Gems in the Wastes (Exalted/Warhammer Fantasy/CK2)

zxzx24 said:

@Critian Caceorte will rolls (or enemy action) be turning once successful actions into incidents in the future? Especially retroactively?

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Generally no. Heart-Eaters are particularly subversive, but the sudden reveal here actually was to your benefit for two reasons:

1. You gained a relatively early lead on investigating what's going on with the Heart-Eater IC.
2. In the sake of fairness, I had to discard my original reveal plans for the Heart-Eater, which was them making a Pawn of your son. Granted, for that you would have had personal actions to talk with him to perhaps figure it out. But still, that's one point of paranoia you can take off of the table.

As for the Raksha and the Infernal, both of them are not currently near your position. After all, there were other starting locations you could have chosen, just because you went one way doesn't mean the others went the same way. They're going to be more long-term threats here, especially since from what I rolled neither are particularly combat-heavy.

In addition, generally if a Luck roll is particularly bad, than that means that enemy action is afoot.

As an aside, I've finished up the rest of the Turn 1 results. With how much more time I have remaining on the vote with no new votes being added, I'm debating calling the vote sooner than projected. So if any of you have not created or voted on a plan for the Advisor Vote just yet, I suggest doing so. If you need it, I can make a plan summary post just like I did for Turn 1 to help.

Please see previous parts for full plan details. Individual actions will still be listed along with rolls.

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Learning Actions
-[X][Learning][LOCKED] Sorcerous Survey (DC 0/30)
Roll: 81; Notable Success, finds 15 people who have potential for Sorcery.

When you surveyed the people for any Sorcerers still present in the populace, you were pleasantly surprised by the results. All of your students survived, of course, as well as another sorcerer you were not familiar with who specialized in transportation spells. He could be called upon to create a Floral Ferry at any time, and these rental services were how he earned his family income. Besides those 6, there was also your niece Abioye and yourself, making 8 total initiated Sorcerers in New Uluiru. With your survey, you found a rather decent amount of individuals you suspected had the potential to learn the art, around 15 people total.

The issue was finding the time to teach them. If you could do that, then you might have a new class on your hands.

Unlocked Personal Action: The First Class

-[X][Learning] Medical Aid (DC 20+)
Roll: 96; Notable Success, heals wounded General Troops to restore their size (Size 3 -> 4).

Apparently your doctors were more than up to snuff with taking on the task of healing. While injuries among the populace were relatively few, that did not mean that none existed. Still, your medical team was able to diagnose and treat each problem they were handed with remarkable alacrity. In fact, so great was the speed at which they worked that they were able to move onto other issues.

Issues such as your returning army of troops, most bearing either prisoners or injuries as they came back. The doctors and their assistants were there almost immediately to take soldiers in and triage their way through the worst of them. By the end of the third month, not only had every soldier received the aid they needed, but most would be able to return to the fray sooner than you had expected. This act of duty did admittedly inspire you, as you began to think of ways to improve their efficiency even more.

Unlocked Learning Action: House of Healing
Made Progress towards Unlocking Learning Action (Working): Wellspring of Life. Requires "Draw Up Freshwater" to be completed ?/? times.

-[X][Learning] Stabilize Reality for 10 Miles (DC 45/55/65)
--[X] Assigned Sorcerer: Yourself (-1 Personal Action; Frees Up 1 Learning Action)
Roll Bonus: +17
Roll Result: 38 + 17 = 55; 2nd Degree Success. Remove Wyld from Future City Center, at the cost of sending Dhar out to nearby enemy settlements.

Before you could work on hiding your people away from outsiders, you first needed to work on removing the Wyld's taint on the land. Besides the ongoing risk of mutation from being inside what was likely a Middlemarche, there was also the risk the chaotic Essence had on any future Workings you sought to perform. It was better that you eliminate that risk permanently, rather than allow it to play havoc with your future plans. The only question was, how?

Trying to purge away the taint via sheer force was unlikely to work in the long-term. The Wyld always does its best to creep back in, stopped only by the efforts of the Gods and Sorcerous Transmutation. You couldn't depend on the gods, not now, so that really only left Sorcery as the solution for this problem. And luckily for your people, you thought that you had an answer.

Rather than simply eliminating the Wyld energies permeating this place, if you could somehow channel them downwards into the earth, past their original flows, lose their twisting energy from clashing with the Earth Essence below and then directed back towards whatever source they came from, that could drain away the taint from the land. With that taint removed, not only would the mutations cease to occur, but the magic done in this place would remain stable long-term. It was a remarkably easy plan altogether, one that you patted yourself on the back for coming up with. As your other apprentices were still busy managing their own families (what remained of them, that is), and you didn't want to bother Mobolaji with a problem like this when he was having his own personal issues, you decided to attempt this great working all by yourself. For most sorcerers, attempting something like this on your own was suicidal.

For you, it just became a bit more difficult than you had initially thought.

While channeling the strange Essence flows of the Wyld was simple enough, moving them down below the surface proved to be more of a challenge than you realized. The energy rejected the orderly power of the earth, and sought to remain skybound like the wind. While interesting to discover, this didn't help your working very much. You attempted again and again to direct the energy down, but it just would not budge. With some regret for this would affect things in the future, you couldn't stop your Working now when halting the process could make things worse. Instead, you pushed the Wyld energies outwards, channeling them away from your land in exchange for inflicting the problem onto someone else.

You would find a better way to solve this problem. But for now, you at least bought your people time and safety.

Mining Actions
-[X][Mining] Ground Survey (DC 60)
Roll: 23; Failure; 2 Opportunities Left

As expected from the initial studies done by the Miner's Guild, the land here was quite poor in terms of mineral content. As surveys were conducted across the immediate area, nothing was found to be of worth to anyone. On the one hand, this did mean that the area where your people were currently settled in would not have to be relocated to make way for mines. On the other, not having easy access to metal would put a strain on any future projects you had in mind.

There was still plenty of ground to cover in the region you had stabilized, but your miners warned you that it was still unlikely that anything would be found here. Any success would likely require divine or elemental intervention.

-[X][Mining] Mountain Scouting (DC 20+)
Roll: 64; Success; Iron Discovered, Dangers Avoided

The mountains, on the other hand, proved more fruitful here. While there was still some worries about Wyld Taint in this far-off region, it seemed that less of it was present in this mountain range. Better still, there was a lack of rockfalls in the future or any other hazard common in mining. The vein of iron which had been found was only partially hidden away within a natural cave system, meaning that the need for building new tunnels was lower than usual. Overall, a good find, if a bit convenient to haul the contents all the way back home.

The issue, of course, with the mountains would come up later...

Unlocked Mining Action: Build a Mine (Iron)
See Mutation Roll results for more details...

Personal Actions
-[X][Personal][LOCKED] Decide Who'll Advise (No Roll)

Results will be seen at start of Turn 2.

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Mutation Roll (1d10): 4 individuals mutated.

As you looked over the emaciated body of the poor child in the medical tent today, you carefully halted any grimace from taking over your face. You would not flinch when one of your own suffered from an affliction which was not their fault, especially not one so young. Besides, it wouldn't do to make her panic. She was not a monster, regardless of what the Wyld had done to her. Her body may have been turned into little more than skin and bones, but she was still a person, still alive.

When you finished your examination, you directed the doctor in the tent to speak in a far-off corner. Normally, you would have taken this outside, but her parents still remained outside of the tent flaps. So, you needed to content yourself with getting some distance. "And you say that three others have also suffered from mutations such as these?"

The doctor nodded. "The three in question were all members of the Miner's Guild, their prolonged exposure outside to the Wyld caused these changes to occur. The girl is the only mutated individual who has not stepped foot outside of here."

You nodded, slowly filtering the explanation through what you knew. Your Working to eliminate the chaotic Taint was still, well, working, reducing the presence of the Wyld to a much safer level, but it was likely that this girl had been changed before you finished your project. For now, all you could do is accommodate her condition with the best doctors on hand. While wealth was not of much importance at the current moment, you still had plenty of money stored away to be distributed when a currency besides food rations could be used again.

You would also need to consider if it was worth the effort trying to scour away the Wyld from the path to the mountains, or even in the mountain range itself. You could also just rotate out Miners every so often in the hopes of avoiding further corruption, but that would mean less overall experience with the terrain for each miner. Perhaps, if you had something more portable, you could send it along with the miners to their destination, but it would likely sacrifice some of its power as a force of Order in exchange. Even the Exalted couldn't have everything they wanted without effort and sacrifice.

Utilizing your wealth will require 2 out of the following 3 things: A stable Food and Water supply, the Money Matters action, and Trade Partners. Once these requirements are fulfilled, you can utilize your nation's wealth to conduct trade and fund certain projects.

Without some method of protecting your miners, they will still be at risk of mutation outside of the homestead's borders, though perhaps not to as great of a degree. Ground Survey is considered to be within the homestead area enough to avoid this problem.

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Author's Note: With how much happened in the last two parts, Part 2 ended up being the runt of the litter in terms of word size and content. I tried to fill it out as best as I could, but obviously it wasn't going to be a huge thing.

The Luck Roll and the Advisor Vote results will both occur during the intro for Turn 2, if you're wondering where those are. I felt they better fit as the prologue for what's going on next.

I think I'm going to go ahead with shortening the vote's length to end on the 7th. That does clash with another quest of mine, but that one will be easy to write and update for. So, if it takes a few days for me to finish up Turn 2, don't worry, I'm not dead, just busy.