Part 170: Hinnom - Turn 66
Turn 66
In libraries across Hinnom, scholars have spent years poring over well-kept, perfectly preserved tomes. Reading is important kids, and King Hippomnomnomnom is pro-reading all the way. Take a look, it's in a book! Reading rainbow of destruction and death to King Hippomnomnomnom's enemies and praise to the glorious Pantokrator from who all good things come, even science which is what was used to preserve all these books in the first place. In his youth, King Hippomnomnomnom devised a superior Cheeto dust that tasted great and had magical book-preservation properties. Being something of a book worm, King Hippomnomnomnom's giant fingers liberally coated each page of his books and the great libraries of Hinnom have been shining beacons of modern literary preservation ever since.
At long last, the tentative whisper of a kraken rose in King Hippomnomnomnom's mind "lord, we have found him. We, uh, we think anyway. It's a little unclear. It might just be one of your uncles. Honestly, they all look the same to us. It's got nothing to do with skin color, we're just ancient beasts from beneath the waves with little understanding of those inferior beings born with only four or, perish the thought, two arms. Ghastly really. Your majesty aside, of course. We were quite glad you introduced us to this wrench dressing. Might we have a bit more? Just a touch. Yesssss, thank you lord."
Blood hunting is at 85 and research in blood is finally complete. T'ien Ch'i is still under siege.
Look, my first full school of research!
With blood complete, King Hippomnomnomnom's librarians are directed to put some work in on alteration. Right now there are three things really driving my research. 1. Lightless lanterns. These are still just huge and almost every nation should have a plan for getting either lightless lanterns or skull mentors because they're both so great. 2. 
are great researchers and I have a lot hanging out waiting for fish amulets. 3. Cyclops. They're not as good as kraken at researching, but I'm still building up a decent number and they provide a significant research boost. As I summon more they'll become increasingly important, with the downside that a clever opponent will be able to tell if I roll them out in force because my research will dip. 
"We triangulated his location based on the clues left in the Hippomnomnomnomishad and the Hinnomicon. Plus, we did a google search for his name. We didn't get too far until we hired Tracer Bullet. That kid may have seven slugs in him (six are bourbon and one is lead), but he is a damn fine private investigator. This is what he found, boss. Plus look at all these other neat gadgets! They were in the back, under your old copy of James Bond's Birds of the West Indies."
This is the one personal buff blood has. Blood vengeance forces a MR check whenever anyone does damage to your dude. If the unit doing the damage fails their MR check then the damage rebounds. It's dreamy. It's also only great vs chaff because anything better will have decent magic resistance. And it has the same old problem of being high fatigue and requiring a slave to cast.
This spell summons lots of fiends of darkness. Fiends of darkness are flying demons with two claw attacks that also inflict poison damage. They have dark power and are OK. You shouldn't waste slaves on them because they are not storm demons or demon knights but you might have to if you don't have B/A or B/E casters.
These are, presumably, the Grigori's jailers. They are in charge of hell, where the Grigori are locked up. Except that the Arch Devils and Ice Devils are also in charge of hell(s) and maybe also the Oni and Helhirds and look, it's complicated. All you need to know is that the demon lords have received a serious helping of awesome sauce. In the vanilla game they're not at all worth summoning. In Awesome Endgame? They are awesome.
This is kind of cool because it summons devils and then gives you imps to go along with them. Imps are great patrollers and great chaff. Devils are burly flying troops with a heat aura and two attacks. The heat aura is key as it fatigues out anything that doesn't have fire resistance. Fun fact: I lost a pretender once because I didn't understand that.
Here it is. The reason you research blood 9. Storm demons are wonderful. They fly, they have storm power and they throw lightning at people. In the vanilla game they're the only archer unit that works underwater.
And here is the worst of the blood troops. They have ranged ice attacks but their range is low and because undead have innate cold resistance they're effectively neutered by a significant portion of their enemies. They also have very low protection so they die easily.
These are the guys that compete with storm demons. They're my favorite, even though storm demons are objectively a bit better. They are beefy fire immune cavalry with fear and a lance. Anything the lance doesn't kill, their fear stacking will make run away very quickly. They're wonderful. Did I mention that?
This spell is broken.
These two spells, and Astral Corruption, are the ones that make people cry the most about blood being broken. You saw Infernal Prison in effect with Ornias. It's a great spell to get rid of an SC for a few turns (or none at all if your dude is as badass as Ornias
), but the only way it ever kills an SC is by making them reappear underwater (spoiler: they drown) which is hilarious. 
"888-987-6667. So... Uh, boss. Are you going to call him?"
Thuella hands Aegis to one of the Ammi and rolls up her sleeves. T'ien Ch'i will submit or she will know the reason why.
Thuella will be summoning 20+ air elementals before heading in to shank any survivors.
Thuella is a magic being so opposition will just straight out kill her. She's relatively safe at 24 MR, but I'm not risking anything so the screen of air elementals should kill everyone first or alternately provide other targets for opposition.
King Hippomnomnomnom scrounged up the gold to recruit another Ba'al and *ROCKY THEME SONG* heads to Histyra to join *sad trombone*.
Ornias heads to the blood site to see if his dad finally managed to pass a parole hearing. Savnok forges the Armor of Virtue. You can also see that the lycan amulet MOM'S TENNIS INSTRUCTOR picked up when Savnok destroyed the Zmeywaffe has finally turned him into a werewolf! (he's a skinshifter, they turn into werewolves as their second shape) fortunately, as long as nobody makes him mad he can sit in a library researching all day.
Armor of Virtue is the "screw you guys, I'm going home" armor. It casts returning on the wearer when they're damaged. It can be a little buggy but it's always worked for me. It's quite useful for when you want a caster to rain fire and lightning and yeah, maybe a horror or two, but you want to get them out of dodge before they get really hurt.
KRAKEN QUEEN forges the Boots of Antaeus. These are the second best boots in the game behind the boots of the planes. They boost earth magic, provide 5(!) reinvigoration and 10% regeneration. The reinvigoration and regen on boots are huge as it frees up a misc slot for something more useful. KRAKEN QUEEN forges these because I went to forge the dimensional rod with Savnok and discovered that *gasp!* someone else had already forged it. And then I checked all the artifacts and discovered they'd also forged the soul stone of the wolves! Who could this dastardly figure be? Who would take King Hippomnomnomnom's toys away from him? For shame!
Gemgen Counter
Blood stones: 127
Cost: 603E, 960 slaves
Gems Generated: 1,688
Diplomacy
Ready?
Ready? I'm practically peeing my pants with readiness here!
Of course Hinnom. I'm... always ready.
Pleasure doing business with you, as always old boy.
So, uh, dude, this is like just business, you know? No hard feelings or anything if the rest of things don't work out. Right?
Strictly business. Understood. No hard feelings when Mictlan Enterprises Inc. puts your Melqarts to work selling trinkets at roadside stands that make South of the Border look upscale.