And rightly so.
You see, [REDACTED].
Oh! That means- Everything makes sense now!
That means Dragons [REDACTED]
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[REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED]
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[REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED]
Which means!
[REDACTED]
By the same logic, a sun-surface of Forest would be around Magnitude 5 million.
Well. I'm not sure we'll ever get there, but the thought is nice!
What size does Magnitude 10 get us?
Do we have any idea of the Woo Clan's actual territory, in terms of size/Magnitude?
(I hope you have a Map on hand, I have a
lot of plans for examining their territory.)
And you'd have had a different set of Enemies and Allies.
As expected, different alignments and different actions lead to different interactions and objectives after all.
Possibly a short-term alliance with the Woo Clan before your mutual sudden-yet-inevitable betrayals.
Of course, and whomever held more cards to their trunks would have likely come out on top.
Old Man Materson would have been your first Boss Fight. Or possibly your recurring Nemesis who keeps level-grinding to match you, and hands you more defeats than anyone else. Hard to say.
Someone with {Eternity} on their side would be quite the nagging thorn
Vampires might have outright recruited you, and poured in resources and techniques to try to counter The Last Star contingent only on you being mind-controlled by them - a control that you'd have shaken mid-to-late-game, for a delicious "Since when were you the one in control?" interaction.
Very classy, plus there'd be quite the interesting build up to both the offer and the vote whether or not to accept it.
On one hand, power leveling and direct guidance, protection, and access to some of the oldest and most knowledgeable beings in setting.
On the other, a
firm release of freedom and control in a
Riot Quest.
I'm quite glad we're where we're at, but I can see the interest of the Murder Forest Plot.
The Shining Concord Empire would have been a mid-term Boss Fight.
....
I'm suddenly looking at where we are, and where we'd need to be to fighy the SCE, and wondering if the growth curve for the Evil route is so much higher, or if you plan for this quest to last
quite some time.
I'm hoping the latter.
The Last Star would be the last Boss, or at least the last heroic Boss, within the quest proper.
.....
This makes me wonder just what
fights The Last Star, and just how big a problem something has to become for The Last Star to get directly involved, beyond their nudges and snipes.
Going off to fight Cali (or a hypothetical apprentice or something) would have been the epilogue. (Or possibly the whole Forest self-destructing. Who knows. That can be awesome, too, especially for Villain playthroughs.)
Ah. So Cali's a bit larger scope than I
really thought about.
All the above are assuming I kept feeling like GM'ing, and wrote anything like the same setting around you.
Of course! A different route, different circumstances, different threads to pull.
Maybe. Although, if I was a elvish survivalist in a millenia-long grudge match with the forces of supernatural evil, I might be a little cautious about letting strange plants teleport stuff into my home.
Even if we mean well, the relative velocities could go nasty places fast, and if we didn't mean well…
Very reasonable, though I'm fairly sure that they know we mean well, or can be about as best assured of that as possible.
Any thoughts on growing Defender Ents? Despite their name they would probably make good shock troops and offense while risky in its own way seem to work better with the Woo.
I'm curious how they interact with our Special Tree system, and what an Ancient Defender Ent might look like...
This is the exact kind of things I designed the Defender Ent for! Just need some Growth trees to grow some.
Any thoughts about designing a Meat Tree? We're quickly reaching a point were a dedicated meat producer would be...useful let's say.
Plus if we push it to Ancient, we might get enough to act as a trade good!
Or maybe it could be directed as a Healing Tree, with Flesh Creation as an aspect of it?
Thank you
@Nigerian Duck for getting us Flesh Magic, which will make this a
lot eaiser!
(Negotiations will be ongoing in Turn 27, and probably Turn 28 at this rate. Daggers rise in the shadows. But this round, at least, is yours. And your eyes are watching now.)
Very sensible, and now we've opened up a whole new angle to the War!
Project unlocked! (Hopefully?)
(The rhyme wasn't that good. Then again, he saved all his best for Annabeth anyway.)
I'm glad we all acknowledge that, he rhymed the same word with itself for Cali's sake!
But knowing that there was someone - anyone - who was determined to fight it out? And had any chance at all? Just that, alone, would have been enough.
Oof.
Well, I suppose we have another Speaker Candidate, if she so desires.
Let's bring some Hope into things, yeah?
(-12 Resources conducting a bunch of thorough Healings. 191.3->179.3. Some miscellaneous Healing Potions and such as well, mostly donated by Marta Yarrow.)
I'm very glad to see my efforts at stockpiling Resources make actions like this something easily done and not need a vote regarding whether or not we can afford to help people.
Does Marta have a list of ingredients those Potions are made of? We should probably look into specifically cultivating plants and fungi that she can use to create potions, if we don't have easier access to buying replacements.
but the trick was to rescue them at the last possible moment.
Oh my
The Shadow-Spinners wove webs, not just of silk, but also of Magic and Lies. Anyone within a mile or two of their Nest could easily be entangled, and then be guided straight into the nest. Not a bit of pain - the illusion would ensure you never knew you were dying. Perhaps that was a mercy; perhaps it was the cruelest lie of all.
Lie Magic. That actually makes a
lot of sense, and is basically perfect for Illusions and Mental Manipulations.
It explains all of their known capabilities, and gives us a pretty direct counter to research to help maintain our ability to actually know what's going on.
After all, Truth and Knowledge cut through Lies, in an ideal world.
That being said, if we can properly Connect to them and convince them to our way of things, Shadow-Spinner Webs sound like an
excellent way to improve our defenses and guide future Woo Clan Assaults directly into killing fields.
The Forest frantically fought a Magic war, at risk of being entangled with every move. More than one Tree had to reel back from the fight, barely able to hold on to sanity and recover from the entangling illusions. But, slowly, the Forest won. Every Refugee was carefully nudged around and through the webs. Every Soldier was left unguarded, and most of them were ensnared one by one.
Damn. This is
intriguing.
I think we might have a lot more to learn from the Shadow Spinners than we thought.
The free soldiers were carefully fooled by subtle illusions cast with Light/Darkness Negacion
Oh! We finished it? Very nice!
The five free soldiers dwindled to three before anyone realized what was happening, but one of their shorter members yelled, "Illusions!" And he and the other two drew their weapons and started slicing.
Again, the Forest found that it had subtly underestimated the Woo Clan. For these weapons could, if poorly, slice through Magic. They cut on the dream-webs the Shadow-Spinners wove. Weapons forged of Severing and Ending, Death and Decay, and even Malice. Yes, those cut on the Webs of the Spiders.
Interesting
Confirmation of Severing as a Magic for our Sword Tree, an introduction to Decay as an entry into Entropy Magic and as something to augment our Combat
And
firm confirmation of the existence of Malice as a mortal usable Magic.
Implication wise...
They don't have someone with Negacion Magic who is willing and able to produce arms and armor for their standard forces.
They might not have Negacion Magic
at all and rely on deep chains of Combinations to do their work, and as we see here two Combination Pairs bound together by Malice is rather potent.
This was a
very nice information gain, and as we learn more of these specific Magics we'll have a better idea of what protections are needed by our fleshy forces, and how to optimize our Protections against the Woo Clan's magics.
You don't know what tale they will bring back to their bosses.
But it's definitely going to involve "Spiders ate a lot of people"!
Spider-monsters, you might add, that are now much more interested in any offers of Connecting to the Forest.
Score!
They also periodically leave trash outside the nest. The helmets of the Woo Clan Soldiers seem to count as particularly disgusting trash. And, after recovering and analyzing one, you are fairly certain that the metal has minute traces of Voidshard Dust forged into it. Well: at least you can guess one way they blocked Telepathy.
Very informative.
Sounds like we're going to need a lot more Telepathic Power and a lot more Telepathic Finesse to proper data mine Woo Clan forces.
Anything else the Shadow-Spinners discarded as trash? The Weapons and Armor for instance? Any bags?
What were their shoes like?
[ ][Steve Robertson] Learn Magic (cost: 2 Resources per turn initially; likely to go up if he has difficulties and gets bored; will have a major penalty to success if the Forest doesn't Connect with him) (discount: I'll eat the cost and scrounge most of my food to learn Magic… but only if I'm actually making progress)
I'm sort of leaning this, but the current votes suggest "Accounting For Military Action", which ya know, fair enough.
(discount: I'll eat the cost and scrounge most of my food to learn Magic… but only if I'm actually making progress)
Okay, yeah, no. I'm drawing up a basic contract, ain't no employee of ours doing any shit like this.
Here's something to add to any and all votes, because fuck flexible bullshit like this.
Edit: I was checking how to spell "dysphoria" because my autocorrect wasn't providing a confirmation on how to spell it, accidentally hit "More Options" and only just managed to recovet everything above this point. I remember the broad strokes, but losing the specific language makes me a bit pissed.
I've tacked on a more proper "This is a Job Steve can do/participate in" that I had written up, and the vote itself alongside explanation is going to be at the top of all of this, because I do mass quote collections as I catch up and that leads to massive posts that are likely skimmed through, and I actually want people to look at my write ins here and vote for them.
Edit the second: Wow I had a lot more quotes than I thought. I clipped the ones below this out and am going to set that all up in a separate post, and
then get to my "Spiders Are Good, Actually" essay. Jeesh.
[X][Steve Robertson] Plan: Domestic Dispute
-[X][Steve Robertson] The Still Unnamed Asshole has a Mother and a Younger Brother whom he physically and emotionally abuse. Steve, alongside any volunteering residents of Newton or the Forest, will escort a "node" (a Connected Sapling) to wherever the Asshole is from and provide whatever assistance is necessary for the Forest "Wizard" to fulfill whatever agreements or offers come to pass betwedn the "node" and the VIPs.
--[X][Steve Robertson] The Forest will offer and provide healing free of charge with no strings. Afterwards, the Forest will offer them sanctuary within the Forest or Newton (with Newton's consent though I honestly don't think it will be a problem), which includes permanent housing and food, again no strings attached, as well as gainful employment, a few small strings, and the opportunity to learn Magic (with the only strings being those attached to joining the "Advanced" Class).
---[X][Steve Robertson] Tldr: We tell Steve about the Asshole's family and our intent (established with this vote) to get them out of their shitty situation and offer them a chance at a hopeful zero amounts abusive new life.
-[X][Steve Robertson] Subvote: Basic Contract Law
Add this to your Vote to vote for the things below it.
--[X][Steve Robertson] While basic verbal/mind to mind agreements have served the Forest well, with the inclusion of those who work "for" the Forest without being "of" the Forest, firm boundaries should be established to help ensure proper communication and safety for both sides.
---[X][Steve Robertson] Those "Of The Forest", from here on out referred to as "Residents" can be defined as beings who consent to be Connected to the Forest, beings who knowingly live within the "territory" of the Forest and have engaged in friendly dialog with the Forest, and those who have been granted Refugee Status by the Forest.
----[X][Steve Robertson] All Residents of the Forest shall be provided with Food, Shelter, Clothing, Healing, Friendship/Emotional Bonds, and whatever other needs a Resident might have to the best of the Forest's ability to provide for the Resident's needs. All Residents will forever have a Home within the Forest and be welcomed by the Forest.
----[X][Steve Robertson] The Responsibilities of Residents are as follows:
-----[X][Steve Robertson] Try to be Kind, especially when you don't need to be.
-----[X] That's it. Seriously.
----[X][Steve Robertson] All current residents of the village of Newton are granted Honorary Resident Status, as the majority of them technically do not qualify to be Residents due to living within Newton territory (and I'm just going to ignore the fact that we're practically Connected to all members of Newton anyway)
---[X][Steve Robertson] Those who work for the Forest, otherwise known as Employees, will have their needs met for as long as they remain employees of the Forest.
----[X][Steve Robertson] Each Employee will have all Food, Shelter, and Clothing provided by the Forest free of charge and free of debt, with the Employee free to leave with all such provided when their employment with the Forest ends. (If someone manages to figure out how to move with a House, they deserve it)
----[X][Steve Robertson] All Employees will be healed to the fullest extent of the Forest's ability, of all past, present, and future ills during their employment with the Forest. This explicitly includes injuries, illnesses, diseases, infections, curses, poisons, Void Shard Dust Infection, parasites, tumors, dysphoria, and any other potential ailments that are not listed here. If the Forest is unable to cure a particular ailment, the Forest will do its best to provide quality of life improvememts, alternative means of maintaining a normal lifestyle, and alternative treatments to best help the Employee live a happy healthy life.
----[X][Steve Robertson] The Forest regularly investigates and researches Magic, both new and old, and all Employees are allowed and encouraged to participate in any and all Magic Learning Sessions done within the Forest, to whatever benefit they may find.
-----[X][Steve Robertson] If an Employee is aware of the Forest's Telepathic aspects, they reserve the right to request personal lessons from the Forest, up to Connection Guided Tutoring Sessions. Willingness to offer this service does not mean capacity to grant this service.
----[X][Steve Robertson] Regardless of the position held or job worked on by an Employee, in addition to their needs an employee will at minimum be paid the equivalent value of 1 Unusual Lumber and 2 Resources per Turn, however that turns out in time scale. This minimum value may be refined upwards at a later time due to changing economic circumstances.
----[X][Steve Robertson] An Employee may decide to leave the Forest's employment at any time with no penalty. If the Employee declares their intent to separate from the Forest's employment and then finishes the job they are currently working on, or the next job if they are not currently working on a job, they will be provided a severance package scaled to the work involved with their last project.
----[X][Steve Robertson] Employees have the right to negotiate their contracts as well as designate someone else to negotiate upon their behalf. Once a year, contracts will be revisited and all signatories of the contract will review it and discuss any changes desired if at all.
----[X][Steve Robertson] Any Employee of at least 1 year of service to the Forest may apply for Resident Status. The Forest may offer Resident Status at an earlier date at its own initiative.
----[X][Steve Robertson] This basic contractal format will for the basis and template for all future employee contracts for the Forest and can be assumed to be tailored to each specific employee as the need occurs.
And there we go! Something much more substantial than "I'll forage for my own food if you teach me Magic".
I know I said I was going to copy this at the top of this post, but that was before I removed the follow up quotes, before I lost most of my progress, and before it became 11pm.
Good night all, and good luck!
