Part 162: Hinnom - The Penis Mightier
The Penis Mightier
What is a cyclops? Many have heard of these mysterious creatures, but few have lived to tell the tale. In this riveting documentary we explore every aspect of the common house cyclops.
Awaken Cyclops is available at conjuration 8 and costs 35 earth gems, putting them on level with Asynja. Unkitted he's quite a bit worse than our gold standards for efficiency, the Zmey and kraken. His magic is significantly worse than a kraken's and his HP are relatively low at 65. He also doesn't have any innate mobility bonus like flying or teleporting. So what does he have going for him?
First, he costs earth gems and I have a ton of those. This is probably the most important factor. I can churn out 3-4 of these guys a turn!
Second, he has full slots. This instantly vaults him up from the ranks of the thug to, potentially, a low level SC. Because of low HP he's never going to be able to compete with Ember Lord or tarts but that's OK. He's a lot cheaper. The most important thing about full slots is it means he's adaptable. I can equip him differently for whatever he's fighting (vs, for example, a rain of stones kraken who's never going to be able to dual wield dusk daggers).
Third, he's immune to fire which is a nice start (I would prefer lightning but you can't win 'em all). And he causes fear which is excellent for routing province defense. His base protection is also quite high which is also great for fighting province defense but pretty useless for anti-SCs stuff. His attack is decent enough but his defense is a bit low. He's never going to be a defense based fighter.
Fourth, he provides easy access to E/F cross paths for forging fire brands, charcoal shields (wearer is surrounded by a fire shield, attacking units take F damage) and shields of gleaming gold (wearer gains awe, stacks nicely with fear).
Finally, he has some of the most sneaky good battle magic around. With one fire gem he can cast Phoenix pyre. Without any boosters or gems he can earth power up to E4 (and 4 reinvigoration a turn) and cast iron will to buff his magic resistance.
His high level of earth, high leadership and general beefiness make him perfect for leading troops and casting army of lead/gold,weapons of sharpness and strength of giants on them.
With earth boots and/or a blood stone and earth power he's at E5 or 6 and can start spamming petrify. Petrify is one of the SC killing spells. It forces a magic resist check and if the target fails it dies. But, and here's the kicker, if the target succeeds it's still stunned for a round. And then you can kick its teeth in. If you have eight cyclops chain petrifying that's a lot of MR checks to pass and, just as important, a lot of stunning.
The current plan sort of rolling around in my noggin is to roll out a group of ten cyclops with a bunch of mechanical men. Two cyclops will cast strength of giants and weapons of sharpness and the other eight will just spam petrify. That ought to cut through most everything out there right now.
Earth boots and a blood stone also allow each cyclops to summon more cyclops, mechanical giants and iron dragons and to cast earth attack and crumble (adios fort walls).
Back to battlemagic - if you're going up against troops, cyclops can spam blade wind (their precision is terrible though so you'll want to bring a lot of them or be fighting something like maenads where they can't miss) and magma eruption. Magma eruption in particular is a pretty great spell that does 20 +1xE level damage over 2 + E level squares and then does 15 fatigue to the same area.
The cyclops is solid but not exceptional for its cost but it has tremendous versatility in both gear and battle magic. I can churn out a ton of them. But, more important than all these things is the fact that one-eyed warriors allow me to institute my penis euphemism naming scheme. Let's find out just how many ways there are to say penis, shall we?