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From a Dead World (Skaven Quest)

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Apologies for the shortness of this one, but converting the strange-ass fuckery that is Japanese mythology to a gameable format was confusing and involved a lot of categorization.
 
Xantalos said:
- Mundane Nipponese Creatures - Some of the creatures recovered from Nippon are merely strange creatures that nevertheless obey most biological laws. Bioluminescent herons and sickle-clawed weasels, as well as a species of spherical mice that casts its fur off with explosive force when approached by a predator, are some examples of the odd variety of life found in Nippon.
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Xantalos said:
The categorizations of Nipponese creatures below cost 1 Authority each to research unless otherwise stated. The action of a suitable hero unit will also suffice. Verminkin may research 2 categories at once unless otherwise stated.

- Living Objects - A collection of Nipponese objects - teapots, swords, boots, it seems random - which seem to have become living creatures, complete with organs and circulatory systems adapted for each of their particular shapes. Their respective functions are not impaired by their alive status, and indeed they seem to be more useful than mundane items - some even possess the ability to think and speak. It's unknown how this happens, however.
- Chimeric Creatures - A wide array of Nipponese creatures that seem to be comprised of the features of many normal animals stuck together. They don't seem to be negatively affected by their oddly-placed features, and behave as normal animals do. It is unclear how hybridization of this degree occurred, and how it might be induced in other creatures.
- Mutated Humans - Some of the Nipponese creatures were otherwise normal humans that seem to have been altered in two ways: they have lost the capacity for most higher thought, and they always have some extremely divergent feature on their bodies. Some examples have been a preposterously extendable neck, extraordinarily long fingers, eyes that expand in size when their face is observed, and the ability to grow upon observation. They don't seem to be pledged to Chaos like most humans, and it is unclear if they reproduce or it is the result of mutation.
- Human Hybrid Variants - These differ from the humanoid mutants in that they are instead animals with the features of humans. Crabs with working human faces on their shells, bipedal creatures with the top halves of horses and the bottom halves of humans, cows with human heads, and tigers with human arms for limbs all occupy this category, among others. It's unclear if they are simply very mutated humans or actually self-propagating species somehow.
- Magical Creatures - These are creatures that possess some form of innate magic of sorts. The many-tailed foxes weave illusions and drink emotion, troupes of age-like creatures read minds and repeat the thoughts they see faster than they can be made, capricious humanoid reptilian creatures that can control water, animals that seem to be innate reservoirs and generators of certain kinds of magic, and other strange feats. They all seem to be intelligent as well, growing more powerful and clever with age. Unlocking their secrets costs 4 Authority. The assignment of either Thanquol or Verminkin will reduce this requirement by one.
- Apparitions - These beings are a strange in-between of spirit and mundane, being creatures that manifest in otherwise biologically impossible forms in odd and specific circumstances. Some examples are of a whale skeleton that swims around in a certain area off the east coast of Nippon, a human skull that doubles itself once every few minutes when inside a castle, and a disembodied horse leg that dangles from trees and kicks at whatever passes near. They aren't daemonic, but neither are they wholly material, as they manifest again shortly after being destroyed. It is unclear how, or even if they are created. Investigating this fully costs 3 Authority, with Verminkin's supervision reducing it by 1. A suitable hero unit may reduce the cost further.
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So many things, so little Authority. Verminkin's two for one should help though.
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- Living Objects - A collection of Nipponese objects - teapots, swords, boots, it seems random - which seem to have become living creatures, complete with organs and circulatory systems adapted for each of their particular shapes. Their respective functions are not impaired by their alive status, and indeed they seem to be more useful than mundane items - some even possess the ability to think and speak. It's unknown how this happens, however.
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What. What. Are in Fallen London-verse Polythreme now? Because that's really creepy.
 
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EVA-Saiyajin said:
That's a lot of creatures. At least Moulder won't be lacking in things to do for a long while.
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Chimeric Creatures looks to me like a good place to start. Would probably help us make hybrid monsters with the rest of Moulder's war beasts.

Also
@Xantalos
Has Moulder already begun using those "spherical mice" as living hand grenades? Since they're already part of Moulder's tech.
 
Nippon is Fucking Weird, what can I say?

(other than sorry because holy shit the amount of assets you have that you can research are so high)
 
Chimeraguard said:
Also
@Xantalos
Has Moulder already begun using those "spherical mice" as living hand grenades? Since they're already part of Moulder's tech.
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Only the more eccentric/rich people, since their fur explosion is more like a pillow exploding than anything actually deadly, it just casts a disproportionate amount of fluff everywhere. Also they explode when they see a skaven, so to be used like that they have to be given little blindfolds. The fact that they're already part of Moulder's tech is referencing the fact that you can use them as a basis for whatever new creations you want if you so wished, since they don't have goddamn weird properties like the other categories of creatures.

Anyhow, I should say something: you can use basically any yokai from actual Japanese mythology as inspiration for a project you want (besides the outright spirit ones), just ask me first since the things listed there are just examples. There are, for example, also giant centipedes in the mundane category, and a fuckton of other random creatures. Goddang japan having such an insanely large variety of mythical creatures.
 
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Xantalos said:
Anyhow, I should say something: you can use basically any yokai from actual Japanese mythology as inspiration for a project you want (besides the outright spirit ones), just ask me first since the things listed there are just examples. There are, for example, also giant centipedes in the mundane category, and a fuckton of other random creatures. Goddang japan having such an insanely large variety of mythical creatures.
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Cool. Right now what I'm thinking of are Inugami and Yuki-Onna. Also, we need some sort of mass-produced aerial unit if we're gonna be fighting on the surface a lot.
 
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Xantalos said:
Packlord Verminkin rubbed his eyes wearily as he perused, yet again, the extensive sheets of documentation before him. He was familiar, comfortable even, with organizing large amounts and varieties of resources and subordinates to accomplish his goals. It was how his clan had risen to the prominence it had. But the Nippon specimens were a bit much, even for him. By the Horned One, how did one meagre island chain produce such an insane variety of odd and outright supernatural creatures?
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Japanese mythology is all sorts of--
Xantalos said:
Apologies for the shortness of this one, but converting the strange-ass fuckery that is Japanese mythology to a gameable format was confusing and involved a lot of categorization.
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--what he said.

Xantalos said:
- Magical Creatures - These are creatures that possess some form of innate magic of sorts. The many-tailed foxes weave illusions and drink emotion, troupes of age-like creatures read minds and repeat the thoughts they see faster than they can be made, capricious humanoid reptilian creatures that can control water, animals that seem to be innate reservoirs and generators of certain kinds of magic, and other strange feats. They all seem to be intelligent as well, growing more powerful and clever with age. Unlocking their secrets costs 4 Authority. The assignment of either Thanquol or Verminkin will reduce this requirement by one.
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This one's probably the most immediately applicable, barring someone having some specific inspiration.

@Xantalos How do you want us to handle this? Will Moulder slowly just start doing stuff on their own with the vast disparate mess once we start picking more things off or do you need/want us to really drill down and create specific creatures such as the skittaur to actually leverage the new stuff?
 
Chimeraguard said:
Chimeric Creatures looks to me like a good place to start. Would probably help us make hybrid monsters with the rest of Moulder's war beasts.
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I agree. I'll probably be aiming for Verminkin to look into Chimeric Creatures and Living Objects. Chimeric allows Moulder abominations to function better if they can figure out how they work, and living objects is a cheap boost. Also, can you even imagine the shenanigans that could come of this? Two words: Living Fellblade. Or if you want to be boring, we have so much junk, some of it is bound to gain sentience if we can figure out how. It'll be interesting to see if skaven equipment is more or less loyal than the skaven who use it.

While Magical Creatures and Apparitions sound like it would be much more interesting and effective, it also requires more investment than I think we'll be able to spare in the near future. Even investing dice slowly rather than all at once wouldn't get the results we want in the timeframe we need. Magical Creatures would probably result in epic units or an abundance of fun stuff, like magic battery beasties, and Apparitions would get us some ethereal units, but it's just too much dice. We'd get more value investing in Dwarf tech or trying to start up a large project to equip our lower rats. We'd also get more out of voth if we finished the Yasei no Majo tech first as it would let us control them to some degree.
Xantalos said:
Only the more eccentric/rich people, since their fur explosion is more like a pillow exploding than anything actually deadly, it just casts a disproportionate amount of fluff everywhere. Also they explode when they see a skaven, so to be used like that they have to be given little blindfolds.
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Adorable. Shame they're likely to be turned into horrible abominations to leverage those explosions properly.
 
Spectrum said:
@Xantalos How do you want us to handle this? Will Moulder slowly just start doing stuff on their own with the vast disparate mess once we start picking more things off or do you need/want us to really drill down and create specific creatures such as the skittaur to actually leverage the new stuff?
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I'd say a mixture of both of those approaches. Researching the weird categories is basically figuring out how they happen/how they work and thus how to reproduce them or add their qualities to a custom creature, and I'll probably throw you a few custom breeds once you research a category. At the same time, if you have a specific idea, just pitch it to me and I'll let you know if you need to research X category more to be able to produce it. Seem okay?

Oh, and some may have guessed this, but in keeping with the trend of interrelated research projects helping each other, it's likely that looking into the woods witches would help with at least some of these things and how to do stuff with them.
 
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Xantalos said:
I'd say a mixture of both of those approaches. Researching the weird categories is basically figuring out how they happen/how they work and thus how to reproduce them or add their qualities to a custom creature, and I'll probably throw you a few custom breeds once you research a category. At the same time, if you have a specific idea, just pitch it to me and I'll let you know if you need to research X category more to be able to produce it. Seem okay?

Oh, and some may have guessed this, but in keeping with the trend of interrelated research projects helping each other, it's likely that looking into the woods witches would help with at least some of these things and how to do stuff with them.
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Yeah. I mean, my main concern is action economy--it's great that you've given us a bunch of stuff to do, but the more dilution there is to items, the worse things are for us. Doubly so if you were of the mind to hit us with what would effectively be a double action tax by requiring assets to be researched which only give capabilities, then require specific projects afterwards to do anything with those capabilities and this didn't happen automatically.
 
Yeah, it is a little unwieldy at present, but there is gonna be some stuff for mitigating that. I forgot to account for the increased authority gain thing that'll hit a bit of a milestone next turn, and since you'll only be able to do anything with all these next turn I'll just decrease the prices accordingly now.

And yeah, now that I've reread your initial question, there will be widespread application of some of the upgrades present here once you do research them - some of your already-existent creatures will gain magical abilities once you fully research that, which is why it's so expensive - and I'll proooobably try reworking how Moulder does things again to make it less cumbersome. Something like being able to breed new creatures for a specific campaign with the amount of resources invested increasing the complexity of the creation? It's not so different from the current way it's organized, and I do wanna figure out a way to make it so that unlocking new breeds of creatures doesn't somehow limit your ability to utilize them.
 
I wonder if some of those things could help us unlock stuff that we weren't able to get out of other specimens, like Magical Creatures and shit getting full lightning from the Dragon Ogres.
 
EVA-Saiyajin said:
I wonder if some of those things could help us unlock stuff that we weren't able to get out of other specimens, like Magical Creatures and shit getting full lightning from the Dragon Ogres.
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That's a good question. Synergy would say yes, but that has interesting implications, like Lore of Hashut unlocking inner fire and toughness qualities of the Taurus tree.

On a different note, should we be worried about Pestilens or Eshin falling behind technologically, or is Skyre and Moulder being so far ahead the natural state of things?

@Xantalos, now that I'm thinking about the big clans, will they start incorporating technology that would help them as we create it, or does that investment need to be through their clan? For example, if daemon binding/chaos dwarf wargear gets researched would both clans eventually get standard daemon-bound gear as it spreads, or will we have to invest in them getting it. On top of that would we see (a year or two down the line) them putting their own spin on the equipment, such as Pestilens creating plague daemon-infused gear, while Eshin puts its own spin on daemon gear? Spectrum's questions about proliferation have me curious about how hands on we need to be.
 
EVA-Saiyajin said:
I wonder if some of those things could help us unlock stuff that we weren't able to get out of other specimens, like Magical Creatures and shit getting full lightning from the Dragon Ogres.
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Won't necessarily get you full dragon ogre lightning, since there's other elements to that beyond just magic, but yeah it will help you with other creature stuff. Beyond explicitly god-affiliated creatures, unlocking all these categories will basically let you do whatever you want with any other creature on the planet, since the variety is so ridiculous. Demigryphs, pegasi, manticores... if there's a thing, there's probably a Nipponese variant.
 
Kairos123 said:
That's a good question. Synergy would say yes, but that has interesting implications, like Lore of Hashut unlocking inner fire and toughness qualities of the Taurus tree.

On a different note, should we be worried about Pestilens or Eshin falling behind technologically, or is Skyre and Moulder being so far ahead the natural state of things?

@Xantalos, now that I'm thinking about the big clans, will they start incorporating technology that would help them as we create it, or does that investment need to be through their clan? For example, if daemon binding/chaos dwarf wargear gets researched would both clans eventually get standard daemon-bound gear as it spreads, or will we have to invest in them getting it. On top of that would we see (a year or two down the line) them putting their own spin on the equipment, such as Pestilens creating plague daemon-infused gear, while Eshin puts its own spin on daemon gear? Spectrum's questions about proliferation have me curious about how hands on we need to be.
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They do their own work without our input and resources, so it depends, but it's not as big as it could be.

As for the other thing, the major clans probably wouldn't accept and incorporate something if it went against their beliefs or offended them without a direct order.
 
Kairos123 said:
On a different note, should we be worried about Pestilens or Eshin falling behind technologically, or is Skyre and Moulder being so far ahead the natural state of things?

@Xantalos, now that I'm thinking about the big clans, will they start incorporating technology that would help them as we create it, or does that investment need to be through their clan? For example, if daemon binding/chaos dwarf wargear gets researched would both clans eventually get standard daemon-bound gear as it spreads, or will we have to invest in them getting it. On top of that would we see (a year or two down the line) them putting their own spin on the equipment, such as Pestilens creating plague daemon-infused gear, while Eshin puts its own spin on daemon gear? Spectrum's questions about proliferation have me curious about how hands on we need to be.
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Skyre having a lot more technologies than anyone else is relatively normal, since their way of doing things translates into a lot of 'breeds' of tech that can't really be mixed. Moulder's recent proliferation of things is mainly due to me being kinda klutzy with how I've organized their stuff, they're actually more similar to Pestilens in that they have one central tech - monsterbreeding in their case - that researching other breeds and odd properties adds onto, and a few generalized easy-to-breed species that they sell in large numbers to other clans. Gotta fix that up somewhat, I'm thinking. Eshin's main strength is in its assassins, so their efficacy isn't diminished by a small tech number - stuff that'd fit them is ways to upgrade their gear, make their assassins better, or give them entirely new vectors of killing. Stuff like that.

I do have to sit down and codify in my mind how exactly the clans do things in the background, since there should be stuff like that happening. It shouldn't be like some other quests where you guys are the deciding factor on everything, there oughta be some autonomy. I've got some ideas on that front, I think. Or it could just be all the caffeine from these cookies I ate which apparently have coffee inserted straight into them. They probably should've put that on the packaging.

EDIT: Alright, edited the prices to reflect your soon-to-be increased authority thingy.
 
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By the way thread, because we plan to betray Nippon at some point in the next 2-3 turns, I currently place a higher than normal priority on researching Spiritshaping and the woodswitches as we currently have teachers on them enabling those topics at all.
 
Oh, and my apologies for this, but the next snippet (which I'll put up probably tomorrow or the day after) won't be the full superweapon entry since I'm not done the whole thing and I don't wanna run out of backlog material too soon. So it might be a bit unnecessarily suspenseful.
 
Spectrum said:
By the way thread, because we plan to betray Nippon at some point in the next 2-3 turns, I currently place a higher than normal priority on researching Spiritshaping and the woodswitches as we currently have teachers on them enabling those topics at all.
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Is that necessary? From what I can see they've pretty much been sold to us without any expectations of getting home. When we do betray them I don't know how they'd notice.
 
Chimeraguard said:
Eh, better safe than sorry. Besides, their stuff sounds really cool anyways.
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Spectrum said:
There's some casters in there, this is End Times, I'm not putting anything past some Divine (or otherwise) fuckery.
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Fair enough. Just pointing out that we still have a lot we want to do. Producing more food, better equipping the lower ranks, restoring our hero units, and making some cavalry and aerial units. I suppose if Thanquol doesn't have anything we need him for next turn or the turn after, I'd be willing to assign this to him.

I too wish to see Thanquol riding Boneripper atop a flying ghost-whale, or Skaven warlords suddenly going ham like this was Nioh.

Sidenote: Nioh's pretty much my headcanon for Nippon. For those who don't know what Nioh is, it's pretty much weeb Dark Souls, set in Japan. Rather than knights, magic, and monsters, it's samurai, ninja, spirits, and youkai.
 
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