Turn 6
- Location
- The Internet
You briefly consider giving your new friend's sight a shot, but decide you're better off scouting the area. You need answers of the larger variety.
Stealth: 2v1: [3]
You're not quite as stealthy as you'd like, and are caught out a few times. Fortunately, you respond to this by turning around and bolting, and while they sometimes put up a good chase, you're never close enough for them to realistically catch up to you before you've vanished again.
The downside is that, assuming they have any communication at all, they now have multiple sightings of you wandering around. Hopefully they'll either be too busy to do anything about it, or their attempts at responding will slow them down more than your efforts ever could.
The upside is that you now have a pretty good idea where you are.
This is, as near as you can tell, the general layout of the area you're in. Past the bordering fortresses seem to be relative wasteland, with no enemy movements or visible structures for the most part, at least as far as you saw. The outpost you died at seems to indeed have been one of a line of fortifications attempting to wall off or at least screen the area between two mountains, and the place you woke up afterwards seems to have been a little to the south (lower on the map, which you think is south) of there, closer to the southeastern most fortress. Your original fortress should have been the western of the two southernmost bastions walling off mountain passes, and thus fairly far to the south through a lot of dried riverbeds that you didn't see anywhere near here.
Alternatively, you got which say is south wrong.
That aside, your survey has revealed some very noteworthy points of interest.
-The giant fortress nestled/built into the mountains is absolutely gigantic. You severely hope they renovated one of the existing ruins, because this thing puts your own fortress to shame. It's also swarming with activity, and not just military patrols or mindless milling; there's all sorts of crude wagons and hauled packs going to and fro. Very disturbing.
-The fort curtain you were at earlier is interesting. It's obviously designed to ward against attack and seal off the pass, but there's room between them to sneak past without being in range of anything save possibly tower-mounted artillery. That leads you to suspect it's there more as a deterrent or breaking point for larger forces than to block literally anything that comes through. The "front" of each fort is also slightly different than the other sides, with the crenelations being raised and reinforced into arrowslit-bearing shields, which seems to confirm both that they're designed to withstand assaults from without and that these assaults are liable to include ranged fire of some kind.
-The fortress to the south (again, you think) seems pretty robust. Like all the other forts that aren't the curtain wall, it seems to be made of quarried stone rather than Nightmare-warped reality, which is a good sign. You'd think it'd have a lot of ground to cover, but while it's got heavy patrols it doesn't seem super frantic about scouting out against attack. Presumably that means this border is relatively safe, despite including what you assume is a way around the fort curtain to the north.
-Haha wow, there is an actual forest in here. The fortress guarding it- and you have no doubts whatsoever about the necessity of defending against a Nightmare forest- seems suspiciously vine-covered and defensive. Patrols were pretty sparse and kept near the fort, which you took as a hint not to hang around yourself.
-The western fortress seemed a bit sparser than the southern one, but with much wider-ranging patrols. You saw a lot of ranged troops in these patrols, which could mean just about anything.
-The pits in the middle-ish of the region are important. Truth be told there's a lot of work being done around them; they're so wide-ranging that it's hard to call them a fortress or similar, but the total volume of (mostly crude, unfortified) structure and (still armed but often working) population could well rival or exceed any of the not-capital fortresses. You were regrettably unable to figure out what they were doing, if indeed they had a single purpose with all those pits, but you have no doubt it's a bad thing. Given their size and frequency, however, you're guessing this is either an enormous and long-running operation, or that the pits themselves are natural (read: Nightmare-tainted abomination) features with some kind of value.
With a much better understanding of the area, your strategic options open up considerably.
[] Scout [Location]. You did a quick pass, but nothing in-depth and nothing risky. Poking deeper might reveal more intel on any particular landmark or location.
[] Assault [Location]. Now that you know where everything is, you can pick and choose what to kill much more coherently.
[] Seek [Feature]. Whether looking for a place to stay or a patrol to ambush, knowing the lay of the land will aid greatly in finding things you want found.
[] Ghost Memory: A Chance To Learn. While scouting the pools, your friend said she sensed an opportunity. It might still be there.
[] Ghost Memory: A Clean Home. Several times while scouting, your friend said she sensed the same opportunity. It might still be there.
[] Ghost Memory: A Favored Toy. Near each fortress (but not the fort line or capital), your friend said she sensed the same opportunity. It might still be there.
Stealth: 2v1: [3]
You're not quite as stealthy as you'd like, and are caught out a few times. Fortunately, you respond to this by turning around and bolting, and while they sometimes put up a good chase, you're never close enough for them to realistically catch up to you before you've vanished again.
The downside is that, assuming they have any communication at all, they now have multiple sightings of you wandering around. Hopefully they'll either be too busy to do anything about it, or their attempts at responding will slow them down more than your efforts ever could.
The upside is that you now have a pretty good idea where you are.
This is, as near as you can tell, the general layout of the area you're in. Past the bordering fortresses seem to be relative wasteland, with no enemy movements or visible structures for the most part, at least as far as you saw. The outpost you died at seems to indeed have been one of a line of fortifications attempting to wall off or at least screen the area between two mountains, and the place you woke up afterwards seems to have been a little to the south (lower on the map, which you think is south) of there, closer to the southeastern most fortress. Your original fortress should have been the western of the two southernmost bastions walling off mountain passes, and thus fairly far to the south through a lot of dried riverbeds that you didn't see anywhere near here.
Alternatively, you got which say is south wrong.
That aside, your survey has revealed some very noteworthy points of interest.
-The giant fortress nestled/built into the mountains is absolutely gigantic. You severely hope they renovated one of the existing ruins, because this thing puts your own fortress to shame. It's also swarming with activity, and not just military patrols or mindless milling; there's all sorts of crude wagons and hauled packs going to and fro. Very disturbing.
-The fort curtain you were at earlier is interesting. It's obviously designed to ward against attack and seal off the pass, but there's room between them to sneak past without being in range of anything save possibly tower-mounted artillery. That leads you to suspect it's there more as a deterrent or breaking point for larger forces than to block literally anything that comes through. The "front" of each fort is also slightly different than the other sides, with the crenelations being raised and reinforced into arrowslit-bearing shields, which seems to confirm both that they're designed to withstand assaults from without and that these assaults are liable to include ranged fire of some kind.
-The fortress to the south (again, you think) seems pretty robust. Like all the other forts that aren't the curtain wall, it seems to be made of quarried stone rather than Nightmare-warped reality, which is a good sign. You'd think it'd have a lot of ground to cover, but while it's got heavy patrols it doesn't seem super frantic about scouting out against attack. Presumably that means this border is relatively safe, despite including what you assume is a way around the fort curtain to the north.
-Haha wow, there is an actual forest in here. The fortress guarding it- and you have no doubts whatsoever about the necessity of defending against a Nightmare forest- seems suspiciously vine-covered and defensive. Patrols were pretty sparse and kept near the fort, which you took as a hint not to hang around yourself.
-The western fortress seemed a bit sparser than the southern one, but with much wider-ranging patrols. You saw a lot of ranged troops in these patrols, which could mean just about anything.
-The pits in the middle-ish of the region are important. Truth be told there's a lot of work being done around them; they're so wide-ranging that it's hard to call them a fortress or similar, but the total volume of (mostly crude, unfortified) structure and (still armed but often working) population could well rival or exceed any of the not-capital fortresses. You were regrettably unable to figure out what they were doing, if indeed they had a single purpose with all those pits, but you have no doubt it's a bad thing. Given their size and frequency, however, you're guessing this is either an enormous and long-running operation, or that the pits themselves are natural (read: Nightmare-tainted abomination) features with some kind of value.
With a much better understanding of the area, your strategic options open up considerably.
[] Scout [Location]. You did a quick pass, but nothing in-depth and nothing risky. Poking deeper might reveal more intel on any particular landmark or location.
[] Assault [Location]. Now that you know where everything is, you can pick and choose what to kill much more coherently.
[] Seek [Feature]. Whether looking for a place to stay or a patrol to ambush, knowing the lay of the land will aid greatly in finding things you want found.
[] Ghost Memory: A Chance To Learn. While scouting the pools, your friend said she sensed an opportunity. It might still be there.
[] Ghost Memory: A Clean Home. Several times while scouting, your friend said she sensed the same opportunity. It might still be there.
[] Ghost Memory: A Favored Toy. Near each fortress (but not the fort line or capital), your friend said she sensed the same opportunity. It might still be there.
