[ ] Plan -ned Suppression
-
[ ] Set Prices High - Hold onto the supplies for now in case the Pass cannot be reopened for half a century or more. This will cause more casualties now, but less in the long-term.
-
[ ] Wait, and see what else might arise.
-[ ] Fortifying (The Yuan Clan) - Spend Clan manpower and soldiers to build new fortifications against outside enemies. New Arrays, help train new cultivators in lesser Formations to defend their lands, and so on. Will also strengthen a vassal or ally if chosen, and increase relations with them.
Increases defenses in the chosen territory, ally, or vassal.
--[ ] "It's a difficult thing to say, but the Archegetes may have invested overmuch in the gambits taking place in the Yuan clan. The Clan has often made due with less wealth, when the sweat of our
Optimatoi has served well enough to create great works and fortifications. We have enough forces deployed along the breadth of the Yuan, and enough resources invested in it. Let those who are already present dig in, and reshape our newest vassals land into a bulwark to rat out the temporary problem. And make a permanent reminder to the Region just who owns that land now. A declaration the Yuans invaders are unable to ignore, a perfect bait for their Nascent souls. A Monstrous Root Threshing Domain."
-[ ] Manuel - Hunt An Enemy (Yuan Clan Invasion Nascents) - Why not? Hunt down enemies, see if you can kill someone. Usually used against an opposing Nascent Soul. Potentially
very dangerous.
--[ ] "The
Archegetes remains our most powerful combatant by a wide margin, and even in a territory lacking in his typical preparations and schemes seeded throughout it, the Yuan Clan territories have their own defenses that they can inform us of, our own assets freshly deployed there to account for, and our own Legions to frustrate and inevitably bait out enemy Nascent Souls. Kill one, it may be insufficient. Kill many, it will definitely be enough. Catch them between a thousand anvils, and a singular hammer in the Archegetes and we can bring and end to this miserable affair, and not a moment too soon."
-[ ] Kleisthenes - Open Diplomatic Relations (Blood Oak Sect)
--[ ] "For too long have our new neighbors to the North gone ignored. I will be having Casia assist me in opening up formal relations with the Blood Oaks to the North. Regardless of what the ongoing situation is for the rest of the Region, they're direct neighbors with the Qiguai Clan, who we know are the direct target of the Gao Clan and Shattered Time Sect. If they intend to make moves there, I would rather we not act at cross purposes there.
-[ ] Xinya - Accompany and Assist Manuel in Hunting Yuan Clan Invasion Nascent Souls.
--[ ] "The
Archegetes can not be expected to perform his flawless preparations for combat as he normally could. However, our Third Elder possesses the necessary expertise to make up for it, as well as feed new sources of intelligence to the
Archegetes in order to better prepare and execute the necessary ambushes in order to truly end this final desperate gambit by the Ma Clan, once and for all.'
-[ ] Casia - Offer Peace (Blood Oak Sect) - Casia's personal ability allows her to bring harmony between people and among them. Within the Clan she can calm vassals, outside of it she can calm relations, between the Clan and her target or between any two targets. If she were permitted to use this for twenty turns unobstructed she might end the current War, so it is more useful in repairing failing relations than trying to rebuild failed ones.
--[ ] "With Casia's assistance I might be able to negotiate for terms and concessions that otherwise would be utterly unthinkable, especially in the absence of the
Archegetes peerless intelligence gathering capabilities to provide advantages for us to make use of. We will project Absolute Goodwill to them, and in doing so hopefully win the Blood Oaks over to our side, abandoning the Blood Path in its entirety. After that...there will only be two powers left in the Mountains, of which only one is capable of being harmful to us anymore."
-[ ]
Forge a Wedding Ring (Major Purchase - 2 Purchases)
-[ ]
Use 3 Shadow Key Points to Purchase the Earl's Insignia
-[ ]
Use 2 Shadow Key Points to Purchase the Fortress-Mounts
With the acquisition of a fourth Nascent Soul and the potential to bring either Trial Lord or Lady Yao into our orbit for a campaign, it's time to go into what I've been low and high key boilerplating for much of the past year: What I refer to as the "Wicked Twilight Retribution" based around the creation of a Nascent Soul-Grade Artifact Fortress using the Fortress-Mounts legacy to create an invading spearhead deep into Devil Bee's territory with the explicit purpose of creating a hard point that will deprive the Abyssal Invasion of the ability to replenish their stores of Devil Bee Mounts.
This would normally be a tall order due to the presence of Old Cannibal as a Late Nascent with attendant backup dancers, but we have all the pieces necessary to assemble a counterweight to prevent him from being able to dominate, at which point his natural caution will win out and he'll likely cede the battle space to Manuel and the Clan while fully aware that we have no way to prosecute a war beyond the Mountains, nor will he believe us capable of actually holding the Devil Bee territories due to the Hives to the Soutth of that particular territory.
And
ordinarily he'd be correct to.
However, the true objective isn't to hold the territories indefinitely. It's to hold them for long enough to set up the Implacable Chant either over the pass that enables access from the Verdant South...
Or.
Little enough is known of the Chant, except that it can be used to render a region entirely barren for nearly three centuries, a Qi-dead zone that will drain the life from enemies and friends alike. Once used it cannot be stopped, and while Nascent Souls can easily bypass it, it extends nearly two hundred kilometres across in diameter. It was used and locked away as it takes centuries to be re-used, but can stop an enemy army in its tracks, or serve as a permanent barrier for a beleaguered people. It can also conceivably ruin an enemy stronghold, sucking it dry of Qi and killing everyone within.
If the bolded means that we can uses it as an assassination tool against the Great Circle Nascent Devil Bee herself, then that just means we can permanently break them as a sustainable species in the first place, and then loot the bounteous Devil Bee lands ourselves before burning it all to the ground on our way out.
Either way, we just need to meet the criteria of:
- A Nascent Force capable of Matching or Surpassing Old Cannibal
- A Mobile Hardpoint capable of resisting Nascent Soul attacks, in which to station sufficient Legions to contribute to an Early Nascent Soul fight
- The Righteous Path need to convince Old Cannibal to split his forces so he does not devote a plurality of Nascent Souls to his defense of the Devil Bee lands
And we should be able to repel Old Cannibal from returning to the Desert in sufficient force to present an existential threat until the end of the game, he'll be so caught up in restoring his own infrastructure and offensive mobility that he no doubt intended to use as an integral part of his strategy to keep his Abyssal Invasion of Love and Peace relevant against the Blood Defiance Pact long term.
We currently possess the first criteria, we still need the second which requires the Fortress Mounts. And while I ideally would've preferred we use Weeping Anvils corpse for that this turn, it doesn't appear to be on the table. So I'll hold off and hope that the presence of the Mounts will inspire something from Destasia next turn, if not we'll go for one of her presented options then.
Next turn, ideally, we can secure the final criteria by opening up negotiations with the Blood Defiance Pact. And the benefit of getting Manuel and Xinya to focus on crippling the Yuan invasion this turn is that we can start benefiting from the Yuan Clan tribute as soon as possible, and Manuel can focus on generating additional Shadow Tokens so we can get enough to purchase the Bull and Paints in order to further tilt the Nascent Fight that will come about in the Mountains in our Favor as much as possible.
Thankfully this isnt such an involved strategy that it'll eat up everything we do. With Xinya's ascension in addition to Casia's, we actually have a fair bit of breathing room to carry this out in addition to putting out any other fires that crop up in the lead up to Turn 18, which is when Old Cannibal's ban on the desert runs out, and he'll definitely start scheming to come back after us in force once again.
At which point, its better to take the initiative to get this wrapped before the Turn 20 Trials, which will otherwise be an ideal timing for Old Cannibal to strike at us with the full force of the Abyssal Invasion. Deny him the Devil Bees he'd otherwise be relying on to give him weight of numbers and speed, and Old Cannibal will be unable to prosecute an invasion into the desert from the Plains for at least a century.
Not without denuding the Verdant South of nearly all his Nascent Souls, and risking a genuine clap back from the Righteous Path powers that he's been terrorizing for the past century and change, that is.
I think this is a good plan. My only issue is it might hit Old Cannibal's bottom line and incite him, or any of his nascent, to come over the mountains or prematurely wreck the Colossus Path before we're ready. While we still have that Psuedo-Nascent Light Beast I would like to play that card on Ol'Fish or one of his Early Nascents.
As illustrated in the rest of the post, that simply won't be a problem by that time. And the Lightbeast was already deployed in the Yuan territories to help defend them. That card is no longer playable, and it wouldn't have been anyway. We had three turns to use it or lose it, so thats where it wound up going. Sorry.
