Part 217: Sauro - Turn 46

Turn 46
- Domestic
I hit Thaumaturgy 4, which is nothing special. Thaumaturgy 5 (and my new objective) is only a turn away! I captured 19 blood slaves and god a random event that gives me a few extra candles in one of my provinces. Remote site searching has revealed nothing new. The second squad of Witch King + Shades (with some extra Triton chaff) lost miserably against that independent ocean province full of Ichtyids that I mentioned earlier. Nets do not mess around, people.


You can see it here, more or less in the southern-middle of the map, taunting me. For the time being I decide to leave that province alone. I've got lots of other things to worry about now, and that little squad took up too much time and failed too completely for me to bother putting together another one. It's not like anybody is going to get to it before I do anyway. Even so, ~400 gold down the drain for no gain at all represents my biggest loss since taking over and I'm not happy about it.

- Arcoscephale
Once again, my only interaction with Arcoscephale is to endure the interminable bolts of lightning sent down by his global.
Wrath of Rainbow: 756 (previous turns) + 30 (5 wounded) + 48 (4 killed) = 834 gold

- T'ien Ch'i
So, Feinne and I are fighting now. I drove the defenders of that fort off last turn, and destroyed the walls this turn. I've ordered my sieging forces to storm the fortress. Feinne sent a single cheap mage out to break the siege (possibly to e-take the province if my armies decided to move on). That mage was killed in the opening volley of arrows from my Androphag Archers. The only resistance offered were two castings of this spell:

Fires from Afar is an Evocation 3 spell that requires 3 paths of Fire magic to hit 10 troops (a little more when cast by more powerful mages) for 15 armor piercing fire damage. It's not quite enough to kill my Witch Kings or my cavalry, so I assume that the deaths are all Androphag Archers. 13 of my archers for 20 of his fire gems is not a great trade, but Feinne is obviously desperate at this point and likely cares little for efficiency. The other invasion force that I split off from the main army was--as you may recall--4 witch kings with whatever markata and ghouls I had left over. They ran into these defenders:


Which is basically half the survivors of the Battle of Weald (the fortress province) in addition to a mass of militia from a random event. I lost all 4 markata and both ghouls, while T'ien Ch'i lost 38 troops (mostly militia) and the province. The survivors retreated southward to the fortress in Troban. That provonce is the last one of T'ien Ch'i's that I can reach, but it is now well-fortified and would probably take some time to siege. That's a concern for the future, though. For now...

- Mictlan
In Erfel, that province where my witch kings just drove off T'ien Ch'i defenders, this asshole attacks me.


The zmey flew directly into freshly raised skeletons and continued fighting endless hordes until he lost a head and flew away. If the turn order resolved differently then I would have attacked him, so this was a lucky break for me. Arguably it didn't hurt that the zmey had 2 water breathing rings instead of a lycan amulet, but frankly if it were berserk then I would have just killed it instead of driving it off so really that gear discrepancy worked in Lilli's favor.

One could argue that eventually my witch kings would have fatigued out and stopped raising skeletons. I would counter that the nearest witch king switched to Hand of Death when he went off script. He was dealing 40+ armor negating damage each cast (at the cost of maybe 5 fatigue), which is a lot of damage even for a zmey. The skeletons themselves were enough to offset the zmey's regeneration, so roughly every other turn I would have removed a head until the thing was dead.

"Schneeble," you might say, "this Hand of Death spell sounds fantastic."
"It does," I would tell you. "But it only hits with a successful melee attack. You don't usually want to risk D2 mages for this purpose, but certainly there are situations where it comes in handy."

And then you would be impressed by my knowledge of the game and I would not disabuse you of that impression, even though my victory here was at least 80% dumb luck. No hard feelings between Lilli and I at this point, she was attacking T'ien Ch'i and we were not coordinating our movements. She lost one head off a zmey and I lost nothing at all, so nobody is really upset.

- Pangaea
I received 30 Death gems from Pangaea for mysterious purposes. We may never know why I needed those, or why Pangaea was willing to trade them to me. Moving on.

- Hinnom
I received five Lightless Lanterns from Hinnom. I'm pretty sure I paid him for these. I also got this message:


There was some activity up north between Hinnom and Lanka, but when isn't there? I wanted to use this as an excuse to post my Lanka icons (since I've posted everybody else's) but really this turn has run long and there will be opportunity to use them later.

Note that this turn is when I order a tiny force to go take the province of Cacian Forest from Hinnom. He's going to let me have it for a turn so that I can recruit an Illusionist (Air mage!) and thus realize an Irrational Objective. I'm inordinately excited about this prospect.

Irrational Objectives:
1. Control the entire isthmus.
2. Extract an air mage from buildscharacter.
3. Summon/GoR the Daughter of Typhon.
4. Extract blood price from Arcoscephale (834 gold).