Good news, the author moved it to ao3.
Warning: it is old, and I had only read it years ago when I was young and not able to understand what was good or bad reading.

Hitchups - Chapter 1 - AvannaK - How to Train Your Dragon (2010) [Archive of Our Own]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I always did have a soft spot of the Byzantines as much as for dragons.
 
I don't know if it is a significant part of the story or not, and came more a few chapters in.

It has a lot of references to the book series, and mixes the humor of the movies in so I am not sure if it is as good as I remember.

Like I said I'll give it a try, if it's not my cup of tea I'll drop it and go read something else. Regardless I appreciate that you looked it up.
 
[X] Remain in Mardja and try to find more mercenaries
-[X] With the festival in full swing for another two weeks, there may not be any sizable mercenary companies in the area who are not already bound by contract. If we cannot find any within a day, we will travel to Kelasi to learn more of the conflict between the Emir and Galzerai. Rather than seeking to speak to the Emir himself, we will instead spend the day seeking out more rumors and accounts from those citizens we are able to speak with, along with using Divination magic such as Ears of the City to learn more.
-[X] If there are mercenary companies available to hire, however, we will attempt to arrange meetings with their representatives to learn the size of their companies, the composition of their forces, and the price for their services.
 
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Just saw that seventh level casting orca. They are awesome. Can make them like a major part pf our empire. Give them a template that has rapid breeding or something. I really love the idea of smart teleporting magic orca. God knows they will be the deadliest hunter on the seas. Just like IRL.
 
@Goldfish, please re-phrase in a way that won't have us spending up to a week here.
We have other destinations both on and off-plane
And a fair bit of them.
 
A genuine question: is anyone interested in doing the remainder of the PoW-actions?

Because I'm not seeing a lot of activity from the thread lately, tbh.
---Plane of Water Actions: Start---
[X] Visit Vialesk again
-[X] Grab the crafting orders we made, make new ones.

[X] Visit the Emirate of Mardja, inquire about setting up a Planar Terminus station there.

[X] Look further for mercenary companies capable of effectively fighting Deep Ones.
-[X] Asking around in Mardja seems a good start, what with us having made a defense pact.

[X] We already got the crafters and Enchanters from Vialesk and Hampa, now would be the time to try and get more from:
-[X] Dalaqua (focus: crafters/artisans, also any enchanters we can get).
-[X] Zerbat (focus: artisans, also any enchanters we can get).
-[X] Dawa (focus: crafters (fishnets), also any enchanters we can get).
-[X] Kela (focus: crafters (massive amounts), also any enchanters we can get).

[X] Look into the situation between the Emirate of Kela and the Wyrm Galzerai - learn the truth about their relationship insofar as we can, there is a possibility of us manning a rescue mission of sorts, in order to get Kela's resource support.

[X] Look into the possibility of bringing more Marid Emirates into your war on Deep Ones:
-[X] Dawa (fishnet-wielding units, said to have been excelling in the last war).
-[X] Kela (huge amounts of crafters, so possibly war-machines of sorts..?).

---Plane of Water Actions: End---
I'm kinda too out of this atm to push stuff through myself, either.

[X] Goldfish
Imma slep more now.
 
A genuine question: is anyone interested in doing the remainder of the PoW-actions?

Because I'm not seeing a lot of activity from the thread lately, tbh.
I'm kinda too out of this atm to push stuff through myself, either.

[X] Goldfish
Imma slep more now.
Not particularly on my end. It's mostly just cut-and-dry "Hire these mercenaries" and "Make new crafting orders". Yeah we're gonna do it, and it's important, but my eyes are gonna glaze over.
 
A genuine question: is anyone interested in doing the remainder of the PoW-actions?

Because I'm not seeing a lot of activity from the thread lately, tbh.
I'm kinda too out of this atm to push stuff through myself, either.

[X] Goldfish
Imma slep more now.
Plane of Water is great, IMO. Interesting people, new places, chances for neat random encounters, etc., plus we need to secure more aquatic mercenaries, and this is the place to do it.
 
A genuine question: is anyone interested in doing the remainder of the PoW-actions?

Because I'm not seeing a lot of activity from the thread lately, tbh.
Delegating this to a few envoys and just getting a paragraph worth of results in a report would be plenty for me.

Mind. I think so about a lot of actions.
 
Just saw that seventh level casting orca. They are awesome. Can make them like a major part pf our empire. Give them a template that has rapid breeding or something. I really love the idea of smart teleporting magic orca. God knows they will be the deadliest hunter on the seas. Just like IRL.
The Spellcasting isn't genetic, I don't think most of their templates are genetic, so their offspring, will just be intelligent big dragonblooded Orcas.
 
Delegating this to a few envoys and just getting a paragraph worth of results in a report would be plenty for me.

Mind. I think so about a lot of actions.
I'm just not sure if we can be efficient that way.

A huge part of us being able to grab alliances with Marid so far was our draconic over-the-top Charisma.
No envoy can really match that, and we kinda need every alliance we can get, to as much as survive against the Deep Ones, imo.

I'll... agree that "grab more crafters" could be delegated at this point. We've proven our credentials, and the quality of work-space we offer time and time again, we should be able to do that without being to the remaining emirates in person.

Not sure if Diplo-corps are up to the task of such caliber yet, though
They were decidedly planetos-scale so far.

Thanks, @Goldfish.
 
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Hmm, OK I'll see about streamlining things where I can. There is a limit to how much of that I can do without making the world less diverse in culture and motivation. Putting more actions in the background like Rhaella's reach negotiations helps with that sort of thing since the narrative does not linger as much on things that feel repetitive
 
I'm just not sure if we can be efficient that way.
You are not efficient. You are losing yourself in frivolous micro-management while losing track of the big picture.

A huge part of us being able to grab alliances with Marid was our draconic over-the-top Charisma.
No envoy can really match that, and we kinda need every alliance we can get, to as much as survive against the Deep Ones, imo.
No. Difficulty was never a result of previous actions. The world still scales to match and it always did.

No amount of mercenaries or crafted creatures will change a single thing. The enemy will always have just enough troops to prove a mild challenge.
 
No amount of mercenaries or crafted creatures will change a single thing. The enemy will always have just enough troops to prove a mild challenge.
While this is entirely true, the nature of that challenge can change simply because @DragonParadox feels the narrative effort of literally overturning every fucking sandbar in your path for some more allies to bring to a fight shouldn't be glossed over.

So rather than him just retroactively nerfing the scope of your contributions by pasting in more CR, he will try to think "they saw this wasn't going to go well and focused on X scheme/plot to even the playing field".
 
The enemy will always have just enough troops to prove a mild challenge.
All I'm trying to do is that we'd have a "mild" challenge indeed, and not an "overwhelming shitshow, fight for your lives everyone, roll d20 to lose cities"-experience with this.

We, objectively, lack the numbers compared to the Squids- even with the forge.
Too many cities for us to defend, too many citadels for us to try and attack, otherwise.

Also, what Crake said.

Edit: deff-ly sleeping naow.
 
While this is entirely true, the nature of that challenge can change simply because @DragonParadox feels the narrative effort of literally overturning every fucking sandbar in your path for some more allies to bring to a fight shouldn't be glossed over.

So rather than him just retroactively nerfing the scope of your contributions by pasting in more CR, he will try to think "they saw this wasn't going to go well and focused on X scheme/plot to even the playing field".
Here is the thing though. We know nothing about how anything could or could not go. The entire threat is undefined, making every effort to mitigate arbitrarily too much or too little.

Heck. We are making CR 15 creatures by the dozen. If that wasn't enough, why doesn't everyone on Planetos have a brainslug for a hat yet?

And if the threat is that ill defined and the consequences of preparations impossible to judge, this here is both a doomed attempt to stave off inevitable defeat and a pointless waste of resources on an easily won war. At the same time.


So the real question is: Do I care?

Run a tally to find out my feelings.
 
No. Difficulty was never a result of previous actions. The world still scales to match and it always did.

No amount of mercenaries or crafted creatures will change a single thing. The enemy will always have just enough troops to prove a mild challenge.

I'm going to have to stop you there. That sort of meta-narrative is not accurate. It's not healthy for the story not for the exercise of playing the game. Challenges scale as you guys choose to take them on or as the background evolves around you, but it's not a constant game of catch up that you can never get ahead of. That would be bad GM-ing on my part and bad storytelling, that sort of issue is why we have a social combat system more complex that me setting a DC for stuff remember? I've taken that advice to heart in more than the particular case.
 
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