Round 4
Chaos Card
Oh boy! The card I drew is incredible. I literally was like "I should sleep on this, it's too good."
That card is: The Philosopher King.
It states “That society has a new ruler. This ruler wants to conquer the known world and, at least initially, seems like they are able to do it. If there aren’t any societies, define one now.”
This card can be this entire round and I think it will be. Choosing which society the ruler is going to come from is tricky. Maybe they're from Vel'helm as the now unified people feel they can conquer everything else. Maybe they're from the Mycine as they have that powerful orb that can spread their forest. But really, I think the answer is obvious. It has to be the humans of Nothia. They already are descending towards fascism and controlling the world is not far away.
So who is this ruler? His name is Linos Troy.
How do they come to power? Nothia’s government structure previously was something akin to a representative republic, I think. Linos was basically able to seize power with color rhetoric and by assassinating his opponents.
But also, there is a story, that he found some sort of forbidden technology in the static. He carries with him a sword that is claimed to be magic. It’s said that it can cut down 100 people in a single slash.
I’m going to get the other questions on the card as I go through this round. As of now, Linos Tory has conquered up to Lake Harmony. As a show of power, he has successfully hunted the Serpent of the Lake too.
Turn 1
So, what to do now? I think setting a scene makes the most sense.
The question: Where do the people of Vel’helm fall back to when overrun by Linos Troy’s army?
The combined efforts of elves and dwarves of Vel’helm were just no match for Nothia’s army. Even with advanced warning they just did not have the training or martial strength to repel such an army. They had to retreat. Fortunately for them, the dwarves of their society were masters of carving tunnels through the mountains and had made it easy to defend. They got as many people from the valley as they could into the mountain and closed the massive stone doors behind them. Then smashed the ceiling making sure nothing could get through.
Turn 2
Ok so that’s how Vel’helm “dealt” with Nothia, but what happens with the Mycine?
The question: How does Nothia attempt to take over the Mycine?
Linos Troy has a plan. He knows he and his soldiers cannot survive in the spores of the mushroom forest for long. If he were to take it over he would need to control something about it in some way. Linos considered attempting to reroute the main river that fed the forest, but realized that would take too long. He decided on something much more sinister. He was going to burn large sections of the forest if they did not recognize his authority.
The mycine had other thoughts however. Unlike Emperor Troy, they did not forget about their artifact. The blinding light that the elves and humans saw so many hundreds of years ago flashes again. This time a massive wall of purple fungus, harder than diamond, appears around the territory of the Mycine, cutting off the Empire from them.
I had to update the map for this one. I even changed some of the rivers in the south a bit. I went with a darker pink for the new area just for some variety. The only reason the wall is purple is because gray didn’t look right with it.
Turn 3
Since I’m doing three turns a round this will be where I finish up Linos’ tale. I could see if I could get a good Chaos Card like the Assassin or something, but I don’t want to risk it. I’m going to set a special scene. In my last play test I mentioned an expanded rule that I haven’t made public yet called “Mortal Quests”. These will be part of the next release as a new action Deities can take and as a way to resolve things mortals do.
The quick and dirty of this new mechanic is that you set a quest for a group of mortals to achieve that has a series of sequential goals. Then you roll some dice for each goal to see if they achieve it. They get one dice by default and one for each deity that is helping them. As a deity action though they get two, assuming that deity will be helping them the whole way. It’s a lot like setting a scene but has dice rolls.
The Set Up: The Goddess Ilah is not happy about the needless war of conquest that has come over the lands. She knows that she cannot annihilate the entity of humanity lest she makes the Static a lot stronger. So she decides to find a set of humans among Nothia that could deal with this in a more direct way. She assembles a team of four warriors of might to take out the evil that is Linos Troy and his associates. She finds two humans, an elf, and a dwarf that she feels would be perfect for the task and sends them a message.
The goals she gives them are thus:
- Find the Sword of Ages in the western mountains (G4)
- Infiltrate Emperor Troy’s camp
- Dispatch each of his generals.
- Assassinate the Emperor.
Since Ilah will be present with them the whole way and influencing things as she can, I’m going to roll 2d6 for each of these goals.
The results are: 6, 4, 6, 5. Pretty dang strong. No straight misses!
As a reminder, a 6 is a hit, 4~5 is a partial hit, and a 3- is a miss. This game doesn’t use the terms “success” and “failure” because any of these results can be interrupted as either a success or failure. It’s more about the cost of those. If Goal 4 was a 6, I COULD interrupt that as “The heroes fail to assassinate the Emperor, but depose him of his position.”
This is what happens:
- The heroes have no issue getting the Sword of Ages from the western mountains. Ilah’s guidance takes them there and they return with little hindrance.
- The infiltration does not go as smoothly as hoped and two of the heroes get caught. This ends up working to their favor as it creates enough of a distraction to split up the generals.
- The two captured heroes are held in different cages in different parts of the camp. Each guarded by one of Troy’s generals. The battles are swift and the imprisoned heroes freed.
- With the group reunited they take on Emperor Linos Tory himself. This encounter proves much more difficult. The rumors of his magic sword are, in fact, true. When it clashes with the Sword of Ages, both blades shatter. The resulting explosion vaporizes both wielders into dust.
With the Emperor slain and his most loyal killed, the Nothia Empire is no more. The reminding heroes set up a republic. Which, hey, I guess, it’s better than what it was. They do return the land back to Vel’helm.
