Fire Emblem: Last of the Manakete

JAGwin · Dec 3, 2023

SoaringHawk218 said:
"You're pretty light, and with all the flying around you've been doing you deserve a rest."

I feel like there should be a comma after "doing", but I'm not entirely sure.

SoaringHawk218 said:
The rest of the scouting group is nearby: you can hear them all around you and even catch glimpses,

That colon should be either a comma or a period, and if it's a period, then that "you" should be "You".

SoaringHawk218 said:
"It's been a while since you've been back, and depending on how long we have to stay up here helping the Northern Kingdoms it might be a while before we can go back.

This feels repetitive to me, but given what Ryza is saying, I think the way to fix it isn't to change the wording, just italicize "can" so that Ryza is putting more emphasis on that word. Also;

SoaringHawk218 said:
"It's been a while since you've been back, and depending on how long we have to stay up here helping the Northern Kingdoms it might be a while before we can go back.

There should be a comma after "Kingdoms".

SoaringHawk218 said:
But what I'm doing is important: while I'm sure life for most people in town

That colon should be one of a semi-colon, a comma or a period. If it's a period, then that "while" should be "While".

SoaringHawk218 said:
"Besides, spies steal information. I'm more of a… security consultant? Counter-assassin? Professional back-watcher?"

How about "bodyguard"?

SoaringHawk218 said:
My mom died in a big Flame Fever outbreak when I was ten, along with a lot of other kid's parents.

That "kid's" needs to be pluralized.

SoaringHawk218 said:
"Ryza, most commoner's will never be in the same building as their noble overlady,

"commoners"

SoaringHawk218 said:
"I'm sorry you had to go through that, Belle," you say softly. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Belle: "You can help me kill Cicenco when he inevitably defects to the Empire."

SoaringHawk218 said:
You can sense the Black magic coiling about him: you don't figure he's hugely powerful

That colon should be either a comma or a period. If it's a period, then that "you" should be "You".

SoaringHawk218 said:
(you haven't studied Black magic, but you've started to recognizing the decoration humans put on their more advanced tomes.)

That period should be after the parenthesis.

SoaringHawk218 said:
I had four different complications, and after rolling I considered switching out the one you got for a different one since in hindsight it was a bit worse than renegade priest, but I decided I wouldn't meddle in things after rolling.

I'm not quite following this, so quick question for clarification: Are you saying that the result from the 1 on the d4 is the renegade priest and you were tempted to change it because you thought a 1 should be a worse result, or are you saying that the 1 resulted in something else and we haven't seen what it is yet?

Regarding plans, while I don't have much in the way of specifics, I think we should try to take the priest and one of the leaders alive, both to figure out what they're doing (right now it sounds like some kind of attempted flanking maneuver, but unless they have a lot more troops than I'm understanding them to, they wouldn't be able to meaningfully change things at Starhelm, so that can't be it), and to hopefully prove to the Divine Realm that yes, this did actually happen, and moreover it happened the way we said it did.

SoaringHawk218 · Dec 3, 2023

JAGwin said:
I'm not quite following this, so quick question for clarification: Are you saying that the result from the 1 on the d4 is the renegade priest and you were tempted to change it because you thought a 1 should be a worse result, or are you saying that the 1 resulted in something else and we haven't seen what it is yet?

The first one: there were four complications I came up with, and after you all rolled and I went back to see which one you got, I got to thinking that the complication I'd put on Result 2 was probably worse that Result 1, but rather than make the probably worst one the lowest roll I decided it was more fair to stick with what I had.

Thank you as always for your editing.

EDIT:

Alectai said:
Black Magic has an advantage against Yellow Magic I think?

This is true, which means that if you fight him with Yellow magic you lose one dice and he gains one.

Alectai · Dec 3, 2023

Right, so he beats us even if we're using Arcthunder, but if we face him with Shine instead, we'll take away his bonus die and get it ourselves.

Does Barrier still work even against Black Magic?

Then again, it might be best to just stick to spamming Mend, it seems to have the same effect as Barrier for the opening round, and doesn't risk giving him a Triangle Advantage on us. We might even be able to pretend to be a White Magic Caster if we keep our wings under wraps--which we probably should given how they have Eight Fucking Level 4 Yeomen here and we would be their number one target.

On the other hand, if we can have Barrier up for our force by the start of the match, and it'll stay up, then we can have Mend as our Support Spell up for the encounter and get the best of both worlds.

SoaringHawk218 · Dec 3, 2023

Alectai said:
Right, so he beats us even if we're using Arcthunder, but if we face him with Shine instead, we'll take away his bonus die and get it ourselves.

Does Barrier still work even against Black Magic?

Then again, it might be best to just stick to spamming Mend, it seems to have the same effect as Barrier for the opening round, and doesn't risk giving him a Triangle Advantage on us. We might even be able to pretend to be a White Magic Caster if we keep our wings under wraps--which we probably should given how they have Eight Fucking Level 4 Yeomen here and we would be their number one target.

On the other hand, if we can have Barrier up for our force by the start of the match, and it'll stay up, then we can have Mend as our Support Spell up for the encounter and get the best of both worlds.

You can only have one Support Spell active at a time, so you have to choose between Mend or Barrier. However, Barrier does work against Black magic and does not trigger Triangle Advantage one way or another.

As for the yeomen, there is a solution to that problem... Check Ryza's combat skills

Alectai · Dec 3, 2023

So, wait, are you suggesting we unleash the Kraken?

....

It would be a way to delete both of the enemy detachments in short order and force a surrender.

JAGwin · Dec 3, 2023

Alectai said:
Right, so he beats us even if we're using Arcthunder, but if we face him with Shine instead, we'll take away his bonus die and get it ourselves.

Remember that we have Mother's Hymn, so we can up-cast that (although I don't remember what the next tier of offensive White magic is).

SoaringHawk218 · Dec 3, 2023

JAGwin said:
Remember that we have Mother's Hymn, so we can up-cast that (although I don't remember what the next tier of offensive White magic is).

You actually can't automatically upcast anything except Yellow magic; it's not in Ryza's blood enough for her to automatically figure out how to modify the spell without spending some time researching and training.

So you're just on Light now, not Ellight, since the vote chose to focus on Mend next in White magic.

JAGwin · Dec 3, 2023

SoaringHawk218 said:
You actually can't automatically upcast anything except Yellow magic; it's not in Ryza's blood enough for her to automatically figure out how to modify the spell without spending some time researching and training.

So you're just on Light now, not Ellight, since the vote chose to focus on Mend next in White magic.

Strange... I thought I remembered Ryza casting higher tier magic against the Lich via Mother's Hymn. Was that just regular Light?

EDIT: *checks* Seems like it, because the narration makes it sound like that was her first time casting offensive White magic. My bad.

SoaringHawk218 · Dec 3, 2023

JAGwin said:
Strange... I thought I remembered Ryza casting higher tier magic against the Lich via Mother's Hymn. Was that just regular Light?

EDIT: *checks* Seems like it, because the narration makes it sound like that was her first time casting offensive White magic. My bad.

That's alright, it happens. I had to go check my notes as well to make sure I wasn't misleading you all.

alvus · Dec 3, 2023

SoaringHawk218 said:
It was a statue depicting his goddess, a tall, detailed work of marble art depicting a beautiful woman wearing a flowing robes, holding a diamond-tipped scepter in one hand and a golden orb representing the sun in the other.

However, most of the man's focus is on the two smaller figures kneeling on either side of the woman, staring up at her adoringly. One boy and one girl, both are childlike in their appearance, and both have feathery wings sprouting from the back of their robes. He stares at those wings… they're smaller than the wings he'd seen on the girl… feathered rather than wyvern-like… but the similarities are still uncanny.

So a few dragons decided that discretion was the better part of valor and escaped the empire....
i guess if the priest succeeds at disseminating the truth....

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSTN3mHEAOA

Barondoctor · Dec 4, 2023

Anybody with better tactics than either bum rushing them to best advantage or releasing the dragon?

Miho Chan · Dec 4, 2023

The Shock Value of the Dragon is definitely worth it, but have we considered a more subtle and significantly less "Honorable" approach of waiting till nightfall to ambush them? Unless I missed something and we have a genuinely limited timeframe to attack them, I feel like attacking now might not be our best bet.

TaliesinSkye · Dec 4, 2023

My two cents:

The traitor priest is the priority target, here. Their whole plan clearly falls apart without him. Withdrawal after taking him out is an acceptable result if the battle doesn't go well.

After the priest, that black magic caster is likely worth getting rid of, but he could be tricky to pin down. The empire is very short on casters, maintaining caster supremacy is a major strategic and tactical advantage we can milk for everything it's worth.

The woman with the sense of authority no doubt has a crest.

JAGwin · Dec 4, 2023

TaliesinSkye said:
The woman with the sense of authority no doubt has a crest.

Last time I checked, we are not in Fodlan.

That aside, while her description made me think she was a Great Knight, she's not listed as a promoted unit, just a Cavalier.

TaliesinSkye · Dec 4, 2023

JAGwin said:
Last time I checked, we are not in Fodlan.

That aside, while her description made me think she was a Great Knight, she's not listed as a promoted unit, just a Cavalier.

Had to check back, is seal the correct word? There's no guide to what stuff is for people who haven't played the games.

GreatWyrmGold · Dec 4, 2023

SoaringHawk218 said:
He stares at those wings… they're smaller than the wings he'd seen on the girl… feathered rather than wyvern-like… but the similarities are still uncanny.

Fae, is that you?

That had been interesting enough that you'd reported it to Artemis, and she'd come over to take a look. However, it had turned out to just be some "smugglers," and while your friend clearly hadn't liked them, she had said that they were only a minor problem and not worth the time and effort to arrest and escort to Starhelm.

"That makes sense. Smug people are annoying, but they're not dangerous."

"When you get around to giving that Knight Seal of yours to someone, they'll just get a little more intense and chivalrous and junk like that."

I wonder how Belle would be if we gave her the Knight Seal.
Confused, probably. And maybe irritated.

You frown. "Couldn't you have asked Countess Mantrae for help?" you ask.

Belle laughs bitterly. "Ryza, most commoners will never be in the same building as their noble overlady, let alone get her to make one of her minions do what they're supposed to. No, we were on our own."

Makes sense that Ryza would make that mistake. She was quasi-adopted by a noble family as soon as she woke up, and before that the only authorities she knew were her own parents. She might intellectually know that big nations don't work like families, that the little peasant kids can't talk to their royal papa, but she hasn't lived it.

"I've been meaning to mention that there's a few boys in Agrithe who've been asking me what sorts of flowers you like. I figure you for an edelweiss girl, what with growing up in the mountains, but if that's not the case-"

Makes sense. She's small, clean, and bright; while she's yellow, she can cast white magic. May she bloom and grow forever.

The woman grunts. "Very good," she says. "But you'll forgive me if I want to see this all for myself. It's not in my nature to trust a traitor, even if he is betraying other traitors."

Ugh, deontologists.

TaliesinSkye said:
Had to check back, is seal the correct word? There's no guide to what stuff is for people who haven't played the games.

A quick trip to the Fire Emblem Wiki reveals that some promotion items have been called Seals and some have been called Crests, along with the occasional Bolt, Ring, Proof, etc.

But yeah, SoaringHawk has just been using seals.

Barondoctor · Dec 4, 2023

Seal (Ocean, Master)
Crown (Master)
Proof (Hero's, Master)
Crest (Hero, Knight)

Given the cavalier nature of the boss, Crest is probably more precise tbh; we're not in Thracia where everybody promotes on the same items or endgame Tellius where they use crowns.

I know back in the games thieves just couldn't use a Knight Crest; considering the "played for angst" nature of heaven seals in FE7 I wouldn't be surprised if trying to give Belle the knight seal had her scoff about how "of course it doesn't work on me".

At least right now.

We give her more Thrilling Heroics moments and we might be able to promote her into the sort of Shadow Knight that would make Bruce Wayne blink.

But that's not today. Probably not tomorrow either.

I do think while we have strategic initiative...wait.

Could we Bolting from the blue the Priest and then continue to play for range and potshot the commander to keep her occupied while the rest of our forces hit and fade in a different direction to force the enemy to pick army or us? Jump and stomp their yeomen and then pull back and make the command element choose which one they go after and which one falls on them to flank them?

Emanyzal · Dec 4, 2023

Miho Chan said:
The Shock Value of the Dragon is definitely worth it, but have we considered a more subtle and significantly less "Honorable" approach of waiting till nightfall to ambush them? Unless I missed something and we have a genuinely limited timeframe to attack them, I feel like attacking now might not be our best bet.

SoaringHawk218 said:
"Very good, priest," the cavalier says. "Alright, men, take a breather, we move on in ten."

Seems they're not quite willing to make camp right on the border they're trying to sneak across.

Alectai · Dec 4, 2023

One possibility that comes to mind would be having Dragon Ryza attack from the Northeast, driving them to the Southwest into the waiting arms of our team.

That aside, does Dragon!Ryza have enough understanding of our side to be able to differentiate between Friend and Foe @SoaringHawk218 ? And also, what are our options for Emotional Context?

SoaringHawk218 · Dec 4, 2023

Alectai said:
One possibility that comes to mind would be having Dragon Ryza attack from the Northeast, driving them to the Southwest into the waiting arms of our team.

That aside, does Dragon!Ryza have enough understanding of our side to be able to differentiate between Friend and Foe @SoaringHawk218 ? And also, what are our options for Emotional Context?

For the first question, absolutely. Dragon-Ryza's impulsive and short-sighted, but she's not stupid. She's spent weeks with many of these people, she can tell them apart.

As for the second, now that Ryza's Awakened you get to choose how long and what emotion she transforms in. So in the vote, you'd say something like "Ryza transforms into her dragon-form for 4 rounds using Anger and attacks from the Northeast."

The trick is trying to predict as close as possible to the actual number of rounds in a fight. Too few, and you untransform mid-battle. Too much, and Dragon-Ryza's still running around afterwards in a full emotional state, and depending on how delicate an after-battle situation is that might be harmful.

As for the emotions, the three broad sweeps Ryza currently has access to are Fear, Determination and Anger. In-universe, there are plenty of nuanced versions of those three, but mechanically each gives a different effect. For example, Fear gives the Brave Weapon effect (Ryza rolls out her attack twice, using all her bonuses and rerolls and everything, and takes the better of the two.) Anger gives her Killer (All 10s count as 3 successes) and Determination gives her two additional dice on top of the additional one she gets from using Elthunder-level breath.

There is one more broad emotion I have planned, but it won't show up until later.

Alectai · Dec 4, 2023

Right, and we don't have to worry about Angry!Ryza Collateral Damaging our side, right?

Because broadly, I think a good play is "Use our air superiority to force them into an ambush from our dudes, while having Belle focus on being a sneaky rogue and see if she can live capture the low level White Mage in the confusion"

Definitely want to use Angry!Ryza in this case given those mechanics though, Because 4 Autos and then they need 3 successes just to register any against us, and then we're rolling 6 Dragon Dice with 5 rerolled means that we're going to be hitting roughly 10 successes against them.

Of course, the worrisome bit would be "They're going to be rolling 36 dice, and even if they succeed only 20% of the time, that's still only 7 successes on average, of which 3 disappear due to our Defense. A 6+ result regardless--and I'm not sure if the Spearmen can contribute if Dragon!Ryza is bombarding them.

Is this take about right?

JAGwin · Dec 4, 2023

SoaringHawk218 said:
The trick is figuring trying to predict as close as possible to the actual number of rounds in a fight.

Something went wrong here.

Alectai · Dec 4, 2023

I think three turns would be about right in this case. One turn for them to react, a second turn for them to start fucking off, and then a third Turn for our dudes to Jump Them, at which point, anything still alive would be dealing with the Whole Squad.

Of course, this all gets flummoxed if they happen to be rocking Wyrmbane Weapons as a precaution and then we just fucking die, but the scouting didn't reveal anything suggesting that. Of course, if they Stand their Ground instead of React like everyone else has, the plan will also be fucked. Dragon Ryza can likely do a lot of damage to one of those groups, but if they all blob up, chances are she loses that fight.

Alectai · Dec 6, 2023

Just realized nobody's voted!

Okay, here is the Plan

[X] Plan: Angry Dragon Pinchy Claws
-[X] Secondary Objectives: Capture the Priest if possible, any other surrenders are as opportunity allows. Try not to let any escape.
-[X] Strategy: Ryza circles around to the northeast and transforms using Anger for Three Turns before attacking. To draw attention and pin the enemy formation in place, while our main force moves in to ambush them from the Southwest. Ryza prioritizes archers during this period as best as she can, bombarding with dragonbreath.

veekie · Dec 6, 2023

[X] Plan: Angry Dragon Pinchy Claws

Fire Emblem: Last of the Manakete

What would readers prefer?

Pure narrative quest: no dice will be used, the author will have free reign to decide what happens.

New dice system: the author will design a new, better dice system to add some randomness and risk.

Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion

Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion

The things I chase come to me.

One with too many ideas

Occasional Editor

Occasional Editor

The things I chase come to me.

Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion

Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion

Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion

Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion