Part 218: Sauro - Turn 47

Turn 47
These are fun turns...

- Schneeble/Sauromatia
I researched Thaumaturgy 5 and I immediately had a D4 Witch King equip a Skull Staff (which boosts him to D5) to cast Burden of Time. I then returned my research to Conjuration. I've got to get the Daughter of Typhon out as soon as possible, after all. My remote site searchers turned up a Grove of Evergreens in one of my core provinces. It's nothing special, just 1 Nature gem per turn. My blood hunters turned up 14 slaves, yay.

I got two unpleasant random events in the same turn:


and



These resulted in two battles:


against my PD, which I lost without killing a single Troglodyte. 19 remain (18 and a commander). The other battle was:


against my big army of Witch Kings and Androphag Archers down in T'ien Ch'i territory. An attack like this is normally enough to take out PD, as it's an independent Druid


leading 21 Vine Men


and 13 Vine Ogres


Normally all of this would outnumber PD, and certainly there are enough hit points and enough attacks on the table to overwhelm 6 to 66 gold-worth of PD. In this case however, 2 of my opening 4 Shadow Blast volleys hit their targets and about half of the Androphag archers hit something as well. So many of the vine creatures died in that first round of combat that the Druid routed from HP loss. He almost made it off the map when my cataphracts finished off the remaining vine creatures (most of whom were still paralyzed by the initial Shadow Blast volleys). Good times.

So, one other thing happened domestically. My pretender, the Earthmother President Skroob, finally returned! All those turns spent on Call God finally paid off! It's worth reminding everybody that whenever a god dies and comes back, he or she loses one rank in ever path of magic. Now she's 3W 3E 4N (instead of 4W 4E 5N). I slap one of my new Clam of Pearls on her and have her cast Curse of the Wendigo.


This particular summon is of questionable worth because of the amount of time it takes for the Wendigo to "grow up" but we'll investigate that further once we have one. I will say that the Wendigo in EDM (Endgame Diversity Mod, which is part of CBM) is summoned with Water and Death, but in AE (Awesome Endgame, the mod that we're using in this game) uses Water and Nature.

Oh, also I gave a Fever Fetish to an Independent Commander. The Fever Fetish is a pain in the ass and I don't know why I thought it would work out, but that Commander had accumulated an Affliction from a Wrath of God lightning strike and I figured it wouldn't hurt to try to generate some extra gems. Basically you stick this trinket on a commander and they become diseased, and after a couple of months the Fetish starts generating fire gems. Eventually the commander dies and you need to move the fetish to somebody else before he takes it with him to the grave. So stupid.

Anyway, I also won a bid for Mighty Pak-Ur (an ettin mercenary we will look at shortly). Here's the map for the turn.


Let's take a look at foreign policy!

- Dexanth/Arcoscephale
Wrath of Rainbow: 756 (previous turns) + 24 (4 wounded) + 24 (2 killed) = 804 gold

- Feinne/T'ien Ch'i
I would briefly like to mention that you can see in the lower left corner of the map that there appears to be a two-headed Zmey in a T'ien Ch'i province. Feinne's god apparently enslaved the same zmey that I ran out of the province that I wrested from him. It's like the circle of life except with cannibal witches, eastern European dragons, and Hindu gods.

So I stormed the fort in The Weald. My big army (less a few Death gems I spent in the Vine Man attack) goes up against these 8 mages:


The Masters of the Way started out by summoning Air and Water Elementals as blockers. Besides a single Woodsman in the fort with them these elementals are the only blockers they have. Ultimately of course it wasn't enough. My cataphracts weathered Falling Fires well enough, and in fact the only notable casualty was that starting commander who had been holding the Banefire Crossbow from way back on turn 20 or so. RIP whatever you name was. You deserved a better death than by fireball. Fortunately(?) the crossbow was recovered after the battle.

The fortress was protecting the Citadel of Pyriphlegeton, which is awesome. Just awesome.


Pyromancers are young F1 mages for 60 gold, and Adepts are old F3 mages for 180 gold. Glee!

- Lilli/Mictlan
I'm attacking Mictlan's undefended sea territory with my little squad of Merfolk led by a Witch King, and I'm attacking the lightly defended isthmus province with my Witch King and the freshly-recruited Mighty Pak-ur.


Pak-ur is a big bag of hit points with good Magic Resistance. I'm hoping that he will soak any nefarious blood magic that Lilli's Circle Masters might throw at me. I'm so close to controlling the entire isthmus that I can taste it. Finally, after all this time!

Irrational Objectives:
1. Control the entire isthmus (attacking this turn!).
2. Extract an air mage from buildscharacter (recruiting this turn!).
3. Summon/GoR the Daughter of Typhon.
4. Extract blood price from Arcoscephale (804 gold).