[X] UNLIMITED OWL WORKS

For the Zerg! My life for the Queen! Whatever that is, anyways.

[x] so, the greatest rocks take at most one turn to pop?
[y] I propose when we get the slack we go for Dorf 1 Rock 1[subfeatures: huge, durable, mineral, modular-multitasker, magical, reinforced, superlatives here] and have the dorf help the rock turn into several dozen sentient ultramegaweapons.
[z]but we should probably get the most basic of defences set up first so sure start with a round of Hauflins or rocks or something.

Er... sure. [X] Unlimited Owl Works

Suggestion!
Lapi tests one of the Owls for fall damage! Clip its wings and whatnot, then throw it out the tower. Lapi is obviously immune to such puny damage, but what of their subjects?

[X] UNLIMITED OWL WORKS BUT WITH A BIT MORE EXPERIMENTATION

Turn ends extremely uneventfully. Night falls like a hammer, and nothing happens but the occasional howl in the woods.

DAY 2: THE FIRST OWLS

A bunch of snowy owls spawn into existence atop the tower! In the midst of this mass of hooting, Lapi mid tower-inspection attempts to clip one by the wings and then throw it out the tower!

ERROR SOUND EFFECT: DUTY

Lapi gets as far as gripping a bird in one hand and pair of scissors in the other before getting hit by the fall damage rules information!

Apparently, fall damage is fairly random. Basically, if flight isn't stopping it and ground or momentum is vaguely nasty enough, it's usually an injury and chance of various forms of incapacitation...or death. However, you've discovered there's a duty to the side preventing you from killing non-harvestable units for no serious benefit!

The rules want people to be killing other teams instead of teamkilling, so there generally needs to be a belief it's key to side integrity to experiment lethally. And tower-grade fall damage is too likely to be lethal to play around with!

The owls, unperturbed (even the one subject to near-execution experience), peck through their morning meat before finding various trees and rooftops worth exploring throughout the city's hex. A bit of a spread-out guard while a few hold the garrison.

DAY 3: REPLACEMENT OWLS
Wildlife does not dare intrude today either. The new owls receive marching orders to scout in case the wildlife is getting uppity or something very not-wildlife is responsible. Scouting relay appears as a vague pile of mental sensory information, mapping out the nearby hexes.

< 10 + 4 + 14 +19 +10 = 57>

They're boring. Little of note, forests on an island with some low-mountains in the northwest...aaand resources though! The owls stake claim on site until you can really build more than the basics on them.


Okay, so there's a hex of gems, iron, and silver out by the mountains that automarks as a mine, and a hex of pumpkins in the second ring away from the capital that automarks as a farm. The rest of the islands in the chain before you really need ships don't have much. There's some silver to the south and bananas to the north, both flagged with very basic structure. None of these do anything without an appropriate occupying force, and owls aren't exactly competent farmers or miners.

DAY 4: MORE OWLS TO MAKE UP FOR THOSE GUYS HOLDING THE SITES

< 6 8 1 3 8 = 26>
Wolves bust in before turn start. Vehk. The owls fly from assorted little nests and engage, while Lapi stays dutifully behind inside the building to not get sneak attacked.

OWLS: <16 9 4 4 16 = 49>
WOLVES: <20 14 7 10 19 = 70>

That goes badly. Both sides lose members in a bloody kerfuffle of flight, feathers, fur, fangs. But the wolves are getting pretty siege-y.

They advance upon the garrison proper, howling and clawing at the door and swearing in wolf languages. The tower squad squawks and waits at the ready, spewing from the windows for scratchy strikes and horrid biting every which way.

OWLS: <3 13 4 19 1 = 40>
WOLVES: <2 7 7 4 18 = 38>
Neither party performs admirably. There is much violence, but the wolves are in a bad position and the owls can mostly pull away before taking lethal damage. Some cycling later, the wolves die already. But darn, city walls grow more desirable by the day.

There is rejoicing and much gnawing of meat as one pack is felled by the other. With the fall of the enemy neutrals-that-aren't-actually-neutral, battlespace ticks over. The survivors' wounds fizzle, not quite healed but a lot better than they were before, and those who have not eaten their fill get necessary rations.

More owls appear. Well, best to let the veterans recover and the new ones scout the seas charted by the first wave.

<11 20 19 13 19 = 82>

With some exploration to the limits of range which return is possible, there isn't anything going on....but. There's something undersea! The owls aren't equipped for night flight, but there's definitely something at sea to check out with diver marines or something. Might be a sunken city, might be a seabase, might be a ruin, we don't really know.

Well, the owls have done what they can do for now. And those wolves were a bit of a scare...but the owls worked! A bit more won't hurt.

DAY 5: OWLS AGAIN

<11 4 9 8 13 = 45>
The wildlife seems to have gotten the memo this city is occupied. Scouting doesn't reveal anything exceptional, and owls converge to murder a few animals that might be a threat in the fog.

Well, that's the island mostly monitored in owls while still keeping a garrison. One more day's worth should be good.

DAY 6: THIS SHOULD REALLY BE ENOUGH OWLS

<14 20 3 8 2 = 47>
That really is enough owls. Nothing threatens at the second.

Lapi muses there's a reason this game mostly runs on meta-turns rather than day-turns past the intro phase. I'm mildly concerned they know that.

They decide to invest in a corvette. It'll be a 3-dayer...

DAY 7: THE BEGINNING OF THE OWL DROUGHT
<3, 4, 7, 7, 12 = 33>
The wolf situation is stable, but the weather worsens. It rains heavily today, and the owls are unhappy about it.

DAY 8: WAITING FOR BOAT
<7, 13, 15, 2, 8 = 45>
Nothing happens. Like, straight-up nothing. Everyone holds very still for several minutes until the void passes.

DAY 9: BOTE

Lapi is excited, at the dock with a bunch of owls who are vaguely aware what's happening today.

<10 1 11 19 5 = 46>
Boat! The single-masted cutter of a corvette pops into existence with six hauflin harpooner marines and a dedicated sea-tracker diver, water displacing with a bob. The crew's expressions are fairly placid, their minds uninterestingly almost-lifeless, just order-bots with a veneer of seafaring expressions to cough up when needed. Wow, they did NOT do this game's secondary AI very well.

There is some discussion of directions and tactics over rations, and a boat laden with owls investigates that seabase thing.

<4 4 11 8 13 = 40>
The diver checks it out, and after some move calculation stuff sends an owl back with the news. Nothing much happens, but it's apparently a natural seastead of some sort. It's like ruins or a dungeon or something, junk and sea-life is supposed to pop down there in its collapsed glory. It'll require some additional work be done to really claim it as factional, but checking back in for shenanigans every few turns is fine for now. Looks like they'll have to deal with finer details later.

Production is set to a dorf, while the corvette squad goes toward the southern islands to get a sense of the continent.

DAY 10: WITNESSED
<4 6 10 16 8 = 44>
It's a dark and stormy day in Ocean's Fledge, with the concealed crack of dawn meeting an unconcealed crack of thunder. A flax-bearded dorf in some angular mess of plate armor is forged falling onto the carpeted floor of the throne room with a 'DORF' noise.

He(?) scrabbles to his feet and salutes.

"MONARCH!" he says, a bit too loud and awkwardly dialogue-y.

Lapi acknowledges him in the described-but-not-detailed voice stones usually speak in.

"ORDERS, CROWN?" he asks, not toning down the volume.

Lapi clarifies that there's a plan to experiment with unit modifiers and what Dorfs can do in terms of ultramegaweaponization.

"I HAVE NO IDEA CROWN." he answers. "I WAS BORN LITERALLY TODAY."

Lapi finds it in themselves to ask what's this new guy's name again (since units do have names and this one is going to be referred to a lot if they don't die).

"SHOUTER!" Shouter shouts, shoutingly. There is a very shouty way to shout things, and he's shouted it alright. "IT'S PRONOUNCED LOUDLY."

LAPI ACKNOWLEDGES SHOUTER, THEN. And suggests...running some experiments or something. Poke some owls.

The next several minutes involve a dorf flapping up to one of the owls in the rafters and scribbling on them with dark magic.

<18 19 9 7 5 = 58> + 15 -> 73
Dorfs are more builders than buffers, but apparently integrating runes into spirit structure is....possible, but not that powerful. Putting a runic array on a bird proves repeatable but very weak: suggesting properties and juicing them up sort of works, as the general principle of magic, but it's not that strong relative to other mechanical facts. Details...unimpressive relative to mechanics, but impressive relative to baseline. Apparently magical energy regenerates a bit at a time per few minutes then all at once at start of turn.

Some modification to general bird sizes and their defensive qualities ensues, with tolerable success but not enough to really retype stuff (giantizing an owl to aerial-mount size would take a lot of magical energy). Making them mineral-y is apparently more of a basis than something with immediate effects. Modularity invokes Censored and Block Character and a whole bunch of other bits, but at the end of it the owl can apparently split off parts a distance before unit logic shakes them back together. Multitasking results in an owl that can solve multiple owl puzzles at once (neither Lapi nor Shouter was clear on what owl puzzles are, but they're apparently a newspaper-like thing made in the library). Trying to teach an owl magic tricks one into becoming less visible but not invisible, but it'll take way too much work to get results. Reinforcement and direct durability stuff finally improves defensive values a significant mechanical amount without compromising other features. Superlativity creates a Superb Owl, which is...interesting, high-quality for an owl but not excessively so.

It is an impressive showing for a natural-caster who isn't even commander-level, but pulling off like eight-ish teaching-tricks takes most of their supply throughout the day and night. A useful experience, sure.

Production set to ROCK. See what we get.

Scouting the southern lands hasn't revealed any notable resources or reportworthy turnarounds.

DAY 11: ROCK YOU

Lapi and Shouter wait excitedly. Shouter is now Lapi's lackey, which is sort of like a follow-around service position? But the day begins, and rocks blorb into existence, which is more like blobby popping than morbing.

<7 16 4 5 6 = 38>
Four rocks, three average and one small. They're default boring types: greyish browns and greens, though the small one's a bit pinkish-red and the third average has yellowy splotches.

Shouter punches hands together and begins experimenting with "RUNES, LADDIE!", to the consternation of the newly-fed rocks.

<1 16 17 20 20 = 74> + 15 -> 89
Several hours of long-term buff stacking later, the Weaponized Rocks have been created! They're effectively knight-grade statistically, if barely. A bit weaker than the standard Dorf before taking magical abilities into account (and considering how the magical abilities are the bulk of the Dorf's pricepoint that is pretty meh all things considered).

Developing even the lower grades of external magic seems to be a prolonged investment though, not something to just shove in one building instance.

<16 2 4 12 7 = 41>
Southern island scouting isn't revealing anything of note, but there's a good spot for a second city all hashed out once Ocean's Fledge grows already. It's a small island, but with particularly fishy waters and a stopover point between the capital and distant probable-continent.

Objectives obtained, accelerating...

DAYS 12-30

Shouter: <8 3 17 19 17> 64 + 15 = 79
Shouter's figured out how to stretch operations across multiple turns, and store excess energy in the tower via some built-in battery functionality. Good for him! He seems to have the insights likely to claw his way up to commandership naturally. Keeps a bit busy with shoveling runes into things to see what happens, building little things around town.

Scouting: <8 4 12 13 10 = 47>
Nothing of note, though the ship does make it through some rough weather and a few owls are left in hexes with enough land for comfortable foraging of wild animals. The corvette has prowled its way to the southern continent and established an owl beachhead sufficient for a third site on the mainland proper, approaching the steppe biome seen earlier.

Buildup: <20 17 15 14 16 = 82>
Things go unnaturally well. A few hauflin digging squads are popped to deal with the same-island gems-iron-silver hex and pumpkin hex, and a few dorfs to put some basic structures in place. Another corvette is worked in to deal with discretionary shipping-things-around, managing to claim the banana farm and silver mine nearby.

Ocean's Fledge City is on fleek, and with resource-related incomes is speeding its way toward Level 2: settlers, battle commanders, mounts, siege, and more. The next few days should round up the first month and offer an opportunity to really level.

What should be prioritized once money gets good and things get into the later-earlygame? Tactics that aren't prioritized will still progress, but likely much slower.

[ ] MAGITECHNOLOGY LEAD
Funnel things into getting Shouter to commanderized and therefore able to figure out what's with the basement without so much Redacted. Practice makes perfect, but longer-term experiments with the named character seems...something. This may require using some of the stranger parts of the city design functionality, including using unit generation on unusual orders. Assets that are already being directed outward will be operating mostly at discretion.

[ ] SOCIALIZE & STRATEGIZE
Find everyone else who isn't dead-eyed among various spawns. That's talent to nurture, names to learn, and potentially details to refine that might be missed just living day to day.

[ ] COLONIZE ASAP
Prioritize getting those settlers built and the good sites claimed. This might still be early enough everyone else is still getting their acts together. Send some administrative commanders with/after them too. Use the navy to hold the sites against randomly occurring monsters and escort settling.

[ ] EXPLORATION
Prioritize picking up low-effort natural resources and further searching for sites that can be followed up on later. Use the navy expansively, and send out settlers with follow-up waves in case anything's spawned or becomes apparent.

[ ] THE WATER THING
That seastead site is a more advanced resource to build things against, and might be worth factionalizing instead of just periodically looting tidbits from. Examine what's going on there and how it could be made yours.

[ ] (write-in)

[X] Rock can Socialize while SHOUTER DOES EXPERIMENTS and spare Pops(those found mindless by Socialize and unneeded for EXPERIMENTS) are vaguely sent off to Colonise Or Explore. Multitasking!

[y]Oh, so when popping a rock, I guess we don't get to choose all of the adjectives that apply to the rock we're popping?

[X] Yes. JOE's plan. Lapi hops on a boat and follows the sc-owl-ts (scout owls) to whatever people they find to socialize with.

[X] SHOUTER SHOUTS AT HIS EXPERIMENTS. I'M SURE THIS HAS PRACTICAL BENEFITS FOR "SPELLCASTING."

[X] And with the other troops, I'd rather see more priority on Colonizing, especially in the Steppe Biome so that WE CAN BECOME MORE WELSH, but that's just me.

Suggestion!
Know any good libraries we can learn wolf speech in? "Do I not destroy my enemy when I make them my friend?" and all that. Or is there an expendable food ration we could use to begin taming them?

Q&A post, voting still open / at least a few hours before I start drafting The Post

- Rocks and their inherent specials are basically random and decided when popped, as far as Lapi can tell from the unit order system. Giant Rocks, which can be driven by pioneers for miles as mounts, will be available at level 2.

- Applying adjectives to rocks post-popping can be done with a caster's time and or effort, but it takes serious investment in the magnitude of those adjectives to really do much. The set of inherent specials they have is at a pretty high magnitude; it'd take turns of work for the dorfs extant to even try and isn't guaranteed.

- From Lapi's cursory look-about of relevant-looking books, the libraries do not contain markedly useful wolf language. A general summary of beasts contains a few generalities of emotional state and types of signal (in that they are apparently swearing at you). There is a very rough game guide to the general principles of taming things, but they require that the feral be initially nonhostile or captured for several turns of time.

- In terms of expendable rations, processed rodents are acceptably meaty and the wolves will also tolerate fish.

- Most types of dogs and certain dedicated tamer-and-trapper types can communicate with wolves (if clumsily). The former is apparently an inefficient use of special-order popping (but gets faster at level 2), and the latter is a rogue-type unit that gets some cheese with limited offturn interhex movement...also available-at-reasonable-cost at lv2. Man, this game design...

- "SHOUTING WILL BE TESTED ONCE WE GET TO THE POST! ANY PARTICULAR PLANS FOR WHAT TO SHOUT AT, HANDLERS?"

[X] SHOUT AS CLOSE TO THE EARS OF WHATEVER YOU'RE TESTING AS POSSIBLE SO THE SOUND DOESN'T GET WASTED ON THE SURROUNDING AREA
[X] CONSIDER INVESTING IN A MEGAPHONE
[X]incidentally, how does upkeep work? Dorfs have a 'high' upkeep iirc- what does this translate to in terms of owls/turn, and how many owls to the dorf? or is upkeep on a different cost-track from popping-if so, how are we doing on that front?

More Q&A tidbits throughout Turn 30's day, but it's long and disjointed. About 4 hours until update planning starts...

- "I'LL CONSIDER THE MEGAPHONE, LADS!"

- Sending Lapi to go afield personally would be dangerous, since if they get randomly killed by something they die, and it's been long enough the nasty things might spawn!

- Lapi says that the game mechanics aren't fully operating at the intended scale yet. There's a separation and flex between 'unit-level' things that make sense, and 'strategic level' where the OOC game mechanics live factionally. In-character game mechanics Redacted. Redacted. Redacted.

- Lapi defenestrates the incarnation of Redacted (gods apparently do not take fall damage and resist scissor-clipping their limbs).

- Upkeep is paid at start of turn to produce food-or-analogues for units that have not been fed enough provisions to moot that. Extra upkeep can be paid into handling small-scale material repairs greater than the partial start-of-turn repair/heal/cleansing mitigation-y effect, but it's generally a quirk of 'eat things -> how did my equipped armor heal also?'. Certain incapacitations can resist the flow of time and default-food properties. In the event of inability to eat normally even after repairs, daily meal generally pops as a medical deployment tool to work around that (sometimes directly stabbed into the person if too restrained to be applied normally). Food is alarmingly interchangeable, which means certain kinds of dirt are delicious (sort of like salt but meeting other needs).

you cannot eat money...but in this world, it can be on time-delay converted to edible!

- Failure to meet upkeep or refusal to use it leads to a slow degradation by starvation or increased environmental erosion. Insufficient food intake on an upkeep-requiring unit (i.e. insufficient forage and side is unable to financially support) means severe statistical penalties and lack of regeneration that turn. Total starvation means escalating damage over turns rather than regeneration over turns, resetting to insufficient-upkeep state once fed something.

- The details of treasury and unit management are currently being edit warred over by Censored, Block Character, and occasionally Data Expunged. To compensate, the abstraction layer will track units in similar-upkeep-cost stacked blocks of ~100-1000, with the massive volume of flex there stuffed into handling lesser expenditures, buff-related changes, and the wild variability of fine details. Unit popping power and the actual cost of those units are separate tracks, but once approaching the limit supportable the city can be retasked on food to be relatively stable-sized.

- The numbers are fluctuating right now, but one dorf's upkeep cost can match low double digits of owls, a group of roughly 6-8 hauflin tending higher, and is slightly cheaper than a ship-and-crew combo. Rocks keep being rebalanced but are costlier enough than individual hauflin with some randomness, so it's apparently meant to be...the fudge dice? Owls tend to be single-digit, hauflin tend to be low-double-digit, dorfs are in low-triple.

- Ocean's Fledge is large enough that the current unit complement exceeds its natural outside-popping income, but not its income adjusted for claimed resources and converting popping power into food to further reduce that cost. Basically, hauflins and new-dorfs capped the farm and mine on the capital's island while waiting for the corvette to pop, then the dorfs shipped with the new corvette to get the banana farm and silver mine. Gems can be converted to abstracted-money fairly cleanly and therefore most-other-things. Silver and iron are mostly raw materials but large volumes can be converted to small volumes of abstracted-money. Pumpkins, bananas, and farm-variety-products keep the farmers and capitals directly provisioned, while the afield units can be maintained directly by treasury.


The likely unit distribution would be something like...
(Farm+mine clusters account for units staffing and degree of improvement, currently basic hauflin and dorf-built basics)

Ocean's Fledge
Lv1 Capital:
+5 money (base)
+1 money (silver mine)
+3 money (gems-silver-iron mixed mine), sometimes spikes
9 clusters money

+1 food (base farm)
+1 food (production pause)
+1 food (pumpkin farm)
+1 food (banana farm)
4 clusters food

Southern Scout group, corvette + lots of owls: using 2 clusters money
Mobile workgroup, corvette + dorfs: using 2 clusters money
Placeholder field owls: using 1 cluster money
Capital garrison, lots of owls + rocks + Lapi + Shouter + misc expenses: using 4 clusters food

Net income 4 money reliably...were it not for it not usually being tracked this tightly except during sensitive turns.
The early-game being-understaffed spat out a lot of money, but waiting several turns for the city's inherent qualities to be growth-ready cuts down on upgrade costs and still leaves a treasury afterwards in event of shenanigans. (And there are many shenanigans.)

i'll rebalance it later totally
Will you?
CONDEMNABLE.
Tch. Uncharitable.

[X] Well, in that case, have SHOUTER EXPEND BRIEF EFFORT TO DEVELOP MAGICAL MOBOWL PHONES.

(Not to be confused with Mo Bowl Phones or Morb-Owl- WHY DID I MAKE THAT JOKE? ...Sounds like bowel, but more bile, if you read me. Mobowl.)

Lapi uses these to better coordinate troops and communicate with distant Named Characters from the comfort of their home.

[X] PEOPLE WRITE IN A LOT OF IDEAS

Did you know that Nedben can plan after he actually does the thing?

lol. lmao.

The city is promoted to level 2, finally at a growth-point where the treasury takes it in stride rather than being depleted (a few days longer than necessary, perhaps, but the distractions of scouting!)

Lapi's vision of Ocean's Fledge is accompanied by a burst of walls around the land border and slightly out to sea. Stone supported by wood and the odd metal reinforcement, towers at the major angle curves, only a few meters from the hex borders. There's one awkwardly positioned heavy wooden main double-door gate with metal backing, positioned near the northwest and west hex edge to form a gatehouse. The town seems...more of itself, filling a bit more but not all of the space with miscellaneous new buildings. The docks have expanded into something of a dedicated dockyard with serious architecture compared to the ramshackle.

The general vibe is still rather homey, but the garrison building has expanded from townhall-manor to 'palatially-themed moderate fortress'. Somehow, reality found it in itself to put a nice flagpole up and some lapis lazuli blue paint on teal background. The defenses haven't improved much, with the big hoot being the outer walls, but there's a bit more resilience. A few more floors and side-tunnels to the dungeon that make it legitimately dungeon-y. A few more floors and protected balconies for the tower, with a better footprint altogether. A good bit of foyer and guard-hall between the garrison entry and the throne room. The outside farm has become an elaborate gardening experience of various farms, filling something that can be called a district.

The panoply of units isn't complete, but it sure is expanded. It's still way too many turns for anything superheavy, but now a pile of more advanced combat units are available.

There exists the very tepid question of a heir, though. It would be a bad hit to the treasury to force-ascend and then force-designate somebody non-royal (Shouter seems a good candidate). But it would also be a nasty hit to unit production to tie up the capital for like 60 turns or something for a royal heir.

Lapi decides the colonization situation is of priority while experimenting, and the general 'pop settlers, use the discretionary ship to ship them out' thing will eat a few turns for experimentation. The scouts haven't found anyone for Lapi to talk to yet...but once the settlers are popped the heir-or-promote comes to a head. Apparently settlers are administrative commander types with a special item that builds the city they're to manage? Crazy. By default they will be nobility and then transition to managing the city they've founded indefinitely, with pop orders set by the monarch.

LAPI SOCIALIZE: <19 4 16 10 7 = 56>

Lapi has vague conversations with the more talkative of garrison while patrolling the not-that-shiny new city. The commoner rocks are...simplistic of topics. They talk of sediments, and rock things, and Redacted. Apparently they've collectively invented Drop Basketball Golf, which involves dropping bouncy things and trying to get them through strange courses in as few shots or weird re-drops as possible. The owls watch ominously.

Things go overall well, but there's just not much soul to these people, nor any particular candidates for heirship. Lapi is inclined more towards a royal spawn by this.

SHOUTER MEGAPHONE: <10 10 9 1 16 = 46> + 15 = 61
Shouter has successfully constructed a megaphone! It's a fairly simple voice amplifier, very little special to it beyond 'be loud'. This doesn't really have combat applications, but it can be used to make really loud announcements to everybody in the hex if used from a good position.

SHOUTER MOBILE PHONE: <12 1 4 5 12 = 34> + 15 = 49
Shouter doesn't have the necessary metaphysical underpinnings of orders, nor the external signal-based framework to construct mobile phones. He does get distracted and produce a pet bowl that contains screams and attempts to do something horrible to metaphysical sy-

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Crack sound effect.

"WHAT'S MOB OWL AND WHO'S THE SIGNED..." Shouter trails off, momentarily dizzy with metaphysics. "THAT DIDN'T WORK."

Lapi receives the alarm notice of a non-allied unit appearing in the dungeon! Agh, that portal...but whoever the mystery caster is, they left super immediately.

"NOT MY FAULT!" Shouter says, of unclear fault.

Guard rocks in the basement discover...a magic hat! Sliding open the gate, they send one in to investigate it and close behind them. A little signal panel on the brim indicates how to make messages spawn and how to send messages to other hats with them...particularly, a hat labeled 'Deep Desert relay'.

"The Jewel Queen of the Deep Desert most amicably contacts your Faction." a folded letter within reads. "Please accept this offer of communication. We are interested in becoming a telecommunications provider. This magic hat device has been created for leader-to-leader communication by Candy Wolf, novice caster. It is capable of teleporting and receiving small inanimate objects, such as notes or gems. Resizable magic items may also be mailable while compressed. We are currently updating our business model to offer services in exchange for gems or magically enforced contractual money transfer. Contact us, the faction of Deep Desert, with any questions. Letters sent using this hat are recommended. Please do not send bombs, they will be disarmed and your response marked as hostile. Thanks."

After some checking, the rocks are pretty sure it's not a trap and let their peer out with the hat.

"WELL, THAT'S INTERESTING." Shouter says, having skedaddled down ahead of Lapi with the reveal of the item, in order to inspect it. "IT'S TOO COMPLICATED FOR ME TO WORK WITH YET, BUT WE KNOW THERE'S AN ALTERNATIVE AT LEAST FOR TEXTING."

You may now contact the Jewel Queen of Deep Desert and Candy Wolf of Deep Desert! You...don't know anybody else with a magic hat to contact right now.

This is enough of an upset to the status quo the questions raised are...yeah.

Two votes this update!

1. What, if anything, do you ask Deep Desert?
[ ] Polite Acknowledgement
man we can't escape ad mail even in wargames
You have no questions or need to spend the treasury at the second, so just write a letter of placid thanks to set the royal-to-royal decorum. You'll get back to them if you come up with anything and you're open to them writing back.

[ ] Communicate
- [ ] (write-in)
Ask questions and see what they say about themselves or what their services cost.

2. Heir: pop, designate, or later?
Lapi, or rather your collective will for them, wants to leave a secured location and go see the world. This is a strategic and tactical disaster for somebody with no combat experience to do...without leaving a backup first.

[ ] Pop
This will get in the way of the capital spawning units for literally months, after the currently queued settlers. Lapi will get Royal offspring then, therefore freeing them up to do whatever with no particular need to secure their life.

[ ] Designate
- [ ] (who)
Find somebody acceptable and bash a nontrivial portion of the treasury over their head. The current tolerable candidates are Shouter (though that'll cramp down on him and Lapi being out of capital at the same time), one of the upcoming settler nobles (relitigate when they've both popped and first is en route so you know what they're like, such as to pick one or give up and make a heir oneself if they're deemed unsuitable), possibly the dorfs on maintenance crew...but pretty much any unit on the side could be force-promoted to commander and then deputized.

[ ] Later
Lapi will stay home in the capital city instead of taking the massive risk of getting eaten by whatever vaguely-lithovoric or vaguely-stabby monster the world decides to spit out. There are worse things than wolves, and a successor should be in place.

COLONIZATION 1: PENDING
COLONIZATION 2: PENDING
SCOUTING: PENDING BUT THE NOT-PENDING PART DIDN'T FIND ANYTHING.

[X] ask SHOUTER if he thinks he can make Lapi Modular enough to exist on multiple hexes, possibly with the help of his MEGAPHONE-ENHANCED SHOUTING CAPABILITIES or other Dorfs.
[X] Communicate: Ask them if they have any useful information they don't expect us to, ie something they learned by chance which they would otherwise have been wrong about and which affects general planning and operations.
[X] barring the above, Later.

Q&A Update

"I DON'T THINK I CAN DO THAT FEASIBLY." Shouter says, doing the point-sideways-from-chin-and-stroke-beard motion befitting cursed thought and squinty eyes. "GENERALLY, A UNIT IS ONLY IN MULTIPLE HEXES DURING THE PROCESS OF CROSSING A HEX BORDER OR A SIMILAR TRANSITION. TRI-HEX BORDERS ARE KINDA UNLUCKY REPULSIVE SPOTS TO PREVENT BURNING TOO MUCH MOVE AT THEM. AND THERE'S NOT MUCH ACTIVITY RIGHT UP AGAINST THE HEX BORDER WHEN IT MIGHT BE CROSSED. THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING THAT BREAKS HOW LOCATION RULES WORK OR HOW COUNTING AS ONE UNIT WORKS, BUT IT'S WAY ABOVE MY PAY GRADE. AND METAPHYSICS UNDERSTANDING."


Lapi pens a letter, puts it in the hat, issues the command, and waits. A few minutes later, there's a rumble signifying new mail.

Candy Wolf has penned a letter that's mostly pleasantries. She says, after accounting for various degrees of implication, allusion, formal decorum, and so on...
<10 9 9 2 3 = 33>
That there's apparently a number of metaphysical signals and conspiracies going on in the caster-only holy ground. Apparently the people who made this game world did interfere quite seriously over there when they copypasted. The creators are definitely trying to hide something and we don't know what yet. That said, operations-level information and planning-worthy technology reveals are something Deep Desert will likely start charging for in the future. Consider this a freebie, but most things that are more tactically relevant than all fate-of-the-world big news are trend analysis they'll want to charge for doing professionally.

She does round it off with an innocent cutesy signature, so it seems like they're one of those 'charge you for everything but the call' types and doesn't take it personally.

Heir vote is currently 0-0-1 with waiting in the lead.

1. Communicate

[X] Have one of the Owls pen up a map of Ocean's Fledge. Send it to the Jewel Queen, with a letter formally and kindly requesting they send a map of their land back in return. Something something meet IRL. Figure out GPS. Something something excuse to not go to their house right now. Something THX. Discuss tactics and whatever. Sincerely, Lapi.

2. Heir

[X] Yeah... no. Lapi doesn't want fake kids right now. Save it for later.

[x] (wait does SHOUTER count as a caster who can go in the holy land?)
[x] what kinds of casters are there, do we know? that might be more valuable information than the map of Jewel Queen's area
[x] hey rocks don't have vitals(like, bleeding and stuff) right? is it possible to cut a bit of a Rock off without killing the rock in question? what happens if you try to cross a hex border carrying that bit?
[x] also do we think it's safe to talk overtly about the ominous discovery just now in textual communications (or commands but I Assume commands are safe)

[X] TRADE MAPS
<11 17 8 17 16 = 69, nice>

Deep Desert map trade accepted suspiciously fast! It appears they have a lot of desert and extreme desert in every direction except for some narrow grassland directly on a northward-flowing river, and the occasional bit of swamp very far north. They have done markedly less omnidirectional land/air scouting than Ocean's Fledge has, but appear to have boats following the river hexes on and on and on whoaaaaaa and land cover decently far out from their capital. They did manage to get a city up near the northern swamp, but haven't settled down much else yet. There's just...not that many special resources in their area.

Guess it really is a deep desert...

It appears their tactical strategy is not for sale, but since you can probably extrapolate it from the maps anyway they do admit that they're playing tall rather than wide right now.

-

"I'M STILL NOT A FULL CASTER, SORRY." Shouter clarifies. "I THINK THE CASTER PROGRESSION GOES NATURAL, NOVICE, ADEPT, MASTER. BUT THAT'S JUST THE PURE OCCULT BONUS IN STAGE INCREMENTS, WITH THE NOVICE AT 30 AND I THINK ADEPT AT 60 BUT THAT MIGHT BE CHANGED."

Shouter defenestrates Redacted again, who was sneaking up behind them. Redacted.

"CASTERS HAVE A BUNCH OF SPECIALIZATION STUFF BUT I THINK THERE'S A PROBLEM THERE. THE SYSTEM IS BEING EDITED AGAIN. LIKE A CK2 OCCULT STAT OR SOMETHING, BUT IT NEEDS TRAITS AND SPECIFIC AREAS OF PRACTICE? THAT'S WHAT I WAS POPPED WITH AND I THINK IT'S STABLE."

Shouty man shrugs, closing the window to prevent Redacted from crawling back inside.

"I THINK THERE'S AN ERFWORLD REFERENCE IN HOW THESE MAGIC HATS WORK BUT I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S A WHOLE DISCIPLINE."

You can chop off a piece of a rock, but that means the piece generally deanimates as any old severed extremity. In that the severed piece is dead or non-unit biology depending on how it's claimed. The surviving unit regenerates at turn/over a few turns depending on severity, while if left unclaimed the damaged piece is depopped as trash or possibly converted into some other curiosity. Taking apart a modular unit and then dragging a piece across a border generally pulls the rest of the unit to reassemble, or the piece can't be brought across if they've got insufficient move or contested intents-to-move-places.

I THINK IT'S FINE TO TALK ABOUT THE SECRETS. BUT THEY DON'T KNOW AS MUCH AS YOU DO. BE AT PEACE WITH THE PRESENCE OF GODS.
bruh. bruh they're throwing me out of windows. i think they're fine.

Wouldn't defenestration indicate intent to remove?
Nah, it's just intent to remove.
...
...

Okay. Sure. Whatever. Redacted is Like That, as you can all see. Moving on, I think we can discuss how familial relation works under a popping system for reference.

Which is that it's impressed on the unit who finally pops once they're materialized, based on a contextual relationship of reproduction-receptive units that may have existed before or during the popping process. It is then 'confirmed' to the parent unit(s) should they still live. The spawn gets a general sense of the parent unit(s) regarding personal nature and habits, and is likely but not certain to inherit certain physical appearance traits. The parent gets some emotional attachments analogous to a muffled physical recognition of relation. Sometimes you get a situation where the offspring is nothing like the parent and were it not for both sides claiming it's unfortunately true it'd not be assumed, or an atavistic situation where something much earlier in the line manifests again. Heredity is very nonsensical here, and primarily aesthetic or emotional-attachment except for very small bonuses for mechanical-royals and mechanical-nobles. Messed up, ain't it.

Actual formal mechanical parentage is generally limited to commander-level units producing other commander-level units. Usually this is faction leadership transmitting royal pedigree or certain managerial nobility. That said, even commoners may have personal offspring or adopt. Adopting people contractually can bestow nobility but not royalty, has to do with the whole 100-royal-lines thing that's being tested as a world condition. Monarchy has many problems and this version has more, trust me.

combine them all into one super-royalty!
Defeat them all except your own, and claim victory.
Ugh. Overlords are better, this dynasty can be passed into history. Go on, let the rock have some fun until they drop.
I am curious which way things will fall, but not enough to weigh the scales except toward the interesting. See which colors fuse and which fade.

Royalty from the same lineage and nobility from the same estate are considered distantly related in a way that glosses as 'cousins'. This is expected to happen much later if/when certain royalty break off or are picked off but leave heirs. It can also happen if a titled commander (heir or not heir) is ordered but the source of royalty/nobility does not want a direct parent-child or sibling-sibling relationship.

Multiple units popped in the same city may view themselves as related to some physically similar units, but this is explicitly inconsistent and semi-random. Units popped simultaneously have higher odds of being considered 'stack siblings' and appearing somewhat similar, while units of the same or combined-arms-well types have higher odds of being considered 'job siblings' or 'successors' while repeating key features. Stack siblings are generally a sub-commander relation, while job siblings can be either sub-commander based on position or include commander-grade based on other commonalities. Actual siblinghood due to shared parents exists, but is considered less likely to get long-term interaction due to that connoting need for separate deployment.

Above individual heredity, there is a 'tribe affiliation' that indicates general features outside a family line and is tied more to what types of units a city can pop. This is generally faction-based or biome-based, but cities captured from different factions (e.g. angry rampaging Neutrals) or built in different biomes may have different tribal affiliations and therefore various degrees of build lists and flavor. It connects to the Inherent Techbase system but is technically something else after the generation-phasey stuff. Some factions get hauflin and dorfs, others get pseudo-humans and trullan, some get various brands of alf, some are lamyros and skeletoid, sheeple transcend your awareness, orcs and satyrs, jinn and explosions, the boundary there is pretty messed up and also has environmental variations.

Vote for heir is 0-0-2, with Later in the lead!

Full-update with colonization 1, colonization 2, and general exploration tomorrow probably unless something happens. Vote is still open for further queries or takes-on-potential-heir if needed, but I get the sense the 'monarch in field = threat to survival' message got across.

ALMSOT TO THE SHEEPLE WHEEE

oh yellow text is REDACTED I thought they were unrelated.

[x] Since Rocks naturally regenerate during turn upkeep and presumably feel less pain due to being rocks, we can make use of our rocks for a small perpetual supply of whatever resources our rocks are made of! OMMV on how efficient this is relative to mining, but sometimes you have troops you're keeping in the castle who you can't send mining or whatnot.

[y]Is it possible for a familial relationship to spontaneously manifest itself during the popping process, such that we would end up with a heir when popping a rock even without spending resources for it?

[z]since a major part of (my) interest in popping rocks is variability, and pops which occur in the same turn have reduced variability/pseudokinship, I propose that generally orders like 'pop rocks this turn' can be replaced with 'pop one rock this turn and one for each of the next n turns until you've spent a total of one turn of pops on rocks; other pops spent on [next consideration]'.

[a] things SHOUTER and other Dolfs make don't have increased upkeep, do they? like if SHOUTER makes a bigger wall or enchants a rock, we don't need to pay more money on that? if so Dolfs are a good go-to if expansion ever slows down.

[b] If they don't know as much as we do does that mean we can sell the secrets of reality for fun and profit

[X] GIMME DAT TROMBONE *Bold Sans starts playing*
((Irrelevant to the update beyond that Redacted is doing a trombone solo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCh9bp1hlnU ))

You can in fact break rock components off to acquire a bunch of mundane rocks! Those trophies are...mildly unsettling. They're not very good resources, being kind of crumbly and display-preservative-would-help-ish. It's not very mining-worthy or cheese-useful as far as can be determined.

Familial relationships are distinct from the heir designation process: you can have royal commanders who aren't heirs, which means the factional succession breaks down but the royal survivors are incentivized to found new factions. It's a bit strange of a system and you might be able to convince the Sus to change it, but it's inherited from what we're badly parodying.

I DOUBT THAT THEY'LL BUY SOMETHING LIKE THAT. THERE ARE THINGS THAT THEY CAN FIGURE OUT JUST BY ASKING, AND SOME OF US ARE MUCH MORE TALKATIVE THAN REDACTED IS.
:P :P :P

COLONIZATION 1: <17 17 2 8 17 = 61>

Lord Eurythm is a thin, graceful hauflin of the count-nobility who balances that massive-looking colony pack neatly on the ship, dressed in something mildly-puffy and evocative of a Renaissance wealthy person. Short brown hair, mousy face, kind of 'yeah that's a person'.

Lapi has a short conversation with him about planned pop order: a turn of basic garrison infantry, a dorf for on-site discretionary maintenance, then another corvette should suffice for back-and-forth relaying if needed, a bit more infantry, maybe more dorfs if there's anything meriting them, then be on food production or research. Lord Eurythm nods subserviently and heads off. He has...something of a personality about liking music, dance, and the perception of elegance, but it's a thin veneer barely thicker than the seafarers.

All in all, matters go well if not stunningly well. He rides out with the TMS Discretionary, the corvette with the builder dorfs on it, and the city of Eurythm is spawned in that beyond-visual distance with little fanfare. It's apparently a musical little port town in light blue resembling a boardwalk to start with, facing the northern sea-face and thus indirectly the capital. The Discretionary will be with him for the night, but once it's not a solo operation they'll ship back out for the new colonist. That city will mostly be a resource point until ordered otherwise, little more than another glorified farm save for strategic placement and opportunities for later land development of some sort.

COLONIZATION 2: <15 19 14 7 7 = 62>
The Lady Violet Lenses, countess of the nobility, pops with an aggressive 'puff'. She dresses darkly and wears sunglasses, and seems a bit void of things to be immediately sad or angry about but thinks it's a moody existence anyway. Well, she's not wrong.

Her pop order plans will be infantry, ship, dorf, and then some road work. Her city will be a beachhead on the southern continent, and once they've reasonably staffed the secured resources down there, it'll be a good shot to do something more.

She salutes with one arm and holds her pack in the other, marching aboard the boat once it arrives. The voyage is uneventful (they'd stopped over in Eurythm for provisions and nothing alarming happened), and when the time comes the city of Violens arrives as a stony set of formidable buildings on the north coast of the great southern continent, armed with pithy palisades of varying materials without the full material density for a natural wall.


HOW'S SHOUTER DOING ANYWAY: <10 8 17 18 4 = 57>
"I'M DOING FINE!" he says. "NOTHING MUCH TO REPORT OVER HERE. THE EFFECTS ON UPKEEP VARY PER PATCH, BUT DORFCRAFT IS GENERALLY MORE ON THE NARRATIVE LEVEL THAN THE META-MECHANICAL ONE. AND WE CAN MAKE IT UP WITH BUILDING IMPROVEMENTS STUFF ANYWAY. I TRIED BUILDING A BRIDGE OUT TO SEA TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS BUT APPARENTLY THOSE FLOATY RAISEABLE BRIDGE THINGIES WILL TAKE HUGE AMOUNTS OF WORK WITH OUR CURRENT TECHBASE SO EH IT'S A VERY LONG PIER NOW."

He shrugs.

"THE OTHER DORFS HAVE BEEN DOING LOW-HANGING-FRUIT STUFF SHORING UP THE WALLS AND REFINING THE LOCAL BUILDINGS. UNFORTUNATELY I THINK WE'RE HITTING DIMINISHING RETURNS FOR OUR SKILL LEVEL. WE CAN DO A BIT OF QUANTITATIVE STUFF TO THE MECHANICS, PUTTING RUNES ON THE INTERESTING VITAL BITS AND ALL. BUT A LOT OF HOW THESE BUILDINGS WORK IS SUPER COMPLEX MAGIC AND IT'S HARD TO ANALYZE. WE MIGHT GET FURTHER THROUGH QUALITATIVE CHANGE TESTING."

THE ROCK SITUATION DURING THE PART WHERE WE'RE WAITING FOR VIOLET TO GET TO THE SOUTH: <9 2 9 16 2 = 38>
The inclement popped rocks, hauflin, and owls during mixed-production turns tend toward the smaller and mid-size varieties of rocks: it appears the larger and more special 'normal' rocks require at least a lv1 city's worth of popping power dedicated to rocks to get. A Poisonous Rock and a Shocking Rock have been acquired, but it seems there's something not quite understood here. Maybe it involves the Giant Rock mounts that were unlocked at lv2, maybe not.

EXPLORATION UNHELD: <5 12 6 12 4 = 39>
The Sheeple have awoken, and they're the violent kind of neutrals.

The eastern side of the southern continent seems to get icier and mountain-ier for some reason: there doesn't appear to be anything over there, but there might be mountain village-fort style cities up streams that're being missed or whatever.

The scouting on the westward side of the southern continent encounters very hostile troops (some sort of sheep-people by the owls' scouting-report-transmission), and near the end of the main ship's move so they can't pull everything out of range. The night is tense, waiting for a battle in the morning.

The morning comes with the sheep wading out to sea with violence in mind, with spear-throwers of their own. They bear bronzy metal-wood shields painted with uncertain symbols, and baa warcries that strike fear into the hearts of not-that-animate objects.

SHIP: <5 20 16 6 13 = 60>
SHEEPLE: <6 3 6 14 19 = 48>

But professionalism holds in the face of hostility. The ship blasts them with lightning because ships can...do that here apparently??? What? I think that's another Erfworld reference. The harpooners crewing the boat pick off a few more with only moderate damage, and the owls manage to off the retreating ones without too-bad losses.

???: <20 14 11 4 7 = 56>
Nothing particularly special happens, though rather disturbingly there's harvested wool, lambchops, and surplus military equipment come morning.

This merits follow-up. Perhaps it's a monster lair, perhaps it's a whole city. How do we do that?

[ ] Advance ASAP
Relay what troops the new city of Violens can spare as they pop and have the owls death-swarm from the coast. Rushing in early might not merit much, but scouts are expendable and it might keep foes busy with healing out attrition.

[ ] Advance With Measured Buildup
A city can probably out-produce some random hostiles if this isn't a one-off dungeon, and if it is all the easier. Have the owls map, but don't engage anything less than an overwhelming victory to avoid losses. Have Violens consolidate in a wave and send it over. Get a few filler rocks to screen, and some hauflin for combined arms, existing discretionary dorfs by the time they get over there.

[ ] Fortify Closer To New Home
The neutrals might have a 2nd level city if they're older than you, and that means more siege is a good idea. Owls will map cautiously to avoid kiting anything untenable. Have a few dorfs do some manual defensive work to compensate for local fragility, pop some more troops of varying types, and once there's a front capable of taking a walled city make it count.

[ ] (write-in, including what the rest of the faction should be doing)

Ocean's Fledge City and Eurythm can contribute troops to the southern front, as can retasking the southeastern scouting, discretionary ship, etc. but it'll be a significant shipping delay. By default, Eurythm will be stabilizing on food resources to be a money-maker while the capital city is free for pop-X-do-Y experiments. There isn't currently much exploration north farther than bird-range: it's deep ocean as far as owl-return-range-on-discretionary has revealed. As far as Lapi knows relative to how long it took to get to the south it's several turns ocean northward before there's even likely islands, but there is a big continent or multiple continents up there somewhere.

END OF DAY 50.

[X] Fortify Closer to New Home. Have Violens build up defenses while excess troop allocations are sent their way from Ocean's Fledge. Violens can send owl troops to attempt to figure out who is attacking, but they shouldn't attempt to attack until reinforcements arrive.

Meanwhile,

[X] Try to use some of those Shock Rocks as batteries! SHOUTER ATTEMPTS TO UNDERSTAND ELECTRICITY! HOOK SHOCK ROCKS UP TO BOATS TO SEE IF WE CAN GET SOME REAL ZAPPING!

[X] Communicate: Send a letter via Hat to the Jewel Queen asking about what troops they have. With the letter, send artist renderings of Lapi's basic troops (Rocks, Haulflins, Owls) commissioned by that one Owl who made the map earlier. Gonna hold back renderings of Dorfs, Corvettes, or special Rocks for now. See what Lapi gets back.

[X] Eurythem is probably fine just getting stable: finding food and whatever. Request Lord Eurythem invest in Bardic magics to capitalize on his city's expertise.

[X] Fortify/Advance ( do the advance thing but also have Dorfs fortify just in case, presumably by the time these paths diverge in terms of tactics you've mapped out a good bit of space and probably know which situation is going on?)

[X] A shocking rock? That sounds useful- we now have unlimited (well, a steady supply of) Electricy Rock Bits, break off little pieces and stuff. With enough work, the Dolfs might be able to use it to charge a battery and power mundane tech-oh ORIGIN already suggested that. Well, still true.

[X] If the Dolfs don't know how to electricity immediately (you can get a simple battery by alternating ... I believe nickle, a weak silvery metal, and copper, which is orangeish and corrodes to blue... and soaking them lemon juice! I said this from memory so I might be wrong about details.) bits of shock rocks can still be used to improve our fortifications by 'paving' the edge of the walls with shock rocks to stop people from climbing over without getting shocked.

[X] Similarly the Poison Rocks could be good too! Poison is useful for attritional combat, it amplifies the effect of hitting your enemy, makes their healing costs harder. It'll be particularly good for any of our troops that end up fighting enemies stronger than them, so if they land a hit on an enemy leader or heavy or whatnot it'll matter and not be scratch damage. Perhaps collect the poison-bits, crush them, mix into water, coat weapons? be careful and do proper lab safety and stuff to not be poisoned by it though.

[X]If you redecorate the magic buildings to be goth or cartoony or something do they work any differently?

[x] Oh yeah, whenever we might otherwise convert Silver/specific resources which are specialised as not-money into Money, we should perhaps ask that city we have a hat to if they're in any need of [specific resource] and if-so trade it for their money at a slight* markup relative to the gem cost.

*slight being approximately a markup of: ([specialisedvalue]-[moneyvalue])/2.1, such that we and they profit about the same amount from this deal with a minor leaning in their direction in case of a miscalculation.