Titan

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Titan

Post by willpell » Sun Mar 08, 2015 1:11 pm

The Great Wheel turns, and I as the Caretaker can only hover in the skies above, looking down upon this artificial world where the reckless Titans fight their endless, purposeless war. The deaths of dozens, even hundreds of creatures serve to feed the bloodthirst of these divine destroyers, whose hunger for glory knows no bounds. Perhaps, then, I should be thankful that only two of them are active during this cycle; two-thirds of the world may know relative peace for a while, as they gradually muster the forces with which to seek each other's annihilation. By virtue of my neutrality, I am privy to the secrets which they jealously guard from each other and their agents...but the same token restricts me against any effort to protect the innocents, who were born only to be butchered in the name of a warlord's greed for conquest. I can only watch as they are born, conscripted, and sent to their doom on the battlefield, their hopes and dreams sacrificed on the altar of the demigods' pointless conflict. I cannot deny that there is a certain grand-guignol theatricality to their struggle, but I cannot agree with the Titans' beliefs...that it is all merely a cosmic game, whose only purpose is the joy of matching wits and swords. It is beyond me to accept that all this carnage could be "fun"; nevertheless, having nothing else to do, I shall continue to watch it unfold.

The self-proclaimed Masters of this age, the architects of the current conflict, are Lord Argent of the Cerulean Host and Lord Sylvan of the Viridian Throng. By the cast of cosmic Fate, Argent stands now atop the Tower of Triune Majesty, surveying his dominion beneath the banner of the Cyclonic Legion, while at the stronghold's base flies the octopus-crowned standard of the Benthic Legion, commanded his chief subordinate, General Raphael. As they plan their departure on the impending campaign, Argent himself prefers to command a pair of Ogres, creatures who are currently his equal in strength, though not in skill; he has remanded his twin Gargoyles to the service of his angelic second, who will fly into battle with them at his flanks, counting on these lesser beings as little more than a distraction for his opponents, as he relies on his own combat prowess to carry the day. Both legions are accompanied by a single Centaur outrider, a scout whose battlefield prowess is minimal, and whose presence is little more than a supplemental option for the mustering of new recruits.

Sylvan, meanwhile, has no love or trust of ogres; he sends these cloddish brutes to accompany each Legion as a vanguard - which is the hypocritical green Lord's preferred term for "cannon fodder" - while trusting a pair of Centaurs to aid General Arael, his own next-in-command (not that these evanescent beings could ever step into a Titan's steel-spiked shoes, of course), in the Ouroboros Legion with its circling-snake eikon. The Titan's own Laureate Legion has a pair of olive-branches as its symbol, typefying Sylvan's characteristic fondness for brokering false peaces, behind whose protection he schemes to betray his foe at the most opportune moment; wishing to conduct most of his campaign within the deep wilderness Lands he most appreciates, he has taken both Gargoyles with himself, and he leans idly within the Tower's bottom doorway as he watches his creatures prepare to depart, while the swift-running Centaurs meet with their angelic commander atop the structure, letting haughty Arael refrain from approaching the unclean ground. The roll of Destiny has placed Sylvan in the Tower of Unrivaled Unity, not far to spinward from the one where Argent's blue flags fly; unless both opt to expand into the vast, empty empty east, where three vacant Towers rather than one separate them, then conflict is likely to erupt soon indeed due to their proximity.

And with that, the great campaign - the "game", if you will - commences.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Sun Mar 08, 2015 2:04 pm

By the Laws of the Titans, the Towers hold a precedence order due to the accident of their positioning on the Wheel; the initiative goes to Argent as a result. The winds of Fate favor him indeed, and his departure is cataclysmic in its abruptness; a surge of the improbable energies of the divine enables both Argent and his subordinate to perform Teleportation, rather than needing to immediately begin the dreary business of marching overland. Since knowledge of his foe's whereabouts will grant Sylvan an advantage, the blue Titan chooses to Teleport himself as far away as he can get; the Cyclonic Legion vanishes in a flash of sapphire light, and appears a few leagues away at the Tower of Quatrinate Hegemony, the furthest-removed of the fortresses from where the green Legions must depart. Meanwhile, the Angel in Argent's service leads his Gargoyle legion (and their Centaur footman, who alone requires a place to stand for more than a few seconds each minute) through the Aether to a place very close by; the eastern Brushland which abuts the Tower offers easy return access to it, should the conditions of future movement continue to favor the Blue Titan's cause.

In the Quatrinate Tower, Argent makes no secret of his precence, since Sylvan has doubtlessly already detected the Teleport and knows where both Blue Lords are at the moment; that knowledge will avail him little until after a good deal of Mustering has occurred. Boldly announcing his presence to the order of Warlocks whose mystical studies keep them cloistered in the Tower's depths during times of relative peace, Argent demands - and, quite inevitably, secures - the service of one of those conjurers, a particularly ferocious and belligerent wizard by the name of Occluraq. Back in the Brushlands a little ways to the west, Raphael sends out his twin Gargoyle servants, Ygrrn and Mrnyn; they soon spot one of the mighty Cyclopes who stride effortlessly through the local brambles, and light on his shoulders in order to whisper simultaneously into both ears, thoroughly confusing the brawny creature (lacking binocular vision, a Cyclops is not evolved to integrate input from multiple sense organs at once, and thus usually only listens from one ear at a time), until it forgets whatever it was previously doing and agrees to fight and die for the glory of Lord Argent's cause, even accepting the new name which Raphael bestows upon it, "Oudeehn". (I recognize a parallel between these names and certain figures in your mythology; perhaps the cosmos is playing a private joke upon us all, your world and mine alike.) The day's mustering concluded, Argent and Raphael both encamp for the night.

Fate is almost equally kind to Sylvan; the gusts of mystic impulse which buoyed his foe beyond the boundaries of time and space have abated completely, leaving a tranquil hush in which it is impossible for an army to travel far, but this merely ensures that the Green armies remain proximate to the Unity Tower, and staying near these structures of power is always convenient. Arael's legion descends onto the Plains which stretch out to the north of the Tower, continuing to the very rim of the Wheel; bounded by the Wall of the Void, this "outer path" circles the world, sweeping all creatures to spinward with an aetheric wind (I am told your world knows of no such phenomenon; you might equate it loosely with the phrase 'go west, young man', a subconscious command which nearly every great civilization in your history has answered without thought or protest, only the compulsion is far stronger, thus that not even the mighty Titans can defy it). Though it is difficult to return from this Edge region to the central reaches, where the widest diversity of Lands are most easily reached, it can be worth the risk, for the recruitment of mighty creatures can be easily achieved if a legion remains out here for long, and is favored by chance in their efforts to advance through it. However, the risk is minimal in any case for those who remain within sight of a Tower; following such a landmark makes it relatively easy to defy the spinward-travel urge and return to more stable, interconnected lands.

Retaining the secret of which of his Legions is commanded by which Lord, Sylvan orders the Laureate banner to travel westward (or anti-spinward, I should properly say; with our sun being fixed in the sky, just above my own heat-proof refuge, we have no need for the concepts of 'east' and 'west' as your people define them, though I find it convenient to use them in describing our struggles to you). Like the Octopoid Legion, this one contains two Gargoyles, although their names are Grazzak and Fryzart (do not attempt to make sense of gargoylic nomenclature, I beseech you; only madness can result from such a doomed effort); they likewise recruit a Cyclops, though their methods are simpler, as they simply speak to it in the kind of honeyed, deceitful words which are so beloved by the Viridian Titan, and secure its eager cooperation with a trifling sequence of seductive lies. As for the Ouroboros Legion, I happen to know (though Argent does not) that it contains both of the centaurs Khoresh and Ghop'han, and thus it could scour the flatlands for one of the mildly reclusive Lions which prowl in search of defenseless prey. But such opportunities will hardly be rare, so Sylvan orders only Khoresh to reveal himself to the enemy Titan's spies, and contract the services of a third Centaur to march with the Legion, in hopes of enjoying certain opportunities on later days of the campaign. It is a perhaps-questionable decision, given that a Centaur is one of the weakest units in terms of raw combat ability, but such treacherous gambles are Sylvan's bread and butter, so I am hardly surprised to see him engaging in such a strategem.

The day has passed for both Titans, and so we proceed to a new dawn.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Sun Mar 08, 2015 3:18 pm

Not wanting to risk letting his enemy remain clearly cognizant of his location for too long, Argent makes the perhaps-premature decision to fission both of his Legions; in each of the existing two armies, a second banner is unfurled, and the cloaking magics which radiate from it obscure the identities of all creatures below, ensuring that a spy can rely only upon his memory and deductive reasoning to guess which of the resulting two Legions contains each previously-identified creature. Taking a considerable chance, Argent dismisses the ogres to accompany Occluraq the Warlock, remaining under the Cyclonic standard, and takes only his centaur Phirion with him as he carries away a new flag, whose smoldering-candle emblem marks it as the Quenching Legion. Back in the brush, the Benthic legion remains firmly under Raphael's command, with Oudeehn and the other Centaur (whose name I'm embarassed to admit I've forgotten) marching in lockstep, making them a relatively fearsome combat force. Solely consisting of the two leathery-winged Gargoyles whose names roughly translate to 'thought' and 'memory' (as if those were somehow different things; I confess I don't understand it), the new legion that splits off there could hardly have any other name than Chiropterean, with a stylized bat for its heraldric device. And with that, alea iacta est, as I believe some of your own closest equivalents to Titans might have put it.

The forceful winds have largely returned, though not enough so to permit Teleportation again as yet, nor even nearly so. Argent risks stranding himself on the outer ring, traveling to a Plains in the far "southwest" corner of our great hexagonal plane (I can't fathom how your people stand living on a sphere of all things; it must be a distressing experience to know the ground beneath you isn't even properly flat, let alone bounded by genuinely straight lines). The Cyclonic Legion travels on without him, circling one of the many Voids to arrive in a Marsh, adjacent to the Tower of Chromic Pentatheosis. (I suppose you don't know what Voids are, do you...well, without getting too much into the mechanics of celestial architecture, suffice it to say that there are places where our sun doesn't shine, and that nothing can exist in those lands, making them essentially holes in the landscape, where to enter without instantly dying is an impossibility. And no, that doesn't mean you can throw someone into a Void in order to kill them. Honestly, what is it with your race? Always looking for exploits, refusing to accept matters as they are. If only there a few Dragons could be somehow set loose on your 'planet'; you would surely learn respect for the cosmic order quickly enough then.)

Meanwhile, the Chiropterean Legion opts to stay in the Triune Tower; they're Gargoyles, after all, it's not as though remaining stationary has ever bothered them. Following a roundabout path, as they inevitably must, the Benthics arrive in a Woodland, a forest too dry and too open to satisfy Oudeen's craving for dense, enfolding vegetation. But the Centaur is happy (oh, he's also Simecx, that's his name, I recall now); he dashes and weaves among the trees, letting all the dryads get a good look at what they should be gossiping about, and locates a comrade by the name of Tarlek to accompany him back to the concealing Octopus pennon. In the Tower, the Gargoyles go unnoticed by local observers, but their subtle whispers reach the ears of a young Ogre named Glorb, who decides to join the war and make something of himself (not realizing how likely that "something" is to end up being a bloodstain on some cyclops's axe). (Nevermind; oh, but I'm getting absent-minded in my antiquity. One cannot muster new recruits if one never commits oneself to the effort of travel; otherwise, even the bellicose Titans would have little reason to ever leave their Towers.) In the marsh, the first two Ogres of the Blue Titan have managed to locate one of their bigger, meaner cousins, a Troll; his name is some typically ugly sound which I can't quite pronounce, Grinchak or Grolashk or something. At his little relatives' urging, he rises out of the bog he's been lurking in, hefting a much larger and more impressive club than the ones they've been brandishing non-stop since they could stand, and all of Sylvan's spies get a good look at him and them before they vanish back under the Cyclonic cloak. Another Centaur flocks to Phirion's aid in the Plains, leaving the Quenching Legion still rather pathetic, but of course far from any real danger at the moment.

Preferring to retain strength in numbers, Sylvan catches a slightly stronger astral breeze, and has a lot of options for where to move his two Legions. The Laureate could reach one of the coveted Gateway Marshes, which guard entry to the Inner Ring that lies almost directly below my observatory; surrounding the Primeval Void, the very axis about which our Plane slowly rotates, the six Lands of the Centrum are touched by fire and ice, since the Sun's beams are filtered or concentrated by the projections of my triangular headquarters. Marshes form where the world's three Tundra regions thaw out and drain into the flatlands below; where the Ring is instead composed of smoldering volcanic Mountains, the adjacent Plains remain untouched. Either way, these areas quickly become contested battlefields in a more densely populated campaign, for those who cannot enter the Inner area can never recruit the coveted Colossus - the strongest of all Creatures, and more than equal to the combat strength of even an Archangel (only a Titan can surpass it, and then only in a very prolonged campaign). And so inaccessible are the Mountains and Tundras, due to their remoteness and their closeness to the source of all energy, that one must camp overnight in the Gateway Lands before an entrance to the Centrum shall reveal itself. No Legion can remain for long in these inaccessible regions; a visit to the Inner Ring is invariably brief, and seldom does one even gain the opportunity. However, it would be pointless to attempt the trip this early in the contest; such weak creatures as can be effortlessly found in any Tower have no influence over the fearsome denizens of places this inhospitable. Not having a Troll and being unable to gain one this day, Sylvan's Legion cannot accomplish anything by visiting the Tundra, other than possibly to get attacked in conditions harsh enough to imperil even him. Thusly, with no desire to loop through the Tower and end up back at the Woods just "upstream" from his position, Sylvan does indeed travel to a Marsh, but it's one on the Outer Path, precisely on the far side of the world from where Argent stands, not that either one knows the other's location for a fact.

The Ouroboros Legion has a far easier choice; able to reach a desireable location in any of three directions, they choose the path which leads them to the threshold of the Tower of Razored Dichotomy. Here, Khoresh and Ghop'han conduct the necessary flush-and-outflank maneuvers necessary to capture a Lion on the hunt; thankful prey animals whisper through a chain of informants which carry the knowledge back to the blue Titan, as the two Centaurs collar and calm the beast, explaining to it why its carnivorous hunger is now to be sated in warfare rather than wilderness, and that it had best accept the fact gracefully, rather than struggling against the inevitability of its enslavement. (I believe you have Lions even in your extraordinarily boring universe; yours, however, appear to be far more dull-witted, and cannot understand the speech of intelligent creatures. Ours can, though they can respond only with growls and roars; therefore, while they don't especially wish to become soldiers, they are at least capable of such service - when the Titans or their agents manage to dominate them into obeying.) In the marsh, the Laureate Legion allows its ogre (by the name of Blork; they're not an imaginative race) to go out and impress a comrade into service; by coincidence, this one is also named Glorb, though he's unrelated to the one who's currently residing in the Triune Tower, gradually developing a desire to sign up with the Cerulean Army.

Another day and night has passed, and even such an ancient and occulted creature as myself must occasionally eat. I will return to continue this account shortly; I will not always confine myself to narrating a single day's events at a time, but for now the process is taking long enough that I figure I should curtail the extent of each dispatch. Until the morrow, then, at least as I measure it.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:55 pm

I'm told that according to the differential vibrational rates of our respective dimensions, more than an "hour" has passed in your reality since I spoke to you at the end of what I regarded as yesterday. I apologize for the delay, but there was much that required my attention. Without further ado, I shall proceed with the description of the unfolding conflict.

Having schismed his legions adequately for the moment, Lord Argent of Cerulean harnessed the currents of Fate and achieved a moderate degree of momentum; unable to reach a desirable location as a result, Occluraq the Warlock and his Cyclonic Legion opted to remain encamped for the moment, achieving nothing but at least not losing their proximity to the Pentatheon Tower. The blue Titan himself refused to move, but some activity must occur each day in the campaign, whether or not the Titans will it; such is the Law, and it bends not even for them. Thusly, one of the two remaining legions, born of the angel Raffale (I apologize for spelling his name as a figure out of your own mythology in previous dispatches; stupid AutoCorrect) or of his former Gargoyle escorts, is compelled to move; luckily, both of them can profitably do so. The Chiropterean Legion, consisting solely of those two Gargoyles (Ygrrn and Mrnyn), swoops out onto the Outer Path and settles in a comfortable Brush region, from which they can climb back into the region of relatively free movement; Raffale's legion, with Oudeehn the Cyclops in tow, proceeds under the octopus banner out of its current Woods location, into a much denser and more fetid Jungle. Both of these legions muster a new Cyclops to their service, rendering the Chiropteran entirely devoid of secrets (and if Lord Sylvan the Viridian is any kind of a strategist, which of course he must be, he doubtless can manage the process-of-elimination reasoning necessary to know that the Benthic Legion now contains the Blue Angel). In their current Jungle encampment, the Benthics cannot remain in the middle region; their location is one of the "trapdoors", Lands which inevitably lure any Legion occupying them out to the Rim. (Two of these irresistable gates may be found on each of the Great Wheel's six sections, both of them perilously close to the Edge of Existence Itself, which perhaps explains why they exert such a siren's song over Mustered creatures, while having no effect on those who remain native. Then again, the natives never leave, which a Legion is not compelled to do either, so perhaps if some random Behemoth from this particular Jungle decided to go see the world one day, it too would be drawn inexorably toward the verge of Chaos, which the blue Titan is currently gazing serenely across.) And that is all that Lord Argent's forces can achieve on this rather unsatisfying day.

Simultaneously, but with the benefit of marginally more effective spies (as a result of his slightly greater preparation time at the contest's beginning), Lord Sylvan begins his activities for the day. With himself and his angelic servitor Aerayl each commanding four subordinates, the green Titan is approaching the moment when he too must divide his forces, but having seen that inefficiency is already beginning to creep into the war effort of his foe (wherein too numerous a group of Legions begin tripping over each other, making free movement impossible, and just generally cannot all achieve very much more than if they had remained together), he opts to retain just two Legions for now. He catches an extremely powerful surge of dynamic energy, enough that he could have Teleported if he were inside a Tower at the time, but as it stands he must simply rush across the landscape under the force of this incredible urgency. His own Laureate Legion moves along the Outer Path into the Brush; the Ouroborean Legion moves to a Jungle, not because it can recruit anything there (all the "tropical" units are in the Laureate, remember), but rather because it is positioned to Engage the enemy at last, and its superior numbers make it the best able to do so, despite the disfavorable terrain. A second Cyclops (named Omskol) joins the Laureate, gathered to the cause by its recently mustered kinsman (who I failed to identify previously; you can call him Yrtwrt). Not a very productive day for Sylvan, but it sufficed.

Argent now faces an uncomfortable situation; an enemy is breathing down the Chiropterean Legion's proverbial neck (since its current war-leader is a Cyclops named Bflorosk, who doesn't have a literal neck; the two Gargoyles that just obtained his service were all too happy to put him in charge, so that he would be exposed to the lion's share of danger in any engagement). If the winds of Fate blow strongly for him, or otherwise for his foe, the Legion could escape pursuit, but there's another problem, and a much bigger one - sitting where it is, the Quenching Legion, with Lord Argent himself very inadequately bodyguarded by two Centaurs, is trapped on the Outer Path just a little behind the Chiropterean, with only two possible points of escape. Thusly, moving it without stepping into dire danger is nearly impossible - and if it never moves, then it can never muster, so it is in deep trouble. Depending on the cast of Fate, the blue titan may have to order Chiropterean to perform a suicide strike on the Ouroboros, simply for the sake of weakening it, so as to clear the path for the Quenching to proceed safely. And indeed, with a doldrum affecting the Cerulean Legions' movement for the turn, it does in fact choose that option; the Cyclonic Legion enters the Pentatheon Tower, the Benthic drops through the "trapdoor" into the Brush, Quenching creeps across the border into an inhospitable Desert, and the trio of Ygrrn, Mrnyn, and Bflorosk prepare to give their lives in an effort to injure their opponents.

So now I can tell you of the first Engagement in this campaign. As I have alluded to before, our world was built for war, and its unholy symmetry is the work of gods driven by a desire for impartiality; the creators would never have heard the end of it from the Titans if they had not had an immaculately fair battlefield, on which to practice their games of conquest. Thusly, every Land is a neat hexagon, with space enough for only so many creatures to fight. A Jungle is a particularly crowded example; of its initial 27 "leagues" (a local unit of area measurement; I'm not sure what it translates into in your system, since we simply think of it as "enough space for a Serpent to fight in, but not enough for two Centaurs to occupy at once", which I will agree is a trifle difficult to make sense of, even when it's right before your eyes), three are blocked by trees, and seven others are choked with brambles which hamper the movement of non-natives, leaving less than a full 2/3 of the land area free to move in without impediment. Since the three attackers are all natives while none of the five defenders are, the battle is closer to being fair than one might expect, although with an Angel on the defending side, destruction for the invaders is virtually certain. Their objective will simply be to secure casualties, particularly aiming to slay the Lion since it will be difficult to replace; destroying Aerayl the Angel would be impressive but improbable. They can fight something of a delaying action by using the terrain to their advantage, but by the Law of Titan, the attacker cannot stall forever, or his incursion is forfeit and the gods themselves will blast the incompetent soldiers. (This is not a completely pointless choice, as it ensures the defender fails to gain credit for the victory; if the attackers were certainly doomed, they might choose this outcome, but such is of course not the case here.)

As the two forces formally declare hostilities, their distant commanders mindlink with whoever serves as their general in the Legion, using the standard as a focal point to ensure that their telepresence is not tied to the survival of any particular minion; each evaluates what the other has to offer, sometimes opting to save time by not bothering to play out a battle that is completely unequal. Since it is the attacker's battle to lose, Sylvan is in position to offer terms, volunteering to sacrifice a few of his own soldiers in exchange for the lives of the entire opposing army; however he feels that he has a decisive advantage in numbers, and makes an insultingly cheap offer, offering to kill Ghop'han alone. Certain that he can accomplish more than that, Bflorosk delivers an equally unreasonable offer on his Lord's behalf - he and the two Gargoyles will commit seppuku, but only if the same is done by three Creatures from the enemy camp, allowing only Ghop'han and the Angel Aerayl to survive. Since there is obviously no agreement possible, battle begins after all.

The defender's forces move onto the battlefield to begin the Engagement; the Ogre forces its way into the nearest Bramble space, unable to make any further progress through the tangle of thorns. Khoresh takes up the other side of the entry point, leaving a single space clear; through this opening, the lion (whose captors have dubbed him Arshlang, don't ask me why) moves forward and to his right, standing in a gap between brambles, while Ghop'han stands to his left. Able to fly over his allies and the terrain hazards, Aerayl ensconses himself in the middle of the formation. The centaurs could opt to penetrate much further into the combat area, but would accomplish little other than self-endangerment by doing so.

It is then the attacker's chance to move, and in some cases to join combat; alas, neither Gargoyles nor Cyclopes are swift, and with the defensive force being slow-moving and having chosen to keep their distance, none of the attackers can reach a target this round. Having no desire to be reckless in a battle where careful planning favors their side, the intruders opt to move only a single space; Ygrrn lives up to his name by inhabiting a bramble, which protects him in the event that the Angel should swoop in to attack him. The other gargoyle sits in a corner of the map, and Bflorsk the Cyclops stands between them; being barely mobile due to his bulk, he wants to be centrally positioned.

Glad to have been given the first chance to attack, Aerayl eagerly swoops forward to attack the undefended Mrnyn, not caring that the Cyclops is close at hand. Since the Lion is too valuable to lose, but useful enough that he should remain within striking distance, he prowls his way forward around one of the trees, taking up a defensive position in the middle-right (middle-left from the attackers' perspective) corner of the field, with the tree to his left and a bramble to his right, having walked through the open space between them. Fleet-footed Ghop'han is able to pierce through some foliage in order to engage with Ygrrn, locking him down so that he cannot move to a new position; behind him, Khoresh follows in the lion's footsteps, but wedges himself into the Brambles behind the angel, mostly to act as a reserve combatant on future "rounds" of the battle. The slow-stumbling Ogre walks into the space between the other two trees, where a Bramble to his forward-left threatens a possible ambush if the natives should manage to survive.

With battle being joined, blood is sure to be shed now, and it will flow on both sides. Eager Aerayl strikes first with his flaming sword, taking a mighty swing at Mrnyn; being both stronger and more skilled than his victim, the angel stands likely to secure a casualty at once. The blow is somewhat poorly-struck, but remains sufficient to strike the gargoyle dead at once; had it been a truly mighty swing, it could have cleaved into the Cyclops a little, but had no possibility of more than trivially wounding that powerful brute. Ghop'han makes a more tenative poke at the second Gargoyle with his axe, but manages to hit something vital; there was no possibility of the weak Centaur killing the stony-skinned creature in one blow, but he got as close as he possibly could, even with the defensive advantage of the brambles. Now the victims of this assault retaliate; with the last of his strength, Mrnyn struggles to inflict some harm on his angelic assassin, but can accomplish no more than a scratch. Mighty Bflorsk takes a great and ponderous swing at the Angel as well, but that evanescent creature is nearly impossible for him to touch; again, only a trifling injury is inflicted. Ygrrn tries to maul his assailant, bemoaning the fact that an ambush from within Brambles is not more effective than a regular attack; yet again, only a shallow cut is achieved.

Pinned down by still-living enemies, the two surviving attackers cannot maneuver; they simply repeat their attacks, with Ygrrn striking a microsecond sooner this time. This time he strikes a skillful blow, mortally wounding Ghop'han (who dies cursing his Titan's eagerness to sacrifice him as a pawn). Bflorsk again tries to smash the Angel, striking a blow that would have been incredibly fearsome against a less deft opponent, but the angel quickly interposes his massive aethereal shield, cushioning the blow enough that he easily survives, though he definitely felt the pain of it right down to his bones. Aerayl retaliates, his blade biting deep but stopping well short of the damage it ought to have inflicted; he still could well manage to finish the cyclops off with his next swing, assuming it is slightly better-aimed. (There was no possibility of a one-hit kill in this case; the sheer amount of meat on a Cyclops's bulky frame is beyond the ability of even an Angel's sword to bisect in one swing, though an Archangel can manage it with somewhat extraordinary luck.) The dying Ghop'han has no trouble finishing the other Gargoyle off, despite an unfavorable throw.

It's the defender's chance to maneuver again; he's nearly finished his foe, but faces a risk of the doomed attackers managing to call in an additional combatant in a moment, if they do not immediately and decisively finish the battle. The odds are poor that Aerayl alone could fail to execute the Cyclops, but he sees no reason to take chances; he orders Khoresh to step forward and assist him. (There is no real danger of Khoresh dying, since Aerayl himself is a bigger prize, and the Cyclops would need good luck to kill even that much.) The precaution proves unnecessary, as the angel easily runs the big lunk through; in his dying contortions, he attempts to finish his assailant off, but cannot quite manage to extinguish the flame of Aerayl's life before he himself perishes. And so, Lord Sylvan notes smugly that the battle ended exactly as he proposed it should, with victory costing only the life of Ghop'han the centaur, whose loss leaves the Legion insignificantly diminished. A very poor outcome for Argent.

As I have said before, all this bloodshed is but a source of amusement to the Titans; they treat it like any other game, even to the extent of keeping score. But this is no mere trifle or diversion; it is a system of accounting which directly influences each Titan's ability to dominate in personal combat - he begins the game no mightier than an Angel (and without the power of flight), but can eventually exceed the Colossus (or, in a larger contest, even the immense, ungainly Serpent, while retaining his own speed and dexterity) in combative prowess. Additionally, when a Titan "scores" in this way, he can command the allegiance of more divine enforcers - gaining additional Angels or even the mighty Archangel as combat minions. In this reckoning, each slain Gargoyle is considered "twelve points", and the mightier Cyclops that the two of them can recruit is regarded as eighteen; thusly, Lord Sylvan's share of the currency which Titans call "glory" is measured at a total of 42. This is less than half what is needed to affect any change in the battle, but it is certainly significant.

Having squandered the lives of three of his soldiers to no real profit, Argent is unquestionably in a weaker position now; he must strive to regain what he has lost, at any cost. In the Pentatheonic Tower, Occluraq reveals himself, not caring that he's given his Titan's position away as well, since his Ogre and Troll bodyguards are a known quantitiy; demanding that a comrade come to his aid, he secures the services of Par'chyr, a particularly fierce and destructive fellow Warlock. Elsewhere, the Octopoid Legion is in the Brush and has two Cyclopes, so it recruits a new type of creature: the Gorgon, a winged bull with a poisonous breath. The floundering Titan is in danger, but he has potent servants working to ensure his escape.

As the day wears on, Sylvan is seized by a strong current, which threatens to bear the battle-forged Ouroboreans away from their current menacing position, sweeping them into a Brush space which is just as unprofitable to them as their current Jungle. So they opt not to move, and the Laureate Legion sweeps up into a Hills space, not far away from the yet-neglected sixth Tower. He could instead have moved to the Plains below tower Five, but could recruit nothing there, and despite his numerical strength, does not feel so invincible that he would risk the life of a still-novice Titan against those Warlocks. In the Hills, he can muster nothing but an Ogre, but this is good enough for a turn that has already proven highly profitable. (Actually, come to think of it, not even the Ogre can be gained, since the legion already contains seven units, the most that may be keyed to the battle-magic of any given Legion standard. So the effort to muster fails, and the turn results in no gain at all for the green Titan, though he is probably in the superior position.)
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:03 pm

It grows late; the conflict may well fail to conclude before I must retire, unless the blue Titan continues his string of grave tactical errors even while the green one very successfully capitalizes on them. Still, I shall continue for the nonce.

Despite the catastrophic consequences of having created such a weak Legion before, Lord Argent opts to resurrect the Chiropterean standard by splitting Par'chyr and the troll Grutchnark off from the Cyclonic Legion, which continues to contain two Ogres under the command of Occluraq. Thusly, the two Warlocks can independently seek more of their brethren, hopefully giving the blue Titan a decisive advantage in access to this valuable resource (while physically weak, Warlocks are unparalleled in their skill at long-distance destruction, making a large number of them incredibly fearsome). A middling fate-current bears this new Legion to a Gateway Plains; despite originally being Swamp creatures, Trolls surprisingly thrive in Tundra lands, and so there is a possibility Argent will be the first combatant to order one of his legions into the inner Centrum. More importantly, the Quenching Legion makes an approach to Tower Three, perilously close to the Ouroborean Legion but currently safe against any depradations they might perform. The Benthic Legion descends into the very Desert just vacated by Argent, equally unable to recruit there, but needing to move eventually if it is ever to resume recruiting, and with much better prospects on future days if it makes this move now. The Titan's two centaur escorts, Phirion and his new friend Qhuerlon, conduct a Lion-hunt in the Plains, acquiring an animal which they dub Dr'shart; that is all the mustering that the Cerulean Host can achieve this day.

Lord Sylvan begins his day by correcting the error of the last; he divides the Laureate legion, creating one specifically for the purpose of defeating his water-loving foe, and dubbing it the Dessicant Legion, with the symbol of a skeletonized fish. He sends two Cyclopes and two Gargoyles out under this new pennon, making a highly specialized force which is worth nothing outside of Brushes and Jungles, while he retains two Ogres and has a good bit more recruiting flexibility. The aetheric winds blow steadily at the same speed for both Titans this day; the Dessicant departs for a nearby Jungle and recruits yet another Cyclops (one of the existing pair reveals itself to acquire the newest one, while the second remains in secret along with both Gargoyles), while Ouroborean continues to hold its position.

Argent notices with some suspicion that the "pace of life" has remained consistent yet again; the Quenching Legion moves to a miserable Swamp for no other reason than to make room for the Benthic to advance, since two Legions cannot bivouac in the confined space of a single Land. For this same reason, Cyclonic has no new movement options this turn, and Chiropterean cannot reach a Tundra but only a Mountains, where it has no desire to go. Alone of all legions, the Benthic can manage to muster a single Centaur.

The invisible winds finally slacken on Sylvan's side of the world; for the first time for either Titan, his legions may cross exactly one Land and arrive in a second. This gets Ouroborean to a Marsh, and though this is not ideal, Aerayl takes the opportunity rather than remain stagnant yet again. The other two legions opt to stay put, and the tail-biting-serpent standard attracts a second Ogre at last.

Catching an abrupt gust, Argent debates ordering Benthic to ambush Ouroborean, but the odds do not favor victory, since the other Legion has at least a few natives to the Marsh where they'd be fighting, and his own does not. So this legion bypasses the Triune tower and crosses to a Plains bordering upon the Quatrinate one. While none may march against the currents, Swamps and Deserts which are in the Middle Reaches rather than the Outer Path have the unique characteristic of allowing one to march in a circle on the most "urgent" of days, wasting this surplus of activity on a recruitment effort which could not be achieved by remaining in place; with a slightly "slower" day, such as this one, the Legion can take a long road back to the Land just previous to their own, and Quenching opts to do this, just so that it can get access to a Tower (or at least to its triple-divergent departure paths) tomorrow. The doughty Benthic Legion musters a Lion, while no others gather any new Creatures - but at least the dysfunctional pattern of the last several Turnings is broken.

A slight decrease in speed affects the Winds before they reach Sylvan's forces; he guides Ouroboros to the Marsh below the Duality Tower, while the Laureate's wendways bring it to another Marsh adjoining the Unity one; Dessicant drops out of the Jungle to a Plains, simply to enjoy greater flexibility on its next move. The two Legions in marshes each reveal two Ogres to gain a Troll (their names, in no particular order, are Glonsh, Flork, Trulzohk, Brogl, Argor and Grongand; try to guess which two of these six are the deadlier-but-marginally-dumber Trolls), while the third cannot accomplish anything by mustering.

The Benthic Legion must undergo what your "scientists" (some version of Warlocks, from what I understand, except that for all their decades of scholastic effort, they can't throw so much as a single fireball) refer to as "Mitosis", before it will be capable of any further growth; being safely distant from any foes for the moment, it doesn't mind this division a bit. The new legion's three-pronged-spear symbol results in it being imaginatively dubbed the Trident Legion; its "prongs", as it were, are two Cyclopes and a Lion, while the Gorgon and two centaurs remain with Raffale the Angel beneath the octopus flag. A fairly "fast" and active day commences; Trident circles the Void to the tower's Centerward (or "north" by your system), stopping in a Brush where it can gain a new Gorgon, whereas Benthic passes through the Tower and loops back to a Brush, which lies on but opens out from the Rim Path, and there the Gorgon can "recruit down" to obtain a new Cyclops. Presented with similar choices, Quenching moves around the Tower to a Brush as well, just because it is no more inhospitable than a Marsh; Chiropterean meanwhile gets into the Tundra as it wished to, gaining a second Troll, and Cyclonic sweeps out into a Verge marsh where it gains a third Ogre. (Their names are Loraw, Mo and Kershlem, the last being the new acquisition; Loraw is the dumber of the original pair by some slight fraction, so he was the one that managed to give his position away while drumming in the newcomer.)

A gentle "wind" gives Lord Sylvan's forces some options; Ouroboros moves through the Tower of Razored Duality and emerges into the Plains beyond, while Dessicant returns to the Jungle it recently left, and Laureate moves to the Edge Plains just for the sake of doing so. Ordering the third Cyclops to reveal itself, the actual commanders of Dessicant (the two cowardly Gargoyles which used to be Sylvan's personal guard) send them all out to collar the Jungle's second-fiercest inhabitant, the horrific-looking Behemoth, whose body bristles with spikes nearly as terrible as its teeth and claws. With greatly protrusive eyebrow horns, an armored back and a lashing club-tail, the creature looks like nothing should be deadlier, although it is in fact only on the high-middling side in terms of actual effectiveness, hardly comparing to a Hydra or Dragon and usually not quite as effective as even a Unicorn or Griffon. Still, as a dedicated Legion of jungle natives, Dessicant is very potent, and the new Behemoth (whose name "Rahabiath" is runically etched into the armor-plating of its spine, somehow created at its birth by the magic of the Ancients who brought forth these creatures as their enforcers) fits right in with that purpose. Ouroborous attains its seventh member as the Lion Arshlang impresses his mate Owslaine into military service beside him (since all members of the Titan military are officially regarded as males, Khoresh the centaur arranges to fit her with an artificial mane; none other than a fellow Lion would ever know the difference, were it not for my Limited Omniscience and my desire to narrate the conflict). With one Legion full and another approaching it, the green Titan cannot go long without equaling the five Legions which his blue nemesis has already fielded; once that is achieved, the two will be fairly nearly equal again.

This seems like a good place to stop and post my dispatch; it may have been only a single evening for you, but four whole days and nights have elapsed on my end, and I see no need to make it an entire week. I shall return shortly with further details; a second Battle is almost certainly inevitable in short order, and will occupy more time to describe than even this prolonged period of noncombatant activity.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:54 pm

It's a good day for Argent, who is desperately in need of one; the forces of Impulse have slackened to their minimum, freeing him to take the slow and deliberate maneuvers on which his current strategy certainly hinges. The Cyclonic Legion makes incremental progress around the Verge, but for all of the others, it is a magnificent day; both the Triune and Quatrinate towers can be entered, and Benthic can ascend into the Jungle to continue gathering Cyclopes. Only the new Chiropterean views the situation with worry; it would normally be eager to dive into the Gateway Marsh, gaining a third Troll and being ready to return to the Centrum in search of Warbears. However, the fact that Ouroborean looms nearby, obvious in its numerical strength, even though its exact composition is clearly known. It contains nearly as much strength in native units as Chiropterean will after mustering, but has only a single Warlock to the enemy's Angel, Centaur, and two Lions; a battle between the two would certainly result in the re-annihilation of Chiropterean. Granted, the reverse scenario is almost as worrisome; an estimated one in six chance prevails that Ouroboros can move into the Marsh itself, simply barring the extremely weak blue Legion's only possible path for one Round of the plane's turnings, and then later steamrolling it completely. However, the latter scenario is sufficiently unlikely (and would require that Ouroboros refrain from fissioning a new Legion, despite being unable to recruit further if it does not) that Par'chyr opts to keep his two Trolls by his side and remain in the Tundra, possibly for a very long time as he waits for Ouroboros to move away, or to get a "fast" enough fatestream that he can get away safely.

In the Jungle, Benthic gains its second Cyclops; more interesting things can happen in the Towers. In Quatrinate Hegemony, none of the divine Lords are present (and even Angels cannot command the allegiance of a Warlock, since those not locked in open combat with them can be easily dismissed with an abjuration, so the Trident Legion can do nothing but call for a volunteer from among the local Ogres. (Remember Glorb? It turns out he was assigned to the wrong Tower by mistake, so he was relocated here, and has been waiting to join up with the Host ever since.) This gives the Trident Legion a stake in all three of the major "recruit chains", although Swamp, Woods and Tundra locations remain devoid of profit for them. Meanwhile, Lord Argent decides it's worth the risk to advertise his location, and obtains an audience with a more patient and contemplative Warlock named Somnolesk. This newcomer is just as deadly with a Lightning bolt spell as his more hotheaded compatriots, and just wasn't quite as quick to enlist in the army. While Argent is still struggling in this conflict, he at least has managed to regain a sporting chance at victory, and if the Viridian Throng wishes to retain its current dominance, it will have to refrain from dividing its forces, thus stifling its opportunities to further grow, and risking its eventual loss in an attrition war against the more numerous Blues.

Deciding it isn't worth stagnating just to present a credible threat, not even to a Titan, Ouroboros sends away the Centaur and one Ogre to form a new legion, who is assigned the rather pathetic standard of the Batrachian Legion. Their heraldric device isn't even a particularly intimidating-looking frog. The fates reward this circumspection with opportunity, in the form of a slow and precise step forward on the Path to Triumph; the main Ouroboros steps into the Duality Tower, Laureate into the Tower of Unrivaled Oneness, and Dessicant drops into a Brushland. Two Cyclopes recruit a Gorgon there, while a new Gargoyle swoops down off the Duality tower without any instigation, granting Ouroboros future options in Brushlands and Jungles, and Lord Sylvan betrays his continued presence in Laureate to bring at least one Warlock to the cause of the Green Throng, this one being a somewhat mad sorcerer named Icqwillyph.

His enemy having never Teleported thus far, Lord Argent gets a second opportunity to do so; Trident lacks a Lord and cannot take advantage of this ability, so it simply goes flying in a frenzy of motion, rushing up to the same Gateway which sent Chiropterean to its current uncomfortable perch. That Legion manages to get more or less clear, with a half chance that Ouroboros will be unable to reach it even if it tries; its new position leaves it adjacent to the Triune Majesty Tower, from which the blue Titan now Teleports, arriving in the just-vacated Hegemony tower, to which it Teleported last time. Even Octopoid moves, landing in a Plains below the Third Tower. Alone of the blue Legions, Cyclonic sees no particular reason to move; it is also the only one not to recruit, as the Bat legion gains that third Troll at last (though it will take a bit longer to really capitalize on it), and Trident duplicates its Lion, while Benthic/Octopoid gains one through the efforts of two Centaurs. The second-to-last Warlock in the world (theoretically they're supposed to be one per Tower, but they can never resist the urge to step through their own hidden Portals during peacetime, to confer with the colleagues who alone can really converse with them, so at the moment that war breaks out, they might happen to be stuck in any of the six) is brought aboard by one of his colleagues, allowing the Quenching Legion to maintain a bit of "plausibile deniability" about whether the Titan is indeed still there. (Your race might have invented that particular concept, given how differently time flows between our two worlds; nonetheless, it is well-understood by the Titans, and has been since the dawn of their Creation.)

His foe having pulled ahead a bit in the contest, Sylvan begins to worry; he debates keeping the Dessicant legion unsplit and just having it race along the Outer Path, hoping to catch and exterminate Cyclonic while it continues to putter along, but decides this is too long-shot a gamble, and so those original two Gargoyles are split off to form the Athamae Legion, with a serrated-knife icon which is typical of how much these creatures overestimate their own deadliness. Fate favors the newly split legion with a strong tailwind, and the original and still-deadly force rushes along to a Marsh abutting the Tower of the Resplendent Hex (unsurprisingly, Six is a sacred number to us, so the Sixth Tower is the most coveted of all). Having no desire to travel to a Brush or one of two Deserts, Laureate stays put; Batrachian hops over to a Woods, just for the sake of visiting such a different location. And, having gotten the movement advantage it needed, Ouroboros initiates an engagement against Chiropterean, hoping to exterminate it anew.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Sun Mar 08, 2015 11:00 pm

The battle is a bit closer to fair this time; though one force still has a numerical disadvantage of two, and contains three natives, its components are significantly tougher, while Ouroboros contains a lot of relatively dead weight. There are none of the fairly useless Centaurs, although a Gargoyle isn't much better; as before, the most potent unit is the Angel, but three Trolls pose a little bit more of a threat to it than one slightly stronger Cyclops. Neither Titan wastes time proposing an agreement this time; the Trolls form up into a defensive wall, with a stretch of Bog in front of them which no non-native may traverse, ensuring that the higher-Skill opponents who they are virtually powerless against cannot engage them two at a time (and that the center one can't be reached at all by the attacker's first move). The Warlock wants nothing to do with a physical contest and stays well behind the Troll trio.

Alone of the attackers, Aerayl the Angel can reach a victim this turn; he chooses to swoop down on the Troll who is slightly further away from the Warlock, though still within the reach of his deadly blasts. Being not only weak but unique to this Legion's future recruitment flexibility, the Gargoyle keeps his distance; the Viridians' single Troll lurks in the bog in front of him (not because there's any defensive advantage to doing so, but simply out of habit), while an Ogre stands to his left. Two Lions don't really want to get involved, so they keep their distance. The Angel attacks its Troll victim, and swings so clumsily that against an equally skilled opponent, he would miss altogether - but although the blow was devoid of talent, neither was it even slightly incompetent, and so it bites deep into the Troll's flesh, wounding him greviously. For his part, the Troll manages to inflict a minor bruise.

The Trolls advance, the middle one wading through the bog and then the rightmost moving into it; the Warlock steps behind the Troll who's about to die, knowing that the Lion can't reach him in the next wave, and not wanting to risk having so much as an Ogre sneak up and trap him in a melee. He needs a moment's peace to concentrate so that he may call up a gout of eldritch energy; he does so now, and has average success, mildly singing the Angel. The Troll Dogpile then begins; the near-dead one takes the first swing, and scores a very palpable hit on the Angel, making tiny humans walk slowly around atop his head and say "chirp" for a moment. The second doesn't fare so well, being unable to connect at all, but the last manages to finish the job. With its last breath, the Angel makes an unskilled blade flourish, managing to inflict equal wounds on both of the Trolls who successfully attacked it (although they are not adjacent to one another, they are both marginally closer to the Angel than the one "between" them, so a single wide swing can manage to tag them both, though not exceptionally hard). The slightly injured Troll then must contend with an attack from one of its own kind; not being absurdly slow by comparison, as it is when fighting an Angel, the brute turns to face its new enemy in a fair fight, and receives a blow that is little more than glancing.

Seeing its chance to be useful, the Gargoyle surges forward to land between the Warlock and the rearmost of the surviving enemy Trolls; it's not likely to live long with two possible assailants, but if it manages to survive for just a moment, it will keep the Warlock too busy to throw any more blasts. The Ogre walks into the Bog, also engaging the rear Troll while avoiding the foremost one, who is busy battling his twin - and is now attacked by a Lion as well. The last lion remains well clear of the entire ruckus, being charged with surviving at all costs. The Ogre attacks his stronger kinsman, managing only a gentle tap; the Gargoyle attacks as well, and does very well indeed, leaving the Troll at less than half health. Green's only Troll attacks and doesn't quite manage to slay its opponent; the Lion however doesn't even break a sweat finishing it off. On the defender's side, the Warlock delivers the first blow, and in an extraordinary display of ineptitude manages not to so much as touch its Gargoyle target, so the Troll ignores it as well, trying for an above-average strike which could manage to instantly squish the Ogre, but manages to do only half the job. The dead Troll has poor odds of accomplishing anything against either of its foes, so it attacks its twin simply because it's a Native creature; with a blow that would have absolutely shattered a Lion's spine (or even a Warlock's, which is equally tough but harder to successfully target), it staves in only half of the enemy Troll's spine, then succumbs to its own wounds.

Unable to move (or to spell-cast in the Warlock's case), the defenders face grim odds indeed at this point; the Warlock targets the Gargoyle again, and remains hilariously ineffective, dealing only moderate damage. With both its potential targets half-dead, the Troll has to make a choice - attack more carefully against the Gargoyle, almost certainly not striking with enough force to smash it into the Ogre and kill them both, or ignore the Gargoyle altogether and smash the Ogre alone. The former trusts luck, while the latter ensures against the possility that the surviving Ogre can recruit after the defenders are wiped out - but the Troll is still around, so that issue is hardly relevant, and thus killing the Gargoyle is more important. He manages the job, though not by much, needing to concentrate as hard as the peanut-sized trollish brain can manage, and ignores the Ogre completely. This allows the Ogre to absolutely annihilate the Troll with a surprise attack (presumably involving a nutcracker).

Were it the warlock's chance to attack, he could stand good odds of killing the Troll and perhaps even the Ogre, but the attackers have the initiative; they move the disposable Ogre forward, along with the less cowardly Lion, and the Troll gets as far away from the Warlock as possible, to ensure that he has time to regenerate without further risk. The Ogre attacks first, and does a pretty good job of it; the Warlock's spine is intact, but his ribs have definitely cracked in a couple places. The Lion mauls the magic-user but isn't quite able to finish him off; entitled to two retributive strikes before his destruction, he tries to slay the more valuable Unit first, but deprives it of only about 60% of its health. That leaves its second attack with a dilemma like that of the Gargoyle-attacking Troll a moment ago; it chooses to focus on exterminating the Lion, leaving the two Marsh natives to both survive along with a single feline, and such is indeed the outcome, with a stray bolt managing to fry a few more layers of skin off of the Ogre but not seriously threatening its life. The Lion goes berserk in its last moments, reducing the Warlock to nothing but tattered shreds of flesh and sparing the Ogre the extremely challenging task of landing a blow upon him.

Ouroboros has claimed its second victory, but at a much steeper cost; three casualties occured in total, and the loss of an Angel would be incredibly crippling. Except, of course, that the spoils of war remain to be paid; the Warlock amounts to 20 "points", or a fifth of the "price" of an Angel's summoning, all by itself, and each of the Trolls is worth 16 more. Adding this 68 to the previous total of 42, a groundswell of surpassing glory explodes within Lord Sylvan's breast, and he attains the strength of a giant, as well as the power to call the just-banished Aerayl back to the battlefield immediately! Thusly, the attacker's losses amounted to little more than two units, one of them fairly worthless; the loss of a Lion is a fairly steep price, but nothing compared to what the death of both Ogre and Troll would have meant.

In the wake of battle, Ouroboros's Troll veteran strong-arms one of his brethren into signing up, reasoning with trollish straightforwardness that you ought not to tick off the guy who just killed three others like you (not that he was solely responsible, of course, but he's the one telling the story, so...). Benthic doubles its total Centaur population in the Woods, and that's it for the turn's Recruitment; Lord Sylvan is definitely the favorite to win the contest now.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Sun Mar 08, 2015 11:39 pm

Deciding to put Ouroboros out of his misery once and for all, Lord Argent orders Raffaele to lead the Benthic Legion through the Tower and into the Marsh; at seven non-native attackers versus five defenders, two of them natives, this is far more of a longshot than the blue Titan would prefer, but it's a chance that must be taken if Argent is ever to have a prayer of success in this conflict. However, the order is belayed by the whim of Fate, which denies the Cerulean Host momentum sufficient to complete the transit; occupying the Tower but unable to recruit there, since it failed to divide earlier, Benthic hoists its cephalopoid emblem and settles in for a long siege. The Quenching Legion, containing Lord Argent himself, steps out of Tower Four into the Plains; another Plains is reached by Cyclonic, a legion much like the just-slaughtered Chiropterean except weaker, with Ogres instead of Trolls (and a much older Warlock). Trident is happy to enter the Mountains, and both it and Quenching recruit Lions.

Granted a reprieve, Ouroboros decides to seek the better part of valor; it too receives almost no energy from the cosmic flow, and staggers creakily into an adjacent Swamp. Batrachian drops onto the Edge, and Dessicant ignores the temptation of Tower Six to enter a Jungle, while Athamae also steps into one of those, climbing back up through a "trap door" which will drop them again on a later day. Even Laureate moves, stepping into a Marsh adjacent to Athamae's Jungle, though the two are destined to drift apart. The wily Grazzak and Fryzart convince a new Cyclops to listen to their promises, while the existing trio of Cyclopes in Dessicant continue to form up into a terrifying squad of assassins, as one Behemoth's howl of triumph brings another one lumbering into view. Trolls call forth other Trolls in both Marsh and Swamp, and two Centaurs capture a Lion in the Plains.

The odds being more nearly even, Benthic gives up on its pursuit of Ouroborean, and risks splitting off dead weight in the form of two Centaurs (rather than tempt Fate by again calling them Chiropterean, Lord Argent assigns them the cracking-egg symbol which symbolizes new possibility, calling them the Invivian Legion. Quenching also needs to split, and this seems the ideal moment for Argent to sneak away, taking two Lions with him for a reasonable amount of protection as he forms the Anchorite Legion, whose nautical-themed symbol you can probably guess. Even the Trident legion is ready to split, and it discharges two Cyclopes who bring the old standard with them, while the main legion rechristens itself as the Lunarian, with a grimacing-faced crescent moon on their flag. With all these new Legions departing, the Cerulean Host must disperse whether or not it wills; Fate wishes them godspeed, and sends the newly decimated Trident legion to their deaths by forcing them to move into Dessicant's path. Seeing the approach of Dessicant as probably inevitable, since the temptation to pursue and squish such a pathetic legion as Trident will probably be easy for them to resist, Cyclonic wants to flee along the edge of the world, but Lord Argent forbids it, for he himself wants to lead Anchorite to the Corner Plains which is Cyclonic's only possible destination as well. Except no, I'm foolish and senescent; that's one further step along the Path than Cyclonic can go, so it does indeed move, arriving in Brush from which it can later depart the Outer Path. Though the newly-incorporated Invivian Legion has nothing to do in a Swamp, they travel to one anyway, rather than stay so close to the rampaging Ouroboros's path; Benthic, meanwhile drifts into a Desert. Of the seven Legions, only the Lunarian fails to move, and that's simply because it can't - splitting in the Centrum Ring makes it impossible to move both halves, since they invariably have only one possible destination.

For whatever it's worth against all those Behemoths, Trident gets a third Cyclops; the Quenching Legion reveals only a single Centaur to duplicate, while a Lion finds its counterpart for Benthic in the Desert. Cyclonic is in entirely the wrong sort of terrain and can't recruit, but Anchorite has a very exciting option; with two Lions in the Plains, it acquires the first Ranger, a highly-skilled archer and swordsman who rides a pegasus. Then it's Sylvan's turn, and he does indeed attack the Trident legion, not even waiting for the day's auspices before doing so, since it can't possibly fail to get the movement necessary to strike at an adjacent Land. For formality's sake, Sylvan checks the cast of fate - a low-medium amount - and declares the rest of the day's movements before commencing the battle; Athamae stays put, Laureate drops out into a Swamp, Batrachian proceeds to a Desert, and Ouroboros stays put, because it cannot recruit in either of the places it can reach, and has no desire to risk a conflict with the equally puissant Benthic on unfavorable terrain.

Witnessing the full fearsomeness of the Dessicant Legion, the Trident of cyclopes is very much tempted to Flee; such an act of cowardice is shameful to the gods, who will execute the recalcitrant defenders before they've made it out of the Land, but since this isn't much of an achievement on the attacker's part, it diminishes by half the Glory which they stand to gain by exterminating the victims in real combat. Still, absconding from the battle without even trying to slay one of the Behemoths would mean enabling the Dessicant stack to gain a Serpent, the most unreasonably powerful (if clumsy) of creatures, so the Tridents agree to fight, after their offer to accept one Behemoth and one Cyclops in trade for their own lives is unsurprisingly rejected.
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Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Mon Mar 09, 2015 12:45 am

For the second time, battle is joined in the Jungle, but this time every creature is a native, so the Brambles, they do nothing, making the three trees the only relevant terrain feature. Neither side's combatants can move quickly, and the defender's Cyclopes in particular can't even avoid being slow, so the attackers are completely unable to reach them in one move. Between this and the knowledge that the death of at least one Behemoth is the opponent's entire goal, Dessicant finds itself in an oddly quasi-defensive position; it thusly makes a wall of Cyclopes in front of the Behemoths to ensure their safety, and to guard against any possibility of a flanking maneuver, it throws the Gorgon under what you refer to as a "proverbial bus", sending him out to keep the first Cyclops that advances tied down. That Gorgon now has the opportunity to do a Rangestrike, although it is much less talented than a Warlock with this distance weapon; the sheer deadliness is greater, but its distance is more limited, so only the nearest Cyclops is within reach. With a snort, the creature blows its withering breath toward the foe, who inhales only a mild whiff and is in no danger of death from the Gorgon on its next turn.

Though the Gorgon is little more than a distraction, not even being able to recruit here in the Jungle, Trident has little choice but to engage it; it can get no more than two of the Cyclopes through the gap between trees in order to make a frontal assault on all three of their counterparts, and there will be no hope at all of reaching the Behemoths. So two cyclopes move to attack, and the third withdraws to behind the other two's starting positions. Both Cyclopes (who collectively have all the power of a single Serpent, though they can be killed individually) cooperate on slaying the wily but weak Gorgon, and with decent luck they could have achieved it, but their fortunes are terrible; the Gargoyle only half-dies, and it does respectable damage to the Cyclops it already breathed upon.

Dessicant's forces close in for the kill; they can't reach the third enemy cyclops, but they can certainly box it in. No longer feeling especially threatened, the Behemoths draw closer as well, tauntingly staying just out of reach of the two cyclopes that are pinned by the Gorgon; the last Cyclops tags along behind them, unable to really accomplish anything on this wave of the engagment. The Gorgon tramples the poisoned Cyclops to death, and manages to smack the other one lightly with a lash of its tail; it is massacred in retaliation by the dying Cyclops, while the other bashes its twin - who hasn't bashed yet, so let's resolve both of those. Each one wounds the other, for a total of the health of one, with the Gorgon-tail-slapped one taking the barely-lesser blow; the result is that both of them are just past half-dead.

Trident is free to move, except that it really has nowhere to go; one tree two trees and three other cyclopes, one friendly and locked in combat so that it cannot clear the way, have the cowardly one completely boxed in. Seeking to at least draw out the conflict by avoiding two-on-one odds, he engages the other undamaged cyclops, and then the two pairs (one healthy and one wounded) work on the equal-odds effort to kill each other. The wounded defender fails to finish off his foe, who more narrowly fails to finish him (in both cases this involves impressively poor performance); the other defender strikes a very grevious but not quite fatal blow (amusingly leaves three of the four all right in a straight line, with 6, 7, and 8 damage in order from left to right on each of them), and manages a truly pitiful degree of retaliation (dealing only 2).

Having slain a foe on the last round, the attacker now has the option to gate in its Angel from elsewhere on the board, but doing so is strategically undesireable in the extreme; despite their phenomenal luck, the Tridents are certainly doomed, and Dessicant hasn't the slightest fear of losing even the Behemoths, let alone the whole engagement. So the rearmost Cyclops, as the de facto field commander, politely declines Aerayl's offer to swoop in and join the slaughter, stating that the situation is under control, and it shouldn't leave Ouroboros weakened while Benthic remains nearby and close to full strength. Still, in recognition that the battle is proving messy, he orders the Behemoths to withdraw and practice their Serpent-attraction dance, while he himself steps in close to his desperately wounded brothers, ensuring that the death of only the nearer-death one will not leave a gap through which anything could move. The slightly-healthier Viridian Cyclops attacks its insultingly unharmed foe; probability almost compensates for its earlier lapse, but the rearmost Cerulean Creature is left just barely alive. Its counterpart has no such luck; it is barely alive, and takes far more than the trifling damage necessary to kill it, though it has absolutely no trouble returning the favor with a very desperate and incredibly effective return strike (the kind it would need to kill an undamaged Lion, or very nearly so a Centaur). An even more dolorous blow from the Cyclops which isn't dying brings down the other of Dessicant's frontliners.

Having survived (however narrowly) to reach the halfway point of the predetermined time limit of the battle, the almost-dead Cyclops (whose name I particularly wish I'd managed to keep track of at this point) is entitled to call for reinforcements; while the local creatures don't really know which side to back in a struggle like this one, they tend to default to assuming that they disapprove of the more recent arrival in their Land, and so will pretty reliably join a clash on the defending side, while only the battle-mad Angels will answer an Attacker's call for supplemental forces. While a Cyclops is undeniably more potent than a Gargoyle, there is nowhere that one could reach the battlefield where it would prevent the enemy Cyclops from engaging and finishing off the wounded one; therefore, in the name of fighting a more effective delaying action, and with absolutely ridiculous luck perhaps even managing to time the battle out (this being really the only hope that it can get the Behemoths killed, since the near-death Cyclops will get only one swing at them), it actually does in fact call for a Gargoyle to join the battle, instead of the stronger but less-maneuverable unit. This creature harries the enemy commander, despite being deterministically unable to kill it in less than three rounds of blows, even with the best of luck ; it does manage to land a maximally effective attack on the first try, however, but then its effort at ducking and weaving to escape retaliation spectacularly fail, turning it instantly into a grease spot mere moments after it arrived. (At least by calling for a weaker reinforcement, Trident reduced the number of extra points it was giving its opponent for killing it.) Without further distractions, the last surviving cyclops goes to secure his status from the second-to-last; he does not fail, but his status as a veteran lasts for only a split second, as he is split in two by the other's dying strike.

The attacker's objective was to preserve his two Behemoths, enabling them to acquire a Serpent, and this was achieved - but it cost him everything else in the once-magnificent Legion, losing a Gorgon to his opponent's Gargoyle besides the complete mutual annihilation of cyclopes (and he only even got the Gargoyle because his opponent allowed him to, gambling unsuccessfully for a slightly better outcome - which, in retrospect, was completely pointless; reinforcement was just plain a bad idea in this situation, since no amount of luck could actually have killed a Behemoth here). The bounty on three cyclopes and one gargoyle is a total of 66 "glory points", bringing Lord Sylvan's running total to 176; there is no further change to the Titan's combat prowess, but one more battle is almost certain to end in the Viridian Throng acquiring a second Angel at once, even if the defender flees.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Mon Mar 09, 2015 1:57 am

In the wake of that successful attack, Lord Sylvan gains more than just the Serpent, although that's obviously the red-letter item on the list; Batrachian twins a Lion in the Desert, and Sylvan's own Laureate stack gains a second (actually third, but one remains in hiding) Troll. Despite being in distinctly poor shape at this point, Argent isn't yet ready to forfeit his possible victory; getting a magnificent tailwind, he is unable to safely move the Invivian or Lunarian Legions (the latter could attack the depleted Dessicant stack, and has a nonzero chance of killing the Serpent, but due to lack of Natives it's extremely unlikely to accomplish this, and would squander a very difficult-to-replace trio of Lions in the process. Meanwhile, Benthic has only two Lions, so it can accomplish little by circling the Void back to its current Desert location; still, traveling to the Marsh is even more pointless, and there's nothing to be gained by standing still and not recruiting, so it goes on the lap after all. The Cyclonics remain where they are, and so do the Anchorites, which in turn denies Quenching the ability to move at all - actually, I'm not certain that the Law of Titan permits a combatant to end a Day with his Legions all in the same Lands they occupied at first, even if they moved in a circle to do it. So just to ensure that propriety is observed, Anchorite does opt to move to a Brush location, where they at least are not immediately vulnerable to Ouroboros attack, although it's worrisomely close to happening, given that Lord Argent is here with a rather inadequate set of protectors. But at least this way, Quenching can recruit a Lion with two Centaurs in the Plains, while Benthic does so with a Lion by rediscovering the Desert.

Leaving two Ogres in the Laureate Legion, mostly because he's tired of looking at it, Lord Sylvan takes the bulk of his forces into a new legion, whose deceptively non-warlike symbol of a harp corresponds to its treacherously soothing name, the Celestrian Legion. A lull in the winds of Destiny results in the large new Legion traveling from Swamp to Marsh, which is just fine with Sylvan, although it blocks the only place that Athamae could have fallen to, so that Legion remains stuck yet again. Dessicant moves just for the sake of moving, occupying a Plains at the extreme "east" end of our Plane; Batrachian also moves to a corner Plains, and Ouroboros can't muster wherever it goes, so it withdraws to a Brush next to the Razor Dichotomy Tower, rather than occupying a Woods next to the larger Benthic army and probably forcing a confrontation, which might end with Aeryal dying again (momentarily at least). Batrachian has two Lions in the Plains, so it grants Lord Sylvan his first Ranger, and a moment later Celestrian duplicates this feat, only it uses Trolls in the Marsh.

Argent contacts the Benthic Legion, ordering Raffaele to cut loose the Gorgon and one of the three Lions; these form the Quicksilver Legion, with a winged foot for its icon. There proves to be at most a mild totemic value to the symbolism; the impulse current is of average strength, and so the Benthic Legion moves down to a Jungle. Cyclonic manages to move up into a Gateway Marsh, while Lunarian finally quits the Mountains in favor of mere Hills, both it and Benthic being condemned to fall onto the Verge Path thereafter. Anchorite wans to move to a new Gateway Plains, but doing so would risk Ouroboros swooping up after it, should Fate grant it a sufficiently strong urge-pulse; though failing to move a known Ranger to where it can recruit functionally advertises the Titan's location, he risks it, instead moving to a Brush location which is completely safe for the moment, although very perilous in future. (With the correct cast of fate, Ouroboros could simply barricade the Marshes just ahead of Anchorite, leaving it trapped indefinitely without the ability to gain strength, so that eventually Dessicant could catch up and assault it with incredible force.) Quenching moves to the Verge Plains below Tower Three, and the pathetic Invivian holds its position in the miserable Swamp; the former twins its Lion, whereas Cyclonic shows off its two known Ogres (the third remains clandestine) and acquires a Troll. A Benthic Cyclops gains another in the Jungle, and Lunarian replicates its Ogre in the Hills.

Sylvan has three Legions at six, but none at seven; it throws a low-medium current and sends Ouroboros to an Outer Path Desert, almost but not quite barricading Anchorite's path - it must now wait for a doldrum to approach the Tower, and then use that on a later Turning to escape to safety. Neither Laureate nor Athamae wants to visit a desert, but the latter at least is desperate to simply move, so it falls toward the Edge and rounds one of the Plane's corners. Celestrian doesn't wish to visit the Brush, and neither does Dessicant really, since its Jungle creatures actually can't recruit there; they're Natives and thus probably safe against the numerically superior Lunarians, but the green Titan sees no reason to take any chances, willing to leave its current strongest Legion held hostage for a little while in order to similarly tie-up one of its foe's best hopes at victory. It can easily win through simple attrition, and the last thing it needs is to risk giving its opponent a chance to recoup some losses. So it concludes its movement, recruits only a Lion to complete Ouroboros again, and finishes.

A powerful wave of energy crackles through Argent's legions; he ignores it, but commands the two Invivoan Centaurs to follow it to their inevitable deaths against the mighty Ophidian horde. They can't possibly kill so much as one creature, and probably won't even try; their job is simply to discover the Ouroborean Legion's secrets, preparing the blue Titan for a possible desperation assault against them. Benthic falls into Brush, as does Lunarian (much to Dessicant's relief); Quicksilver circles back to a Plains, and Cyclonic's troll-quest takes it to a Tower-adjacent Marsh rather than a Tundra. Preparing to possibly follow in Invivo's suicidal footsteps, the Quenching Legion falls in step right behind Anchorite. The Desert Engagement is evaluated, and Ouroboros is found to be more than a little outside its comfort zone, with the three Trolls probably being more nearly obstacles than useful combatants on this terrain, and an Ogre being so useless that Aerayl might well execute him rather than allow him to be fielded (since it is contrary to the Law of Titan for anyone to refrain from entering the battle at the first opportunity; the punishment for defiance is death, whether enforced by the Legion's commander or by Fate itself).

Had the two Centaurs been on the defensive in this battle, they could have Fled and denied the attackers the Glory for killing one of them; alas, this is not an available option, and so it will prove that the Centaurs' death will inevitably raise Lord Sylvan's victory count to 200, entitling him to a new Angel (though he will have to induct the Angel here, and unless he manages to somehow suffer two casualties, he won't get both the Angel and a Lion reinforcement. So in view of the reality it's stumbled upon, the Centaur pair simply Concedes, making no attempt at combat whatsoever; this awards the due Glory to the green Titan, who becomes as strong as a Troll (and of course far more effective in battle, the equivalent of two Rangers when striking, though without flight or the ability to rangestrike). But calling in a new Angel is impossible, and just denying the foe that opportunity is effectively the same as killing an existing one, so the Centaurs presumably receive some sort of afterlife reward, in light of their brave (if compulsory) sacrifice.

That ugliness concluded, Argent recruits; two lions in Quenching are worth a Ranger, the Lion in Quicksilver finds a partner, two Cyclopes in Benthic acquire a Gorgon, Lunarian betrays its own Gorgon's presence, and one good Troll deserves another for Cyclonic. Argent now has a healthy enough set of armies that he begins to wish he wasn't so busily running away from his opponent, and could actually initiate some favorable Engagements.

Unless the speed force reaches its ultimate crescendo for Sylvan, this day will not result in any further combat for him; that it in fact decided to do the exact reverse is really kind of an insult. Still, Dessicant doesn't complain, it just tromps and slithers into the Swamp, and Athame proceeds into a Plains, vacating its Desert for a less-than-eager Celestrian. Ouroborean retains its blocking position, since the Brush ahead would not favor it; Batrachian, however, happily steps into a Jungle, even though it can accomplish nothing there. Absolutely no mustering is possible, but the gods do not punish idleness in this regard; so long as a Legion of each Titan at least performs maneuvers daily, the Law is upheld.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Mon Mar 09, 2015 4:17 am

Casting its lot in with the idea that it will just always attack Ouroboros as long as that Legion exists, the Cerulean Host prepares to move the full-strength Quenching Legion into the desert and attack its equally potent foe, leaving the Legion unsplit. Benthic, however, drops off a Lion and a Cyclops, opting to dub them the Chiropterean Legion again after all this time, given that they're safe from Ouroboros retaliation for at least a goodly while (unless ordered to kamikaze themselves, as Invivo just did). Safe from the immediate risk of Dessicant catching them, Lunarian also splits, this time falling into two neat halves, identical save for an extra Lion in the one which stays with the existing banner; the newborn takes up a flag with a raincloud emblem and becomes the Nimbus Legion. Sufficient spiritual momentum is indeed received, so Quenching joins battle against Aeraeyl's army, as Benthic moves into a Swamp, Quicksilver out onto the Corner Plains, Nimbus onto a Tower-Threshold Marsh, and Cyclonic finally arrives in the place it has been hoping for some time to go, a Hills (tragically one with a "trap door", but this simply gives the Legion a chance to tackle the Dessicants).

The clash begins in the Desert; Quenching's total array is one Ranger, two Lions, two Centaurs, and two Warlocks, which is a respectable force to field against a force that's almost precisely half trolls (if you count an Ogre as a half-troll, and that seems like a fair enough thing to do). Categorically refusing any effort to negotiate, the attackers demand that their foes file into starting position, but with the Desert offering no less than three distinct terrain hazards to comprehend, the preparations are lengthy. Trolls and Ogres cannot move effectively across the sand, and the defender's entry is choked with it, leaving room for at most two Trolls to advance all the way ; the third Troll wades into the dry quagmire as far as he can manage on the other side, with the Ogre to his left to complete the humanoid chain. Prior to this, the eager Lions leaped forward to stand on either side of a small cliff; that leaves only one space within the near seven, and Aerayl chooses to hover down and stand there momentarily, until he gets the opening he needs to wreak suitable havoc.

The Quenching Legion's necessary maneuvers are still more involved; with the Lions too far away to join combat at once, and the non-native characters being virtually doomed if they confront a Lion from below a sloping Dune, while even the fleet Centaurs can't reach the Trolls across their own expanse of sand, the problem is a thorny one indeed. The Ranger decides that it's safe for him to stand atop the most prominent of the Dunes, which is bounded by Cliffs on two sides and thus risks attack from only one Troll at a time - though neither is native, a Dune only harms non-natives who are below it, having no disadvantage as long as you're at the top. Though the Ranger has half the Strength of a troll, he has double the Skill, and his ability to potshot creatures from afar with his arrows makes this a commanding position for him. One Centaur rushes forward to engage the Lion below the cliff, while the other accepts the suicidal task of preoccupying the one atop it; the two Warlocks make a hesitant approach, getting just close enough that they can focus fire on the lower Lion (besides their terrain advantages, the Lions can also recruit after the battle for the surviving army, or at its midpoint for the defender, so priority 1 for both armies is to exterminate the enemy's Lion pair). This leaves the two attacking Lions with the responsibility to plus holes in the formation which the Angel could fly into; nothing can be done to entirely prohibit the swift flyer from engaging the Warlock pair, so the Lions at least ensure that Aerayl cannot pick off only the nearest one, and will have as much as four attackers (assuming the hapless Centaur survives) surrounding and dogpiling him if he moves into the open space. The nearer vacancy is nearly as doomed, with both Centaurs and the forward Lion threatening it.

His maneuvers finished, the commanding Ranger initiates Strikes and Rangestrikes, ordering the more distant Warlock (who is floundering in sand at the top of yet another cliff) to fire first; aiming poorly, he manages only to slightly scorch the Lion, and so the second Warlock's fire is required as well. (Both of them together could not have slain the Lion with ranged fire, but if the first blast had struck full-power, the Centaur might have managed to luckily behead the cat, letting the second Warlock fire on the other one instead.) He does a better job, and so the Centaur strikes confidently, but finds that it's rather inconvenient to try to climb a hill of sand while fighting, and that his axe is no more effective than the warlock's little zaps (impressively improbable though these magics are, they are sharply limited in their raw power, since conjuring even a tiny quantity of destructive force ex nihilo is as much as even the greatest of scholars can achieve; only a trio or better of the sorcerers can hope to kill anything stronger than a Centaur or Gargoyle with a single volley, no matter how easily targeted their victim is, since sheer body mass will prohibit swift annihilation of tougher foes). He doesn't quite manage, and thus the Ranger is forced to take a literal and figurative longshot; rather than firing at a close and easy target, he must sight his arrow for the furthest limit of its range, which limits his accuracy (Warlocks lack these worries, happily, but any non-magical projectile must obey the limitations imposed by simple ballistics). Even so, he's able to finish the creature off, and of the four creatures that collaborated to annihilate it, only the most unimportant must endure its retaliation. Meanwhile, the other Centaur ignores the relatively easy Troll, who he couldn't kill even in a full Round of uninterrupted hacking and slashing; despite that same inconvenience of striking up a Dune at the remaining Lion, he makes the effort, and does typically poorly. (Then I abruptly noticed that the first Lion was not in fact atop a Dune, so one more die should have been rolled to attack it; since the error is too difficult to correct after all the subsequent actions, I instead decreed that the second Lion took 2 damage after all, since this was a plausible outcome.)

Retaliating, the Lion that is dying on level ground attempts to maul the Centaur which was among its assassins, and the only one which its animal instincts can comprehend as having caused its demise; its blow is fierce but not quite sufficient. Then the other one demonstrates exactly what the word "momentum" means, by charging down the dune in a fearsome flurry of stirred-up granules, colliding with the doomed Centaur with incredible force - almost. Against a Gargoyle, this attack would have been lethal, but the weak, swift Centaur eludes it completely, leaving the Lion foundering and trying to scramble backward, up through the cascade of sliding sand which it loosed itself. Still, the Centaur isn't safe just yet; it also has to dodge a Troll's flailing - and it mostly does that too, sustaining only a flesh wound.

Having failed to ensure a casualty on its first defensive strike, Ouroboros now gets to maneuver, but has to make a choice - with the Blue forces potentially opting to gate in an Angel on their next maneuver, if and only if the limit of seven units allows it, should Green even attempt to kill a weak attacking creature such as a Centaur? But of course, Strikes are compulsory where combat is joined, so the odds are extremely good that the Lion and Troll will manage to finish the Centaur on this wave. So there's little point in refraining from combat, and the two Trolls that can advance do so, the rightmost one taking only a single step to engage the more wounded Centaur. The Ogre struggles into the Troll's former space, and finally the Angel swoops into the "murder hole", accepting that it will doubtless die, but determined to slaughter at least one of the Warlocks before they can do any more damage, since they at least are pretty nearly irreplaceable. The surviving Lion charges first, this time crashing into the Centaur hard enough to have killed it even without the Troll's prior attack; the same Troll thusly sits on his hands, while one of his brethren tries to finish off the other Centaur, and easily manages. The last troll, in the foremost position, makes a slightly less forceful strike (identical to that of a downhill-charging Lion, save less skilled), attempting the nigh-impossible task of one-shotting the Ranger, and does in fact manage to get half way there. Lastly, the Angel takes a swing, choosing to strike the Warlock who is not protected by elevation (even a flying immortal with a blazing fiery sword suffers when his opponent has the high ground), and fails to quite exterminate him.

It's the attacker's turn to roll retributive Strikes, and he begins with the two Warlocks, who collectively call up such a storm of short-range annihilating forces that they disintegrate the Angel where he stands (or floats; he probably refuses to quite touch the ground). This leaves the Lions with nothing to attack, so the first of the dead centaurs gets his pound of flesh out of the solitary Troll that killed him...make that three pounds, actually. The other Centaur waits to see what happens with the Ranger, whose non-native status prevents him from gaining a VERY impressive benefit for being at the top of the dune (it'd be nice to have gained half again his initial puissance on an attack), but he succeeds well enough on raw skill against the Troll, cutting the lumbering creature down to half-size. Since the Centaur can't kill the Lion anyway, he decides to hit this same Troll, hedging against the risk that the Ranger will fail to finish him with the next attack; it is indeed hedged, but not by much.

Beginning the second attacking Turn, Blue does indeed opt to call in Raffaele to join the battle; the new Angel arrives with a victorious shout, the blood of the first slain Lion vanishing in a flash of holy fire as the sacrifice is accepted. He flies forward to halt the Troll's advance, while one of Cerulean's lions steps forward to tackle the remaining Viridian one, as well as that same Troll. The other Lion withdraws for the moment, though he remains ready to take position atop the dune next to the Ranger; the un-wounded Warlock steps forward, while his counterpart remains where he is. And then commences the carnage; the Ranger slashes at the Troll and effortlessly decapitates it, the new Angel effortlessly carves up another Troll (on the very spot where the Lion died), and the blue Lion attacks the green one, ignoring the intervening dune since both are natives, and inflicting damage that just suffices to be lethal. Only two defenders remain, and killing them before they can move is an impossibility for the two Warlocks, but they make an effort nonetheless, easily barbecuing half of the sluggish target. The dying Trolls and Lion make their retaliation efforts, managing to finish off the Ranger, and with the Lion being significantly enough wounded by its counterpart that the Troll commits to killing it, ignoring the Angel altogether. It strikes hard enough that it could have killed the Lion from full health, or could have intentionally made a cautious strike that would have ended up touching the Angel as well, though only to a marginal degree.

Left with only an Ogre and a Troll, and no hope to catch the enemy Lion, the once-great Ouroboreans' only remaining purpose is to finish off the near-dead Warlock, and a Troll lumbers forward to attempt this, with the Ogre coming along to attack the healthy Warlock just in case of incredible luck. The Troll's mission succeeds, though only just; the Ogre does no more than bruise the second Warlock, who only barely needs to sully his hands with revenge, as the Angel nearly extinguishes the Ogre at one blow. Perhaps it is due to having just watched one of his comrades die, but the Warlock experiences a bout of the shakes and is only able to drain a little life-energy out of the Troll after finishing off the Ogre; the mage who has been struck down is left unable to extinguish the Troll with his final ghostly curse, although he gives it a pretty good effort. The Troll thus gets another shot at bashing the Warlock, after he and Raffaele have cut it down (actually the Angel doesn't have to lift a finger, he just hovers nearby for the sake of insurance). The Troll has nowhere near sufficient adrenaline to take down the Warlock, and at last the Ouroborean standard is furled once and for all.

It took long enough for Lord Argent's forces to score a victory, but at least it's an impressive one; 12 points for an Ogre, 48 for three Trolls, 30 for two lions and 24 for an Angel totals 114, instantly raising the blue Titan's power, and calling forth a new angel, a gleaming golden creature by the name of Samdaphol, who agrees to balance the scales of this previously lopsided war. What is left of the Quenching Legion, besides the two Angels who weren't there at the battle's beginning, is just one Lion and one Warlock, but the population of big cats quickly doubles itself (the Warlock wishes it had the same option available to it - although the "dead" Warlocks, much like the extraplanar Angels, are merely discorporated into a half-deific spirit, and can eventually reconstitute themselves back in one Tower or another, when a Titan or a fellow spellcaster gives them a reason to bother). Meanwhile, in a Plains far "upstream" on the Verge Path, the Quicksilver Legion broadcasts the position of its two Lions, enabling it to acquire a Ranger, and in the Hills, a trio of Ogres recruits an entirely new creature, the Minotaur, who wields a tremendous flail with sufficient skill to throw it at long range. (The Minotaur is functionally a non-flying Ranger, though its terrain advantages are different.)

And with that, Argent's most impressive Turn thus far is concluded.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Mon Mar 09, 2015 7:15 am

Sylvan begins a turn where, for the first time, he worries he might conceivably lose this war if he's not careful. Fate dictates that it shall proceed glacially, which makes the crowding of many of its Legions a serious problem. Fortunately, Athamae is content to advance into Brush, so it's no problem for Celestrian to move into its vacated Plains, and Laureate is happy to move into a Marsh, as is Batrachian. An Ogre in the latter Legion recruits another one, while two the two Ogres that are Laureate gain the service of a Troll; Athamae gets a Cyclops with a Cyclops. Lord Sylvan reveals his Ranger, and could gain another Ranger, but opts to take a Lion instead. And with that, he's set.

Lord Argent wants to split the Cyclonic Legion, but doesn't dare with Dessicant hovering behind it; all the other stacks are tiny and free to recruit, so Cyclonic's job is to act as gatekeeper, keeping the Serpent and Behemoths from marauding freely along the Outer Path. A strong current strikes the Host, touching off a small chain-reaction of moves in three distantly lockstepped legions; Nimbus (which should have recruited an Ogre last round, but I seem to have legitimately forgot, and I won't engage in revisionist history if I don't have to) swings back up to a Marsh, and Lunarian takes its previous Marsh spot while Cyclonic moves into the Brush it vacated. (The thought of facing the Dessicant stack in their home terrain is frightening, but it can't be helped. Quenching isn't ready to take on all of Batrachian, so it stays put, as do Benthic, Chiropteran and Quicksilver, and it goes without saying that Anchorite does not approach the mighty Frog stack. Having managed to do enough moving to minimally satisfy the need, despite these persistently undesirable travel speeds, Argent recruits; the two Legions which moved both double their number of Ogres.

Sylvan doesn't really know what a good job Batrachian has been doing of keeping Argent bottled up; he drops it down to four weak creatures, while three strong ones split off to form a new legion, called the Adamantine and symbolized by a diamond. Celestrian also splits, and has much more business doing it; the green Titan abandons his recently-created group to their own devices, leaving only a Ranger and a Warlock, while he takes three Trolls and a Lion to form the Carcinome Legion, again totemically channeling his distaste for the ocean by choosing a crab's severed claw for the emblem. Yet another mighty wind proves inconvenient to him; Laureate advances to Jungle and makes way for Batrachian, while Dessicant remains trapped, unable to move without running into the seemingly undauntable might of Cyclonic. However this motion-pattern is very convenient for the newborn Adamant Legion, as they attain a Gateway Marsh and are safely free to seek out a Mountains later on. Athame is stuck, but the former halves of Celestrian also both disperse from their position, landing in two different Plains, but Carcignoma with its Lion goes toward the Gateway into the Inner Ring, where it likewise plans to visit Mountains if given the chance. A flurry of recruiting results; Carcinohm gains a second Lion, Celestrion and Adamantine a second Ranger each, and Batrachian shows two Ogres to gain a Troll.

No longer having significant worries, Argent finally divides Cyclonic, recreating the Trident Legion as three Ogres, and then moving them three lands to a Plains, while Cyclonic rises into a middle-marches Swamp. Nimbus risks taking position in the Desert, knowing that Dessicant is very likely to engage it and probably wipe it out, but certain that it can inflict at least one casualty thanks to the partial home-terrain advantage. Lunarian stands pat, but Chiropterean and Quicksilver advance in step, as do Quicksilver, Anchorite and Benthic. Nimbus collects a second Lion, Trident gains nothing for the moment, Cyclonic twins one of its dual Trolls, Quicksilver reveals and duplicates a Gorgon and Chiropteran does a Cyclops, and the three more Lordly legions (Benthic no longer contains an Angel, but its culture is firmly informed by the fact that it once did) fail to recruit in their undesirable new homes, but at least they've moved away from possible pursuit.

Lord Sylvan gets the speed he needs, and Dessicant does indeed risk taking on the numerically superior force on their home ground; Celestrian follows close behind it, stopping in Plains adjacent to the Pentatheonic Tower, while Laureate stops at Marsh, as does Batrachian. Adamantine is positioned to reach Mountains, while Carcinome is not; it remains where is is rather than risk a "trapdoor" Jungle which would send it crashing into Anchorite, littles suspecting that its foe resides in that slightly-weaker group (neither Legion has native creatures, so the Brush or Jungle battle would be fairly miserable, but at least the game would end after it). With that, movement is finished for the day, and battle commences in the Desert again.

The terrain is identical to the last battle, though the attackers are very different; a lone Gorgon and the three Jungle intruders all wish for some nice brambles to lurk in, but instead there is only sand, where the Lions cavort happily. Ogres stand wherever there isn't a sand pit to stumble over, and the Gorgon sits atop a central dune, keeping its options open for its next flight. In slithers the Serpent, seeming a mile long as it uncoils and moves forward; it camps beneath a cliff where it doesn't risk abrupt lion-pounces, and one Behemoth steps forward to guard its approach, as the other struggles up a dune and stands above the cliff. Seeing that it is free to "play defense" in this fight, given the cumbersomness of the attackers, Nimbus sends the Ogres circling about (toward an expanse of sand which would take them an interminable time to cross, but they're okay with that), letting one Lion withdraw to behind them while the other takes its place atop the Dune. The Gorgon steps into the space between these felines, belching a deadly breath toward the nearest Behemoth, who makes the mistake of inhaling at that exact moment; the great beast coughs, sneezes, and begins to choke.

The undamaged Behemoth prowls its way forward into the space next to one of each enemy creature; the wounded one moves to below the Lion's cliff, not wanting to risk letting it attack at full power. The Serpent, on the other hand, is perfectly content to take that chance; its sheer size renders the positional disadvantage it suffers barely relevant. It strikes with the power of a Cyclops and a Troll combined, rather than two full Cyclopes; the Lion's agility only goes so far against this overwhelming force, so that even the extremely aimless blow almost completely flattens it. That still leaves the healthy Behemoth to attack, and though it does genuinely notice the problem of striking up a Dune, it still easily swallows the Lion whole with its tremendous jaws, while snapping them both shut firmly on one of the Gorgon's flanks. The Ogre attempts to batter through the Behemoth's armor, and despite its poor skill does an excellent job; the Gorgon makes a more fair assailant, but suffers in the hostile climate and isn't able to finish the thing off. Clawing its way out of the serpent's mouth, despite being half-digested by its acidic spittle, the moribund Lion attacks the Behemoth with all its might, and just manages to finish it.

For a change, the defender's counterstrike has destroyed the only foe that was keeping it pinned down, leaving it free to move; the Ogres wade up into the sand while the Lion effortlessly dashes past them, and the Gorgon flies far, far away from its foes, gently landing on a sand dune outside the reach of either enemy. (I had an epic struggle to try and confirm whether this was legal, and it appears it indeed is). No attack is possible, so the initiative passes to Dessicant. The Serpent slithers up to the two Ogres, opening its maw in an effort to swallow both of them whole, which it stands an average chance of actually doing - and indeed, its lower jaw alone easily scoops one up (and would have done the same to a Ranger, though not to a Lion even if it lacked a Dune advantage), whereas the second one just barely escapes annihilation (I think; truthfully I lost count of the spill-over damage). A total of 7 are inflicted in retaliation.

The moment of reinforcement arrives, and a new Lion arrives. It engages the surviving Behemoth, who is still gagging from the poison gas it was dosed with; the creature could have tried to escape, but there was nowhere it could flee to in time where one of the two Lions could not reach it, so it simply makes its stand in a not-particularly-disfavorable spot. The lion is not quite successful in instantly slaying the creature, which returns the favor by not quite devouring it in one snap. Meanwhile, the Ogre's last desperate effort deals another 4 damage to the Serpent, leaving it more than half-dead; with only the most trifling of half-efforts, it squishes the pitiful thing.

Facing probable annihilation, the Serpent decides to try and ensure it has plenty of company in death; it slithers up next to both of its foes, risking a very steep chance of its immediate destruction, but having an only somewhat-below-average possibility of killing them both, and not otherwise being able to ensure that the Lion won't escape entirely while it's devouring the Gorgon. Though a time-loss would ensure that Argent scores no points for the destruction of these valuable limits, it is simply too unsatisfying to risk, so the creature backs the desperate longshot. With half it's effort, it does not quite slaughter the Gorgon, while its other end finishes the job and just fails to put down the Lion as well. The Behemoth is more than equal to the task of killing the reinforcement Lion, but unsurprisingly dies in the process; the Gorgon butchers the Serpent effectively, but a couple coils of its dreadful length continue twitching, long enough that the horribly crushed but still living Lion manages to finish off the immense monstrosity completely.

An extraordinary end to that battle; it is a testament to the fearsomeness of the Dessicant's creatures that, outnumbered and on hostile ground, they still wiped out the same number of creatures that initially opposed them, with only the reinforcement managing to eke out a win. Had the Viridian Throng still possessed an Angel that the attacking Legion could Summon, Nimbus would certainly have been exterminated altogether, and likely neither the Angel nor the Serpent would have had to die. But, such are the tides of war. As it stands, the Serpent's glory value of 36, and the 24 each of the two Behemoths, suffice to boost Lord Argent's score to slightly exceed Sylvan's; the nearly depopulated Legion is joined by yet a third Angel (this one being a flaming-red figure named Razarniel, the incarnation of pure divine wrath and fury - which makes him little different from any of the others), and it appears that Argent has seized a decisive lead indeed. Sylvan concludes his Turn's mustering, gaining a Ranger for Celestrion in the Plains adjacent to this bloodstained Desert, Laureate and Batrachian have to have Trolls to make Trolls, and Adamantine twins a Lion while keeping one in the shadows of its Flag.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Titan

Post by willpell » Mon Mar 09, 2015 9:13 am

The Cerulean Host is borne by sluggish impulses the next day, with the Nimbus legion's sole survivor and newest arrival both traveling exhaustedly to a Marsh, just in a desperate effort to outrun Celestrion (it knows that the pursuing Legion's four creatures include three Rangers, but it doesn't especially fear these creatures's trivial advantage of being able to occupy bog spaces). Lunarian goes to Plains and makes room for Trident; a veritable conga line of Quenching, Anchorite and Benthic could proceed, but only the foremost is actually trapped on the outer path and condemned to seek out an upcoming Brush, while Anchorite and Benthic take up flanking positions on either central-region side of the Duality Tower. There, the octopus recruits a third Cyclops from the dwindling supply, and the Titan's legion gains one of the few remaining Lions in the world. Two Cyclopes gain a bat-winged Gorgon under the standard of the Bat; an unprecedented and somewhat unnecessary third Gorgon joins Quicksilver. Lunarian lures out a Ranger with two Lions, and Trident shows two of its three Ogres to gain a Troll.

Sylvan is annoyed to note that Cancerian contains both Lions and Trolls, so there was no reason for it not to enter the inner ring previously; nonetheless, it can easily do so now, as yet another 4-strength timewave sweeps through the Viridian forces. Celestine attempts to pick off the remnants of Nimbus, and Carcinic arrives in Tundra; Batrachian tries to get in on the Inner Ring party by arriving in a gateway Marsh. The Marsh battle is joined, with the Angel refusing to Flee and deny the attacker Glory; unlike in past battles, the defenders know that there is no point in delaying, so they travel deep into the Battleland. They did not realize that their attackers were ALL rangestrikers, whose inability to drop the Angel from afar with a hail of such attacks (it turns out that these are thrown bolas rather than arrows fired from a bow) is the only thing keeping the battle somewhat fair; nonetheless, with three of these being free to land on Bogs which surround the divine warrior, they easily lock up the battle, while the Warlock just stands back and wisecracks a little, aside from throwing one quick Acid Arrow that scores a shallow line across the Angel's chest. Ranger the First lands two shallow slashes upon the entity; another one duplicates the feat, and the last gets a poor throw and fails to polish it off. The Lion bites one of the two closest Rangers at random, delivering only a scratch; the Angel is unable to finish it completely. The Lion fares vastly better on its second try, slaughtering one Ranger and badly mauling another; the Angel finishes butchering him and makes a bloody ruin of the last one, which retaliates to more than finish the brief-lived Razarielgh. The other two Rangers' dying strikes are just barely sufficient to execute the Lion, leaving the Warlock untouched and one Ranger who will mend his wounds.

That miserable excuse for a battle merits 37 points added to Sylvan's score; the Throng then proceeds with their turn, mustering a Troll with Batrachian, and then achieving something really special with Carcerine - revealing three Trolls in this inhospitable place, the green Titan attracts the aid of a Giant, a creature as skilled as a Centaur or a Minotaur, but combining the power values of both. That's all Sylvan accomplished for the turn, but it's enough of an achievement. Argent catches a powerful wave and sends the Quenching Legion into yet another desert; Anchorite moves back out onto the Outer Path and stops in a Plains, while Benthic goes to a Gateway plains of its own. Trident moves into a Hills, right next to the Swamp where Cyclonic is electing to remain, and on the other side of it, Lunarian arrives in a Marsh. The usual Lions and suddenly-commonplace Rangers are acquired, along with a second Minotaur for the Ogres which now form Trident. And abruptly I discover that there has been a serious mistake - the most recent permutation is that the Giant should not have been acquired on green's last turn, as the next step in the Tundra recruitment chain is the Warbear (yet to be seen, since it takes three Centaurs to muster one in the Woods, and neither triple Centaurs nor Woods arrivals have been at all common thus far). But that step is preceded by a requirement of two Trolls, not three, and the same is true for gaining Minotaurs with Lions in the Mountains. So both sides in the battle have made numerous unnecessary Troll and Lion recruitments, when they were qualified to receive much more exotic units. (And while the trio of Lions or Trolls can achieve interesting things in a Desert or Swamp, it has yet to actually happen, so the fact that both armies are lousy with them seems insufficient.)

Having corrected the errors of the past as far as possible, we march onward with Lord Argent's turn; he splits off two Rangers and a Gorgon from the Lunarian Legion, creating the Securian one, with a sturdy iron padlock as its device. A surge of maximal energy strikes, letting...letting Sylvan take his turn, actually. And he didn't split two seven-high legions, only one of which may go into combat now. So, whatever, Batrachian will just sit out a round, while Carcerian swings down to ambush Trident in the Hills; this proves to be a foolish choice, though, since the green titan is in that Legion! Well whatever, I've been playing for more than twelve hours, so let's just wrap it up. Having no Natives to the local Slopes, and reluctant to lose either the Warbear or the three Trolls, the attacker is in a distinctly awkward position, and for the first time the Ogres have an advantage over the stronger Trolls. An Ogre and the Minotaur move to occupy the two raised hills closest to its entrance; the Minotaur has a tree at its back, but remains very vulnerable, while the Ogre is no better off and has a tree in front if it instead. The other two Ogres move to either side, and a Troll lurks uselessly in the middle-rear. One of the attacker's Trolls begins atop a hill and then ambles down from it, while the other two walk on clear ground wherever it can be found, and a Lion labors its way to the top of a hill while the other lines up behind it, with a tree ahead to one side, and the Warbear directly to the other. Able to stride boldly into the center, but having more sense, the Titan also stands atop the hill.

One Ogre claims a more forward Hill, not closing with the opponent since it would forfeit its slight advantage; the other does act as a "clay pigeon" by stepping forward to attack the Lion, not having to worry about the Slope due to its native status. The Minotaur steps down from the hilltop, keeping a tree between itself and any empty space; the Ogre climbs through its vacancy and engages both Trolls, not expecting to live long but hopefully protecting the hard-to-replace Minotaur. The defending Troll can make only a single space of progress. The Ogre attacks the Lion, managing not a single hit due to incredibly poor luck; this clarifies the Minotaur's choices, so he hurls a chain-length at the nearest Troll, managing to strike only a glancing blow despite great odds. Clearly, Fate doesn't want to see the Titan slaughtered quite yet. The Ogre does its best against a clearly superior foe, but the cursed luck holds and it strikes for only 2 more damage; one Troll then very nearly flattens it, and another completes the task. A Lion thoroughly savages the second Ogre with little difficulty.

Having secured a casualty outside his own turn, the green Legion misses its chance to gate in an Angel, even if it had one, since it still holds seven surviving units. Its forces are free to move now, and an untouched Troll closes with the Minotaur, hoping to exterminate it and savagely curtail the defender's Reinforcement options. A Troll steps between the two surviving Ogres, only one of which it can effectively attack, since it is particularly hopeless at striking up-Slope, having its Skill effectively reduced to 1 for the purpose! (Against a 4-skill enemy like the Minotaur, the difference between attacking with 1 skill or 2 is irrelevant, but otherwise it is a very drastic debuff.) Though worried about the possibility of losing it, Sylvan allows the Werebear to move in and face down the other Ogre; the intervening Slope makes it an undesirably fair fight, but it seems necessary. The Lion attacks, and finds that the attacker's luck is also cursed; only two damage is dealt, so the Troll is forced to finish the job, ignoring the hill-mounted Ogre in the process, whom only the Werebear can attack, with exactly the prowess that an Ogre could. It too does poorly, inflicting just a couple damage. Lastly, another Troll attempts to attack the wily Minotaur, two damage manages to get through, and the Minotaur manages just three in return. Trying to obtain the rangestriker's freedom, the Ogre ignores the near-dead Lion and bashes at the Troll, but doesn't quite reach the impressiveness that its roll would need to kill the brute. The other Ogre takes on the Warbear, with the advantage of striking downslope; he discovers that all the missing good luck somehow wound up in his pocket, and comes within inches of killing the equally strong ursine in a single blow.

Defensive maneuvers come next, but the only unit that can move is the Troll, who climbs up the hill and then strikes down at his counterpart, gaining no advantage but suffering no trouble either. He does mangificently, killing his counterpart at a stroke, although this leaves the Minotaur with nothing to attack. The Ogre finishes off the Warbear, though not by much as his luck returns to terrible; 2 damage carries over to the Troll. The Warbear returns the blow, but again does poorly, and it's left to the Troll to try to secure the kill, which he's very inept at while striking upslope (even "up" is a different concept for the slow-witted trolls). He manages, just barely; his moribund counterpart makes an even more different assault on the Minotaur, managing not to carry over with just 1 damage to the last Ogre.

Since the undamaged Titan can easily come exterminate him next round, with only the vaguest and most remote possibility of success in counterattacking (and if he managed, that would be a lame way to end the game), the hilltop Troll opts to concede at this point, simply to save some time and effort. Troll and Minotaur are both worth 16, and Ogres are 12 each, so 32+24=56 points worth of victory for Green this time, atop his previous exactly-200. But recruiting in the Hills is impossible, and now the weakness of the Titan's defenders is known, so he prepares to defend his very life on the reverse side of the day cycle; his other legions . Opting not to split Securian after all, Argent takes his turn, sending Cyclonic to crash into Carcinox; this consists of three Trolls, who will definitely falter in the Hills, but a Minotaur and worst of all a Warlock!

With his own force being almost as trollish, the green Titan sees he has poor chances to win...and I am extremely tired. So Lord Sylvan of the Viridian Throng formally admits that his strategic blunder has cost him this contest, and the war is over for the rest of the Cycle. However long, ultimately, that may prove to be.

*******************

Postmortem

Considering how much time and energy this Let's Play cost me, I hope at least one person manages to appreciate it. Let me know if my efforts to disguise all game terminology with in-setting language was at all useful in making the thing more readable, and/or if you were disappointed with the fact that I eventually lost the ability to keep doing it. It was an experiment that I'm eager to evaluate, as to whether it could ever be worth repeating.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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