Are the fyoras we tried to scout with still in our zone of control? I'm not going to try and concoct a plan before I've had breakfast, but right now it seems sensible to have them scatter and probe the periphery of the encirclement while we do whatever we're going to do. We use the fyoras to put pressure on at least a few of the crossbowmen, because every bolt fired at one of them is a bolt not being fired at non-disposable assets like ourselves and Waters (and hey, maybe they'll manage to kill off some of the enemies.)
[X] Order a breakout back towards the way you came.
-[X] Lead with a screen of creations
--[X] Where possible, have Waters watch your back and look through their eyes to get a picture of what you are facing.
[X] Order a breakout back towards the way you came.
-[X] Lead with a screen of creations
--[X] Where possible, have Waters watch your back and look through their eyes to get a picture of what you are facing.
Seems like a good plan. Once we get out of the mist and back up a decent way we can stay back a bit and have the Fyora form a firing line while the humans hide behind the Thads. Not, of course, that such an effort would go exactly to plan.
By process of elimination, the necromancer can only be in the temple district. Fortunately, the northern district in which Sindri's forces are currently located happens to border the temple district.
The plan is to evacuate from the northern district, go directly to the temple district, and finish it. It is time to strike the serpent's head.
Vote will be open for a day or two more. Though sadly not a lot of votes to begin with at the moment - should probably have provided options in hindsight. Ah well, live and learn.
Adhoc vote count started by Leoric on Dec 1, 2021 at 10:05 AM, finished with 19 posts and 5 votes.
[X] Order a breakout back towards the way you came.
-[X] Lead with a screen of creations
--[X] Where possible, have Waters watch your back and look through their eyes to get a picture of what you are facing.
[X] Order a breakout back towards the way you came.
-[X] Lead with a screen of creations
--[X] Where possible, have Waters watch your back and look through their eyes to get a picture of what you are facing.
just noticed this had an update. this seems like a good plan.
[X] Order a breakout back towards the way you came.
-[X] Lead with a screen of creations
--[X] Where possible, have Waters watch your back and look through their eyes to get a picture of what you are facing.
I'm surprised the vote hasn't been called already.
There really is only one plan to vote on so it doesn't
make much sense to me to keep the vote going.
Can we use the Vlish to detect nearby minds? Hopefully the mist doesn't interfere too much with its psychic powers, allowing us to get some sense of the enemy forces beyond them having encircled us.
Also, I think that we should put the majority of our units in the back to cover our retreat instead of focusing them all in front. Think of it like this; currently we can expect the Necromancer to have it's forces evenly distributed around us, but, as we begin to retreat, we should expect the enemy forces to accumulate towards our rear because we're moving away from them. If we accumulate all the creatures at the front the mercenaries will be left engaged at the rear and will likely take a lot of damage, especially so if they can't manage to safely disengage afterwards. Besides, the mercenaries are more skilled, and if we place our creatures at the rear we could also use them to delay the necromancer while we retreat to a place were we may retake control of the wandering units left around.
My proposal is this, a slight adjustment:
[X] Order a breakout out away from the mist.
-[X] Use some strong creation to aid in opening the way for the group while having most of them cover the rear.
--[X] Where possible, have Waters watch your back and look through their eyes to get a picture of what you are facing.
--[X] Where possible, have Fiochag and the Valish pick priority targets.
Few undead have missle attacks, and even fewer pack crossbows. Likely what we have here is just a few of their men with some lesser undead. Odds are we can fight our way out but...well, Sindri is squishy. Terms like "likely" and "odds are" ok for guys with armour and health to charge in but way riskier for us. So while I suspect this will be make us face palm later when we realize how much we outclassed our opponent; the reasonable and intelligent thing is for the breakout to a safer position.
[X] Order a breakout back towards the way you came.
-[X] Lead with a screen of creations
--[X] Where possible, have Waters watch your back and look through their eyes to get a picture of what you are facing. GM Note: You do not yet possess the ability to see through the eyes of your creations. You can understand what they are feeling at range and can roughly guide them though.
It takes but a mere moment for you to mentally reach out and touch the minds of your creatures, stoking their natural aggression to combat levels and giving them the rough commands they require - and so seconds after you barely avoid being wounded the return fire begins.
One benefit many people do not realise, even in Shaper lands, is just how hard it is to hit a base template fyora or cryoa when they act as skirmishers. For while they might not posses the physical might of some derivative templates, or the enhanced ranged attack of others, what they do possess is a body roughly the size of a small dog at its largest, and one capable of both great speed and continuous fire on par or better than that of most archers.
And so when your return fire begins, you suspect that from the enemies point of view it is coming from everywhere at once, as both fyora and cryoa are firing while speeding through the mist and weaving in and out of the formation you have established around yourself and Waters and his men even as you begin to retreat back to the docks.
Sadly, while you do hear a few muted screams through the mist as the fyora hit something, and even see a few other silent ones that are struck by the fire and ignite without really changing their apparent pace noticeably, it does not stop the attack.
Which is why even as you retreat you manage to catch a glimpse of at least one of the enemies attacking you.
The enemy, even at the few glances you catch while retreating as they engage your ablative shield of creatures, appears to be a new variation of the previously encountered undead. These appear to be better equipped, better maintained - and you suspect from how they engage your creatures may even be directly guided instead of merely wandering or being roughly pushed in your general direction.
Whereas most undead, and especially the lesser variations you have come across so far, will merely engage the closest enemy and ignore anything else around them - these undead warriors appear to in fact be supporting each other even if only to the most minor degree, trying to corner or push your thahds not as individual but as small groups of two or three of them at once.
This is having mixed results - their coordination is far from perfect, nor is their equipment, and your thahds are far stronger and durable than they may look... But it is not entirely ineffective, and the thahds are losing more than they are winning from what you can gather.
Your Fyora on the other hand appear to be doing rather well, and so are the cryoa and the clawbugs. Whatever their armour may have once been, and even if it is of greater quality than the other undead you encountered, it is still worn and ill maintained in truth and so can offer little resistance to the elemental attacks of the fyora or the armour piercing claws and stingers of the clawbugs.
In fact, mere moments after the thought crosses your mind you see a clawbug launch itself upon the chest of one of the undead, its tail wrapping around the undead's lower body even as the claws grab the neck and a segment of the torso and then… cut, so to speak, even as its tail constructs and pulls.
The end effect is that by the time the undead hits the ground it has almost been separated into three separate pieces. An 'almost' said clawbugs swiftly makes into an 'actually' in as soon as its tail has been disentangled from the undeads legs.
Your thahds as previously noted though do not suffer the same success - their fists crash into the undead, but it seems that where the armour does not absorb the blows, the undead merely shrug it off. Of course, the thahds themselves are shrugging off most of the attacks against them with roughly equal ease.
This confused melee, even as you retreat, begins to push closer to you - which is when you realise that you will either have to abandon most of your forces behind as an ablative shield and withdraw to the harbour district without them, or you will have to turn around and fight back.
The first, obviously, means you will lose most of the creatures currently following you around - perhaps even most of them. But it should allow you to withdraw without issue into not just the outskirts of the harbour district, but rather all the way back to one of your previously cleared strongpoints that you could appropriate for your own needs in order to regroup and adapt your plans.
The second option, meanwhile, would be a more risky endeavour - but with some luck and coordination you may on the other hand be able to pinpoint what or who is coordinating the undead you are faced with in this section of the city. And once identified, if you can then eliminate them? It may very well collapse an entire wing of the Gardeners current defences.
[] Retreat
[] Attack
[] Write in
GM Note: Sorry for the... Five month delay, but work has been killer for me. Also, you rolled horribly for getting a clean getaway.
We now have a clearer picture of the enemy and are no longer quite surrounded. Seems it's time to push back into the enemy in my opinion and seek to find a way to cut off this branch of the gardeners by finding the local necromancer/necromantic control area.
Hm, one is uncertain. By process of elimination, one would assume that the necromancer would be in the pyramid district.
On the other hand, who but the necromancer could be coordinating these undead?
Creatures are expendable. On the other hand, if the necromancer can be slain here, their network severely disrupted at the least, then venturing to the northern district would not have been a waste of time.
One normally prefers the less risky path, but in this case, the potential benefit may outweigh the risk.
As a reminder, Sindri can perform the Final Rest ritual.
Final Rest (Penalty to all necromantic rolls within an area)
As another reminder, Final Rest will be incredibly obvious to the necromancer, like a flair in the night, and they would be moving to neutralize it.
Using it now is an option, what with the coordinated, upgraded undead. It could also be a distraction to draw the necromancer where one wants them to be.
Of course, it could be kept in reserve until after this phase is resolved.
