And, yeah, as mentioned, originally, this was going to be a case of 'hey gang, welcome to the turn start, Salkalten is a burning pile of rubble, and there is a huge Druchii army marching its way south into the province, this is how the war turns start, here we go going to have to take war turns just rallying together the Army of the Forest and Army of Ostland into cohesive blocks hopefully before they get too far past the forest line'.
Same way that you were also going to get a thing of 'Middle Mountains gone silent, all settlements lost, all settlers gone, also a dragon died' if you'd sent the Army of the Mountains away.
Circumstances change. In this case, a very lucky, perhaps even potentially divinely blessed given how things turned out, priest of Manann, changed this whole encounter around. Also, yeah, without Sadrina, I get the feeling a lot of players would have assumed the dwarf wall would have held off the Black Ark and stationed their men there and then I would have gotten to write something along the lines of 'watching ten thousand men turn to paste, powder, and reddened mist'.
... You know, put like that -- about how two
fairly awful things we have just barely managed to dodge by virtue of either "You managed to get Manann's support again, with the Marienburg adventure thing, and then also rolled really damn well" or "You kept the Army of the Mountain stationed there and thus dodged a bullet"
and "Thanks to Sadrina, and good ideas on where exactly to place people on the walls, you
didn't get most of your dudes destroyed before it even started" ((let's remember that initially, if I remember correctly, people seemed to think that Wall 3 would be good enough... hoo boy. Good thing Wall 4 won that vote.)) -- it makes me feel a whole lot more worried about
this;
Tracking Beast-Paths: The mercenaries found one last year, now it is time to find more. All, if possible. With aid from the Army of Ostland and the Army of the Forest, you need to start locating these assault vectors as soon as possible. With the beastmen hopefully scattered by the fighting at the Blood Fane, it will not nearly be as dangerous as before to investigate. By which you mean send the mercenaries in, and through fire and steel ensure their efforts succeed and that they live to continue doing the job you desire from them. The militia will likely help out as well, in different areas of course. Cost: 500. Time: 1 Year. Reward: At Least One Major Beast-Path Located. Chance Of Success: 75%
Because "Tracking Beast-Paths" was one of the options that we
didn't take this turn.
So. Yeah.
That's not great.
Because gauging by the, well, the overall feel of how things go... well, we didn't make a strategic move to counter
this threat, which means it's probably going to hit us badly and hard and by surprise. Unfortunate. Especially unfortunate is the fact that the first strike is probably going to be the equivalent of "Well'p, your Middle Mountain stuff is literally all gone" or "Well'p, Salkalten is all gone" or "Well, you put your men on the 3rd Wall, and the Black Arks broke through 3 walls sooo..." meaning that the "actual" fight comes
later; this is just the wind-up or surprise attack that, if you had chosen differently or gotten luckier, you could have avoided.
Also, we didn't choose the Flame of Ulric option either, which... resulted in Emil Beltz withdrawing to the Iceborne Flame and presumably rapidly fortifying that place. Though, we didn't get an option to throw Frederick and the province's efforts behind fortifying it, so... So the defenses are based on whatever Emil manages to scrunge up.
I don't really like thinking about how unpleasant the initial attacks of the Beast-tide are going to be. Given we didn't take a "Track the Beast-paths" option. What are we going to lose? Bugman's Brewery? The Pinnacle? (Probably not the Pinnacle, since we gave Aurelion a warning.) The Iceborne Flame? Would it have required us holding yet another army in reserve, or sending it to the Flame/Brewery/whatever, in order to avoid a Middle Mountain scenario? Would it have just required picking Beast-paths and rolling well on it?
Is whatever is going to come for us inevitable due to the choices we made and didn't make, or is it still going to depend on rolls and luck too? Hard to say.
I guess it's good that we managed to dodge the Middle Mountains and Black Arks suckerpunching us and taking us down. But it looks like we are probably going to have a nasty surprise from the Beastmen in exchange. Oh well, can't always play perfectly. At least we managed to avoid 2 blows and weather 2 things well enough; it means we'll have more left for the Beast-tide.
... Also, the Beast-tide is going to be hitting the
whole of the Empire, and not just Ostland alone, so... On the other hand, if Ostland had managed to dodge the 3rd surprise too, then we'd have been in a better position for the "You've thrown off the attacks on
your province; now which province are you going to advance into and aid?" follow-up.
