Part 226: Sauro - Turns 57-58

Turn 57
In which an important trade occurs.

- Schneeble/Sauromatia

I found an S1 site in Lama, one of my oldest border provinces with Hinnom. This stuff keeps turning up. Maybe some day I will get a discount site too! My Earthmother and a couple of Witch Kings are given some summon orders, my new Bane Lord is renamed and has his orders to become my prophet, and not much else happens. Oh! I guess I can talk about how my Clam of Pearls production has been going.

Remember way back when my Earthmother summoned a Naiad, and I said I was going to use that Naiad to make clams (with a Dwarven Hammer, obviously) as often as I can afford to? Well, I have 7 clams now, after maybe a dozen turns. I don't have enough gems to have made any more than that at this point. So that's 77 water gems and 21 nature gems spent, and about 53 pearls earned (I made more of the clams early and production has tapered off as I used up all my available gems). A true clam production effort would involve more forgers, but since I don't have enough gems to keep even one Naiad occupied full-time I don't feel that I'm missing an opportunity.

446 units suffered badly from Burden of Time (most of them are undead at this point so it isn't as bad as it sounds), but 2 died outright and I lost an Enarie to disease. Now let's have a look at the map, and my empire's ridiculous and inefficient shape.




- buildscharacter/Hinnom

So. Hinnom. We are allies, Hinnom and I. He helped prop me up in dark times, and just now he traded a Ring of Wizardry at cost, 30 Earth gems for 30 other gems, I don't remember what, and Boots of Youth for (I believe 2 Amulets of the Fish). So there you go, cat's out of the bag, he finally gets some amulets but his precious kraken don't have the chops to do it themselves. He has to rely on my independent Enchantresses to provide.

By the way, I didn't contribute any Air gems to Perpetual Storm because I didn't have any, and I had to use alchemy to make one of the two that I sent to Hinnom (I think maybe I send the second one to him on turn 59? He can confirm the timing). So don't believe the anti-Sauromatian propaganda that you hear from the greasy slobs over in Hinnom. We put up Burden of Time for this war effort! We paid our bailout debts to Hinnom! The suggestion that our cannibals are inferior to theirs is simply nationalist propaganda!


Anyway, yeah, the Ring of Wizardry is awesome. Combined with the Treelord's Staff (+2 Nature) I traded for earlier it allows one of my Witch Kings with a Nature random (D3N2B1) to have enough magic to cast Daughter of Typhon (N5D2). So that's one of the summons I mentioned earlier. Incidentally I traded for those nature gems so I could summon the other Earth King with my goddess. There's another summon coming through as well, but I guess I will talk about all of them with the turn 58 post. That's a lot to talk about! Let's wrap this up.

- Dexanth/Arcoscephale

Wrath of Rainbow: 7 (previous turns) + 60 (4 wounded) + 0 (0 killed) = 67 gold (1467 less 1400 of my own revenge)

I don't really expect this to last much longer.

Turn 58
In which I summon loads of shit.

- Schneeble/Sauromatia

The Daughter of Typhon will wait until my Turn 59 post. Rest assured that I am using my Earthmother to cast Gift of Reason on her this turn. In other news I summon this guy:


Now I have Air access (but no air gems to speak of), hooray! He can cast Rain of Stones, which I will need to defend myself against maenads and blood mages. He also generates 1 Air and 1 Earth gem per turn, and can spend a turn to summon earth gnomes, which are adorable little elementals.

Also, down south near T'ien Ch'i (and where Hinnom cut off my expansion) I had a Witch King with a Skull Staff cast Legion of Wights. That summon 20 of these:


They're not bad, and one works with what resources one has. For my part, I have death gems. Since all of my ordinary blockers have died off, I'm planning to rely on undead and elementals to pick up the slack.

455 Units suffered badly from Burden of Time, and 5 died. I think my experiment to kill off my Burden of Time caster happens next turn so this may be the last turn it's in effect. My map isn't very different from last turn, with one exception that I will discuss in time.

- buildscharacter/Hinnom

I got a Skull of Fire in trade with this guy. I plan to use it with the Ring of Wizardry to allow an Adept of Pyriphlegeton to summon the Fire royalty. I have poorly defensible lands and no great shot at any gem generating globals, but I will hoard elemental royalty if I can! Obviously builds character is well aware of my plans, doesn't really see me as a threat (can you blame him?), and of course agrees with my argument that his continued fair trading will maximize entertainment for all of you fine folks.

- Incy/Mictlan

I sent a small team ashore to secure an Arcoscephale province. Incy tried to take it as well. Let's see what happened!


So it turns out that two casts of Living Earth at E11 (that's 24 earth elementals) is in fact sufficient to tie up two bane lords while a fire immune badass with an eye shield hacks the heads off a zmey. Better yet, the bigger elementals (before they are whittled down by bane lords) trample the smaller bane lords and either soften them up or kill them outright. Barathrus himself took damage maybe once, but regenerated it all the following turn. It cost me 4 Earth gems, and he generates 3 automatically each turn. This fight was all victory, and now I have access to Mictlan for future offensive maneuvers (whenever the peace deal runs out).

Oh, this is a minor thing, but Mictlan has Arcoscephale's capitol under siege as of this turn. I did say that we agreed to eliminate the three smaller powers before duking it out, and any agreement that Lilli and Dexanth had is obviously void now.

- Feinne/T'ien Ch'i

Speaking of the three smaller powers, I was talking to Feinne at this point about how I could ease his passing into the afterlife now that the war with Mictlan was over and everybody was going to want a piece of his territory. That fort he has down south that is currently surrounded by my territory is mine if I can take it. The wights and a couple of Gate Cleavers should help me achieve that goal, and I believe I am taking one more turn of preparation before I make my move. I inform builds character that I intend to take that province, and he agrees to leave it alone.

- Dexanth/Arcoscephale

Wrath of Rainbow: 67 (previous turns) + 120 (8 wounded) + 60 (2 killed) = 247 gold

Irrational Objectives:
1. Control the entire isthmus. (Succeeded)
2. Extract an air mage from buildscharacter. (Succeeded)
3. Summon/GoR the Daughter of Typhon.
4. Extract blood price from Arcoscephale (247 gold).
5. Summon 9 Elemental Royalty or cast each of the 6 Royalty summons at least once (current progress: 2/9 or 2/6)