you wanted. Your people are safe. No need for more bloodshed. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind…

>>4245368

>Just go home, you’ve got what you wanted. Your people are safe. No need for more bloodshed. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind…

HN people will soon arrive to see what happened I think, then we can demand reparation

>>4245368
>Fly over the castle and pop the bonfire
So they won't follow

>>4245410
That's not a bad idea too

>>4245414
>>4245410
>>4245404
>>4245400
______________________________________________
Alright, for now I'll call it a day, my meds are starting to kick in. Hope you guys enjoyed today's somewhat short session and see you all next time. To keep the thread alive, I recommend to discuss things during the week. Ask questions, make suggestions and so on.

>>4245463
I'd like to rapidly industrialize, plus we need to rebuild the factories and such that were destroyed so we should devote time to building next session.

Military wise we probably should stay in Farsalos for the time being, both to telekinetically help with construction and to defend the village from the Holies, until we come to an agreement of some sort.

>>4245735
Alternativelly, I would say we should focua on research for now, we just comissioned an entire city from Belk, and that city will have an entire section on it devoted to industry.

I do agree we shpuld stay around the village tho. And we have to cone up with an alarm system that can let ua know when things are bad around here, probably psy related

>>4245735
>>4245774
If you're curious, it would take you 2 to 3 weeks to rebuild factories and replant the farms (mostly based on a hidden roll when we get there). City itself would take at least over a year of ingame time and potentially up to two years to complete. It would be made in stages. It would have one of every first level production factory of the largest size (textiles, chemicals, all metallurgy, glass, ceramics, concrete, etc.) and one large rolling plant which makes metal beams, rebars, pipes, metal sheets and so on to enable the use of metal in construction. Everything else would have to be constructed separately, such as petrochemicals, optics, military production and so on.

>>4245774
psi research?

maybe we should do some prospecting as well, just for kicks to fuel our future industry/give us something to export if we roll well

>>4245463
Hey guys, good news. I managed to pass all of the exams this week so there would be no change in plans. We're running tomorrow.

>>4256282
attaboy, sport!

>>4245463
You need to get your people home, but to do that safely you have to ensure that you would not be followed. Thus, you leave your people at the ships and quickly fly to the castle that you’ve just escaped. People there have basically forgotten about the massive bonfire in the middle of the courtyard and it seems that your involvement was discovered. You see a group of soldiers investigating the tunnel exit that you used and the general shuffling of personnel suggests that they are checking if anything else was out of place. You also note the lord of the castle, the one that you tied up, already free and giving orders to some guys in front of the keep’s ground floor entrance. You also note that several horses from a separate smaller stable are gone which means you’ve missed the messengers. It is likely unviable to try and catch them at this point since even with your enhanced senses it would be difficult to scout the space between the castle and all of the nearby settlements in search for a lonely traveler in the middle of the night.

What you can do though is buying some more time. It seems that the warband is already preparing to give chase. You can clearly see four large figures in shining armor already mounted and the other soldiers are preparing to move out as well. You’d probably manage to get home without being intercepted if you push yourself a little, but you don’t want to risk it. You are at half capacity and Mina had trouble dealing with these “Champions”. You float down right over the bonfire and with a pulse of telekinesis the burning wood flies out of its arrangement and scatters across the fortress. Some houses that had thatch roofs light up almost immediately which draws the attention of everyone involved. While they extinguish the fires, you’d have your chance to escape and prepare for the retaliation. As you leave, you note that some of the larger pieces of burning woof from the bonfire seriously wounded or even killed some of the soldiers that stood nearby when it happened. You didn’t have the capacity to control every piece. Plus, it is likely that some people would die in the fires, but nothing can be done at that point. You think back to what you felt while you were just leaving Farsalos for this recovery effort. You wanted to kill all of them, but now you feel bad that you’ve hurt someone, even though they are likely personally responsible for what has happened to the village. You sigh and leave. On your way out you note that the Champions noticed your appearance and pointed in your direction. There likely won’t be any doubt who is responsible…

>>4257958
You return to your boats and shepherd your people back to Farsalos pier where a small group of people assembled to meet them as well as Mina herself who is apparently waiting with a call from Nike’. You leave the villagers to hug it out and catch up as you walk and talk with the young muse to fill in her patron on what has happened. “Honestly, Ag, I’m impressed and a bit surprised. You are way more merciful than what you looked like when you left the village. Mina said that there was murder written all over your face. There would be a lot more issues to deal with if you’ve left the frontline fortress in a state of a smoldering crater. Then again, it is likely that you wouldn’t like what I’ll tell you. The lord was right in the sense that it is basically a common occurrence. We are prohibited from involving ourselves and our cups in skirmishes between the states, but in the current social and economic situation with no international trade, wars for resources, land, and people are relatively common among “mortals”. Some of the gods use that as a proxy to further their interests, but commonly it is just entirely caused and organized by the mortal rulers. These are… not the same times as our past, Ag. People are more brutal and less civilized. We know that war is a horrifying event when for many people now it is a glorious way to get fame and fortune. What happened to Farsalos… is not the worst that can happen.”

“I’ll be honest, I missed such possibility as I didn’t expect it to happen in such a short term. Who would’ve guessed that an opening that was created by Jane would not close within months? Monsters are usually quick on “retaking the recently lost territory”. We won’t be able to help you much with this issue. The most I can promise is that there is an abandoned small fortress some distance to the south- east from Farsalos that I’ll send someone to recover, but it would only help with prolonged sieges by sending a relief force, not with short raids like this one and it would take months for the forces to arrive. I’m afraid that the defense of your people would have to fall on your shoulders. Good luck with that.

>>4257960
Then there is the entire breach of the accords which would be a bit more… complicated. I will claim that Mina was acting by my orders and take the flak in the worst case, but that would not be great. Luckily, the speed of information is pretty low in modern times which gives us some time to come up with the best decision. We could report your existence to the Twins now which would stop any further escalation, but would you want to be discovered that quickly? Then there is the option to say that mortals couldn’t distinguish between a new goddess that lives in our territory and a cup bearer, but we would have to recall Mina in that case.

While we were talking, Vera has made some precognition work based on what has just happened and she says that most likely the news of your existence won’t get all the way to the Twins. Ariel and Arael are only two gods that rule the entire country through a rigid command structure of Angels, which are their cup bearers. It is likely that your attack would be viewed as a rogue cup bearer on our side and reported as such. While extremely rare, such cases have happened. Vera gives it a 65-66% chance that Holies would attack Farsalos with an army that would include up to four of their Angels and dozens of Champions with no direct understanding of the true situation by the top levels of their command structure. We would be notified after the fact as a type of show of force. Much lower chance is that they would demand reparations through official channels where it would be possible to explain away the misunderstanding. So yeah, pick an option, do you want us to tell them now or do you think you could take on an army on your own?”

>Tell her that they are free to report you
>Tell her that you think that the second plan is better, Mina would have to leave for now.
>Other ideas?

>>4257961
>Tell her that you think that the second plan is better, Mina would have to leave for now.

>>4257961
>>Tell her that they are free to report you

if they don't report us there will be an attack between holies and ceno is that right? I don't think I understand both options

>>4257978
If they don't report you, Holies would with high probability think that Ceno has a rogue cup(aka they didn't order Mina to do this) and they would attack Farsalos specifically

>>4257961
About us not murdering them:
"I was ready to do it but....it seemed...not right at the time."

About her taking flak for us.
"No need to do that Nika, you already helped us a lot in so many ways, I'll handle this mess, or at least try..." offer her a weak smile


>Tell her that you think that the second plan is better, Mina would have to leave for now.

To Mina
"Thanks for what you done, I know it was not an easy decision, I hope you can come back to our village sometime."


Ok guys, forget repairing that industry since it's outside our wall perimeter, time to buy some weapons and armors for the people with our cash and reasearch psy attacks and circuits like crazy. We have to buff ourselves


>Tell her that you think that the second plan is better, Mina would have to leave for now.

>>4257982
ah, so it's an attack to farsalos, not to Ceno

ok
change to

>Tell her that you think that the second plan is better, Mina would have to leave for now.

>>4257971
>>4257978
>>4257986
>>4257987
Alright, writing

File: Plantago_major.jpg (91 KB, 629x472)

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>>4257997
You think for a few moments and say “I think the second option would be better. No need to take the flak for me Nika, you already helped a lot in so many ways, I'll handle this mess, or at least try...” you say and Nike’ smiles in response. “Ok then, I’ll pull out Mina for now, in return I’ll get you one of my Oracles. She can return after the mess is dealt with…maybe. It depends more on the Holies at that point.”

"About the murder, I was ready to do it but....it seemed...not right at the time." You add, to which Nika (through Mina) pats your shoulder and says “Yeah, I know what you mean. How was that speech, with great power comes great responsibility? It is kind of like that with being a synthetic god. Mortals are very fragile and precious, there is a million ways to mess everything up and only one to do it right. It took us some… decades to get better at it, and some gods never came to understand this. In any case, Mina said she has some stuff to report to you, so I’ll let her do that and then pack her things at her own pace. Good luck.” And then the lack of glow in Mina’s eyes indicated that Nika was no longer puppeteering the cup bearer.

"Thanks for what you done, I know it was not an easy decision, I hope you can come back to our village sometime." The cup sighs and smiles, but it is quite obvious that she is sad. She wants to say something, then stops herself and says “…Should we proceed with the report? I recovered some of that plant you’ve mentioned.” You nod and the two of you head to Nike’s Temple to see the results of her work. In the temple she has four pots of plants each of which houses a type of plantago with unusually green pigment as well as a small bag full of its leaves. It is as if the leaves of the plant are mainly colored with brilliant green, a triarylmethane dye that is used in some countries as an antiseptic. The leaves are also somewhat thicker and seem to have a rend in the very middle allowing it to be split open. Inside is a thin layer of sticky gel. Basically, you can split the leaf in two thin sheets and put that on the wound. You taste the leaf itself and the plant’s root and yeah, it seems that you’ve struck the jackpot. The root concentrates inside of itself a cocktail of procaine and some lower concentrations of other -caine drugs with local anesthetic action. The leaves contain a less potent painkiller, brilliant green pigment, some antibacterial cocktail and some healing promoters. It is basically a large organic band- aid.

File: Brilliant Green.jpg (270 KB, 1110x525)

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>>4258161
The issue is how to get it… “The plant grows only a significant distance away to the south- west- west from here, almost half way to the Valistrat border. The area is infested with a type of plant based highly territorial monster that can’t move but it spreads out toxic particles when they detect a trespasser. They created a dead zone in the forest where I could find no animals at all, only rare skeletons. The plant is common, but according to Lady Ninmah’s cup’s assistance, the plant relies on high concentrations of… “nitrogen” in the soil and it can’t survive without fertilization that would be excessive for most food crops. The plant monsters apparently suck up nitrogen into the soil as a part of the synthesis of their toxins which is why the plants only grow within range of the spores. The toxin is unstable and degrades within hours, but even low doses are lethal for mortals within minutes. I should also inform you that the rough area where these plants grow corresponds with one of the possible Monster- King locations that you’ve mapped, but no large and obvious monsters that fit the description were found there. I recommend caution.” You thank Mina for her hard work and wonder how you can benefit from such a plant. You narrow it down to requiring chemical fertilizers. Without them, you can’t hope to cultivate it yourself.

You help Mina with some of the heavy moving. She decided to take the wolf carpet along which you don’t blame her for, it is a nice carpet. But overall, she doesn’t have much in terms of personal belongings. She travelled light after all. When all of her stuff was piled into the shrine itself, Nika appeared with another person along with her. This time it was also a woman, but she was obviously not a warrior. She had soft linen robes and a veil hid her face. “Well, Ag, please welcome, it is Astraia, she’s your new oracle.” The woman bows to you but says nothing. “She is not much of a talker, sorry if you expected much from her. She didn’t have much agency of her own during the training, I think it is just a personality quirk. But she’s here to be a living phone line after all, so I don’t think it would matter.” You greet her properly and Astra responds with “I live to serve, goddess Agatha”. Eesh, so Nika has servants like these ones, good to know.

File: art-барышня-art-Ross-Tran(...).jpg (251 KB, 700x1017)

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>>4258165
“Alright, time to go. Oh, yeah, last thing. Check out what happened in the other temple. I guess our last visit was not unnoticed…” and with these words Nika, Mina and all of her stuff disappears from the scene leaving only some new stuff and Astraia, who just stands there. “So, this is your home now” you tell her gesturing towards the temple. “Please get yourself comfortable and tell me if you need anything.” She nods and starts to slowly haul her stuff in one by one. You in the meantime turn around and head to the village temple. Inside you find at least a dozen people and on three pedestals that you’ve left to be filled later now have statues. In the middle is a statue of Elspeth cut out of a single chunk of wood, to the right is the statue of Nike and to the left is a statue of you, the same one from the secret shrine in the escape tunnel.

You stand there slightly dumbstruck. So, the cult is now… official? Not underground? You’re not sure what to say. As you become a bit more self-aware of the situation, you notice that people look at you while you are on the streets. You didn’t really notice it and you considered it somewhat normal since these people live with an equivalent of a superman in their backyard. But villagers never really come to talk to you. Your mailbox is empty, people go out of their way to not cross their paths with you, they watch your every move outside of your home. They don’t feel like fans, far from everyone looks happy while doing it. Are they… afraid of you? Or is it something else? You might need to look into this more later. And for now…

You make your way back home and sit down with your notes. You have three or four months left before you need to worry about Holies attack, but it is far from ideal. The farms are burned and need replanting, the factories are just wrecked and would take several months to fix on their own and you don’t gain anything from building something new since it would take too much time. So, what should you do?

>Construction: repair the factories and replant the farms, other options are unviable with current time limitations
>Research: some new stuff here, let’s look into psi circuitry or maybe some new techniques?
>Exploration: while you can, you should probably make a small trip. Maybe you want to look into the Labyrinth or see where those band aid plants grow, or maybe even a trip to the Holy Nation…
>Social: make sure everyone is alright, everyone is settling in nicely and what the hell is happening with the cult
>DM suggestion: repair factory and start pumping out armor and weapons for the Farsalos defense force
>Other stuff?

>>4258168
>Social: make sure everyone is alright, everyone is settling in nicely and what the hell is happening with the cult

>>4257961
>Tell her that you think that the second plan is better, Mina would have to leave for now.
>>4257986
I see industry as an extremely important goal. Hopefully this bout of diplomacy will keep us from getting curb stomped, we can allow the blame to fall on Nike a little.

The sooner we get rifles, a high percent of literacy, and good modern medicine is the sooner we can tell the Holies to fuck off if they come for us again. All of those come from industry (metalworking+chemistry, paper production, and chemistry)

>>4258168

>DM suggestion: repair factory and start pumping out armor and weapons for the Farsalos defense force
And

>Research: some new stuff here, let’s look into psi circuitry or maybe some new techniques?
If we have time.

Can we send Haven to do that thing that she does where she listens around and reports to us what's happening? I'm worried about the villagers

>>4258168
>Construction: repair the factories and replant the farms, other options are unviable with current time limitations

>>4258192
I know that, bit I feel that the holies attack will not take too long, a couple of month best, so I think aside from providing armor and weapons for our people we should focus on unlocking more of our powers or creating psy circuits that can help us survive this specifically, then we can create some industry after this attack is dealt with and we have our city that Belk is building for us.

>>4258168

>DM suggestion: repair factory and start pumping out armor and weapons for the Farsalos defense force
>Social: make sure everyone is alright, everyone is settling in nicely and what the hell is happening with the cult

could cultivate both the toxin monster and the plant be an alternative for later? obviously we would need some protected place but it seems we could use that toxin for other things later too if we can research it and find other applications

>>4258207
With an army of the size described we probably should have let Nike take the blame. QM, with the armor and stuff what are our chances against an army of the size described >>4257961 here?
>>4258240
probably, we've got tons of little side research projects

>>4258252
Probably, but it wouldn't be right and probably cause bigger problems down the road with the animosity between Ceno and Holies.
I think that beside the armor and weapons, our personal involvement will be a huge factor, probably more than any upgrade we give our troops.

Specially if we can take the "angels" out and break the morale of the attackers

>>4258252
Fortresses allow for smaller garrizon to withstand against a larger force while also allowing the people in the fortress to threaten further arny movements with raids. This turns every fortress into a roadblack and Farsalos has a city wall. "Turtling" is a strategy that works in this day and age, Farsalos could hold off for weeks if not months against a mortal army. We built a pretty tough wall. Getting excess armor would help to reduce the casualties from stuff like stray shots since the main battle won't be fought by the villagers, you would be fighting alone. It is basically only Agatha versus a bunch of cup bearers with support staff. Mortals are irrelevant as even if they wanted to they can't seriously hurt Agatha.

>>4258263
>>4258252
>>4258211
>>4258198
>>4258196
>>4258192
>>4258188
Alright, rebuilding, social and maybe some research. I'll check if we have the time. Writing

>>4258287
You decide to start off with the repairs. People need stuff to eat and you need factories to produce the gear for the defenders of Farsalos. Luckily, you’ve restocked the materials you’ve used up and you had some spares for maintenance and repairs hidden inside of the factories so it wouldn’t take too long. The biggest chunk that was damaged was an all wooden water wheel power generation system which would need a full replacement. However, it is still about a week of work to get the fields cleared out and replanted as well as a couple weeks to restore the factories. You’ve had your new crew, but they didn’t know much about your production processes and mechanisms. You dumped off your notes on them and allowed them to watch the repairs as they were undergoing. Also, enough of the workers survived to allow you to restart cast iron manufacturing almost instantly. The rest would require a couple of months and you don’t have the equipment to delegate steel manufacturing just yet. Still, you were back on your feet roughly speaking and you could focus on manufacturing of the tools you need for the defenses. You focused on cuirasses and helmets since you’ve already created a large supply of steel gear previously and all you really needed is to protect as many of the defenders as possible. Anything more complicated would require training and much more time.

While doing all of that you periodically made flights around your territory looking for movement so that you would not miss an attack like the last time, but with the repairs done and enemies nowhere to be seen you find enough time to look into other things such as the social matters. First you make sure that your new employees are well settled. You’ve had quite a few spare buildings left after that time when you housed the tribals in the village so it was not a problem to give everyone suitable accommodations. Basically, everyone had their own room, some even received whole smaller houses, such as the rich girl who specifically asked for one. Well, for once you are being asked for something, so why not?

>>4258571
The engineer team was excited with the machinery and you’ve managed to easily dump some further reading on them. They would be in charge for maintenance of your factories and on keeping them running. The group of managers was the easiest to delegate stuff to, they didn’t really need to understand how stuff works, just to monitor and report to you for now along with some paper- based busywork. You’ve given them some home tasks as well with “new” managerial techniques they’d have to learn, but for now they are allowed to have a free roam to see where they can be useful beyond monitoring factory workers and handling wages. The architects are kind of just… chilling. You don’t have any tasks for them right now. Luckily, the merchants basically were already set up. You unloaded the business of selling refined metals and goods to them, with some of the cash going to the workers for wages, some of it going to the village’s coffers as “taxes” and some going into the coffers of Ag Incorporated, or however you’d want to call your venture. Regarding taxes, they are mostly set up by you. A sum that seemed fair to help the village to prosper. Most recently it was used to buy cattle and other farm animals, so it is going to good use. You didn’t have to do it, but it felt right.

Afterwards, you pay a visit to Haven, Sig and Rheia. The little girl is busy studying the new materials to the point you have to tell her to take breaks. She is a workaholic when it comes to something that she wants to do which is… good? Still, not a good idea to neglect food and sleep just to read up a bit more. It is not two days before finals yet. Sig is doing fine, she has done some monster hunting at last which is signified by her new giant wolf pelt. After the thrashing that Elspeth caused, they became a much rarer occurrence near to Farsalos. She actually had to accompany Mina once on an excursion into the wilderness for the chance to get her trophy and she seems to be way happier. Unfortunately, her pelt lacks the head section, it was too damaged by her weapon to be used. Still, good for her.

>>4258575
Haven seems a bit unnerved. When you ask her what’s going on, she replies: “The cult… has grown significantly, huh? It seems that you are fully considered to be a goddess, people now just debate if they need to worship you. Most don’t consider it necessary, since you worship gods for certain aspects. Unless you are a blacksmith or an engineer, you don’t worship Yawgmoth often, it is kind of similar. Plus, the cult doesn’t really have set prayers for you just yet. The cult now is around 50 people, it is hard to tell accurately. They are now completely open which was most likely enabled by Nike’ and Elspeth’s appearance that one time. This is the point when you are officially considered to be the goddess by the other gods, or the cult claims something similar. Along with the rest of the villagers they seem to agree that you are specifically a goddess of Change. Neither benevolent or malevolent in your nature. There is also a notion that you might be more like the solitary gods, a goddess of everything but on a limited territory. In this view you’d be the protector-patron of Farsalos which would make it, and by extension its people “special”. That point is popular, but not overwhelming like the first one.” Huh, so now you are basically Tzeench? Not as planned. Then again, “goddess of Change” has a ring to it. Maybe more of a “goddess of Progress”, what if you embody the industrial revolution? You bet that rising living standards can be considered a benevolent trait, right? You’re still not sure what to do with the cult…

“There is one thing though that worries me. Have you heard of… Apostate?” You nod, you’ve heard that name before. “She is one of the more… famous Outsiders. No one really knows who that is or where they are, but they claim to be the force against gods. With the power to banish divinity, they are told to have slain numerous cup bearers and maybe even one or two of the lone gods, the legends differ. They are said to make the divine into powerless, after which they are killed by the mob that usually follows them. There were numerous attempts of the gods to… deal with them, but Apostate doesn’t accept agreements and either evades or overpowers any obstacle both divine and mortal. What I fear is… what if the cult attracts them here? The most recent rumors claim that Apostate is currently somewhere in Valistrat, but they plan to go to Ceno to “purify it from false gods and their servants” …” You’re not sure what to reply, you need more information. Thus, you make your way to the Oracle and ask her to call Nike’.

>>4258575
“Oh hey, Ag. What’s up” says the oracle as her eyes light up. It is so uncharacteristic of her previous attitude that you almost jump from surprise. You ask her to tell you more about this… Apostate. “Apostate is a Synthetic Goddess, like you and me. Elspeth doesn’t remember placing someone like her in stasis, so we currently think that she found a pod and used it on herself somehow. She appeared around 50 years ago and she seems to be offended by the existence of “gods”. She has an array of abilities that make it impossible to use psi powers and most of psi equipment within her range. She also has some kind of body augmentations which basically allow her to drag anyone to her level and beat them up. We could drop a mountain on her from way outside of her range, but she also travels with a large group of followers and chills in cities so we are not fans of killing hundreds of people to get rid of one annoyance. She seems to be smart enough not to poke the actual pantheons, but she has on one occasion raided and killed a minor deity somewhere to the north of Valistrat. I believe his name was… Nar-Sie or something like that. He was an edgy nerd with a small town in his protection and no one touched him because he was frankly not too important. Then one day the comms with him failed and later expedition found his body. Apostate is not nice. Our attempts to communicate with her ended up with her slicing open Val’s face with a kitchen knife which left a scar for a few weeks, Valetina absolutely hates Apostate’s guts since. Currently she’s in Valistrat so don’t worry, but if we see that she moves your way I would have to warn you. If you suddenly feel loss of most of your powers and Oracle won’t be able to use communications then… you’re fucked. Sorry, we can’t do shit with her, I’d recommend you to just get the hell out until she passes. And that’s about it, hope I was helpful.” Yeesh, that doesn’t sound good. It’s good that she’s far away, but now you have some side thoughts about having a cult beyond it making you uncomfortable. Maybe it would be possible to overwhelm her with non- psi-based weapons in the worst case? You’ll need to investigate it further, but for now it is not an immediate threat.

>>4258580
You make another flight around the area and see no approaching armies which means you have some more time. And for you it means research. You didn’t have time for it for a while, but now a polished new technique or a piece of gear might help you a lot with the upcoming fight. Let’s see what you can look into…

Roll 1d20 and pick:
>Physical body research: Maybe it’s time to revisit your attempts to get hold of those scales. What did Mort say, perceived danger is needed?
>Mind shield research: Now that you’ve encountered several beings with mind control powers, maybe it is prudent to look into ways to shield yourself. Time for some mental firewalls
>Goddess Blood research: Let’s see if your blood is useful for medicinal purposes on anyone other than you…

>Telekinesis optimized weaponry: You need to look into combining your TK powers and physical weapons. Maybe you should look into TK propelled steel darts or maybe something with explosives?
>Self- propelled flight: You are currently limited in your flight altitude by having to use a workaround of pushing against the ground to fly. You figure that with some training you should master self-sustained flight that can be maintained above 250 meters or so. What’s the point of flight if you can’t fly through the clouds?
>Melee optimized telekinetic shielding: All of your current TK shields are great at stopping projectiles, but they are poorly optimized for melee combat. You should be able to create a technique which would allow you to protect yourself against hostile melee fighters

>Psi- inscription: basic technology under psi circuitry-based objects. Let’s see if we can make something useful out of this…
>Psi- condensation: you’ve seen psi matter before and you wonder if you can make it work. Promises to be somewhat difficult
>Superheavy gear: armor that can actually protect you in a fight with something more comparable to your own powers. Thick like a tank, it would not look too stylish but it would protect you more than your current equipment
>Other ideas?

Rolled 3 (1d20)

>>4258582

>Melee optimized telekinetic shielding: All of your current TK shields are great at stopping projectiles, but they are poorly optimized for melee combat. You should be able to create a technique which would allow you to protect yourself against hostile melee fighters

Rolled 2 (1d20)

>>4258582

>Melee optimized telekinetic shielding: All of your current TK shields are great at stopping projectiles, but they are poorly optimized for melee combat. You should be able to create a technique which would allow you to protect yourself against hostile melee fighters

Regarding the cult, we don't need any prayers, if they want to pray so bad they can direct it to Elspeth since she can actually use the psy energy from prayer.

We should slso keep an eye on the tribals villages, they are part of our protected people too.

>>4258582
_____________________________________
Aaaand it is midnight here. Having to pause for now. the vote continues until I manage to start tomorrow. We'd likely have a little bit of a late session as I'll need to get out of the house for once, but we will have a session. Hope you've enjoyed, feel free to discuss, ask questions and make suggestions.

Rolled 11 (1d20)

>>4258582
>Melee optimized telekinetic shielding: All of your current TK shields are great at stopping projectiles, but they are poorly optimized for melee combat. You should be able to create a technique which would allow you to protect yourself against hostile melee fighters

>>4258582
>>Melee optimized telekinetic shielding: All of your current TK shields are great at stopping projectiles, but they are poorly optimized for melee combat. You should be able to create a technique which would allow you to protect yourself against hostile melee fighters
>>4258580
Nar-Sie? lol, ss13?

>>4258969
roll for it friend, we can do better than 11 and everyone can roll

>>4258969
Lol, I just noticed! Talk about nerdy edgy god

Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>4258969
forgot to roll

Rolled 15 (1d20)

>>4258582

>>Melee optimized telekinetic shielding: All of your current TK shields are great at stopping projectiles, but they are poorly optimized for melee combat. You should be able to create a technique which would allow you to protect yourself against hostile

>>4258608
>>4258658
>>4258813
>>4259034
>>4259738
Alright, I'm back and writing

>>4259829
You decide that the most useful thing that you could do is to improve your defensive techniques. Previously, you’ve already spent some time developing three different ways to counter the projectiles, but you’ve quickly learned that they are not optimized for melee combat. You walk out of your mad scientist lair and end up organizing a sort of training session with the village militia. They would mostly be trying to hurt you with their melee weapons while you test out a few ideas.

You’ve previously created three types of defenses: a “directional barrier”, a “cushion barrier”, and a “point defense barrier”. Directional barrier took almost no optimization to make it work for melee attacks. It essentially creates a plate of force that behaves almost like it is physical and it stops any object that has lower energy than itself. Unfortunately, it is too expensive to maintain over your entire body and it requires constant input of energy no matter if it is blocking anything at the moment or not. Thus, the main optimization of the technique was the ability to turn the directional barrier on and off with less preparation making a partial hybrid between this technique and “point defense barrier”. While still expensive, it could save your skin since it would allow you to block all physical attacks from a certain angle almost outright.

>>4259912
The second barrier ended up basically near impossible to modify for melee use. The “cushion barrier” essentially creates a volume of space in which objects gain acceleration away from your body. Unfortunately, while it works on projectiles, you note that it has much less effect on heavier objects that have force applied to them while in the field. It means that the barrier acts more like tar to any melee weapon entering its area of effect. It is enough to stop the initial inertia, but moderately strong opponent could still push through it, even if a bit slower. It stays moderately effective against wide swings, but piercing weapons like spears would be capable of passing through the “cushion” with little difficulty to the point that if you use it you would be in danger even from a sufficient quantity of mortal spearmen.

The third barrier was the trickiest to modify as you basically needed a new technique to adapt it to much more massive objects that move at different trajectories from conventional projectiles. After almost a week of trial and error you come up with a moderately successful “prototype”. It is in no way perfect, but practice should get rid of all the kinks, even if it means you’d get hit a couple times. Like how the ranged version of point defense loses its effectiveness proportionally to the volume of attacks you are experiencing, the same applies to the melee version. More opponents or faster opponents mean that more attention is required to maintain the barrier which prevents you from counterattacking effectively and increases the risk that you’d get overwhelmed and miss some of the incoming attacks. However, it is highly effective against slow but powerful attacks.

You would have worked on the kinks for a bit more time, but it seems that you are basically out of it. On one of your daily flights you’ve detected movement to the north- west of Farsalos. Your guests are finally here. They’d take another day to get here, but you warn the village and head to your home to gear up. How should you approach this…?

Roll 1d20 and…
>Intercept them before they reach Farsalos
>Wait for them in your territory
>Other?

Rolled 2 (1d20)

>>4259913
>>Intercept them before they reach Farsalos

wait for them at our "border" and request audience, tell them that they are trespassing and will be treated as enemies if they approach our village
if they do not accept our warning, move further in our territory and start harassing them from a distance

then we wait at our gates

>Wait for them in your territory

Rolled 20 (1d20)

>>4259913
>Wait for them in your territory

Rolled 5 (1d20)

>>4259913
>Wait for them in your territory
But give them a fair warning first and a chance to back away

Focus on the augmented if we have to fight, the mortals don't stand a chance

Rolled 15 (1d20)

>>4259913

>Intercept them before they reach Farsalos
Fighting retreat to spread them out until we reach our walls

>>4259948
>>4259931
>>4259924
>>4259920
Alright, couple good rolls, couple meh rolls. We will attempt to speak with them on approach, if they don't listen we would put our defense close to Farsalos. Writing

File: Boss Angel.jpg (289 KB, 1600x1600)

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>>4259965
You deck yourself in your full gear, grab your weapons, make sure everything is in order and prepare to set off. Currently your plan is the following: you would attempt to warn off the army personally. If they continue, you’d return back to Farsalos and prepare to defend your people. Hopefully you could resolve the issue diplomatically with no need for violence. After all, they are here due to a misunderstanding, they think that you are a rogue cup bearer. Well, they’ll find out the truth, whether through listening to you or through you beating their asses into the ground remains to be seen.

The flight doesn’t take long and you get a glimpse of the army that is advancing against your village. It is around 500-ish people, most of them on foot and they primarily consist out of heavy infantry. Some of them are dedicated crossbowmen with heavy crossbows and large tower shields to use as cover in case of a siege. The more lightly armed units usually have a shield while the heaviest soldiers on the field are “knights” in full plate armor and either with large swords or polearms. You also get a better look at the “Champions”. They look… basically like fantasy paladins. They have heavy plate armor adorned in silvery white fabric and like the knights they carry battlefield grade swords or polearms. You note that their weapons each have glowing parts that produce dim orange light similar to the artifact that you saw in Elspen markets. There are exactly 20 of those, which is likely not unprecedented but probably signifies that they are going to actually be helpful against the “rogue cup bearer”. You should keep an eye on them…

File: Spear angel.jpg (328 KB, 1000x1415)

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>>4260215
The army is marching in a box formation protecting the supply carts and support staff in the middle, which is likely an anti-ambush or monster precaution. You note that some of the carts obviously carry parts for siege equipment. From what you know, Holies really like trebuchets, and those are built from a combination of basically medieval flat-pack pieces and sometimes locally harvested wood. They are expecting to siege Farsalos, not good.

Now, for the enemy cup bearers, or should you better call them “Angels” … anyway, there are four of them. All of them are taller than average humans with wings that somewhat remind you of the wings on Helena, but significantly larger. Some have more than one pair and you can actually imagine them flying with them. However, like Helena, they seem to be mostly floating slightly above the level of mounted knights and moving at the speed of the army itself. The first and the obviously most senior of them is a large man with long white hair tied up into a ponytail. He is wearing custom armor made out of glossy white metal with highlights of azure and gold. His wings seem to also be partially protected by the armor plates with a pair of smaller wings below them. He is equipped with a huge- ass sword that glows strongly in infrared, to the point that nearby humans are trying to get at least some distance away not to get constantly burned by its radiation.

The other “angel” in the roster is also a man. He is wearing an intricate helmet along with slightly less bulky armor and he is equipped with a spear that has a glowing crystal in the center of the tip. You can’t tell if he’s a stabby guy or a caster from his looks alone. His armor is less intricate and his wings are not protected so you assume that he is of a lower rank than the white- haired angel. He’s keeping close to a group of three Champions.

The third angel is a blonde woman with her hair tied up neatly into a ponytail. She wears it a bit higher than Elspeth and her hair are a bit shorter and curlier. Her armor is somewhat strange: her arms and legs are armored, but her torso is covered only with silvery white clothes. Maybe she is protected by some kind of psi armor or maybe she is not intended to go into melee. She is armed with a two-handed hammer that looks kind of dinky compared to the huge sword wielded by her boss. She looks least experienced of all of them.

Fourth angel is also a blonde woman, but her hair is much shorter. She also has three sets of wings all of which are armored and she is also wearing partial and somewhat unrealistic armor on her body, more akin to clothes made from armor than actual protective equipment. She has no visible weapons, but there are several golden rings that float right in front of her so you assume that she is a healer or some sort of a caster.

File: Hammer angel.jpg (317 KB, 1000x1662)

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>>4260216
Well, time to make yourself known. You drop off from the sky and hover several meters above the troops just outside of the personal space of the boss angel. The mortals almost freak out, but the angels and champions barely react, they likely saw you coming from a mile away. You note that one of the champions points at you and says something to the spear-wielding angel, who then shouts “In'l yis!”. The boss angel’s brows lower and draw together as he starts speaking with obvious anger in his voice, almost spitting out some of the words in your face:

“Zitry a'ph nyi Ferli Ga'vl! Tyael ael nyi reln ryetri pha's ha'oi na' loissitvis etv ha'ois vieny za'oirv mi lzaephn. Ya'oi vesiv na' ta'n a'trh vaelsilvirn nyi Ha'rh Ca'tnsern mh silaelnaetk a'ois via'vri'l saekyn a'ph ra'tjoiiln, moin ha'oi'sti vsa'rreaediv ha'oislirph na' mi e Ferli Ga'v ha'oislirph! Ya'ois ernaea'tl yesti reoiliv ksien vaelnsill istit na' ha'ois a'zt rsiena'sl, etv zi zaerr mi va'aetk nyid e phesta's mh degaetk nyi qoivkiditn a'oislirstil!”

You… didn’t get a word of that, thus you’ll start your own elevator speech: “Attention, Holy Nation forces, you are trespassing on the territories that are under direct protection of the independent Goddess Agatha. Leave immediately. You will be considered our enemies if you continue your approach to the village of Farsalos…”

The angel’s face goes red with fury as he spits out:
“Wyen aetla'ritri! Na'z aet evvaenaea't na' ha'ois rsaedil, ha'oi vesi vaelsilvirn Hael Ha'rh Edaellesaeil mh ta'n sivrhaetk aet a'ois da'ln lersiv na'tkoii! I zaerr lii ha'oi sivoiriv na' elyil, phsa'd zyaery ha'oi rsezriv a'oin a'ph na' mraekyn nyael za'srv. Bsa'nyisl etv laelnisl, ennerg!”

That last sentence sounded like an order, and not a good one at that. The other angels were pointing their weapons at you the whole time, but once the order was given your gut feeling told you to take cover. You covered yourself with a shield and just in time. A thunderous explosion punched into the shield and threw you several meters backwards. As you removed it, you saw the four angels moving into positions to surround you while champions started to dismount. The mortal staff went full retreat and they would shortly bunch up around their supplies some distance away from the fight. You glance on your shield and it has a large crater dented in it reminiscent of the HEAT impact on tank armor that you saw once in a museum. Bloody hell, looks like it’s time to get serious…

Roll 1d20 and propose a strategy.

File: Caster angel.jpg (471 KB, 1000x815)

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>>4260217
And the last artwork that didn't fit

>>4260217
Let's take the fight away from the champions and deal with the mass-produced angels alone first, separate and engage, use TK freely, throw heavy objects and rocks at insane speeds at them from behind while we engage in merle with whoever is closest

>>4260292
Roll?

Rolled 2 (1d20)

>>4260292

Rolled 4 (1d20)

>>4260217
I'm not good at this write in stuff so...

Rolled 4 (1d20)

>>4260217
Let's break some limbs and incapacitate them, I imagine it's not a fair fight for them but they are sentient so it's not like turning wolves into pulp

Rolled 20 (1d20)

>>4260217

>>4260350
You are a savior anon

>>4260353
>>4260350
>>4260309
>>4260304
>>4260298
>>4260292
Writing

>>4260375
Okay, let’s see here. You need to take the fight away from the champons so that you have to deal with less threats. They are limited in being melee fighters, they can’t fly and have mobility close to what you’d expect from a human… actually scratch that, they are definitely faster than humans, more comparable to a horse. Still, the same limitations apply, they can’t hurt you while you are not in their range. You quickly assess your situation, you are basically surrounded, but the resistance won’t be identical from all sides. For once, the Champion forces would be coming at you from the front along with the boss angel. The spear angel and hammer angel are trying to flank you from left and right and caster angel seems to be content with sitting in relative backline. The choice is obvious, you engage the weakest link and get out of the encirclement. And the weakest link is the hammer girl…

Your legs don’t even have time to move as you throw your body at full speed in her direction with telekinesis. She yelps but somehow blocks your sword swing with her hammer. Its head starts glowing dim orange as the hammer heats up. Suddenly you feel sharp pain from the back roughly where your liver is supposed to be. The spear angel used the fact that you turned your back to him to strike at you. You didn’t think that it was possible due to the distance between you and him, but apparently, he’s quite a speedster. The impact embedded the spear into your flesh, but it didn’t penetrate your true body. The hammer girl uses this opening to make a swing at your head hitting you straight into your right cheek sending you flying sideways with a massive burn mark on your face. It doesn’t feel like your jaw is broken, but your mouth suddenly feels full of some sort of liquid. As you spit it out, you find that it is a mix of shattered teeth and your white blood. Ow…

Somehow, you didn’t get concussed, thank Dan for all the augmentations. However, it was enough for the boss angel to close the distance and swing at you with his massive sword. The world slows down as you barely manage to block with your own greatsword. To your astonishment, the enemy’s sword glows bright white and your own sword slowly deforms bending almost in half. Moments later you realize that it was not slow at all, instead your perception of time was slowed down and it barely took a fraction of a second. The force of the strike is enough to push you back first through a thick but rotting tree trunk that accidentally ended up behind you. Luckily, this was not incapacitating, but you do have to drop your sword and pull out the dwarven artifact.

>>4260350
Oh boy, these angels will fly no more

>>4260586
You quickly look around, this attack has pushed you in a favorable position, all of your enemies are now within your field of view and you are not in an encirclement anymore. A glance reveals a large boulder mostly underground and a quick telekinetic prod suggests that you could move it. You wait a heartbeat for the boss angel to get in position as he moves up to continue his assault and with a pulse of telekinetic force the boulder is ripped out of the ground and it is propelled as fast as you can manage. The mana pool takes the first big dip of the fight, being cut by roughly 1/8 of its capacity. The rock is a total surprise as it shatters against big guy’s forcefield. However, this provides ample distraction for you to close the distance.

Why would you close the distance? For several reasons actually. First of all, you now have a significantly shorter weapon and when you are in close range, you’d have the chance to outmaneuver the much bigger heat blade. The second reason is that you’ve figured out the caster’s deal: she is a cannon. She has been intently tracking you with her arrangement of rings for the entire battle as if she was aiming. Your guess is that she won’t attempt to fire if there is a chance of hitting friendlies. Thus, less than a second after the wave of dirt and rocks hits, you are already very much close and personal with the big guy.

>>4260590
At full speed you drive your blade into his stomach at such an angle for the blade to pass between the armor plates and enter the flesh just below the ribcage. You apply all of your augmented strength in this thrust further enhancing it with telekinesis. Your sword hits the protective barrier and after experiencing some resistance it penetrates and slides into the weak point finally finding the flesh. The wound is not lethal, but it is enough to cause the boss angel to stagger. This allows you to make a wide swing and inflict a massive strike with the rib of your shield straight into his temple. And this is why you wear helmets… The strike punches through the weakened barrier and seriously clocks the angel. It does not incapacitate him, but he waddles back a couple of steps.

You are out of time though; the spear angel has almost closed the distance completely so you pull out the sword from the wound and produce a telekinetic pulse that knocks the big guy on his back and simultaneously sends you flying away backwards. This was precisely calculated as the spearman flies right through the point where you just were a second ago and a powerful explosion centered on the side of his face goes off. The caster has figured out your position, but she was not ready for the mobility that telekinesis provides. You just baited a friendly fire incident.

The hit spear- angel is not hurt, his barrier held the explosion. However, the impact threw him face first into the ground. You consider it a good thing as their shields obviously have limited energy reserves that doesn’t recover quickly, if they are anywhere close to the shields used by Ceno cups. This means that the longer the fight goes on, the better the odds stack for you as then they would not be protected from being oneshot by your more powerful attacks. A smile creeps up on your face. So, this is what challenging combat feels like…

>Roll 1d20 and suggest tactics
__________________________________
And on this note we wrap up for today. The vote will continue until the next thread to allow you to discuss how to fight such a threat. Hope you’ve enjoyed the first fight that was planned to be challenging since the Mad Goddess. As you might guess, it won’t end in one turn. Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions and discuss as always, I reply during the week. See you all next time

Rolled 16 (1d20)

>>4260591

Rolled 20 (1d20)

>>4260591
I have to admit that they are giving us more trouble than I anticipated, I imagined cupbearers were waaaaaaaay more underpowered compared to actual gods, this means that a small gang of them could take a god

Let's keep close and incapacitate spear angel, he lost his shield and cannon girl will probably not try another shot close to him

keep our melee shield tech primed at our back, since they are with the number advantage I suspect hammer girl will try to hit us from the back

Rolled 16 (1d20)

>>4260591

>>4260633
It's not so much that they are powerful but I think Ag hasn't unlocked her true potential yet, and fight like these help her reach new levels and discover new features of her powers, since she is of a different generation than the others no one is quite sure where we can reach.

>>4261622
Try to knock either the boss angel or the spear angel out of the fight since they are weakened. Use the body as a meat shield against cannon for good measure before sprinting on the next target, give her a wink while doing it to taunt, throw her off her game.

>>4261623
>>4261622
>>4260633
>>4260609
Good news, the fight is honestly going better than I initially expected. Not sure why I expected you not to roll two 20s in two turns with SGQ dice but whatever… This allows me to unlock a choice on one specific of the fight: whether we disable by killing. Cup bearers are tougher than humans which makes it a bit difficult to judge what would knock them out and what would kill them. By making the battle more difficult you could probably take them (or some of them) alive. So yeah, here are the options:

>Kill to disable: this keeps the difficulty low but has consequences that you can guess
>Maim to disable: cut off limbs and wound the opponents heavily in attempts to mission kill them, has less consequences and mildly increases the fight’s difficulty
>Knock out to disable: most difficult option, limit the wounds to the opponents, significantly more difficult
>Flee: felt like I should add it, attempt to escape the fight

>>4267778
>>Knock out to disable: most difficult option, limit the wounds to the opponents, significantly more difficult

I say we start like this and move to maim if things get ugly

>>4267778

>Maim to disable: cut off limbs and wound the opponents heavily in attempts to mission kill them, has less consequences and mildly increases the fight’s difficulty

No sense in putting ourselves at that much risk

>>4267778
>Knock out to disable: most difficult option, limit the wounds to the opponents, significantly more difficult

>>4267778
I say the leader is free game to maim since he's probably too tough to take down otherwise, the others we can knock

>>4267778
>Maim to disable: cut off limbs and wound the opponents heavily in attempts to mission kill them, has less consequences and mildly increases the fight’s difficulty

>>4267778
>Maim to disable: cut off limbs and wound the opponents heavily in attempts to mission kill them, has less consequences and mildly increases the fight’s difficulty

>>4267778

>Knock out to disable: most difficult option, limit the wounds to the opponents, significantly more difficult

>>4267807
>>4267875
>>4267888
>>4268313
>>4269292
>>4269395
>>4267928
3 for maim, 3 for knock out and one to maim the leader and knock out the rest. Next OP is in progress

>>4271466
We're finally live. Sorry for an extremely late start: >>4271575

>>4271609
Thread archived