Part 225: Sauro - Turn 56

Turn 56
In which a change of management occurs.

- Schneeble/Sauromatia
I should note that at some point I used a dwarven hammer to make a fever fetish, which I put on an independent commander who had an affliction already. On this turn I believe I got my third fire gem from the fetish and the commander was down to 2 hp. I intended to swap the fetish over to another commander but I either forgot or else I figured I could string it along for one more turn. Whatever the case, he dies next turn (thanks to Burden of Time or Wrath of God or both) and takes my fetish with him for a net loss of 3 nature gems. I will not experiment with fever fetishes again.

Site searching is fruitless and I get some gold from a random event. The power of my dead prophet has left the world so I summon a Bane Lord to take his place. I'm summoning this turn and will make a prophet out of him next turn, but really you've all seen plenty of Bane Lords by now so you won't really need a screenshot. My intention is that he will be resistant to both of the destructive globals and as an undead priest he will be able to re-animate some longdead horsemen for me.

I've finished researching Conjuration 9 and Enchantment 4. I am moving my Earthmother out of the water so that she can aid in the process of getting the Daughter of Typhon online (but I need to make one more trade with Hinnom before that can happen, so I have some time). Enchantment 4 gives me the spell "Twiceborn" which I now order my Burden of Time caster to use. Whenever he dies he will come back as a Wight Mage. Either his death and resurrection will clear the global, or it won't. Either outcome has its uses and I'm all for experimentation!


I did not take that southernmost Arcoscephale province in the water, but if you look closely you can see that there was a battle in my ocean province to the south of that. That tells us that Dexanth's underwater Shishi intercepted my Water Queen in my province, not in his own. We can also see that it's still under my control, which strongly suggests that I won. Let's go see how that worked out!

- Dexanth/Arcoscephale

On Arcoscephale's side, a Shishi with three items: Water Breathing Ring, Ring of Regeneration, Girdle of Might. On my side, my goddess, an elemental queen of water, and a couple of Witch Kings. Also some assorted ichtyids and tritons and merfolk from earlier military action. Both sides spend the first couple of rounds buffing, although for some reason Thalassa went off script and summoned a single Water Elemental on the first round. As a result, shortly after the buffing is finished, my faster chaff units and the elemental are in melee range with the Shishi and a single phantasmal warrior. Everybody else still has a little way to travel.


The Shishi dispatched most of the chaff quickly, and even managed to knock one size off the water elemental before Thalassa arrived at the head of a large group of elementals summoned via Living Water (courtesy of my Earthmother).


That was easy. Also, needlessly expensive. The Earthmother and the Witch Kings were not meant to be involved in the fight and so their Wrath of the Ancestors and Living Water spells were wasteful. Still, that's 4 gems wasted against 39 (I assume that Dexanth used hammers to make all of the Shishis's gear). 35 gems in my favor, multiplied by the 40 gold I said I'd value each gem in the blood price Irrational Objective, adds up to 1400 gold! Of course lightning is still coming down so let's see what happens.

Wrath of Rainbow: 1317 (previous turns) + 90 (6 wounded) + 0 (0 killed) = 1407 gold - 1400 gold in blood price = 7 gold

I'm not counting any of the ocean provinces against the blood price because Dexanth didn't have them for very long. Really at this point I don't know if he has anything else for me to kill, and only a handful of his former provinces are back under his control. It's looking like I'm going to fail this particular objective.

- Lilli/Mictlan

So, this message arrived along with a single gold piece.


Lilli has burned out on Dominions at this point, and as of last turn (the event that builds character was referring to when he said I neglected to talk about a minor detail) our good friend Incy has taken her place. Hello, Incy! Extensive backroom dealings occurred when Incy came on the scene. He knew more or less what he was in for and he is a champ for stepping into the role of "Public Enemy #1". He is also nobody's fool, and immediately secured a variety of ceasefire arrangements with Hinnom, Pangaea, and myself. New national boundaries were drawn up and really it was all very fun but I don't have chat logs so you're just going to have to take my word for it.

He pulled his Sea King out of the water province and so my dudes were able to take it uncontested. Perhaps more importantly, some of you may be wondering who is left to fight now that the war against Mictlan has been suspended. Well, part of our agreement with Incy was that we all felt that it was obvious there were four major powers in the world now, and three nations that needed to be swept under the rug.

So our peace with Incy would last as long as it took the four of us to completely finish off T'ien Ch'i, Arcoscephale, and Lanka. The implicit peace terms (I don't think that these exact terms were ever agreed upon in the precise language I'm about to use) were further tailored to each of the defensive pact members. For example, Pangaea was not likely to fight Lanka at all and so Irony.or.Death would be free to attack Incy once Feinne and Dexanth were gone. builds character did not share any borders with Dexanth and so his pact would run out when Feinne and TheDemon were gone. I bordered all three so I was likely to be the last one to pile on against Incy.

Of course I wanted builds character to be the front line of any battle plan (but not the last one to dig in) because the more his forces were worn down without province/gem gain the better off everybody else would be. At the same time I had limited forces to devote to three fronts simultaneously, but if I slack off anywhere then my enemies are taking opportunities from under my nose. As of now (real time) I know how almost everything plays out so I won't be adding any more Irrational Objectives, but at this point in the game (turn 56) I know I have got my work cut out for me if I want to stay competitive with the other major players.

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 (7 gold).
5. Summon 9 Elemental Royalty or cast each of the 6 Royalty summons at least once (current progress: 1/9 or 1/6)