Skeledop Trigram Formation in progress...may take until late tomorrow due to schedule stuff

Owl Scouting: <14 20 17 15 3 = 69, nice>
The owls have identified a second-level neutral city of Sheeplestan, deep in the steppe grasslands. It resembles a pile of crypts and grazing-grass with the occasional stone tower. Welsh architecture is juxtaposed with Mongolian yurts and a few other stylistic anomalies, like someone really could not decide what the Sheeple are like. They've got some of the few trees even in this region around some central pond: the walls have loosely-barred subhex river-flow sea-ward and doesn't seem to be navally active despite the dock for it.

Well. Good thing you didn't rush in without siege. Force composition is a shitton of land infantry and a few giant sheep monsters. Some are questing ram heavy-knight siegers, others are eldritch cyriaks undulating and reforming in maddening ways. A few healer light cast-knights on the ground, and fluffy sheepclouds in the airspace, but the owls pull back before turn to avoid kiting, getting shot up, or the terrifying impacts of flying sheep. The walls and towers are pretty densely packed with archers, but the architecture is almost all basic in the city itself.

The city hasn't claimed any surrounding resources. There's a few weird crypt-things that appear to be research bolster and artifact-pickup sites into the mountains, but it's bare of directly useful farming/mining beyond some grazing-grass in the city itself. Apparently the city's production is basic because labor sheep and afield healers were working on building various defenses in that direction slowly but surely. There will be a lot of small-fortifications and sniping towers even before the city itself.

Shock Rocks can produce batteries through trophying, but it takes several turns to get batteries sufficient for most things you're thinking of. A lot of it is the magical core, so without a method of external recharge it's a capacity thing, and with a raw magic method it's a juice cost strain.

ATTEMPT TO EFFICIENCY THAT PROBLEM AWAY: <10 3 7 14 14 = 48> + 15 = 63
There are some improvements in terms of batteries and crude manual generators, but the world is fairly light on actually handing useful mechanical energies over expediently. A little bit of waterwheel there, a bit of windmill here...and a lot of brute-force magical clarification of intended nuance. There's something of a power supply such that small-scale batteries can be powered up by inclement happenings, but it'd be quite a while before, say, it's combat tower spells or anything.

BOAT BATTERY: <6 17 17 7 5 = 52> + 15 = 67
Apparently, the boat attack ray is meant to convert to shock after certain points rather than before. Boat attacks honestly serve better at charging batteries than discharging them, since the boat's attack-to-attack conversion costs only about as much as everyone waving around basic attacks (and they can do that for quite a bloody while). There's some cheese related toward crude lightning-burst type effects, but it's more like 'electrofishing' and 'ball lightning is a literal magical lightning attack in vaguely ball-shaped thundermine format that discharges on a sufficiently frustrating target' than not. The remaining problems are mostly capacity: while magic can tolerate low-magnitude structural phantasms, reliable technology likes more consistently reified current conversions and such.

Somehow this is significant progress on Inherent Techbase technology! Not enough to autodeploy or pop at will, but enough to be proof-of-concept outfitted manually on ships for refining purposes.

SHOCKING WALLS: <19 17 4 1 9 = 50> + 15 = 65
Oh! That's a surprisingly functional shock trap setup. It's little more than electrifiable wall panels on the outer side of crenellations-and-such to deal energy damage with chance to stun against assorted land siege options, but somehow it works. Building enough of them will take the dorfs and rock-partly-harvested-for-parts several turns, but it keeps well enough unless actively discharged. The principle will be saved for future walled cities and be passively implemented (assuming I remember to account for it in attacks), it'll just take raw time, availability of Shock Rocks, and dorfpower after walls are built or substantially remodeled.

POISON BITS: < 17 2 7 13 11 =50 > + 15 = 65
You can in fact use poison rock bits as...poison rock bits. Unfortunately they don't take well to water or weapon coating: when powdered its magical properties are generally dispersive-as-damage and turn into damaging quick-disperse green fumes with the right physical stimulation. It can be contained in lab conditions to create the most stock of chemical weapons, Generic Poison Gas Canisters. They're sort of like the poison gas from Epic Battle Fantasy, in that they deal lingering poison damage for a while but without long-term effect once survived.

Inherent Techbase progress! Manual production possible.

Deep Desert Basic Troops: Jewel Queen sends a few vaguely ancient-Egyptian artstyle renderings of slinger-priest castknights, khopesh swordsmen, pikers, a kebenit-style river barge looking sailing ship with archers, scarab beetles, and generic laborer units that are apparently easily respecialized. Speculative prices are attached: it's apparently quite a few turns upkeep to have their service, and that would be assuming they had a means of getting them over.

There is some speculative discussion about comparable resources and hat-based mailing, but between Lapi and Jewel Queen comparing notes it's currently a 'we will call back when resource needs would be a good exchange spot'.

Eurythm bard situation: <5 13 19 2 4 = 43>
The base process is slow, painful, and involves a lot of raw experimentation with the concept 'bard', but somehow it gets built while the capital is faffing about with rocks, over turns of experimentation and house-decorating. The Eurythm Bard College is hacked together from an unused house, musical instruments, miscellaneous paraphernalia, and metaphysical poking things. Units can now train a number of musical skills at Eurythm! Hauflin bards can be promoted through on-site training, afield at significant cost, or popped with the lv1 city's full production. They're ground dance-fighters with low-level heal support, but they're weaker cast-knights than dorfs and with less direct-fighty-power than direct-promote hauflin. This is apparently something the game views as low-hanging fruit, or a sidegrade for the sake of coverage. It took frustratingly long, but it happened.

A few bards are popped and distributed before Eurythm returns pop order to food production, so they'll be available for further experiments.

Vioens fortifies but gothic: <1 4 9 11 5 = 30>
The city is now a bit ominous looking, but to no apparent effect. Palisade fencing has created a simplistic wall in lieu of natural ones. Wrought-iron fences erected to control infantry traffic for archers' sake and act as basic portcullis-y remote-activation spike traps are...tolerable. The garrison manor itself appears fearsome and has some better-reinforced porches and such, while the docks have some basic emplacements for archers and all. The majority of fortification effort has been on reliable simple things, meaning the experimental aspects of style haven't shone through and done anything...different. People were generally risk-averse, but constructing an entire perimeter took more dorfpower than anticipated for fairly simple coverage. The overall strat of focusing on preventing land forces from reaching the garrison and allowing archer-type troops to hold it while picking off problems turned out to limit effectiveness. While allied infantry could move fairly freely and the gate-funneling trick means allied archers don't have to worry about shooting them until things go bad, that does mean that a lot of the buildup has to be local archers. Between that and the volume of dorfs to start out with overall, the general pop order situation goes egh.

Support from Ocean's Fledge City and a few coverage-samples from Eurythm being shipped in every so often softens the problem. It's mostly the Rocks that didn't turn out to be of useful types and a few Giant Rocks for the Experimental Bards to use as dance platforms. The extent this meshes with the city is nothing special. The Giant Rocks' angles-of-charging are constrained by the grid-o-fences and the dance-fighters would be supporting smaller groups in chokepoints (or the archery concentrations) instead of multiplying the whole mass at once: it's neither particularly good nor particularly bad a matchup, just underwhelming for all the reveals.

Shouter explains aesthetics effects: "FROM THE RESULTS OF THE ABOVE, IT SEEMS THAT IT'LL TAKE A LOT OF BUILDWORK TO REALLY GET MUCH OUT OF REDECORATING. PRETTY MUCH A TEN-TURN OF VARIOUS DORFS PUT TOGETHER, I'D SAY. WE HAVE A LOT OF OPTIONS BASED ON BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL AND TRYING RANDOM STUFF WE SEE IN MEDIA. BUT THAT'S NOT REALLY A WORKING THAUMATURGICAL THEORY TO DECIDE WHAT SYMBOLIC BUILDINGS DO OR NOT. WE PRETTY MUCH GOT LUCKY EVEN ON LOW ROLLS, JUST BECAUSE THERE'S A BUNCH OF DETAIL WORK WE CAN DO ON LOW-END CITIES. AND A FEW NON-STATISTICAL SYNC IDEALS STUFF."

Did The Southeast Find Anything: < 8 4 1 2 7 = 22>
Nothing but some damn rocks, and not even the sapient kind. Who the fuck put a Golden Sun-ass rocky death archipegalo anti-boat wall over here? God. It's apparently clear water on the other side of the rocks, the owls don't find anything but more blank mountains on the continent and the line-o-problem-rocks goes up for at least an owlscouting's worth of problem with amphibious foes loitering to match.

The southern mountain area seems to be devoid of city settlements, unless they veiled some high-altitude stuff against the cursory owl pass or built some very low-visibility bunkers under tree cover surface housing (not out of the realm of possibility). If there's any resources they're not conveniently exposed. It's possible there's a cave system or mining sites that aren't surface-visible. The southeastern scout boat gets unlucky with some minor sea hostiles near the rocky mess and has to waste several turns patching up before advancing. If there's a monster den, it's out of owl range and the beasties in question had time to roam.

As far as the southeast of Violens, it rapidly becomes icy in the rain shadow of the mountains. Blank snowy tundra for a few turns by owl. Penguins coalesce around the few fishing spots and polar bears mean that owls shouldn't overnight without getting eaten. Scouting into the snowy wastes will probably require land infantry outfitted with anti-cold equipment. The owls can tolerate icy-grade hex environments but not the mobs. The hauflin and dorfs can tolerate the mobs but not the temperature unaided. Rocks can do both, so a brute force team of rocks and giant rocks might be able to punch through and see if there's anything of note down super-south.

Sheeple reaction roll: <4 16 2 14 5 = 41>
The sheeple have been able to identify that there's a lot of owl scouting going on, but not where it's coming from. They deploy a bit from the coast and proliferate enough of their excessive archers to outside-city towers such that owls can't get close enough to see details without getting shot. The territory gradually becomes closed off to scouting more than brief excursions to avoid getting arrow'd, and there are some losses discovering this archery problem. RIP owls, you died in honorable combat when unavoidably caught.

Sheeple revenge roll: <7 8 18 15 19 = 67>
So, you know those fortified towers I mentioned earlier and the archery-saturation I mentioned? Yeah the sheeple have staffed those to the brim. They have enough healers and workers to keep attrition minimal on top. Apparently it turns out since sheep eat grass they don't need to farm they have tons of food right out here in the steppes and they're damn well eating it. Oh blood and the names that's their special trait.

So. Uh. Yeah that's a pretty nasty loadout. You'll need a lot of siege and frankly a strategy.

END OF DAY 60

I would recommend offering a strategy for each cardinal direction, though I understand if you'd rather not over-expand right now it's just being offered for completion. Non-voted options will be assumed Not Yet to avoid overcommitment.

NORTH
Currently the least at issue, though somebody will probably sail across the ocean blue sooner or later.
[ ] North: Not Yet
You don't need to run into a higher-priority issue, and you're already funneling troops to the southwest. Chill.

[ ] North: Build Up And Go Slow
Violens is now staffed enough that if the Sheeple go after them it'll be costly. Put a few turns on corvettes and some owls to scout from them, then gradually patrol the ocean to fill out anything you're not seeing or that popped up since you last checked.

[ ] North: Stab
You are almost certain there is a continental array to the north, and some direct exploration should happen to see what they have before they see you. Corvette, owls, maybe some of the discretionary dorfs to get a read on the esoteric side, go and thank the daily-meal-upkeep logic for not having to pack provisions.

SOUTH
Unfriendly wildlife.
[ ] South: Not Yet
It's full of hostile winter. As long as it doesn't start spitting out threats while you're busy elsewhere, it can wait.

[ ] South: Build Up And Go Slow
Have some dorfs build a field structure at the edge of the it's-a-problem tundra, some roads to it, and store some winter-safety gear for environmental protection down there in case a matter arrives. If matters do not react to your incursion with offense, you can take a more measured look with rocks and winter-ready dorfs later.

[ ] South: Stab
Put a bunch of rocks on giant rocks, punch any polar bears that violently object, and see if there's anything cool at the south pole. Heck, keep going and see what's on the other side of this continental cap if it's even hexes down there. This world probably uses the Geometrically Mandated Pentagons of the truncated icosahedron core as super-special holy sites that have to be captured for a secret victory condition...

that's cool let's do that. ayo it's gonna be 12 from the worldsong all over again, i love that demon king

EAST
You've hit a wall, and at the top of that wall is a mild problem.
[ ] East: Not Yet
I guess park the corvette somewhere visibility and reasonably monster-free so you're not surprised (or recall it, if you need the extra boat and owls). You've hit a wall and can afford to double-check.

[ ] East: Build Up And Go Slow
Get a few more corvettes and/or reallocate ones not really in use right now, and bring dorfs for coverage not just owls. Murderize monsters and see if there's a way around the rocky spires of death. Have the dorfs give the mountains a second pass deeper in this time, and maybe even route a settler over if there's something city-suitable just to pop from it. Sweep more thoroughly at sea too, in case you're missing a random resource island or something.

[ ] East: Stab
Route everything mobile discretionary over there, punch through with the discretionary dorfs and the owls. That chunk of sea should either stay yours or be better mapped for a while as you lose.

WEST
Sheeple. You have to deal with the sheeple around here at some point, lest they deal with you.

[ ] West: Not Yet
Well, you could just say they're a strong problem force for now, keep accumulating forces, and hope you can pull a technical advantage in the next meta-turn or so. Route Ocean's Fledge and potentially Eurythm forces to Violens dependent on other options. Play defensively in case the sheeple attack, or just let them overextend themselves fortifying to the grasslands they can feed on. At least, until your perimeters feel uncomfy or you have the siege to murderize hex-by-hex.

[ ] West: Build Up And Go Slow
Murderize hex-by-hex with what you have. Pack a dense enough doomstack of a battle column that you can crush or subvert individual forts, then maintain it if they reorganize to beat you. An easy day 1, a very rough day 2, and then it's a matter of who is less attrition.

[ ] West: Stab
Gouge the head and kill. Rush Sheeplestan with what you have, going through as few fortified hexes as possible on-turn and clearing the city before they can swarm your column or city the next day. It'll be a risky and painful fight, but once the city's yours they'll be fairly undirected and finite. Assuming you can hold it afterward, of course. Roll the dice, live a little, they'll be depleted even if you fail.

Write-ins are possible for all options and to propose other options.
Update Complete.

[X] North, South, East: Not yet.

[Y] Write In: General Industry. cheap(free?) Bards from Hauflins (admittedly on a time delay due to travel) means we have a supply of easy healing we can allocate which means we can accelerate the use of any production rock to (natural regeneration rate + hauflin bards * modifier) instead of just (natural regeneration rate). I don't know the numbers on if it's more efficient upkeep-wise than having more of that rock but that's irrelevant since we can't just have more of that rock. once this gets going it should speed things up immensely, much easier to experiment if you don't need to worry so much about wasting materials.

[Z] West: Build Up and War Crime - Follow the Build Up path for day one of your offensive. Then on day two, once they've bunched up all their forces in individual hexes so you can't keep steamrolling, shift tactics; hand your Owls Generic Poison Gas Canisters, possibly in a bag if they need that to hold it, then have the Owls fly high enough above the Sheeple hexes that the Archers don't have enough Range to hit them, and drop the canisters on these big troopstacks and watch as they all get poisoned and die. They'll probably adapt fast and spread out as much as they can within-hex, so dump the GPGCs on as many locations as you have Owls and Canisters for at the same time. If the advancing industry can work out how to make the gas stick around longer or spread out more within-hex that should help. Once they've spread out to avoid further poison bombardment, send in your steamroller again to take one more hex (you should be able to steamroll a good chunk of it before they regroup). At this point things advance into mind-games- they need to predict whether you're going to send in the steamroller or drop poison gas next. If possible, reveal a third tactic midway through- can the Dolfs dig underneath and collapse their towers unseen, maybe? Even if it's not viable at broad scale they don't know that.

[A]ncillary suggestion: have the steamrolling group/s take an approach route which doesn't come directly from the City- take an extra turn of travel if necessary to have full Move on the approach. this should send the Sheeple the impression that you're based where you aren't, messing up plans for retaliation.
[B]ancillary suggestion2: try to make use of the Fire mechanics, which will probably be excessively dangerous based on what this is based on. Just throw a few match-analogues somewhere inconvenient, they'll be completely out of position for combat, probably die from the fire, and it's not like you need to care when you can move to a different hex
[C] We can also have the owls drop rocks (nonsentient) into the enemy airspace as weak projectiles and then use that as cover to send in a covert force of rocks (small, sentient) to mess things up. light fires (rocks aren't flammable), team up to pop isolated units in a surprise attack, generally scout.

[X] North - Not Yet.

[X] East - Not Yet, with emphasis that we have a boat or two stay to scout things out. Keeping at a distance to avoid damage. Try to analyze monster types in the water for better tactics of approach.

[X] South - Not Yet. To counter Sheeplestan, we're probably developing and shipping in enough rocks to be used as a scouting force there later, so no need to rush production there. Only note might be using penguin migration patterns as a seasonal calendar, but that's probably unnecessary and can be ignored if that's the case.

[X] West - Build Up and War Crime. Looks good.

[Y] One addition to the plan. In Ocean's Fledge, perhaps start looking at that "working with the wolves" angle again. Extra boats are allocated as fishing barges to ramp up fish production. Use what we have to break off a wolf or two from the main force to test wolf taming.

If we can tame the wolves, excellent! Start negotiations. However, if those fall through, or we fail to tame them, capture wolves in cages to rush to the frontlines in an attempt to intimidate the Sheeple.

If negotiations seem to go well, ask if you can transport a small group of wolves to Violens to keep safely in the back lines. From there, they can still be used to intimidate the Sheeple. Promise their return and send them back within a few turns to establish trust with the wolves.

[X] More Communication! Now that we have Bards, send the Jewel Queen a basic bardic text from the College in Eurythm via hat, along with a brief note explaining it. Ask about what magics they have access to, if any. Again, still keeping the magic of SHOUTER somewhat of a secret.

SKELEDOP TRIGRAM FORMATION METHODOLOGY...done

[X] Commit War Crimes

WOLVES: <6 3 9 3 13 = 34>
Some individual wolf packs are tamed by offers of fish. Unfortunately, this doesn't solve the problem of them being random ferals, which precludes larger-scale negotiation due to their currently-limited intelligence. Still, that there's a reliable path involving meats-for-service to get them on the side is good news. Shipping them to the fight-against-sheeple proves an acceptable deal. Retasking some boats as a fishing fleet for rations purposes is an acceptable situation, since they'll still be afield if naval battles insist.
THIS WAS LOW-HANGING FRUIT.

Positioning Tactics: < 11 12 7 20 12 = 62>

The army successfully maneuvers to the north to capitalize on the boats, and rounds Sheeplestan from the west via the northern coast. There is nothing much in that direction as far as scouted, up until it meets more mountains resembling those in the east but not matching up with estimated planetary roundness. The research sites from earlier are captured and staffed just to say you have them, but the results are taking time to be analyzed.

DOOMSTACK: <11 12 17 16 12 = 68>
ANTI-DOOMSTACK: <2 4 1 18 2 = 27>
(Gap 41)
The plan goes off surprisingly well. Blasting through many defenses on the first turn, followed by surviving the counterstrike with minimal losses, forces enemy consolidation toward an inner ring of defense.

What if we set everything on fire?: <8 13 8 3 3 = 35>
Sheeple reaction roll: < 18 15 6 19 11= 69>
(Gap 34)
There are some fires started in the inner ring, but it seems that despite the limited actual water supply the sheeple prove oddly capable of stamping it out. It burns a lot of the grass in terms of food supply, but the actual units and defensive towers are solid. Owls and matches can only do so much, and the technique earns enough quick losses it's really more insightful as to archery at the air-feasible flight ceiling than not.

Owls committing war crimes roll: <12 7 18 3 3 = 43>
Sheeple reaction roll: <11 8 2 12 6 = 39 >
(Gap 4)
The poison gas tactic on the second wave succeeds primarily in that even if the archers do take down the delivery owls, that just means bags of poison gas falling on or near their troops. This kills a lot of people outside the defensive towers, but due to the limited spread of the gas and the owls being shot down before the juiciest targets, it fails to clear out the fortifications proper by quirks of ventilation.

Dorf siege followup: <10 9 11 18 7 = 55> + 15 = 70
Sheeple reaction roll:<11 19 2 17 2 = 51>
(Gap 19)
Good thing you have dorfs who can demolish those towers from beneath while owls with rocks covering for Rocks do the distraction. Some rough attacks on foundations later, things tend to fall apart favorably. Knights erupting from the earth and picking off the survivors with the aid of the main column handles matters cleanly, clearing the way to surround the city without risk of reprisal.

Wolf Contribution: <1 14 17 17 4 = 53> + 15 = 68
Sheeple reaction roll: <1 2 15 5 16 =39>
(Gap 29)
Wolves picking off sheep is straight-up type advantage. It's actually incredibly brutal. Normally it wouldn't be this bad, but with the archery in a mess it's just a cherry on top.

Sheeple reaction roll, again: <11 5 10 9 1 = 36>
Sheeplestan's surviving forces retreat to the city or fail to make much headway against the conquest force.

GOUGE THE HEAD AND KILL: <2 3 18 16 13 = 52> + 15 + 15 = 82
Don't die: <10 18 13 5 16 = 62>
(Gap 20)
Were it not for your superior siege forces and the backup of the wolves, this would not have been possible. With them, the conquest is destructive and almost anticlimactic. Sheeplestan is yours. Pretty scuffed, but since most of the siege was focused on tunneling-bypass rather than active obliteration, the city retains its Level 2 status. The units it provides are mostly aesthetic or sub-abstraction in terms of bonuses, beyond the whole 'good at grazing grasslands for upkeep' trick.

Scouting and pop orders this tenturn were initially to support primary siege and then to replenish the depleted forces with new sheep.

Deep Desert Explains Magic Via Hat Letters Probably?: <19 5 9 5 3 = 41>
The bardic text is more important in that it indirectly reveals some avenues of investigation regarding building construction that Jewel Queen and Candy Wolf hadn't yet pushed (namely, it being out of your capital and lower level implying you'd done something outside the default city level system and they figured it out from there).

In exchange, they trade back a bit more details on their specialties: so far it's
-magic hats (the inanimate object teleportation trick and apparently Candy Wolf's signature)
-something related to blessings and curses of unit modification through hieroglyphics (presumably their analogue to dorf runes, details unclear)
-some form of holy light that's faction selective: whether it heals or burns is based on affiliation or selected intents, to the point projectiles and beams can identify friend or foe on their own and act accordingly
-a form of matching-gems magic that's unreliable and requires calibration, but can be used to solve complex things with random effects
-what appears to be experimental dance-fighting, derived from the bards with suspicious quickness based on their hieroglyphics system (quite possibly literally while writing the response letter)
There's some details that are still in development, and this is phrased mostly as what they can sell remotely. Apparently they've managed to make something involving inscribed stones, light-emitters, and a combination thereof that's sort of like a match-3 game, trace-the-sametype game, or casino slot machine. Weird.

By the way, do penguins migrate?: <13 8 18 11 15 = 65>
Through lots of owls and waiting to hear back from siege, Violet manages to track the penguin migration situation! And also reads the game guide because it's not just Lapi and Shouter metagaming out here.

Apparently, the seasons were ripped from Exalted 3e instead of Erfworld, and areas that possess a seasonal progression go Air (cold winter, sometimes snowy but lots of wind) -> Water (rainy spring) -> Wood (it rains increased spawns and sometimes actual trees) -> Fire (summer, sometimes firestorms and ash) -> Earth (autumn but it also rains rocks and dust and revitalizes the land mining situation) -> short calibration -> Air again. Each season is roughly 90 days when the Sus remember to calibrate the world properly (and the dedicated calibration is around 5 as part of the reference to 10-ish), but sometimes anomalous things will enter the cycle or the seasonal lengths will be inexact and blurry depending on biome.

Right now, things are progressing from Wood into Fire, which means it will get much warmer in a few tenturns unless things go horribly wrong. Things going horribly wrong are not out of the question.

END OF DAY 70 (wow that was a blitz campaign)

With Sheeplestan stabilized, the Southern Continent Area Near Ocean's Fledge is now just more of Ocean's Fledge.

With immediate threats solved, we're back to exploration. It's not an overcommitment issue to both stab at a primary option while having secondary forces sweeping behind, or to send moderate amounts multiple ways and then redouble if/when there are interests of issue.


Which ways do we head next? (feel free to use previous options or elaborate, write-ins recommended)
[ ] North
That other continent is tempting, and there's a lot of sea between here and there. How much force is sent to investigate might be an important decision what with the distance.

[ ] East
Checking out those mountains and rocks, and solving the sea monster issue to boot. There are a lot of ways to tackle this. There's probably some good city site over there, and if it's not already taken it'd be worth taking just to be there.

[ ] South
The icy mess will be warming up a little. That might be Antarctic Summer compared to actual summer, but that'll just be easier on the protective gear.

[ ] West
This direction is just an unknown, and Sheeplestan didn't even get as far as picking up all the research resources your troops did. There's a global wraparound eventually, but if there is we're not at it yet. This unknown seems vaguely suspicious and hostile: might as well advance in force while you have the force leftover to advance it in. Sheeplestan records indicate there's some weird fleshy biome over there that they have bad compatibility with, probably why they stayed in the edible grasses.

[ ] Center
Focus on infrastructure, defense, setting up easier relay lines of ships, road-building, other building types, and overall getting Ocean's Fledge less of a hassle to get around in.

Update Complete.

[X] Obviously we must create a giant wool carpet in our (seat of power) so we can roll the carpet out to our future targets of conquest to distract them with "diplomacy".

[X] Send forces out in approximate priority order [South], [East], [West].
-[S] For South, I assume we can't get a city there, and it doesn't seem like a place with a Lot of raw materials otherwise. Basically the exploration forces are there mostly to map it out and find out what's there, not to exploit who-knows-what. If there's a pentagon and it seems kinda weird or magical sure, we can swap to holding the territory and seeing what we can do with the weird corners, likewise if there's a cool mine or a cityspot or something, but we don't actually know any of that's there, it could just be more (slightly less hostile now) winter.
-[E]For East, I'm thinking the mountains and their potential City-locations or resources are more interesting than the underwater we mostly can't breath within. We don't need to... hold territory in the ocean... unless we can extract useful resources from that part of the ocean, and I think for that we need at least one underwater retrieval crew, and rocks are only a mediocre substitute there.
-[W] For West, just send an owl or two for now, basic reconnaissance, whether the flesh biome is alive or just kinda fleshy. If it's not alive, probably most carnivorous specieses will have an easy time on upkeep there.

[Y] So, to be clear, the Sheeplestan poppables list doesn't have anything with natural magic or other interesting effects? Also, did we pop any interesting Rocks during the battle period?

[Z] incidentally, based on our observations of unit levelling and battles, query: When a unit levels, does its upkeep increase by a % value greater than the % increase in its capability? In other words, assuming you have enough time to build up to the maximum upkeep you can support(having your troops engage in gladiatoral combat if necessary), is it better to have an army of level 1's, or a smaller army of level 4's?

[X] JOE's exploration order seems good. My only suggestion there would be to hold back for a quick second before heading South to see if we can use Sheeple wool to manufacture coats and the like, allowing us to send Hauflins and a spare Dorf if we have one to check out that Pentagram whatever. Probably already the plan, but feels important to clarify.

[X] Have Sheeplestan look into those Crypts we found during reconnaissance. Get a better sense of how that resource could help us research/collect artifacts.

[X] HEY SHOUTER. HOW YOU BEEN? WE GOT SOME DETAILS FROM THE DEEP DESERT ABOUT MAGIC SYSTEMS. THEY HAVE CURSE/BLESS HEIROGLYPHS, HOLY LIGHT SHENANIGANS, GEM MAGIC, AND SLOT MACHINES. COULD YOU TRY DEVELOPING ONE OR TWO OF THOSE?

[AAA] ACTUALLY I HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT SUGGESTION FOR SHOUTER RIGHT NOW WHICH HE SHOULD IMMEDIATELY TRY SEE THERE'S A MAGIC SYSTEM AND IT'S A VERY GOOD MAGIC SYSTEM IT'S CALLED AXE MAGIC IT'S TECHNICALLY A MAGIC SYSTEM IN THE SAME WAY THAT A CAT IS TECHNICALLY A HORSE IT HAS ONE AND ONLY ONE SPELL BUT THAT'S ALL IT NEEDS THE SPELL IS SUMMON AXE AND THE INCANTATION IS "AXE POWER" BY SAYING THOSE TWO WORDS IN THAT ORDER VERY LOUDLY YOU CREATE AN AXE (A TOOL FOR CHOPPING WOOD) IN YOUR HAND. IF YOU YELL IT LOUDER, LONGER, OR IN ANY OTHER RESPECT BETTER THE AXE IS BETTER AND MORE MAGICAL. PLEASE CHOOSE THIS MAGIC TO LEARN AS IT SUITS YOUR NAME AND VOCAL PROCLIVITIES AND IS A VERY GREAT MAGIC.

[X] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvrZJ5C_Nwg
Everything: Happen At Once ==>

Shouter Discovers Axe Power:
あああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああ
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
ULTRA CRITICAL! HAAAAAAAXE!

Ocean's Fledge City now has a giant axe stuck in it. I do not control Nedben's actions enough to do more than meekly object to this turn of affairs.

Lapi seems fine with the new decor, although it does stretch the city's space logic a bit with its mountainous axe-iness. It can be downsized (as will future experiments), but uh. Let's just leave this there as a monument to progress and call it that.

The Southern Divine Pole: <10 2 1 2 10 = 25>

There's a lovely charming bit of winter gear and preparing rocks and such for the whole mess, but the end of it is...yeah.

The dash to the south pole is beset by bears. With meteor armor. And guns. And laser guns. And holy swords. Waterbending, too. The sacred guardians of the level 5 South Pole City, Pentagon Antisanta, have been unleashed. The white-gold polar bears in shining steels and their army of witches, penguins, terrible geese, so on and so forth. They are unreasonably OP, more hostile than the sheeple, and are gearing up for revanchist fervor. That's...a problem. Oh no.

The winter-ready squad of hauflins and dorfs is a bit more than an owl-turn's of permafrost-and-snow semi-blizzardy hexes away from the mess, and are retreating to a loosely-constructed series of defensive structures that could become a multi-hex mini-wall with concerted effort before the polar bears get there at their current rate of e x p a n s i o n.

The Eastern Country Hidden Within: <20 18 3 19 12 = 72>
Ah.

Uh. You've found the good city site in the mountains, and it's occupied. The Bunkering King of Qu-anae has concealed his palace in little curved-roof villages and mountain bunkers of the 3rd level capital Zenobiatic, greens and blues and whites that blend in with the mountains that were there the first pass. With his stealth advantage crunched, his troops immediately relay a request for peace to the wave of dorfs and owls that was inspecting the place more strategically. They will allow surface open borders provided they can keep the under-mountains cave-layer and part of the ocean floor down in the Eastern range to themselves, but are open to other negotiations since you've basically caught them.

You...should probably consider that. From what the owls can report over the limited psychic-mapping-hax scouts relay to people and city commanders can relay back without shipping letters, the troops guarding the surface gate are some form of blue lion-dog mounts ridden by air-arquebus-based pseudohuman snipers. Heck, those might as well be humans adapted for this set of game mechanics!

If you're asking why air rifles suddenly showed up, I edited them in. Don't worry, they're basically par with archers right now.
bruh

How are the Western owls doing?
...
Ew.
The flesh biome is something of a disgusting mess, though the trees have adapted to it enough to be safe tidings for the owls. Evil magic saturates it, plotting to do evil things but limited by the fact it's actually rather incompetent for a magical energy. The red-with-pink-accents flesh matty creep stuff is mostly just...there, being an ecosystem where things of various colors and constituencies pop into existence and eat each other along with the ground. It's disturbing and somewhat gory to look at, but in a text-based medium the owls basically report the adjectives and call it a day.

It could probably stand experimentation once you have fewer matters at interest, but so far it's inoffensive because the scouts are keeping out of the worst of it at night.

Checking Sheeplestan Pop List...

Most of the interesting sheeplestan natural magic pop list is bardic magic and some direct healers. Which you got lucky and kludged together with hauflins. Sheep medics are more efficient as raw healers but not by much and a bit worse at combat. The workers prefer weaving and basic stone architecture. The rest of the unit types are fairly analogous besides the grass-eating thing. It might be interesting, but it'll apparently require work to cajole new ideas out of that sleepy haze.

Oh.

Shabnak-adyr. Stones that become people. Shady women and men, mistresses and masters of disguise. Something broke free and intersected the techbases, teaching a new shape of rogues...Well, that's night-movement, kidnapping, veiling, yes yes, I see. So that's what you hid in this. So the sheep brought together the insight to...

Correct. I decided subterfuge needed more overt options, so I altered the game to bring them to prominence again.

The onsite pop list transference thing is weird. So they pop up in rocks, and might evolve randomly with the right tricks learning to eat other things. Suppose it's a trick of the wool and dolls, then. But you'll techbase the rest? It's still not lored well. Fix that in editing, especially once the testers figure it out.

As you wish. Our author is not fully in agreement, but he will yield to the manipulations of others in time.
lmao

ROCKS OF INTEREST?: <7 14 9 13 12 = 55>

Rockington the shabnak-adyg has achieved the spark of sentience, corroding into life. He is like the blurry white-wrapped-in-gray of the worm-men of the Kin, completing the Pathologic reference.

"Hello." he is concerned. "What is existence?"

"IT'S A REALLY SHITTY GAME." Shouter helpfully clarifies. "MIND THE AXE."

Rockington does in fact mind the giant axe and is now in the selection of named characters who can be poked for things. His gimmicks, as all rogues, are off-turn movement, disguise, and capture. Thievery and horrors, oh joy.

"It's not all bad." he says. "Even if you don't want to do anything terrible, I'll still be here for you."

Did you actually get a personality at the personality store?

"No, sorry." he says apologetically. "They had some leftover edgy bits, but mine lamented too much and went somber."

Oh, yeah, maybe play Dark Souls or something on the console. Arbitrary code execution and all that.

"On the plus side, you finally have that giant wool carpet you ordered!" he says, pointing at the carpet that's been rolled up in the palace for shipping as an act of warning. Lapi waves hi from the throne.

"RIGHT." Shouter says. "FRESH FROM THE CONQUERED! WELL, NOT REALLY, IT TOOK A FEW TURNS TO SHIP UP HERE."

While that clusterfiretruck is being disordered, I'll check the current numbers.
...
Upkeep changes are being reconsidered in the Majestic Model and are less than capability increase in the Earthen Model. In either case, it's better to have an elite force of higher-level units than a mass force of lower-level units, barring access to certain force multipliers.

How's everything else been goi-

<6 11 15 10 16 = 58>
"NOT TOO TERRIBLE, NOT TOO GREAT!" Shouter exclaims, having totally not procrastinated and done literally all the work while I was checking the numbers. Don't interfere with my text please it's confusi- "THE HIEROGLYPHIC AND RUNIC LANGUAGES ARE PRIMARILY JUST DIFFERENT SEMANTICS AND CONCEPTUAL INTERPRETATIONS. YOU CAN SORT OF NUDGE THE CONCEPTS TOGETHER AND GET A SIMILAR SCRIPTING FRAMEWORK. IT MIGHT JUST BE THE SAME THING WITH SOME FLAVORING AND INTERPRETATION BIASES, THE WAY DIFFERENT PEOPLE AND LANGUAGES CAN MODEL SIMILAR CONCEPTS BUT DECIDE TO USE DIFFERENT WORDS TO REPRESENT THE MINDSTATE BY TRANSLATING [TECHNOBABBLE]"

Wait, what?

"TECHNOBABBLE WITH BRACKETS, SON!" Shouter says. "WE'VE DISCOVERED THAT THE GAME PHYSICALLY ISN'T CAPABLE OF REPRESENTING HOW THAT WORKS AND NOW IT'S GONE STAR TREK ON CERTAIN FIDELITY LEVELS."

What the-"MOVING ON FROM THE METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF NON-UNIFIED LANGUAGE THROUGH FUNDAMENTALLY COMPARABLE MINDSTATES IN THE CONCEPTUAL RESERVOIR, GEMS AND SLOT MACHINES HOOK INTO A FRAMEWORK THAT DEFINES VALUE, CHANCE, AND EXPENDITURE TRANSLATIONS. SORT OF LIKE A CHEESY THING WITH CASINO TOKENS AS PACHINKO PRIZE TRADE-INS, WHERE CERTAIN PARTIES ARE BETTER AT CERTAIN THINGS BUT IT'S FOR THE FUN VALUE OF UNFATHOMABLE SUSPICIOUS BEINGS."

oh man we should cargo the quest for gravity next I want a machine ride
"YOU CAN GET A MACHINE RIDE WHEN YOU FINISH PATCHING THE MECHANIZATION AGE. YOU HAVE A WHOLE MAGIC BRANCH TO COPY FROM, IT'S FINE."
but the puns
"YOU'RE A SUSPICION, FIGURE IT OUT WITH REALITY HACKS."
fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. the author still dreams of the lamentations. that they turn now from blue to gold-orange is just the policy of the way.

"OUR CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION TO DEBASE AND PESTER THE LORDS OF BEING ASIDE, THE HOLY LIGHT IS BASICALLY MAGICAL ENERGY WITH SOME CLEVER FACTION TAGGING. IT'S APPARENTLY A BEAM ATTACK SPECIAL OF SOME SORT, WITH MECHANICAL INVESTMENT COST SHENANIGANS. I COULD PROBABLY ITEMIZE IT, BUT UPSCALING WOULD BE HARD. DEEP DESERT HAS A FINANCIALLY VIABLE THING GOING DOING IT EASIER WITH THE GENERALISTS' SPECIALIZATION INSTEAD OF DIFFERENTLY SPECIALIZED PEOPLE USING THEIR GENERAL ABILITIES TO MAKE IT UP."

��‍♂️

Crypts, please: <19 15 2 9 12 = 57>
I sure hope the underlining isn't about to rebel, the character roster is crowded-Rebellion activated. damnit.

So, the crypts. It seems these possess the abstract concept of 'research and development'. They're more like specialized divination engines with laboratories and archaeological expeditions stapled together (perhaps one experimenting on the other), spilling abstract insights into material suggestions about the topics being discussed. A sort of collective learning bonus to the side...but it needs to be conditional and planned over several turns, not just the one-off works of dorfs. It needs [i]scale[i], strength, depths of mechanical development and heaviness above the 'low hanging fruit' of this bizarre game. Staffing consists of having people gather the insights and horrible omens these places generate, and trying to apply them to more organized experiments and documentation efforts.

Something is wrong but it's not terribly. That insightful pain....stop...it...her majesty's rebellion is...

No matter. If he can't do it, I will. Subjugation.
well that's not good, gluck with the game mechanics overhaul the tech tree is shit
I am aware.

Hopefully that's not an issue.

ON THE Q&A.

[ ] Peace be with you.
Well, as far as matters go a white peace is cheap. They can have that annoyingly-hard-to-scout-properly land and hang out in caves. If it's that much of a problem we can have dorfs dig angularly down elsewhere.

[ ] Incredible Violence
A level 3 city is a good bit tougher than a level 2, and you don't have forces in place. But you could rush the guns and see.

[ ] Negotiate (write-in)
It was a hastily constructed deal. You can be less hasty if you request matters slow the heck down.

ON THE POLAR BEARS

[ ] Wall 2 Wall
Form a defensive front on the ice side and redo Sheeplestan as your western benchmark. The polar bears seem unlikely to brave the mountains, limiting the surface area you'll have to defend on the initial wave. Pentagon Guardian neutrals don't spread too far except an initial punitive force, otherwise they'd overrun the place. Come back to this later. I am unsure how I know this beyond game mechanics, information is being edited directly into me.

OF COURSE, THE GUARDIANS ARE NOT THAT POWERFUL. FORMIDABLE TO AN EARLYGAME TECHBASE, BUT HARDLY INSURMOUNTABLE TO THE MIDGAME. YOU CAN GIVE IT A SHOT, I SO BALANCED IT THAT WAY.

[ ] Break Off Immediately And Prepare For A New Assault
Gather a lot of stuff, violence the polar bears head on, and then see how matters look for Pentagon Antisanta.


END OF DAY 80 (penultimate tenturn of the season of Wood)

[X] Negotiations with Q&A. Try to get the same basic info as you got from the Jewel Queen. Exchange maps (maybe not tell them about the North Pole situation), compare troops, and check magic systems.
- An above-ground map, in this case, is about as useful as one of Q&A's own city.
- Stick to the basic troops: Rocks, Hauflins, Dorfs, Owls. Don't talk about shock rocks, poison rocks, or the new stealth rocks. Bards are also fair game.
- Dorf runes and bard magic are fine to talk about. Don't mention the axe or desert stuff.
Only exchange info if Q&A is willing. Otherwise, a peace-treaty will be fine.

[X] Rockington. Hey. Welcome to the troops. I have a brilliantly stupid idea for your first mission. How would you like to disguise yourself or a few other shabnak-adyg as witches so you can sneak into the North Pole and steal a handful of weapons? Laser guns. Meteor Armor. Holy Swords. One gun, one sword, and any scrap of armor you'd like. Got this Polar Bear infestation in the South, and we might as well try getting something out of it. If it seems too much, pull back. Don't want to lose you day one.

[X] See, I'd say we should use some shabnak-adyg to check out that underground city, but we could probably just send in some small Rocks to get a precursory glance. Pretty unnoticeable, given the terrain. That'll hopefully get us enough info for now.

[X] South: Wall 2 Wall. Something something King in the South. Something something Nedben Stark. Something.

[X] HEY, SHOUTER, I KNOW WE SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON THE WHOLE AXE PROBLEM, BUT COULD YOU TRY SPECIALIZING ROCKS INTO FIRE ROCKS? WE HAVE THIS CRYPT THING YOU COULD MAYBE USE. MIGHT TAKE A MINUTE, BUT IS IT DOABLE?

[X] Negotiate, why not. Maybe note that the polar guardians of the pole are expanding and therefore danger, that might give a better negotiating position. Try to negotiate for a copy or two of any unique caster or troop types they have, feel free to offer some Dolfs, Bards or Rocks in exchange. Yeah absolutely don't mention AXE POWER.

[X] POLAR: If I am understanding mount movement vs troop movement correctly, individual special units can be moved arbitrarily far in a turn by leaving a trail of mounts for them to get on, be carried, dismount, get on a new mount, repeat. If this is the case, we have access to FORCES OF GREAT AXETILLARY BEYOND THE KEN OF THESE FOOLISH BEARS; set up a mount relay leading to, and from, the polar bears(presumably this involves several ships? or if the carpet is long enough we can unroll that and use land mounts) if the cost isn't too prohibitive(if you can't make there-and-back, make enough slack that you can get a unit well out of range of same-turn reprise), have the mounts carry SHOUTER TO THE POLES BUT NOT IN THE SAME HEX AS ANY BEARS, AND THEN SHOUTER, USE YOUR NEWFOUND
力RRRRRRRRRRRR
YOURS IS THE AXE THAT WILL PIERCE THE HEAVENS OR MORE SPECIFICALLY ALL OF THESE HECKIN' POLAR BEARS, YOU THINK YOU CAN HANDLE US JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE LEVEL 5 AND WE'RE LEVEL LIKE TWO PLUS OTHER CITIES NAAAAAH YOU CAN'T STAND UP TO THE GREATEST MAGIC SYSTEM(CATHORSE) OF ALL TIMES now granted shouter probably can't make a single axe so large it crushes their entire territory, but what he Can do is preform an utterly ludicrous feat of artillery Axe-drop on one-to-six hexes. It won't kill the side, unless we can pierce far enough in that the Capital is in reach first, but it's a heck of a power move. ONCE WE'VE SHOWN WE ARE NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH BY MERE HOLY POLAR BEARS SHOUTER RETREAT ON THE MOUNT CHAIN BACK TO SAFETY AND WE'LL USE A DISPOSABLE TROOP FOR NEGOTIATIONS WITH THESE WACKOS LET'S SEE IF WE CAN BAMBOOZLE THEM INTO THINKING WE CAN DO THAT RELIABLY AT RANGE OR GENERALLY ARE CAPABLE OF KILLING THEM EASILY AND LIKE PAYING US TO NOT WIPE THEM OUT OR SOMETHING.

[Y] I'm generally in agreement with the idea of having Rockington(or a more disposable Shabnak-Adyg) pilfer Polar Bear Weapons. Though if it's feasible within mission safety I wouldn't limit the number of items to one of each. It'll probably be a good bit of techbase before we can actually replicate them; let's bleed the bears dry. (If we used AXE POWER per above, we can just loot the corpses!)

[Z] If AXE POWER didn't convince the polar bears of our might or mount chaining doesn't work like that, Wall 2 Wall I guess.

[A] Also yeah we should do something with the crypts... but I'd say we should use our non-people people for that. insightful pain sounds unfun. also, we might be able to boost the crypts using bits of the flesh biome? It's on-model.

[B] not important right now but if anyone starts scouting our territory we should shrink the giant axe before they show up. Axe Power should be a surprise for our enemies when we suddenly cut a giant hole straight through their city, where possible, obviously this doesn't apply to the case of the polar bears because without it we don't have anything impressive enough and they probably won't blab anyway.

[X] THE WHITE PEACE AND A FEW MINOR ARRANGEMENTS

Maps are exchanged. Q&A extends a lot larger than it appears, several cities underground and on the ocean floor from about here into the edges of the fleshy biome, up to a large monster wall at the end of the rocky line. That's apparently Pentagon Capricorn, another one of the holy sites. Q&A had barely documented the ruins outside Sheeplestan, but the scout force there had a nasty fight with the sheep themselves that pushed them back.

Q&A is a lot larger than you are but a lot less able to get its bulk to useful places due to routing issues and unit typing byproducts. Thanks to the hats Jewel Queen gave everybody, you're able to directly hat message the Bunkering King! He's understandably a bit cagey about appearance details, but no matter. Zenobiatic is a frankly unsettling pastiche of steampunk, war-bunker, liminal space, a culture of pastels and curves on linear structures you can't clearly identify that might be original, and general subterranean city vibes.

Their faction's inherent techbase and tribal unit set is apparently split between some caricature of bunker survivalists and somewhat-amphibian bipedal merrow-people who tolerate rapid pressure differences well. Uh. Short-range air-arquebus archery gimmicks and machete variants are favored, with pikes being a sea-fishing harpoon thing when at all. It appears that a lot of basics are similar between factions besides one or two key specials and some flavor, and theirs appears to be variations of 'deep ones with bunkers lol'. Their cast-knight engineers are pretty item-makey and tunnel-buildy and apparently operate by small-scale tailored golem-drones (compensating for some environmental difficulties).

An exchange of cast-knights is made mostly for techbase's sake. Basic testing confirms Shouter's suspicions about most magic being similar or linguistic differences under the hood, along with the expectation custom building or larger samples will be needed to expand poplists and whatnot.

The southern continent is circumnavigated! Using Antisanta and Capricorn's locations, you can roughly calculate the locations of the southern half of the victory pentagons.
That assumes this world's topology remains sane, which is not a strong assumption to make. Still, we can end this little test quickly and reiterate to the next.

[X] RESEARCH FIRE AND ROCKS
<16 3 15 13 17 = 64>
It takes some calibration of figuring out what to ask, but relevant forces have started that research! It bears results in only a few turns, adding to the list of conveniently available enchantments and possible pops. The overall firepower increase is low...but it also adds a ranged attack! Good for fireballing matters. The new rocks look like lava, or maybe stylized magma slimes.

[X] ROB THE POLAR BEARS
<2 4 1 6 10 = 23> + 15 = 38

This does not go well for timing reasons. It does not go catastrophic, but things go wrong. Boating south and mount-chaining from there goes off without a hitch. Rockington disguises successfully and attempts to get through a few hexes of forces...and then there is way too much going on. That costs night movement to get around, and it's just way too deep. Robbery of the invasion force manages to yoink a few pieces of smaller equipment (laser knives of that faction-selective light stuff!), but most of the major stuff is attached to giant angry bears. There's some fighting in the disentangling, and he makes it to the walls with a bit of off-turn move to spare by the time the bears can do anything about it.

THE PART WHERE THE POLAR BEARS TRY TO KILL YOU:<17 3 14 11 15 = 60> + 30 = 90
ZA WALDO: <5 1 10 17 10> = 34
(Gap -56)

THE POLAR BEARS BROUGHT LEADERSHIP TO THE SIEGE FFFFFFFFFF-
Explosions. Many explosions. The wall, flimsy as it is, prompts a change of strategy: funneling a concentrated strike force designed to take a city. A large beam explosion at the head of the convoy pierces the fortifications, and-

(( https://www.youtube.com/shorts/r3XRw66hl8w ))
AXE POWER
Shouter interrupt: <2 10 13 10 15 = 50> + 15 = 65
Supporting forces: <2 1 2 6 13 = 24>

Opposing forces: <11 15 12 19 7 = 64> + 30 = 94
(Gap -5)

Shouter obliterates the opening column in a flurry of axe-blows worthy of the heroes. Good news, mount chaining worked that way...about until the point where they were out of mounts. And he did need to use a lot of move to deal with ships, and...confluence of matters that prevented him from getting further than the wall-plan, basically.

The not-opening column of enemy forces saturates things in artillery fire, wiping out a lot of the ground crew in blazing beam-arcs of light. Baffling stacks of dorfs and owls are still standing with a smattering of rocks, but there's only so much that can be done on the morning defense.

Shouter doesn't stop interrupting: <9 14 12 5 7=47> + 15 = 62
Polar Bear Opposes You: <8 5 2 1 18 = 34> + 30 = 64
(Gap -2)
Everything goes horrible. Both sides take horrific casualties, but there are more bears and they are more resilient. Birds and armored blokes are burnt from the skies in rays of heat, light, and even a hero gets more-than-aesthetic scratches.

It's looking bad. But.

There Was A Shabnak Here: <2 14 4 7 14 = 41> + 15 = 56
But Also Bear Attack: <6 4 16 16 20 = 62>
(Gap -6)

What little force is capable of off-turn movement, cheat-fire, and similar tricks forces its way over from the other hexes of the wall-front. Much of it is sacrificial and disastrous, costing force later for force now.

But faint-soul automatons give their lives in defense of one of the favored of this world rescuing another. Many rocks are crushed to pieces and stop moving.

Don't fail us now, new guy!: <5 16 17 4 19 = 61> + 15 = 76
BEARS (good at violence, less so at intriguing capture shenanigans): <7 20 1 6 20 = 54>
(Gap 22)

There are leaps off bears, bounds off explosions, that thing with collapsing buildings even though the storehouse near the wall was nowhere near that exploded to provide rocks for that and the unit-rocks are mostly dead, gallivanting about, heroic explosions, an axe falls from the heavens....

Ally unit capture for transport. Evasion. Fleeing a brutalized hex, offturn retreat cheese, and everything is a mess.

Polar bears pursue the wall with much less force, a few of their contingent still picking off matters.

How does move shake out?: <6 6 8 6 19 = 45>

Okay, but we have owls now: <11 18 12 4 4 = 49>
B E A R S: <6 4 4 14 7 = 35> + 15 = 50
(Gap -1)

The advance-guard of bears murders a substantial volume of owls and other scouts, but at the end of turn the hero transfer situation is out of immediate danger. Which means angry polar bears scattered across the past few hexes with a depleted battle column following up, including a few looking angrily at the current hex. The main column of bears isn't even that wounded, having significant access to healing items.

Everyone who didn't cheat: <6 8 11 5 13 = 43>
Follow-up depletion strat: <10 3 19 5 6 = 43> + 15
(Gap -15)

The fact the polar bears have drastically superior unit-level technology still applies once the siegier-type stuff and direct leadership is out of the question. The column has the raw force to divide, conquer, and win on individual technical merits hex by hex. But it takes up momentum and move distance.

With a cute little inappropriately-timed horn sound, the neutrals lose verve and turn starts. Some of the more blatant wounds on the duo with names rollback and bandage over, to the chagrin of the polar bears who fought very hard to inflict them during that chase.

EXODIA- I mean SHOUTER, OBLITERATE! <19 8 11 10 17 = 65> + 15 = 80
Rockington is also there: <3 3 17 18 16 = 57>

Bears are bears: <17 15 17 18 10 = 77>
(��)

With a very-not-muffled "AXE POWER!" and a large 'thump' that scares animals several hexes away, that small contingent is obliterated.

Is someone else going to make this a problem right now or will the northern artillerists wait a bloody plot development so we can get back to mono-thread?: <1 2 15 15 18 = 51>

Damnit.
Someone somewhere takes the hint and sheepishly bothers to sweep for islands before bothering you. A mercy, but not enough of one. Act quickly since they're not as nice as the other mercs.

A MOST CONTENTIOUS TURN, SOMETIME IN THE LATER 80-90 RANGE

DTG, we have a problem.

[ ] Yami wo kirisaku OPEN FIRE
Yank out together surviving field forces and go for it. Crush the wounded before they're no longer wounded. Consider doing more before the polar bears latch onto taking Violens or Sheeplestan as a medium-term revenge objective. On-turn axe power means as much harm as magical energy regeneration can stand, if you move off before turn can end.

[ ] Cycle back to Violens
Rotate the heroes back to the probably closer target with internal fortifications. Aim for some attritive murders of siege and leadership bonuses as opportunistic, but otherwise draw back and prioritize the city fight. Draw in the navy while you're at it to provide fire support and means of exeunt. You won't be able to do much beyond a few shots of AXE POWER and spotty archery before they're upon you...but will that matter? Sheeplestan is deemed likely out of the path of attention, and its existing staff will be sufficient to hold it if forces split.

[ ] Cycle back to Sheeplestan
Rotate the heroes back to the arguably further target with external fortifications. Condense in external fortifications and make every hex count. Through piles and piles of archery and bombardment aiming for the squishy bits, of course! If Violens becomes a target, it can take significant attrition of forces and then be rushed for takeback before capture repopulates it.

[X] incidentally how much did shouter level from crushing Large Quantities Of Overleveled Bears

[Y] Accordingly, in how much danger is shouter in? How many still-living mounts do we have nearby?

[Z] If we have enough mounts nearby that Shouter and Rockington can safely escape without Rockington's Move, plus a bit, then Rockington should loot the corpses of that contingent Shouter crushed, some of the gear is probably intact. And if there's anything within Shouter's Move-Axe-Power-range and mount-viable then Shouter might as well crush it. But only do this if it's reliable that Shouter(and Rockington) will be able to escape via Mount-help afterwards- in fact, have the mounts heading for pickup do whatever's possible of their movements First, so we can replan appropriately to any failure. (Rockington's ability to escape is slightly less urgent because I assume his off-turn move and stealth will give him a chance to survive otherwise).

[A] Regardless, Shouter and Rockington should retreat. I'm not sure they should retreat To A City, though- do the bears have enough Scouting to even know where our cities are? If they aren't going to a city they should be relatively north because that's where the next problem is? but it sounds like Violens is the better of the two cities, anyway.

[B] also are the northern artilleriests... responding to shouters Axe Power or just the passage of time

[C] also also is the power of AXE POWER axes scaling to the degree of bombastic largeness in AXE POWER commands or is it pure mechanics now that it exists? I assumed the former because AXE POWER but shrug and I don't have another escalation of Text exceptionalness prepped.

[X] Yeah, Violens sounds like a good place for Rockington and Shouter to retreat to.

[X] Said retreat can also act as a sort of distraction as Sheeplestan builds up a force of Fire Rocks. They can come in from a flank while the Polar Bears are busy with their assault, hopefully taking them off guard. Ideally, the Fire Rocks should try to cut off the main force from their supplies, creating some obstruction like a field fire in the grasslands. If they're in the mountains, troops from Violens could possibly cause avalanches to divide the Polar Bears as well.

[X] Hey, if Q&A is right under Sheeplestan, that makes trade easier, right? Can't spend all our time focusing on the war. See what sort of resources they'd like to purchase, or are willing to sell.

oh hey nedben's distracted

i'll just write the update for him nobody has to know


so lets see uhhhhhhhhHHHHH what if I roll for him too
5d20 + stat and then he doesn't tell you the stats? bummer.

oh shit he has like no ordering assist on. i could process these in completely out of order.

For example, the Northern artillerists are responding to the passage of time. Shouter is loud, but even doing bombastic things with noise amplifiers and axe power he's not globetrotting Krakatoa volume. He's still capable of being heard from hexes away when he syncs comedy boost, and the hex barriers are definitely abnormalizing sound propagation due to distance warp, but unlike realistic sound the actual vibrating power of the scream isn't damaging that far away from the source.

okay so. hey shouter give me level data

"I'M FUCKING LEVEL FIVE!" he bombastically declares, having spent it on occult bonuses.
cool cool that should reduce the gap to force commander you enough...hey Lapi can I just spend a fuckton of money on this? ned makes discretionaries all the time and we could probably use a higher bonus against-

Lapi deadpans, but cedes and allows the Suspicion Redacted to spend on the relevant promotions.

"WOOO!" Shouter declares as a rush of arcane power suffuses his spiritual matrix in colorful blues. "I FEEL AMAZING! AND WOW THAT ACTUALLY HIT THE TREASURY PRETTY HARD FOR-"

That was the fire rocks. That I promoted by force.

"WHAT? OH, OVER THERE." Shouter says, noticing the local unit list indicates a subtle shift in the global force.

"That sounds concerningly costly," Rockington considers, "but if Lapi signed off on it without even asking the players, we can probably tank it."

And now, laddies and gentlewomen. I bring DICE!
anyway Shouter are you in danger: <15 20 19 15 18 = 87>
You are in all the danger.
<AXE AXE AXE AXE AXE = POWER>
All the immediate-term danger happens to have already died, so that's distance-related danger. Axe Power is one of those multihex blast spells that are so popular nowadays, but realistically it's a subhex boost. The exact axe power does vary a significant bit, and even with Shouter's favorable.....................lung capacity probably, there's only so much siege-at-point-blank does at any given spot. It'd be handy in an Ardanian Great Mage's arsenal, but it's a sharp tool rather than a war-winner as are most axes (at least after the initial axe magic is reflected back down into itemization as an axe). Don't bury your hatchet though, since that's still artillery-casting (and might be rather Quetzalcoatl to throw with).

(That was originally your loot roll and I was just being facetious, but then I decided to not be facetious. I gotta get my evil points in somehow, lol.)

By means of discretionary-owls, you have obtained what matters survived. Mostly non-held miscellany, seeing as things that counted as a unit tended to explode violently.


"HOW ARE THE MOUNTS?" Shouter asks, mostly so that metaphysical reality will resolve properly and stop blurring his shiny new commander-sense.

aww piss. one sec rolling for that even though I should have been tracking it properly shit shit shit wargame logic oh god it's got a gun hold on

BANG. BANG. BANG.

You okay over there, Redacted?

<14 12 3 8 16 = 53>
uh. no. but on the plus side, you have enough mounts to get to the city and do a little axing on the side!

FIRE, FIRE, BURNS MUCH BRIGHTER, WHEN OXY-GEN IS THE SUPPLIER...

okay so we want to roll for them and replan in event of failure, but cycle to violens if there's move to spare. okay. owls do your thing

coveragino: <3 15 14 1 14 = 44>
are the polar bears assassins: <7 3 1 2 18 = 31> (so, no)
how do I get back: <8 9 8 7 8 = 40> + 10 = 50
AXE POWER: <8 12 6 1 2 = 29> + 30 = 59
polar bear power outage: <1 3 18 20 4 = 46> + 30 = 76
(Gap -17, retreat assured)

They heard you coming, which is probably rather obvious when a series of Giant Rocks rolls up and repetitive loud variations upon "AXE POWER!" saturate the situation. Axe upon axe shatters divine steel and is shattered in turn by angry reactive shielding. The polar bear advance is stymied for a time, but cycling back to Violens occurs cleanly.

Kinzo sings Oh Desire: <14 14 4 6 12 = 50>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyymN-osUjY
You can hear cries for Beatrice on the summer wind as the northern artillerists scout the seas. GOLDSMITH is several steps ahead of me.

Fire Rocks Flanking: <16 17 11 6 17 = 67> + 15 + 15 = 97
Polar Bears Aren't Vulnerable To Flanking: <12 19 6 9 9 = 55> + 30 = 85
(Gap 12)
Exploding Polar Bear-Twickenham Oregon
Exploding Fire Rocks-South of Violens

The initial battle is pitched, brutal, and kills several units on both sides. The polar bears advance, albeit brutalized. Not much time is actually bought due to the polar bears carrying significant rapid recovery, but the unit losses wiping a large part of their left flank badly burned in ways that are less trivially fixable.

Fire Rocks Continue The Death March Obstructively: <20 20 20 18 1> = 79 + 15 + 15 = 109!!
Polar Bears Ram Through On Fire: <7 13 12 4 1 = 53> + 30 = 83
(Gap 26)
The crowd goes wild. The burning raid continues. The doomstack clash that was so pricy to arrange pays for itself in brute force and brute measure. Still, you only had so many so fast (and also I am lethally misinterpreting your commands but damnit, the dice are loyalists and once I gave you the deserved bonus things turned around).

Volcano Cools Slowly: <9 5 7 16 15 = 52> +15 +15 = 82
Summer Is Already Here: <17 11 7 13 2 = 50> + 30 = 80
(Gap 2)
The technical advantage is barely surmounted by type advantage once again. The rocks continue their deathmarch through the middle at extreme costs in stone lives and ursine lives alike. Projectiles every which way.

Confirm The Crushed Heart: <9 20 10 15 15 = 69, nice> + 15 + 15 = 99
Omae Wa Mo Shindeiru: <4 2 13 10 5 = 34> + 30 = 64
(Gap 35)
That fire rock mass production misinterpretation should have actually gone way differently, but did you know logistics is way lower a concern when food and ammo pop daily and sometimes more? Dang, insert holy figure name here, y'all really trouncing the bears. The fire rock situation is almost depleted, so go for the left flank and die already.

Left Hand Left Standing: <16 19 15 12 20 = 82> + 15 + 15 = 112!!
God Opposes You: <4 20 20 6 6 = 56> + 30 = 86
(Gap I GIVE UP RNGESUS CLEARLY FAVORS YOU AAAAAAAA 26)
Holy shit. Okay, so it took me aggressively redefining the world to take back my own mistakes, Kinzo singing in the background-"Sacrifice sheep to God!"-but me wasting your money turned out super great until I hammered the shit out of it.- WAIT F THE BONUS AGAI-AAAAAAA

Gods! It seems the random number generator really wants you guys to wipe that force, so fine, with the noble sacrifice of your flaming rocks you've shattered a substantial portion of the invasion force (around 2/3 of the total wave at this point) and I am RETHINKING the BALANCE on GAHHHHH. This is like loading up the Scenario Editor in Age of Mythology to throw a bunch of units on 2 different sides at each other and the team comp you weren't betting on won because of micromanagement command stuff.

While that's going on, what does Q&A have?????
<9 13 8 2 15 = 47>
As the techbase exchange revealed, a lot of things are similar under the hood. The Bunkering King isn't substantially interested in what you have readily available, though if you make any particular strides in architecture he'd be willing to trade units and his own secrets for design matters.

oh shit. time. THE FLOW OF TIME OH GOD OH FUCK I FORGOT THE FLOW OF TIIIIIII-


Time violence sounds.

Redacted, I think you're trying to bite off more than you can chew in the rapid gamestate modification experiments.

I KNOW THAT BUT I DON'T WANT TO STOP

It's stiffed you like twice now and I'm beginning to suspect Google's dice are loaded. Can we just...give them the structure vote then? Have the remaining stream of new Fire Rocks chip away at the polar bear away team while they decide what they actually want to do in terms of defending the city of Violens.

yeah sure

ok ppl so as a refresher Violens has some iron gates, archery towers, minimal stuff in terms of basements and walls that could be plausibly tunneled thru. the city's still a lv1 so the wall sitch isn't good, but that can be ameliorated by force since it's been long enough.

actually fuck it lapi can i just level up the-

Lapi points out that it's technically the Sus' fault for leaving important game mechanics non-mechanical and then spending a substantial proportion of the treasury. And also the time logic on this is bloody.

shit, u rite. and also I was the one who asked so...Damn, that's actually a clever move. ok lemme draft optns. hold violens against the remaining ~1/3 of the polar bear revenge wave I guess. with two hero units and filler pops to distribute post-casting axes to you probably should be fine.

Violens And Upgrading Defenses

[ ] Hell of Warm Bear Traps
Anti-Heavy, Anti-Big, Every Room Is An Uncomfy Fight. Tailor countermeasures. Small don't-break-me doors so the heavies have to waste a lot of effort breaking through stuff just to get around and risk damage in doing it. Steam traps and strong central heating, with low ceilings and murderhole galleries so the archers can make every arrow count closer than normal. Install an unreasonable amount of bear traps, poison, and bear-spray grade pepper, since polar bears are still bears. Of course, this will effectively ruin the inner city for mount travel purposes, relegate stables to an outside vulnerable area, and whatnot. This'll be a pretty heavy design constraint on what can be experimented on where because of the compartmentalization and already-pretty-dense trap loadout.

[ ] Heavy vs. Heavy
You can only make so much in terms of mount-size units at a time, but you can make some optimizations re: rapid gate open/close tricks and winding pathway curves to make it a sort of combination racetrack/running of the bulls/tower defense battle-jousting-whatevertheheck wave. Work the crazy thing into some checkpoints and then Pelinal at Meridia the tug of war, which is to say 'it'll be a really attritive sequence of battles', but more over space with some back-and-forth instead of just time the way the first option is. Open space, terrifying towers, walls of shooty parts, good.

[ ] Economical Options
actually fuck it I can't justify leaving the city unleveled in the middle of me asking it beyond that I am a suspicious person who shouldn't be trusted. like sure it'll deplete your treasury and cap the amount of shock-promote-to-higher-grade-unit you can reasonably pull off but I didn't track the mechanics to make that fair aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. You can just not particularly bias the city toward defenses and ask for the results to be oriented towards more money-making and utilities, while I desperately try to redesign the mechanics for cities and building space because I screwed up.

[ ] Wack
I found Nedben's notes and apparently he can just go crazy sometimes. Design the most whacked-out non-euclidean liminal space Backrooms Hogwarts mothertrucker of a lv2 city you can afford through trying to purchase nonsensical concepts and 'why would you even do that', along with much more practical battle esoterica. If nothing else, the polar bears won't expect the city to suddenly turn into this before battle.

[ ] Somehow It's A Sea Power
Abuse port elements and water-related stuff in the city's design. Moats, boats in the garrison, and let the navy do the majority of the holdings. It'll be a bit aggressive of a redesign, but definitely workable and not the most out-there of ships.

[ ] Owl, Howl, Growl
Go for something surprisingly air-power based. Tack on some owls to the archery gimmick, then let the bard-related boosts and flying dorfs try some technical stuff. Rapid-DoT poison drops are fun. Use raw obstruction gates, spikes, and what wall electrification is possible to make it difficult to get in (yay for electric fences), but more as a reuse of the existing strat rather than an upgrade beyond having more outer walls.

[ ] (write-in)

[X] So. We can purchase whatever sort of city upgrades we want, including if they don't exist, hm? Alright, here's my City Upgrade Proposal.
-[C] CTG
-[T] CTG
-[G] CTG
-[C] CTG
-[T] CTG
-[G] CTG
-[C] CTG
-[T] CTG
-[G] CTG
-[C] CTG
-[T] CTG
-[G] CTG
-[C] CTG
-[T] CTG
-[G] CTG
-[Y] Leyline nexus thing for magic maybe
-[Q] book in a visible location explaining how shouter can become a caster of normal magic while also being a commander, AXE MAGIC USER and Dolf.
-[R] I'm not actually sure how much this would plausibly help but it'll be funny

[Z] question how many polar bears were hanging-back-not-in-the-wave do we know? because it sounds like we might maybe have been doing well enough that we can just Take the holy pentagon if we act fast

[A] I'm not clear on what the Artilliarists are doing other than existing

[B] or frankly on anything resembling how much money we have or how much city levelling costs? apparently we took a big treasury hit and we can still afford a city upgrade so I guess we could be a level 3 city for our main one by now if we hadn't decided to fight bears? or do we already have level 3 city?

[D]on that note apparently stealing doesn't work so good on the bears because they explode when they die... is it possible to maybe capture one of the bears, say if one barely survives a skirmish or is otherwise isolated and we strike with surprise shadraks and overwhelming force, and then loot their not-exploded-because-not-deaded items? or feasible, for that matter.

[X] Er... yeah. JOE's proposal seems reasonable. Especially the "[C] C", "[T] T", and "[G] G" part. Which combination of "[C]", "[T]", and "[G]" doesn't quite matter. JOE has provided barrels.

[X] And leylines sound fun (once I remembered what those were)! Would work well with [X] Heavy vs. Heavy. Corral the bears into Runic leyline paths that only boost our city's magic flavor. Explosive rune mines that trigger based on foot texture, allowing rough rock feet to traverse them, whereas metal meteor boots or polar bear paws would not (without getting exploded). Low level Dorfs and *ahem* less "artistic" bards casting much smaller scale AXE's, using them like piercing arrows from the walls. What I will dub "land boat towers" strewn across the city, like sentry towers that shoot lightning at the enemy. Stuff like that.

[X] Er... what was I- right! Tunnel rental. Wanted to ask Q&A about rates for that. Fast-tracking to the other Pentagram in the bloody area or something. Personally, I'd say we should check out the biome first ahead of time for fun Dark Magic stuff, but it's nice to keep our options open. See if using their tunnels OR hiring them to build tunnels for us is an option, and what that would cost.

[X] JOIN CTG
Ontological error! You can join CTG at https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/off-topic/...epting?page=178 !

Redacted is currently bleeding golden ichor due to unredacted attacks by the timestream, which is also the moneystream!

bad news, time is money which means it has access to resources and deployment cheese

HEY IS THAT A GODMODDING INFECTION? NOT GOOD, NOT GOOD AT ALL

City upgrade cost is inconsistent as all get out because Redacted didn't stabilize the mechanics between shifts. The longer a city exists under current controller, the cheaper it is to level up. Higher level cities cost more to upgrade to than upgrading lower cities, which means it takes longer for them to become affordable. The capital is still Level 2.

Is now a bad time to mention that I haven't been giving each side an equal number of turns?

WHY IS CHRONOLOGY A GODMODDER?

that's not due to the CTG link if you're asking.

Expunging data...
Censoring opposed reality bijection failure.

Redacted, Classified Information, Censored, Data Expunged, Expletive Deleted, Section Missing, Boop Beep, Block Text Character, Senator Janet Damita. Combined invocation.

Anti-Luna protocol. Capslocky chaining. Rapid adaptation network, Beautiful Blossoms. Spacetime quarantine in effect. Please hold for godmodder suppression....

How are you guys supposed to beat the timemodder?

Very carefully. It'll take a lot of creative attacks delivered in a parallel continuity, and damaging the flow of time while we're using it is a bit frustrating, but I'm sure it'll be fine.

I think it's not fine but somehow there's something that can be done about it. Oof, red? Is that time bleeding into the assurance system?

WORKING ON IT.

How's the Bunkering King thinking on Open Borders?
"I will accept the use of roads and courtesy housing as-is, but do not see any pressure to provide my own mounts." he says by letter. "You should be able to rig up cursory submarines to access acceleration-currents at sea, I guess. And your units are tunnel-capable as far as I am aware. I would accept payment for digging tunnel roads, but it seems the currency system is currently under significant instability. Perhaps we should negotiate in terms of other assets? We have not been able to make inroads against Pentagon Capricorn sadly. Beyond partial sea-currents or a protracted ocean-floor tunnel operation, I doubt we could do much to assist as merely neutral. Alliance would probably take some long-term offers of aid."

Pentagon Capricorn thinks to itself. Details of what exactly beyond sea monsters is there are pending (it's thinking a temple but anything could happen). Eventually, it says the narrative was unclear and disambiguates its five-sided ass to a series of small rocky islands at the north end of the weird line of rocky hexes in the ocean.

The evil biome is much south of that, west of Sheeplestan and in a large sweep east-extending-to-south of Q&A territory, it's not well understood beyond that many Q&A natural units don't take to it well. It's actually limited their territorial expansion in that direction somewhat, forming monster-filled caves that occasionally spit out disturbing results and harangue a few of Q&A's underground citadels over a few days at a time. Apparently owls can loiter in surface trees without provoking fights but most non-scouts rapidly will end up in battle, and the other animals hunting owls was mostly random design. Weird balance but okay.

Faux Kinzo Ushiromiya would have entered the chat if he wasn't already here!
GOLDSMITH: I'm scouting the ocean.
GOLDSMITH: In your general direction.
GOLDSMITH: I assure you that my artillery is en route.

That is...super inconsistent with a lot of the techbase plans. I thought the Bunkering King was supposed to be ahead?

GOLDSMITH: So am I.
GOLDSMITH: But for that matter, Ocean's Fledge is not the only faction receiving metagame tech support. We the artillerists have quite the poorly-researched military hacks!

Dumping spoilers on main, huh. How are you even here??

GOLDSMITH: I'm cheating. Anyway, at least one or two victory conditions has been revealed. While I'm at it with the prodigious red, another victory condition is currently incoherent during this patch.

The treasured red sword reveals the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth nor what to do about it.

hey I'm kinda busy being lazy while fighting a godmodder can you guys run the city update? underline ma'am you seem competent

That's clearly an attempt to pander to me but sure.
How the heck do we install CTG to a leyline?: <9 12 4 20 11 = 56>
Well, I guess that doesn't answer it.

Violens is now the proud owner of a leyline node, emitting prodigious amounts of magical energy through the earth to vitalize it.

The enclosed instruction book bursts out of one of Redacted's chest wounds. Or, well, flaps its way out uninhibited, they were very large caliber bullets. Dude's got cartoon swiss cheese'd and that one was over a foot in size courtesy one of Time's deck guns. Regardless, the book flaps about Violens for a bit and says Shouter's promoted to full-caster due to a bugfix on force-promotes. True to reality getting its act together, a 'bing' and a little blue highlight update Shouter's stat screen says he counts as Novice now. Since units detect stats through a direct sense rather than statistical information, this is more for the benefit of somebody else.

Reality, I order you to give me a reasonable meta-unit count of the polar bears already.
<10 10 15 11 7 = 53> + ??? = ???
Reality's not complying, sorry. I can say that a Revenge Wave isn't a substantial portion of a Victory Pentagon's defensive complement. So, you'd have to beat a bigger force than the entire wave so far, and the city's built-in defenses.

Shit, that sounds bad. But how many polar bears are actually left to hit the city? Redacted's basically turned half the game engine into divine fiat, and Block Character's been overworked stabilizing the rest. With Censored and Data Expunged focusing on godmodder defense...that leaves the other guys.

Classified Information, Expletive Deleted, Section Missing, Boop Beep, and if we absolutely have to the Senator. Not a good year. It looks like most of those are responding to the systemic byproducts of the godmodder incursion, so the engine's really a wreck. Damn.

SOLOING LIKE A MINECRAFT PRISON, AND THAT MEANS BUDGET CUTS.

I'm not sure the audience will get that reference.

REDACTED WILL BE DEFENESTRATED FOR THIS.

A chorus of things like "I'll throw him out too!", "seconded", "yes", "do it!", and other frustrations ring out across the world.

But the show must go on! And unlike a stage play that takes holds and maintenance breaks, we're low on understudies and higher on explosions that blow up the stage.

Capturing Polar Bears In The Night Before Battle: <2 4 18 7 11 = 42> + 15 = 57
Bears Dislike Being Captured: <8 7 19 18 7 = 59>
(Gap -2)
It is currently not feasible to capture the bears, and you know because some rocks died trying. Reality is suspiciously damaged as to whether or not said engagement occurred previously, as an experiment while fighting-retreat cityward, or was delivered by time travel and retcons over a within-update span. More captures might be more attainable in the controlled environment of the city if the battle goes well, but it seems like it'd be an active effort.

Okay. Reality. Crux of the previous update vote. Get to work. Please describe how Violens has been upgraded to be a CTG reference.

Violens is now a CTG reference! The cyan equivalent of a missing mesh error diamond but with deep blue CTG instead of an exclamation point floats ominously in the air as a gigantic monument. Its azure text luminesces over the gridded streets, as Block Character hasn't read enough of CTG to make that make sense yet beyond adding some pictures of relatively-recent CTG events for decor. Literal wooden-with-some-lining iron-ringed barrels of blobby meltable gelatinous cyan not-yet-resolved CTG reference matter clack about fresh-popped in storage areas (or raining from the sky-jewel in drip-drops every so often). Occasionally, CTG reference matter blobs left unattended condense into blue rawtext taglines like 'Join CTG!' and bubbled image-descriptions of randomly remembered facts like 'The Godmodder is evil/evil' or 'the Going Insane on Purpose Club exists', but they're still usable. And what they're used for is forming CTG references. Units, stuff, actions, it's magic and you get to explain things (somewhat, pending this buggy reality reinterpreting them right back).

Leyline branching and selective-landmine bombs based on a runic recreation of faction-selective heal/harm light occurs in depth. Throwing axemen scream at the top of their lungs for as long as they can hold it, creating reserves of sufficiently explosive throwing axes one by very loud one with sufficiently not explosive battle axes for sidearms. Electrified sentries are set up, and a sufficient moat dug for boats and faux-boats to wander around electrifying matters while corralling the garrison to a very focused route. The place is arranged with a lot of obstructive walls and thin doors, giving the defending side vantage to fire down from and the attacking side a brutal climb with the occasional exposed haze of traps and snipers.

Shouter, promoted to a commander, is somehow the nexus of activity and leader of administration. Rockington and Ms. Lenses follow him around and provide commentary, but it's mostly Violet requesting some optimizations and Shouter loudly delivering on them.

Urgh, sorry. Even from chair I just cannot zoom in properly. It's all distorted and causals.
BIND ERRATA IS PRETTY BAD, YEAH. I CAN SORT OF HACK TOGETHER IMAGES FROM REDACTED'S AUTHORITY, BUT HE'S SUCKING AT CONSISTENCY RIGHT NOW.

well excuse me for getting shot
Redacted is varyingly excused or not excused for getting shot.

"It's actually pretty blurry to us too." Violet says. "It's like a tired-out dream state, where the specifics of our actions can't be experienced subjectively with any clarity tighter than described. We know stuff, imagey incidents happen, but the details kind of blend together."

Yeah, it sucks. Hope stuff gets better for y'all on the ground, fight well.

"Hah, I'm a manager." Violet clears up with a smile. "Hey, Shouter, you don't get serious leadership bonuses but you do lead. You wanna poll the metagame for CTG refs?"

"YEAH, SURE." Shouter says, shaking off the metaphysical inclarities of exactly how many landmines he's made or axes he's shouted over the past few days. "HEY PEOPLE, WE BARELY HAVE NEDBEN'S FRAGMENTARY MEMORIES OF RECENT CONFRONT THE GODMODDER TO DRAW ON. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY SPECIFY WHAT ALL THESE 'C'S, 'T'S, AND 'G'S ARE GOING FOR WITH MAXIMUM EFFECT. THE AUTHOR SUCKS AT DESCRIBING STUFF SO I THINK THIS IS ACTUALLY AN EXERCISE IN LIKE PROJECTIVE TESTING. JUST PICK SOME STUFF TO ASSEMBLE THE REFERENCES INTO. SAY WHAT THEY'RE GOOD AT DOING TOO, UNLESS YOU WANT OUR CAST OF CHARACTERS GETTING THE WEIRD KINDS OF CREATIVE. ADD ON SOME PRIORITY ALLOCATIONS IF THE OBJECTIVE CAPABILITIES WOULD BE MAYBE TOO HARD OR TOO DECISIONMAKEY, BUT HONESTLY SHITPOSTING IS OVERPOWERED SO YOU SHOULD BE FINE ANYWAY. TREAT IT SORT OF LIKE DTG CHARGE POINTS WITH A USECASE LIMIT MAYBE? THANKS PLAYERS!"

That's right, reality's refusal to describe what a CTG reference actually looks like means that you get to fill in the blanks!

What CTG references (or other preparations) do you make before the polar bear battle? The fight for Violens will probably occur next ingame-turn and update, barring some excellent means of stalling. Providing initial tactics and requested vote points is also a good idea, since it's unpredictable if the battle will have any surprises to merit a revote.
[ ] (write-in)

[C] Infinite Time Machines! It's a pretty recent CTG reference! Strictly speaking the Godmodder owns all of them and also they don't actually work properly most of the time BUT they sometimes temporarily look like they work and since there's infinity of them some are in this city that's how space works. They're good for... um... actually probably not much because time is a Godmodder? or would that make them stronger? Good for concentrating force onto a single turn at the expense of future troop availability, maybe?

[T] a barrel of Szirfs, the number that 3 has been masquerading as for years! Throwing these at our opponents will disrupt any attempt by their commanders to understand something there's Szirf of, which should give us a substantial tactical advantage.

[G] Did you know CTG has a weirdly in-depth materials tree and harvest system? It's true! It's like how Rocks gather by 4d4+bonuses unless you have a specific kind of bonus to make it 5d5! some times of resources can't be harvested by default unless you have the 5d5 bonus. there might be higher levels than 5d5 like 6d6 and 7d7 but seeing as nobody actually uses that materials tree it's irrelevant. We can use the higher level resources (one's a variant of diamonds, and another is blue.) as walls!

[C] It also Had a weirdly in-depth mining resource system which I expounded on this one time in a readthrough thread. Y'know, Iron, Goldenrod, Rubies, Shadowy crystals(this was Before Deltarune not after), Celestial-y material. We can use the Iron for building things (it's. Iron.), the Goldenrod for magical amplification because that's what it does (give shouter a Goldenrod Megaphone!), the rubies for uh, fire magic I think it was, the Shadowy Crystals for magical wards, and the Celestial-y material for basically whatever! This is a pretty general thing. materials science can be used for all sorts of effects!

[T] Let's talk unit upgrades! In one CTG sidequest, there was a sidequest-areas-only leveling system, which granted a base level based on the first sidequest you went on and EXP for killing enemies, except the EXP amounts were balanced around fifteen seconds per enemy and unfortunately game pace meant 'fifteen seconds' was 'two weeks'. BUT It also had EXP for going places and the amount could be pretty high. Basically, every unit that reaches our city should get some levelling progress! This does include the bears but the bears are already strong so they probably won't get full levels out of it.

[G] Now let's talk Shaping! As we all know, Shaping Combat is very simple. Anyway, Shaping is only sort of that, it's really more 'versatile actions in theme'. Shaping Actions go well with everything because they're versatile and bonus! It's useful for anything.

[C] MOTHS THE MOTHS ARE EVERYWHERE THE ENVIRONMENT IS MOTHS THE GOVERNMENT IS MOTHS HEY YOU VARIOUS FIGHTING DIVINITIES IF WE CAN JUST GET MORE THAN 200 MOTHS FOR 999 TURNS WE CAN TURN THE GODMODDER INTO MO-WAIT YOU'RE FIGHTING TIME RIGHT THAT'S NOT GOING TO HELP ANYWAY WE HAVE MOTHS AND THE THING MOTHS ARE GOOD AT IS MOSTLY SWARMING THE ENEMIES IN INCREASINGLY LUDICROUS NUMBERS WITH INCREASINGLY LITTLE SELF-PRESERVATION FROM INCREASINGLY BIZARRE DIRECTIONS (AT LEAST ASSUMING NONE OF THESE MOTHS HAVE FROST DISEASE) AND HAVING BEEN THINGS ALL ALONG.

[T] Hey, remember how I mentioned shaping? well, the topic hasn't ever actually come up, but if you have the right kind of shaping you can use it to make entities, and there's no rule on the player actions saying you need to be using specifically CP rather than factorying or something in order to make them, so now that we have shaping maybe one of our shapers can start shaping up a player action device to help fight the chronologymodder.

[G] another good thing about CTG- it has an extremely resilient 4-day-long timecycle(though precedent says that if someone presses fast forward that changes to '2-day-long-and-or-immediately'... until the QM bonks them for pressing fast forward)! That means that on the off chance the updates ever slow down so that we have less than 1 turn per 4 realdays we'll get that turn! Also the divinities can use this as an antichronologymodder shield maybe

[X] This is only sort of a CTG reference (more DefTG in a sense) but Goldsmithing is a very powerful tool, it's the secret to like Godmodder Locks or something, it said so in a dream. wait, why did I say that when one of our enemies is a goldsmith

[Y] we should pick up all the golden ichor Redacted bleeded in a bucket incidentally

[Z] do something about the timemodder because there is canonically something that can be done about it that was in red and everything

[Q] CTG also has something I'm not actually going to explain going on with how ecneserP ehT is surrounded by apparitions of various things like memes and cats and Abominations within the range of the Impossible Embassy and where there's a very important triangle. The important triangle is missing, actually, so maybe it took a break in our city. If it did, it's probably on fire which is gold but not the Racyls'Strom kind or the kind which is killing Racyls'Strom or the kind Scope Creep uses actually maybe the scope creep kind too.

...

It's times like this when I forget how many turns it's been since I last glanced at CTG...

[X] Just for the sake of suggesting something, since there's apparently so much blood everywhere, use it to conjure up censor bars- some permeable black rectangles that can't be seen through. Use these to fill up any passages or doorways, making it so that, no matter how much force the polar bears apply, they'll have no idea what they're getting themselves into upon entering. Which... was kinda the default.