Wik'keer'mal felt the voices of the sublime communion an ocean away recede. Some of them permanently, as Chupayotl sank beneath the waves with frightening speed and unpredictability. Examinations as of half a century ago said it would not be in danger of collapse for at least a millenia and now it is gone and with it the connection to his brethren.
Now Zlatlan stood alone against half a world of difficulties.
The work to bolster the Great Warding was not yet complete and without the ability to communicate with the larger Temple-Cities across the ocean there could be no certainty of harmony between the two efforts. But which would be out of balance? His pitiful handful of Slann were as nothing in comparison to the greater portion found in Lustria, but then many of the sacred plaques left to them by the Old Ones had been despoiled there. Zlatlan's sequence remained all but pristine.
Worse still without the connection through Chupayotl he could already feel the Geomantic Web weakening precipitously and it had already been nearly impossible to properly observe the itza'xa'khanx and dro'ka'khanx. How was he to know the progress of his students? To see what heights they would reach and take joy in their accomplishments.
Now there were only his bees to comfort him, their flitting buzzing lives a pale comparison. Still Slann were not given to despair, Wik'keer'mal would have to trust that his students had learned their lessons well and would pass them on. Perhaps centuries on they would have the chance to once again converse. Though he feared it was not likely, since the fall of the Gates the world had become ever more perilous.
The current tranquility was but a slight respite, he was sure.
A bee buzzed near his nostril. Wik'keer'mal smiled,
too right little one there is too much work to be done to lose time to lamentable contemplations, he thought. It flitted away.
Note: Limits. Actions (except for Learning) generally have Limits; this is a per turn limit of the dice which can be applied to a given problem, representing the need for specialized labor to focus on other tasks as well. They also sometimes represent the use of a limited resource. Thus limits can and will fluctuate between turns on some actions.
Turn 1
You have 33 Dice Available!
(30 + 29 + 6 = 65 / 2 = ~33)
Martial: Since the raising of the Great Warding by the itza'xa'khanx, few have been your enemies. Which is fortunate, as fewer yet still are your warriors. Occasional wandering tribes of the cho'mundi'khanx, the feeblest of your lost masters creations, scattered raids by weak bands of daemons, and infrequent brushes with the strange hybrid mutants which have sprung up since. Surely that will not last.
Synchronize Patrols: With the mixed population of eight Temple-Cities living in the gutted remains of Zlatlan, patrol schedules have become a hopeless mess. Your Scar-Veterans are diligent, but patrols sometimes go out at the same time from opposite ends of the city and travel routes which have them covering the same territory. Othertimes none will go out for months at a time in one direction.
DC: 40. Successes Needed: 3. Limit: 7. Reward: Information on the immediate terrain around you, better interception of raiding forces, knowledge of the state of your immediate outer defences.
Long-Range Patrols: If your patrols of the immediate area have been lacking, then farther ranging patrols have been utterly absent. Zlatlan is blind to anything more than a week's travel away.
DC: 70. Successes Needed: 5. Limit: 2. Reward: Gain a slow trickle of information on activity in your general vicinity, and knowledge of the state of more distant outer defences.
Expedition to [Write-in]: The other Temple-Cities stand all but empty, only garrisons even smaller than your own safeguarding them. But that does not mean they hold nothing of value nor that you should abandon them. Send an expedition to one of them and ascertain what state they are in, and perhaps retrieve valuable resources from them.
Choose from:
- Nahuantl
- Cuexotl
- Golden Tower of the Gods
- Tlaqua
- Teotiqua
- Temple-Avenue of Gold
- Temple of Skulls
Note: Will lock in dice used for a variable amount of time depending on rolls and Temple-City chosen.
DC: ??? Successes Needed: ???. Limit: 2. Reward: Knowledge of other Temple-Cities, resources.
Great Reorganization: Cohorts from eight separate Temple-Cities now inhabit Zlatlan, each commanded by different Saurus and though none would ever gainsay an order or descend into any sort of actual infighting, they rarely communicate. Investigate the exact ages, experience and ranks of the small number of Scar-Veterans and Oldbloods in order to establish the correct hierarchy.
DC: 40/80 Successes Needed: 2. Limit: 4. Reward: DC reduction for all Martial actions, chance to gain a Saurus character.
Stewardship: Zlatlan is near half a ruin. Much work remains to be done in order to restore it even to the glory of its founding, nevermind the heights it reached before the Great Catastrophe.
Gate Repairs: All of your Main Gates were damaged in the fighting and without need of large troop movements they have remained so. Begin unsealing and/or repairing them. Specify a Gate. Can be taken multiple times.
- Southern Gate - DC: 40. Successes Needed: 8
- Eastern Gate - Successes Needed: 6
- Northern Gate - Successes Needed: 8
- Western Gate - Successes Needed: 3
DC: 0/40. Successes Needed: Variable. Limit: 14. Reward: Repaired Main Gates.
Wall Repairs: Though you have sealed any major gaps in the walls, entire sections still show damage. Stains of unreal pus and blood that do not fade must be cleansed away, cracks sealed, battlements restored from where winged daemons crashed into the walls. All and more must be set to right.
DC: 20. Successes Needed: 16. Limit: 5. Reward: Walls Restore, better defenses in case of concerted attack.
Defensive Aims: Mounted blow pipes, warded cauldrons full of liquid fire, spouts means to shower attacks in sprays of caustic venom, and more. Though you cannot necessarily provide the ammunition for many of them you can at least restore their physical operation.
DC: 40. Successes Needed: 8. Limit: 4. Reward: 'Mundane' wall defenses restored to functionality.
Unsealing Minor Entrances: For a time during the Great Catastrophe your forces still passed beyond the walls of Zlatlan to meet armies of daemons head on, eventually that proved too dangerous and the Main Gates were sealed. But still your forces sometimes needed to leave, only in small groups, armed in your best arms and armor, until eventually that too was too great a threat. Then even those entrances were sealed. Only a handful have been unsealed since.
DC: 0. Successes Needed: 6. Limit: 6. Reward: Slight decrease in difficulty of Stewardship actions.
Barrio Refurbishment: The various barrios inhabited by your Skinks and Kroxigors are where the vast majority of your light industry takes place; where artisan-priests craft bolts, darts, charms, talismans, and many more of the simple items of everyday use for your forces. And where reeds are processed to make ledgers and scrolls as well as baskets. Crops and harvested meat brought to them to be made into rations. Many have fallen into disrepair, stores of grain and cured meats spoiling. Makeshift structures collapsing. Garden plots allowed to grow wild and untended. Redress these issues.
DC: 30. Successes Needed: 2. Limit: 4. Reward: Armory begins to replenish. Slowly.
Clearing Rubble: Most of Zlatlan is clear of rubble. But some locations have not even seen that much attention. Address this. Specific location.
- Forge Districts - Successes Needed: 8
- Assembly Yards - Successes Needed: 6
- Temple of Chotec - Successes Needed: 4
- Temple of Huanchi - Successes Needed: 6
- Temple of Tepok - Successes Needed: 4
- Temple of Xokha - Successes Needed: 5
- Temple of Tlanxla - Successes Needed: 5
- Minor Shrines - Successes Needed: 4
- Mortuary Shrines - Successes Needed: 2
DC: 0. Successes Needed: Variable. Limit: 10. Reward: Gain access to currently blocked off buildings and locations.
Beast Pen Repairs: Before the coming of the enemy in force you kept your beasts of burden and war in specially kept enclosures which facilitate their comfort and armament. But in order to save even the slimmest of their numbers it was necessary to bring them inside the walls and keep them in much barer conditions. Even those have been damaged and now they must be repaired.
DC: 20. Successes Needed: 4. Limit: 8. Reward: Beasts better kept until you can rebuild better accommodations.
Reseeding the Pastures: Some of your beasts require actual grazing lands. For the last few centuries you have managed off of the growth of gardens and occasionally foraging once the Great Catastrophe was over. But the ancient fields that they once grazed could be restored, it only requires cleansing and reseeding the lands.
DC: 30. Successes Needed: 6. Limit: 12. Reward: Stegadon and Bastiladon conditions stabilize and will slowly begin improving.
Pool Work: Many spawning pools were damaged in the Great Catastrophe, slowing the recovery of your population to a trickle. Little of the damage is serious any longer, major rents were sealed long ago, but subtler damage must still be fixed in order to put them in good order.
DC: 40. Successes Needed: 3 per destroyed spawning pool. Limit: 9. Reward: Repaired spawning pools. Increased population growth.
Resetting Traps: Whenever the walls were breached, as they were more than once, the daemons did not find a vulnerable interior which they could despoil to their heart's content. Instead they ran headlong into walls of fire and lightening, pits lined with obsinite spikes, avenues buttressed by walls that shot barbed darts. Every step they took extracted a bloody price. But eventually the pits filled, the ammunition ran dry, and the fire and lightening failed to come. Restore those defenses.
DC: 20. Successes Needed: 10. Limit: 6. Reward: Increased defense if your walls are breached again.
Aquaculture Expansion: Zlatlan sits near the coast, but not on it, and the Red River runs nearby. Hunting and your own agricultural efforts have thus far been sufficient to feed your population and that of your warbeasts, though they have suffered from bouts of starvation in the time since the Great Catastrophe. A coastal… settlement could go some ways to helping such issues as well as helping with future projects.
DC: 0/40 . Successes Needed: 2/5. Limit: 2/8. Reward: Find locations for a coastal fort/bunker/town and/or build it.
Diplomacy: You know of no one else in these lands who would not either obey you without question or flee from you in terror. And you have no way of speaking to anyone beyond its shores.
Getting to Know your Attendants: Though they have been constant presences in your life for centuries in truth you know little of your attendants, that ignorance can be excused given the circumstance of the Great Catastrophe. Before then you never had an attendant for more than a decade at a time, the empire of the Lizardmen was vast and always in need of resources elsewhere. Now though, you will likely be spending millenia with the same attendants. Learn who they are.
Note: Requires Personal Dice.
DC: 0/60. Successes Needed: 1. Limit: 6. Reward: Become familiar with two of your attendants. Gives small permanent boost to dice pool, chance of Skink character.
Intrigue: You know of no one else in these lands you might need to spy on. And even if you did you have pitifully few Chameleon Skinks with which to do it. Though those you do have are veterans of an extremely long running guerrilla war against the daemons during the Great Catastrophe.
A Quieter Search: Chameleon Skinks by nature do not tend to settle in Temple-Cities. Send them out to do what your Saurus cannot, range far and see the state of the world beyond here.
Note: Must specify a general direction or destination. Locks in die and takes variable time to complete.
DC: 20. Successes Needed: 1. Limit: 1. Reward: Information on distant places. Small chance of loot. Warnings of particular long-term threats in a given direction.
Seeking Salamanders: During the Great Catastrophe some sections of your stable of warbeasts were devastated, leaving you unfortunately lacking in the time since. Though perhaps it was a stroke of good luck as some of those that you lost are notoriously dangerous to keep confined. Salamanders can be remarkably jumpy creatures, and their first reaction is to set things alight. Still, it might be time to locate some.
DC: 50. Successes Needed: 2. Limit: 6. Reward: Locate a source of Salamanders.
Razordon Recon: During the Great Catastrophe some sections of your stable of warbeasts were devastated, leaving you unfortunately lacking in the time since. Though perhaps it was a stroke of good luck in its own way, that many fewer mouths to feed. Razordons for all their relatively small size compared to many of your other beasts have voracious appetites, it takes quite a bit of energy to produce the sheer volume of spines they do. They are useful though.
DC: 50. Successes Needed: 2. Limit: 6. Reward: Locate a source of Razordons.
Learning: Your mind is sluggish and your body lethargic. Frequently you fall into periods of stupor and rest from which you awake not energize but surrounded by a fog through which you must fight to come into full alertness. This is not how you were meant to be. You know much still and yet other knowledge alludes you, like a vine just out of reach. The other Slann of Zlatlan are similarly afflicted.
Each turn, for every increment of ten years some slann will be awake and some asleep. Like actions in other categories those in Learning must be completed by spending dice, but only Slann can contribute.
You have
5 Slann of the Third Spawning Dice (Floor at 30)
11 Slann of the Fourth Spawning Dice (Floor at 20)
35 Slann of the Fifth Spawning Dice (Floor at 10)
Error Checking: Before Chupayotl, and through it your connection to the other Temple-Cities, fell there were already efforts to bolster the Great Warding enacted by the Elves. Unfortunately you no longer have access to the calculations of the greater communion of Slann and must rely on what work was done before communications were rendered impossible. Perhaps you should check for errors?
DC: 40. Successes Needed: 5. Reward: Ensure your portion of the Web will fully support the Great Warding.
Catastrophe in Review: When legions of Saurus warriors could stretch over the horizon and the great temple-cities of your people were mighty bulwarks towering over the jungle canopy there was nothing which could withstand the armies of the Lizardmen. Nothing except an endless unceasing tide of daemons. And now what armies you can field are nothing more than the shattered remnants of what once was, many of your greatest weapons destroyed or lost. Zlatlan stands alone. If it is to continue standing you will need new weapons and new tactics.
DC: 30. Successes Needed: 3. Reward: Figure out what your forces lack, and figure how you might go about shoring up those weaknesses.
Testing the Waters: Of late some of your patrols near the coast have reported seeing shapes moving across the ocean, only a handful over the last two centuries and those at great distance. From their description they remind you of some of the watercraft you saw them fumbling about with so long ago. Such devices might prove useful with the Geomantic Web so reduced.
DC: 40. Successes Needed: 2. Reward: Designs for ocean going vessels.
A Disciplined Mind: Though you are young by the reckoning of the slann, you yet still remember the world before the Great Catastrophe and the vigor with which you trod it. Now that vitality is yours only fleetingly and always followed by long stretches of extended lethargy. Turn your prodigious insight on the problem, perhaps there might be some manner of loosening the grip of whatever spiritual malady or malignant thought pattern has affected your kind.
DC: 80. Successes Needed: 10. Reward: Gain greater chance to remain Alert for longer.
Tracing the Web: Once the Geomantic Web stretched across the continent and over the ocean, now that connection is cut and though the energies still flow they are only tiny rivulets where once they were floods. Follow those ancient flows, spiritually, to gain insights and knowledge of distant places.
DC: 20/40/60/80. Successes Needed: 2 per tier. Reward: Knowledge and ???
Examining the Wards: Mystical wards line every spare block of stone in your walls, feeding into greater wardings that encompass the entire Temple-City. Currently they are not performing to specifications, though so far no flaws have been divined by your skink priests. Examine their structure and ascertain the origin of this weakness.
DC: 60. Successes Needed: 4. Reward: Wards repaired.
Contemplate the Stars: The movements of the heavens have always held sway over the fortunes of events on the ground; whether by influencing the flow of the Winds of Magic, through fortuitous alignments for the designs of the enemy, or simply as heralds for cosmological events. Reading them may provide you with some insight in events soon to come to pass.
DC: 60. Successed Needed: 6. Reward: Minor Prophecy or Warning.
Review the Sequence: Zlatlan was never as heavily targeted by the forces of chaos, as such your Sequence of Sacred Plaques is largely intact. The first step in deciphering the Plan of the Old Ones is to know it's broad shape, undertake a review and see what can be gleaned.
DC: 20. Successes Needed: ??? Reward: Greater understanding of the Plan.
Personal
You have two (2) Personal Dice
Meditate: Contemplate the Sun. Turn your mind east. Consider the endless horizon stretching on and on into eternity. Place yourself then at the zenith and draw all the world inward.
DC: 0. Successes Needed: 1. Limit: 1. Reward: Slight increase to Alertness for next turn.
Lend your Insight: Spend some time considering a matter.
DC: 0. Successes Needed: 1. Limit: 2. Reward: Add 1 dice to any action.
Teachers Learn Too: You remember fondly your students amongst the itza'xa'khanx and dro'ka'khanx, how they took your lessons and slowly pierced back the veil of the world to glimpse in their own ways the power at their fingertips. Overcoming limitations you first thought insurmountable in the case of the delvers.
DC: 50/70. Successes Needed: 1. Limit: 2. Reward: Opens further research options.
Personal Project: Write-in some sort of magical ritual, or project you wish to undertake in your free time. Subject to QM approval.
DC: Variable. Successes Needed: Variable. Limit: Variable. Reward: My interpretation of your write-in.
Note: Here's the first turn! Please, if you spot any mistakes or have any questions don't be afraid to ask them and I'll try and get to them as quick as I can. Also, some of the other proposed Slann may show up as characters eventually (modified depending on their proposed traits, etc) and you are of course free to propose other Skink, Kroxigor, or Saurus characters.
Manual Moratorium
Probably about 3-4 hours. Depending on the pace of Discussion. And if I get distracted.
Edit: also, vote by Plan.
