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We have better Martial and better Intrigue than Drycha. I would be surprised if she has better Stewardship than us and she's also not known for her Diplomacy. So given that she is an ancient and powerful being and assuming that all the hype wasn't overstated by a lot, I assume her strongest stat is Learning and her Magic score shouldn't be too low either.

On its own counterspelling seems like the classical and most sensible choice, but our odds might be below 50% and if we fail she's gone.

Attacking her, also known as muggle counterspelling, could be successful. I don't know what our chances depend on though.

Dragonflask seems like overkill with chances of collateral. And we might not get a corpse, letting us forever wonder if we killed her or not. Would definitely impress everyone around us though.

Pursuing Drycha into a realm we've never been and don't even surely know how to reliably exit while Drycha has frequented the place or similar places like it who knows how many times seems very dangerous. It would also deny us any and all Human backup. Drycha is hated by the local forest, which might be even more impactful on the other side of the veil, up to and including her getting ambushed to support Mathilde, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Disengage is just giving up on this option and Binding an ancient and legendary spirit permanently to our soul seems like insanity even if one ignores that we haven't at all tested the difference between Chamon binding and Ulgu binding and that Chamon usually binds apparitions with no skills or interests in Chamon while we are facing a master Ulgu weaver here.

[X] Attack
[X] Dragonflask
 
[X] Dragonflask

Few are the times where fire is as appropriate as this. And even if Drycha survives, which is not that likely considering she is weaving a desperate escape spell (needing concentration) and made of wood, it will scar and weaken her deeply.
 
Generally no since it is unethical as hell to do that to any forest spirits who are not you know... Drycha. Like this is necromancy by another name as far as the ethics of binding go since dryads actually have human level intelligence.
Dragons have that as well and yet the colleges do have some dragon binding scrolls and would use them.

Moral concerns are often given lesser consideration to strategic advantage in the empire.
 
I am against becoming a slaver. That's leaving aside the many pragmatic reasons to avoid trying to bind drycha.
Don't consider it slavery! She'll be with us for the rest of our mortal lifetime presumably, so consider it giving rehabilitation a go instead of the punitive 'justice' of being caged in the Wildwood. It worked with Qrech!
 
The only ones that have achieved something like this are the Grey Lords and they haven't published their techniques, so there's no research that can be done here. The only way to find out how likely this is to work is to try it.
Did Gehenna tell us anything about how much effort and experimentation was required in order to learn how to bind Hounds with Chamon?
 
That must've looked so strange to ice granny :D

First an "oh fuck, enemy" out of the corners of her eyes. Then the very same enemy suddenly tumbles away from nothing you can see.

Only to later get cut in half by something you still can't see. :D
Branulhune isn't invisible, it just has an on/off button on whether it exists or not.

Ah yes, Mathilde. A more Traditional Grey Wizard you'll never find, what with her Witch Hunter hat, her Dwarfen-made sword, and her spell of Dragon's Breath.
With her growing fame and reputation, give it 40 years and she'll be asking the real Mathilde to please stand up.

To put forth another argument that I only tangentially mentioned earlier:
I don't want Mathilde to even consider binding Drycha because I don't want to play a character who is a mystical slaver.
It's repurposing a cage meant to catch a wolf to catch an enemy soldier. It's unethical if we start making her do slave shit, but until and unless we do, it's just a magical equivalent to clapping her in irons.
 
Branulhune isn't invisible, it just has an on/off button on whether it exists or not.


With her growing fame and reputation, give it 40 years and she'll be asking the real Mathilde to please stand up.


It's repurposing a cage meant to catch a wolf to catch an enemy soldier. It's unethical if we start making her do slave shit, but until and unless we do, it's just a magical equivalent to clapping her in irons.
It's repurposing a cage made for a wolf to hold an ogre, and the ogre is better at picking locks than us at making them.
 
Ah, ok, though in that case how did Dyrcha see the sword coming?
There are very few people who have more experience with Ulgu than Drycha. She didn't know there was someone invisible, but she probably felt something was wrong and could instinctively "feel" Mathilde's presence. If Drycha knew there was someone using Ulgu to be invisible, she could probably find them. Or at least, I think so. I've been on a streak of being wrong lately.
 
[X] Dragonflask

I really like how you weave the dice rolls into compelling battles in this story. You turned Mathilde's first whiff from her swing at Drycha from losing the first roll into a bisecting hit from the next roll from the very swing she was still in the process of whiffing by teleporting the sword into her other hand.

The mix of failure and success rolls gives a very satisfying read, and though I don't doubt that having straight successes and finishing her off immediately from the first roll would have been just as enjoyable, I liked the uncertainty of going through this mix of success/fail rolls on a first read.

That being said, the utter obliteration of Waghhh Birdmuncha from succeeding just about every roll is still my favorite battle moment of this quest.
 
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