Part 67: Turn 58: Christ That's A Lot Of Fighting

Blue Water, apparently, has zero magic sites in it. Useful.



Blind, you may remember, is T'ien Ch'i's Pretender God. What a terribly ignominious way to go.

In any case, I'm no longer particularly worried about any kind of firepower T'ien Ch'i may have set up before leaving the game.

Histyra: Midgard using that annoying Remote Birds spell to irritate Gath unsuccessfully.



Stone Heavens: A bit more interesting.



Phyleides's battle script is reasonably simple. First, Mistform. Mistform reduces the damage of any hit to 1hp. It's canceled if the hit does more than 25 damage, more than 25% of the target's health, or if the target gets hit by a magical weapon. I'm not sure if that's 25 damage before armor or 25 damage after armor - if it's the former, it's nearly useless since 25 damage before armor translates to 3 damage after. Still, it probably won't hurt.

After Mistform, Fire Resistance. I'm not expecting to run up against Fire damage in this battle, but I want to see how it will work against, say, Mictlan.

And finally, Flight.



All three put together leave her at 48 Fatigue. A bit high, but survivable. She immediately flies across the battlefield, vaulting the melee troops effortlessly, and nukes some archers.

She's been bombarded with arrows this entire time, in fact, but not one of them has managed to harm her - shield plus heavy armor means firepower just can't get through.



The rest of the battle looks like this: her surrounded by creatures, taking no damage, splattering them two squares at a time thanks to her Boots of Quickness. Eventually the units start fleeing, and shortly afterwards rout.



Our reward.





For some reason we're getting a lot of good events. We don't have Luck, we're just . . . lucky.

Let's go over this horrifying number of battles quickly.

Midgard: Midgard trying to break the siege on Midgard. They fail miserably.

Stone Grave Mountains: Mictlan's Arch Devil taking out a Midgard province.

Linshire: Kumlakh obliterating a sieging force.

Silver Swamps: Barathrus obliterating a bunch of Ronin.




We get some tasty treats off that as well.

Sermioc: We break T'ien Ch'i's siege easily.



Feral Woods: C'tis takes back the province that we took, now that Kumlakh is distracted.

This is a downside to using supercombatants: it's tough to spread out and cover territory. You end up with a very limited number of extremely angry fists that you can use to punch things, and not a lot else.

Banded Hills: Gath breaking the siege yet again. It's getting kind of silly.



Yldmyre: C'tis tries to break our siege of what I believe is a Midgard castle. They do so with a whole pile of really wimpy undead, and my apes rip the undead apart effortlessly.




The Mirks: Jomon attacks Ulm's bane lord again, this time with a huge, huge slew of summoned stuff.

To be honest, though, we know how this goes. Jomon couldn't hurt Ulm before, and Jomon isn't having any luck hurting Ulm now.



The only difference is that Jomon brought a lot more mages to the party, and initially, it looks like that might be enough. But it isn't - those mages do terrible things to Ulm's weaker troops, but are still unable to seriously hurt the Bane Lord.

Meanwhile, Ulm's Iron Blizzard spell is almost specifically designed to cut down heavily-summoned armies like this. Each casting cuts down half a dozen of Jomon's expensive summons.

It sounds bad, and it is bad. Jomon's forces turn and flee, and the Bane Lord is still undamaged.




Now that's a communion!

You know how this battle ends: it ends in incredible death.



The T'ien Ch'i casters do their best but are rapidly squashed by a huge number of meteors from space. Their army routs quickly.

Duvan: C'tis/Gath skirmishing. C'tis actually wins this with their still-alive squad of fishmen.

In T'ien Ch'i . . . wait how the fuck are we being attacked in T'ien Ch'i?

As near as I can tell, T'ien Ch'i sent a single mage from their magepack to assault T'ien Ch'i on the same turn that we moved to assault the magepack. This happens sometimes - usually they clash midway, but this time they slipped past us.

In any case, a single mage manages to knock off our province defense in T'ien Ch'i and siege the castle.

We'll have to clean them out of there ASAP. I want those taxes.



Typhalia, the little peninsula near T'ien Ch'i. Atlantis attacks with a small squad of Shamblers, amphibious shock troops. My province defense manages to fight them off with few losses.




The Queen of the Sea begins her campaign against Atlantis.

First spell is Quickness, allowing her to attack twice per turn and increasing her defense by 3. Next she casts Water Shield, boosting her defense by a further 5. At the end of all this, her Defense Skill is 32, making her nearly unhittable. She chases off Atlantis's forces instantly.



Free gems.



We capture Boddern Weald easily, our communion-powered Air casters nearly obliterating their ground forces with a storm of lightning bolts on the second turn. Their mages flee shortly afterwards.





yes yes



Clockwise again.

Yldmyre keeps on sieging. I wish I knew how close I was to being done.

In Linshire, Kumlakh, our glorious defender, has decided to pillage the place. Not a lot I can do about that, he'll just stay there. If the province gets sieged, which it very well might, he'll just have to break out next turn.

Barathrus, on the other hand, can - and will - continue moving north to pick up territory.

South of that, my siege army is moving from Vlecz into Robber Home, hopefully to knock down their walls that much faster. South of that we have enough gear for one of our Cyclops. The Worst Tartarian Ever is fully healed, but he's also stuck on Defend this turn, so I hand the gear to a different Cyclops and send him north to Blue Water for staging.

We also forge an entire new set of gear for the Worst Tartarian Ever. I'd like to get him into battle.

I move Mystics eastward from Barra and Agartha. They'll join forces with Jome's mystics and form a new expansion army intended to punch through C'tis lines.

The army that just liberated Sermioc moves northwest to reclaim Behemoth's Rest, hopefully for the last time. The army that captured Birman Highs moves south for, hopefully, the final siege on Black Alps.

Meanwhile, the melange in Boddern Weald heads east to pick up an independent province full of Longdeads and Ghouls. Someone's gotta do it.

Phyleides, the Tartarian Titan we warped over last turn, heads for Boddern Weald. I know, she was meant to go for T'ien Ch'i, but it turns out Boddern Weald has a Lab also, and T'ien Ch'i is occupied. She'll reach Boddern Weald next turn and we'll Cloud Trapeze her elsewhere.

And finally, deep in the Northwest, Thalassa moves to conquer another province from Atlantis.

Next: Wish.