Stories of Lore 17

 

Okay so maybe I didn’t go with everyone else. I had to grade some papers. Anyways they had some clever plans too. Though for the most part Okushiri is still standing, so that’s all good. Matleena and Pasi didn’t make it though, and we lost almost the entire army we sent down there. Only ten units of knights and twenty units of soldiers remain. Though all the manifesters lived since they were on the boat. Aato also retrieved a peculiarly powerful enchanted item that makes its wearer almost unkillable with a looping heal spell. Though it exceeds its passive mana abilities and has to be charged manually or it would take a few years for it to recharge on its own. You could probably sell this in the badlands for a few thousand mana, I’ve never seen anything like it. The recharge cost of it is only ten mana if you wanted to have someone use it. Though on the bad side, Ankathi showed up and took both of the orc artifacts present at the battle for some reason. She seemed very interested in it. I am sure nothing horrible will come from this. We still have Bagrak’s though.

Also as a sort of note from the battle, we’ve learned just how Aato uses mana different then other manifesters. He tends to super charge his own soldiers instead of summoning a proxy army. He has put in a request for a study on his own armor design to take this technique to its logical extremes if you’re interested in funding Essi’s lab to conduct said experiments. Would be about fifteen mana for the testing at least.

On to the tech division. The crystal the katara sent us is very interesting. From a material perspective the amount of mana it can hold is particularly relevant, which means either big enchantments or just…can transport it from place to place really conveniently. For initial ideas from the academy, this thing can be used as the core piece for a particularly powerful ship. The advanced wood of the Oda dawnbreakers allows them to even utilize the scorching ray ballista for more then one or two shots. If you put this thing in a ships hold you could make a massively more powerful weapon. Especially if you make the ship out of the fancy wood, basically the most powerful ship ever conceived of. Largely with some help from the katara’s new dreadnought we got to take a look at. Alternatively you could make a more land focused monstrosity if you let Essi have it, it’s one of those moments where you’re wondering what crazy idea she’ll have and then she just does something ridiculous with it. She promises it would be really cool though. For my own notes, this is the only material we’ve ever gotten our hands on that could be used to make a third gate stone. As I mentioned I can replicate the spell but just didn’t have any material that would sustain the enchantment. You can also come up with any specific requests if you have any ideas, that was just to get the gears spinning. Do note though, any of these designs would still cost a lot of mana to build and maintain but at least with the crystal they would be plausible.

So in regards to the guns and stuff there are some ways to go with this. We can produce fairly useable soldiers very cheaply and efficiently by handing them a gun, takes very little effort to train them to use it. The alternative idea is to just hand it to a soldier trained in multiple forms of combat to create elite units who have both ranged and melee training and weaponry. There is also the obvious “lets put all our eggs in one basket” type of soldier where we hand a knight the gun and stick them on the hoverbikes.

Ansa reached the city of Alosne, I’m starting to notice a recurring theme all these empires are named after the first city they managed to settle and expand from. Alosne is ruled by a sort of theocracy, worshiping what Eliana referred to as their ‘thingamajigger’. To be a bit more clear, they worship a specific person.

This adrogynous mess is named is Sakae, and they are very uncomfortable being worshipped. That doesn’t seem to deter their people any though. Ansa did a close up study and this is where it gets a little…okay completely stupid. The people think Sakae is a demigod descended from the primordial wilds and the primordial light as a sort of hybrid, despite his own admission that he’s just a normal person they won’t believe him. To be fair though, he’s eighty years old and clearly doesn’t age. According to the people Ansa talked to, he has been witnessed to survive being executed…by the people who now worship him. I warned you this was about to get stupid.

So basically he was executed for being too effeminate and making men feel uncomfortable. As well as making all the nobles wives fall in love with him on sight or something stupid to that effect. The official reason was theft but Ansa notes you don’t execute people for stealing fruit off a tree that’s hanging over the public street. So after a formal execution they found him sneaking off towards the badlands. Upon realizing there was only one person in the whole village that looked like Sakae, they did the math that he survived after his body was unceremoniously dumped into a frozen river. So of course the first response to this by the peasants who discovered him? He must clearly be the messiah, let’s take him prisoner and make him king.

The noble originally responsible said that if he’s really a demigod they should get to execute him a second time just to make sure. Saying that if Sakae lived a second time he would offer his whole estate to Sakae as penance. The peasants said that was sacrilegious to even suggest it and burned his whole estate down and then executed him. This whole time Sakae was kept prisoner by the peasants who supposedly worshiped him because he kept trying to sneak off to the south. Seriously they had him in chains while claiming he was a demigod that they needed to bow down to. They were afraid he would run away to bring divine judgement back on them if they didn’t repent while he was still there or something idiotically superstitious.

Okay so now lets get into what he really is and isn’t. Turns out Ansa’s mastery of this field makes her pretty good at figuring it out before anyone can tell her otherwise. He is not a demigod. He is a….dragonborn aasimar? A dragon fucked an angel and he popped out. He’s half dragon half angel. For that kind of mix you would expect something on par with a demigod right? Turns out no, he’s quite frail and kind of sickly. Ansa points out that if you don’t have a humanoid as the midpoint, crossover genetics tend to be…not great. Instead of inheriting the strength of a dragon and the power of an angel he’s just lucky to be alive. He is nearsighted, allergic to almost everything, his bones are brittle, and apparently he is always sick. He’s not good with magic or with ki or with draconic magic or anything. He’s just some kid who can survive being stabbed and thrown in a river at least once and has a very long lifespan.

This is Alosne’s demigod. Because its peasants are fucking stupid. That being said, he’s actually a competent ruler. Alosne went from being a medium sized village to a civilization that spans the north under his guidance. While he’s not that powerful, his parents are. This is about to get even more moronic so hold on to your seat. See the reason they worship him is that neither of his parents talk to each other anymore. Kind of a bad divorce you could say? However, they are drawing powers from both. As long as Sakae is there neither will straight up destroy Alosne to spite the other and instead try to outdo one another as both want the favoritism of the kid.

I shit you not this is happening between an angel and a dragon. Except on this scale that means instead of buying him candy, they give his country massive boons. The smart priests figured this all out, and realized as long as they have Sakae his parents won’t try to fight by way of making the followers enter civil war. So they worship Sakae instead of either of his parents to prevent a schism. It is literally illegal to build a temple to either the dragon or the angel, it all has to be dedicated to Sakae who is just trying to not die from a cough.

I can’t…I can’t deal with an entire kingdom coming to power based on this scale of dumb luck. They were lucky he didn’t die when executed given a slight breeze looks like it might do him in, they were lucky his parents really liked him, they were lucky he’s actually a good king, they were lucky that the clergy were smart enough to figure out the long con and prevent total civil war. We saw what happened to Katara when they tried to mix two things at once, and yet they somehow managed to escape that based on the fact the peasants just happened to be dumb enough to think Sakae was a messiah with such fervor that they forced him into being king even if they had to chain him to the throne.

As a final note, the Archdruid sent us some gift for helping in the war. We’re out of her normal reach so she just sent some seeds to us. They’re glowing so I’m pretty sure they’re neat.

 

Greetings keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. We’re still alive after all. So war report, in my defense it was the best plan to cut the fighting short and the losses just as short. It just happened to mean we broke a lot of the city in the process. The nalkas manifesters took over the bulk of the troop work, though we still lost most of the recently recruited soldiers. The orcs also managed to kill Motsqueh who decided to try and punch the whole horde to death. Serizawa met an unfortunate end alongside him as well.

We managed to kill both commanders though their artifacts were taken by Ankathi of all people who showed up just towards the end to snatch the things. Though we might not have been able to kill the warchief without her so…make what you will of that.

The city is extensively damaged as a result of all this. But the Archdruid has overgrown the empty fields outside of our city so we have easy access to the lumber needed for repairs. She also chose to make it all the special wood from Tonarooka we were trying to harvest since that was what we happened to have planted. So our trade route is looking great and we might have some very fancy houses soon. As a final reward she left us with this thing.

This is Nemnas, a sea monster that is apparently fairly intelligent. Though it definitely improves our control of the seas. No one would even think to look under our fleet for such a thing. It’s also quite good at dealing with other monsters. However, there is a bit of a catch. Only certain people are capable of commanding it since we aren’t exactly druids. Chinami’s hydromancy allows her to, it is also suspected that Shime could as well.

 

 

 

On to other news, we’ve finished reconstructing the village in the badlands. Though it will take some time for it to really get moving because we’re currently fixing the capital up and there was just a big battle with the orcs. However, its colonists have decided to invest their efforts heavily as a trading post. We can expect great returns on this I feel.

Iwanagi continues to sail the island’s coast to see what he’s come across. There’s another island right next to it that he spotted as well.

Kaylen pointed out there aren’t really maps to the orc lands simply because they are a nomadic people. Its just known that they are most frequently located in the plains south east of the badlands.

 

 

Okay so lets start today off with the anirace team. We’ve managed to pay off all the gear to get them set up, and they’ve taken to hiring Juma as their full time coach. He might have originally intended to be a competitor but apparently the cushy job of yelling at a bunch of half naked women to do things with his anirace balls is good at making him consider new options. We haven’t told him the curse is broken yet. I’m debating telling them to never inform him about it just to see how long it takes him to cave because some of our girls are a bit…lets say ravenous.

As for the home field, do you want to use the actual forest and just laugh as people try to use those mounts to cross through it or do you want to register it in the abandoned outskirts of the city itself? We easily have enough abandoned urban environment to make a field of. I mention it because the forest is full of monsters and it will definitely take a lot of resources to keep it safe for use and play during the games for spectators especially. Clearing out every inch of nine square miles can be a bit of an invested effort.

Since we’re throwing this much money into a sports team I figure maybe I should mention the team captain. Elpida Remelis is formerly a blacksmith from Sybaris who more or less had a pretty well adjusted and normal life. I was going to make a joke about that being exhilarating and shocking, then I got depressed when I remembered that actually is kind of unusual around here. She used to work in the eastern section of the city and was primarily just hired by the people for day to day things like nails, tools, and so forth. Not quite Iliana from the south side but still a useful part of the civilian economy.

Perhaps due to her rather normal life she is a fairly upbeat and optimistic girl. She wound up going on the trip to Maji to play in the games just as a break from her somewhat monotonous day to day life. She became team captain slash manager because she’s one of the few there who can both read and write. She’s not the best player on the team, but the best player is a cranky former soldier who just keeps to themselves and you can repeat that story for pretty much every player better then her that we have. So she makes a better captain for the public to focus their attention on.

Also now that the war with the orcs is concluded, the Archdruid has come by to help with our spirit problem. Yaaay and of course someone had to go and fuck it up. The demon and coven cultists decided, the instant she got here, to try and kill her. So…that didn’t make us look too good. I have spent all of yesterday apologizing and trying not to piss her off before she destroys the entire city as her method of fixing the problem. On the upside they failed to hurt her at least. On the downside they are actively fighting back against the exorcism and making things hard for her…so she is leaning towards that mass destruction thing out of irritation. Amare has been working with Petrina to try and eradicate the cultists. Notably Amare vouches for just murdering them as they’re found instead of taking them prisoner as Petrina prefers. Especially since Eliana is supposed to visit next week and the cultists might do something stupid again.

Oh also, we still have Bagrak, and she is still blind and chained up.

While we’re at it, though Petrina is busy trying to keep Sybaris under control she has declared herself the knight-commander. We weren’t really in much position to object and now the trainees are here in Sybaris with her helping hunt down the cultists. Bit of a hit the ground running training style I suppose.

If there is any positive news regarding local affairs its that Thyra still has all those slaves we got from the badlands awhile back. So once she’s done stopping off at Oda’s docks to let them examine the dreadnought we can start fixing the prince problem assuming the spirits are gone by then.

In relation to the orc news, Ankathi was seen at Okushiri to take the orcish artifacts. I mention this because I can’t help but recall she is the one who originally figured out how they work and how the mindless orcs were being made. So…she’s going to have an army soon one way or another it seems. Just not sure what she wants it for or where she would build this army.

So with the guns we got from the badlands the military division figured out two routes to go with it. The first of which being we just give some girls guns and tell them how to use it. This is vastly cheaper then normal as it requires far less training for us to reach a level of competency with a gun as opposed to all the physical conditioning and difficult training our warriors normally face.

Though one of the lieutenants came up with another concept she calls the pathfinders. Training scouts to extremes as a special force and equipped with magic trinkets to prevent things like scrying so they can move with a level of sneakiness she said. Essentially the stealthy template stamped next to it means that they are not normally possible for enemy scouts to notice. Causing them to either have no idea where the units are or how many are really in the army if its a mixed force. To be noted, druids can still find them in forests because druids are extremely good with spotting things in a forest. The pathfinders would be trained in guerilla tactics as well as close quarters weaponry to fulfill a variety of tasks.

((Mechanics note. Guerilla template gives them the ability to surprise attack a hex then make an opposed roll to disengage before any further combat rounds can begin. The 2 is a bonus to the roll because they have long range weapons so they have a bit of a head start on running away))

We sent the crystal up to the nalkas, also we received the other strange artifact. As far as any of us can tell its some sort of religious historical artifact, that or just a really weird and ornate design. It’s a small statue like thing but its so worn down and cracks have flaked off over the years but its embedded with gold and jewelry, notably a chunk of them are likely missing if this was a symmetrical piece due to the earlier mentioned things.

Finally, Ryo noted that he can see orcs in the area he is passing through. He’s not quite sure where they’re coming from and is making a distinct effort to sneak around but it is worth noting those are the plains we heard about the orcs coming from.