There has to be a way to beat it, the problem is that we don't even know the limits of its information gathering ability and capacity to deploy agents. Only that those are 'Lots" and "Effectively arbitrary if it feels threatened enough." There's a Cost it apparently has to reckon with before it makes a Move, but that cost doesn't seem to be something beyond its ability to pay when it needs to, as we saw when it just absolutely raped causality to drop a murderball right on top of Hallr before he could make his Critical Move.
That's another point, if the Enemy is seemingly all knowing and nearly all malevolent, how did Hallr manage to get as close to changing the game as he did? Where he achieved True Cultivation and was moving towards a... Not a Wincon but doing appreciable damage, and the Enemy only did its Absolute Bullshit at the last minute?
I think evidence suggests it has very real limitations in terms of both information and what it can afford to send to deal with any particular threat, we just don't have a good way to gauge either very precisely, but I think overestimating the Enemy is as bad as underestimating it in many ways.
It's worth bearing in mind that whatever attack it sent this time would, on average, without Reward Dice involved, have
failed utterly by reasonable and objective standards. With an average of less than a 10% chance of death and 12 people who might die, there would've been around one casualty on average (if it were actually 14% each as per the original post not counting Hamingja, that's still an average of less than two people dead) and odds were good they wouldn't even have been the ones we cared about most. Like, an attack that costs you six men and kills one enemy is a failure, and that's ignoring any losses they took there at the Farm.
We wouldn't have
felt like the Enemy failed if it killed one of our kids, but realistically? That wouldn't have actually even slowed down our anti-Enemy efforts. It
might have made us mad enough to make a mistake, but if the enemy is throwing that many resources at making us maybe make a mistake, it has problems.
More importantly, what has everyone else done that the Norse haven't? Because apparently everyone's had to reckon with the Enemy or some avatar of it at some point, but everyone else seems to have beaten or suppressed it, and it's only the Norse who are currently under its yoke at present. Was it just that it didn't put its full attention on fucking with them because it was focused on us in particular? (In which case, why is it that it was willing to allow other cultures to grow to the point where it could no longer manipulate them, but absolutely does not tolerate the slightest step forward for us?) Or did they all Do Something to effectively cast the Enemy's influence out--something that the Norse have never achieved because... Uh, reasons.
I wouldn't say we know this, actually. The Western European Christians seem to have thrown it off, and in context I doubt the Chinese or Byzantines are laboring under its yoke, but we have no clue about, well, anyone else.
We know that it seems to have an affinity for Steel--certainly, it's fond of using Steelfathers as its enforcers and beatsticks, and Steel in this setting is hella cursed, to a point where it predates the Norse culture in general. But is this actually the Enemy's doing or is this just something related that it's taking advantage of?
I'm not sure we do know that. We only know of one instance of it using Steelfathers as a beatstick, and they were the only option it had locally with even a prayer against Blackhand, so it would've done that even if it hated them. I suspect it
is involved with the Curse of Steel as part of its 'anti-metal' and 'anti-civilization' thing, but we don't actually know that.
