Part 14: Like Polyphemus Only Without The Stake
Bargash ended up winning by one vote. Let's go find his castle and fight him!
"I'm not sure you can call it 'winning' when what he wins is the right to get set on fire first."Like Polyphemus Only Without The Stake
Castle Yeneverre is to the north, a little further up the river. I guess we're going to be sailing a little while longer. If only there were some kind of artifact that made boat rental cheaper! I could use the money we save to buy earplugs for the next time Iggy starts singing about drunken sailors
This is another of those signs that falls into the category of "useful if we didn't already know what it tells us." If we follow the river all the way to the end, there's a lot of treasure to be had.
Signs are like buses: you don't see any for hours, and then two or three of them come at once.
This tells us nothing useful, but it's my favourite sign in the whole game anyway.
Why couldn't it be gold?
"Why couldn't it be spells?" 
"Why couldn't I have sent a less self-centred hero to look for the Sceptre?" 
Here's that desert we found a tunnel into earlier. Thankfully, it's the only bit of desert on Forestria.
This will be handy if I somehow fuck up and run out of Town Gate spells while still on Forestria. I wish the game would start giving us some new spells, though.
"Maybe there's another villain we can find out about while we're here!"
No such luck. At least it'll be an easy enough source of income once we slaughter its current inhabitants and garrison it.
Oh, hey, a monster lair!
"Please let it be Druids, please let it be Druids..."
We've now found three elf lairs. Three. Elves are great and all, but isn't this overkill?
I think this is the game's way of telling me to stop arsing about collecting treasure and go fight Bargash. Luckily, his castle is just a few steps to the south.
"Okay, Bargash, there are two ways we can do this. You can come quietly and we can lock you up, incinerate your army and seize your castle, or you can try to fight and we can lock you up, incinerate your army and seize your castle."
"Puny humans! Bargash crush you!"
"Hey! Who are you calling human?"
Bargash has quite an army. The hulking yellow man-mountains clutching boulders are Giants. Think of Giants as Orcs on steroids: like Orcs, they're ranged units that are even more powerful if you try to engage them in melee. Of course, Giants have a higher skill level and 10 times the HP.
"Fireball: the only way to start your day."
"You kill Bargash's archers, Bargash kill your archers! How you like them apples?"There is no good way to fight Giants. They have enough HP to endure lots of attacks and magic, and tactical spells like Freeze and Teleport don't do much against ranged units. Leave them alone and they shoot at your weakest unit, but send a unit in to melee range and they do even more damage to it. Of course, this is only going to make it that much sweeter once we get Giants.
The Orcs target our Archers too, of course, killing another two. At the end of round 1 we've lost a couple of Archers and a few Pikemen (which we were going to get rid of anyway). Not a bad result, but I'd like to stop losing Archers.
"This looks like a job for fiery death!"
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But who am I to argue with success?
Our Archers have taken a sharp turn for the useful; they killed 12 Orcs last round as well.
When my Pikemen do something like this, I feel a little sad about losing them. But only a little.
The Elves are being awesome as always.
Jostiband posted:
Keep exploring until you can add more elves to your army!
It may take a while, but you two are not going to be disappointed. Elves are likely to be part of my army right up to the endgame.SynthesisAlpha posted:
By the end of this LP, i want to see "Elves shoot Dragons. 2 die." Make it so.
Cavalry, on the other hand, are not. This is why: they just did about as much damage as a force of Pikemen costing less than half as much. Cavalry have mobility going for them, but not a whole lot else.
Our Knights, also costing significantly less than the Cavalry, hit just as hard. Knights have their uses in the midgame, but other units that can do the same thing better eventually become available.
Here's our situation at the end of round 2. We lost some more Archers and Pikemen, while Bargash lost most of his Wolves and a couple of Ogres.
We're focusing fire on the Ogres and letting our Pikemen bear the brunt of their attacks. In hindsight, I probably should have fireballed those Giants a couple of times instead of letting them keep shooting at my Archers.
"See? You should follow my advice more often."In any case, I decided to stop them from shooting by attacking them in melee instead.
Those Pikemen aren't even much use as a decoy any more. Better get them out of the way while there are still some left to garrison.
"If pikemen weren't enough to stop you..."
"... then it's time to say good knight!" "Puny magic woman no see that it day outside. Stupid humans."
After a couple more rounds, the Giants and Ogres are nearly defeated (at the cost of two Knights and some Cavalry) and all that's left to do is mop up.
We probably could have won this fight without losing as many troops as we did, but I was being careless.
Besides, that's more than enough to pay for the losses we incurred.
"Ha! How do you like them apples, Bargash?" "Bargash no like them apples at all. Them apples all wrinkly and sour like zombie heads." 
As usual, we station a token garrison force, except that this time they have spears and aren't midgets. Ignatia, don't let King Maximus find out how we've been treating his soldiers, okay?
"As long as you don't tell anyone about that thing with the shield."
"Until now, I never understood how the living could envy the dead."With Bargash defeated, it's time to check our stats and end the update.
Our army took a bit of a beating. It's still more than enough to deal with any wandering monsters, but I'll have to restock (and preferably find some better troops) if we want to fight Rinaldus.
"I'm rich! That's enough money for 54 fireballs!"
Bargash's map piece revealed a square of grass to the southeast. We now have 40% of the map. You've seen the maps of the first two continents: do you think the Sceptre is on either of them? Can you guess where it is?
There's still a lot to do before digging up the Sceptre, though. We can go after Rinaldus Drybone, or we can continue exploring the continent and try to collect some more treasure and information about other villains. It's up to you!
"Oh, pay no mind to me. Feel no pressure to find the Sceptre quickly, merely because I happen to be slowly dying in its absence."Aw, stop complaining. Ignatia's stopped time, so we've got as long as we need to find the Sceptre.
Hey, come to think of it, if time isn't passing for anyone except Ignatia and her army, how can you even be talking?
"Good poi--"