Okay, so I was trying to think of a delusion that could resolve this. I figured maybe we could make the blood guard actually care about this guy. Along the lines of "This soldier is your son and will suffer horribly if you don't let him go."

They seem pretty cold though, so he might just regard his duty as more important, in which case at most we'd make him shed a tear for his "son". If this is happening out of sight of other guards, we could simply blind and kill the blood guard.

>>23769442
I say we go with blinding and killing the guard, its more likely to work.

>>23769442

As suspected, the Blood Guard hardly even reacts to your delusion, while the soldier twists about in his grip, trying to find the source of your voice, and not knowing whether to hope or panic.

So instead you wait until he's beneath a walkway, then blind the Blood Guard, pull out his scimitar, and slit his throat. That went well, I guess.

>wat do?

>>23769630
Well he should be able to get himself away now, right?
"You should run." Then return to the shadows and follow him.

>>23769709
Pretty much this.

>>23769630
return to sabotaging the food. Sneak in there and start a fire.

>>23769709

The delusion was probably unnecessary to get him to do what he was doing before. He flees through the night, darting from one shadow to another, and eventually makes it out past the corpses. Looks like he's heading away from the village entirely and towards the east, so he's likely going to run straight into your army if he's not careful. Even if he is careful, there aren't any Golgothans out there anymore.

How long do you plan on following this guy?

>>23769778
Our army arrives in two days; if we burn the supplies they can't claim them as spoils. It's really not worth burning everything to deny the enemy a day or two food.

>>23769790
I wanted to be sure he wasn't just heading for some commander hidden outside the village. If he's definitely fleeing, let's just intercept him. If he doesn't stop when asked, we can blind him.

"Why are you running?"

>>23769854
I agree, intercept him and see if he's more useful than the first guy we questioned. At the very least we can ask him why that blood guard was intent on killing him.

>>23769874
As well as the golden "who is in charge?".

>>23769886
Thought that was implied, but yes.

>>23769874

The soldier barely manages to stop himself from screaming in panic when the shadows rush into his eyes. "Why are you running?" you ask.

"Who are you?" the soldier asks. You roll your eyes, put up your usual "I can kill you horribly" delusion, and restate your first question. "I need to tell the commander what's happening," he says then, "someone has to tell him before it's too late! The Blood Guard have gone insane! They're taken by some foul spirit of this land."

You press him for details and the story comes out. The commander sent them here with 100 soldiers and 30 Blood Guard. There were a few losses in the battle, but the bulk of the casualties were inflicted by the Blood Guards as they began executing soldiers one after another. The Blood Guard have always kept their reasons to themselves, but it was usually fairly obvious. Someone caught deserting, or who had been spreading rumors about the officers, or something similar would get sent to the Blood Guards for purification and that would be the end of it. Now, men were taken for hardly any reason at all, even officers. All of the officers, in fact, the captain and all of his lieutenants were seized by the Blood Guards the day after they arrived.

>>23769822
the idea was that they'd start going toward the fortress which they don't know fell to our guys to refill and we'd get their current position without a siege.

anyway, do this
>>23769854
>>23769886

>>23770077
he's served his purpose. kill him.

i think we want to get a blood guard to tell us what their deal is. delude some mook into sounding an alarm and while they're distracted see if we can get a blood guard to follow us somewhere more private.

>>23770077
Guys, someone is trying to steal our job.
"Do the Blood Guard have a leader?"

So the soldiers are scared shitless of the Blood Guards. If we kill some more and then delude a soldier or two into revolting we should be able to cause massive infighting. Of course, this will have to wait until the interrogation has finished and may change due to unexpected details.

>>23770323
Interrogated dude already died.

>>23770266

The Blood Guards are led by the gods of Golgoth, specifically by Razag, the Lord of Retribution. His divine servants relay commands to the Blood Guard directly.

Having no more use for the poor bastard, you knock him off. Now what?

...Bump?

>>23770381
well some one is killing Golgoth solders, lets race them see if we can get more them them fuckers have a head start too

>>23770381

Do we know that in-character? And if we do, can we remember anything else about the guy, like his court/likely talents, etc?

>>23770602
kill as many of the guard as you can over the next two days. Make sure our minion is at a safe distance from their attempts to find a bad guy

>>23770893
I doubt we'd thin their numbers enough to make a dramatic distance; our problem here is the enemy's terrain advantage. Since this place is built into trees, let's have a look at the pathways. See if we can identify any high-traffic walkways or a central district of sorts. We might find a viable target to collapse when the army begins.

>>23770930
difference, not distance.

>>23770930
Seconding this, head back to the camp and determine any structural reliance we could possibly exploit.

>>23770892

You know because this guy just told you. I'm pretty shitty at writing dialogue for people who are terrified, it always comes off sounding kind of cartoonish and pathetic, so I default to summaries instead usually.

You do know Razag, although back when you were up and about he wasn't anyone's god. He's a member of the Red Queen's coterie, a fairly powerful daemon of the Court of Dominion. Unsurprisingly, he knows how to hold a grudge. "Lord of Retribution" is kind of a stretch, though. He's the daemon of a city on that one world that the Court of Dominion was trying to take over completely, not the daemon of retribution, but mortals often have a way of assuming that the daemons who care about them are supernatural powers on a global scale who govern very broad concepts.

His Talents are Fleshshaping, Potence, and Thaumaturgy.

>>23770930
if we start offing the scary guard their moral might colapse

>>23770930

Either end of the bridge is home to a large platform built between the trees which is a nexus between multiple higher walkways. The further you get from these central platforms, the less central and less vital the walkways become. Near the bridge is also where all the walkways leading up into the treetops are located.

>>23770969
The blood guard are tall, freakish members of the order of not-giving-a-shit; unless we can kill off like thirty of 'em (we've been here a day and only killed one) then looking for strategic advantages suits us better. I mean if we can find a central tree holding up most the walkways we can try talking Girdin into smashing through it during the fight or something.

>>23770965
I was thinking of trying to get Mari some action by using a long-distance fleshshape to turn some bloodguard throats into pelvises, but they'll probably recognise the ability. That'll likely give us trouble later. Gotta find something semi-important for her to do eventually, though.

>>23771012
Not particularly good. We can't take down any trees that hold up the walkway to the bridge since we intend to cross it, and unless there's only two or three main walkways connecting those trees then we'd need an army of lumberjacks to do any significant damage.

>>23771045
Actually do the Golgothans even have any ranged weaponry? Or even bricks they can throw off the walkways at us? If we don't know we can go check out that blood guard we killed and see what he had on him.

>>23770969
Their morale seems to be way down already, they're just to scared to do shit. The blood guard however will do shit. Unless they've all gone mad, their madness probably stems from the torture guy. We should check him out again, maybe.

Given how the normal guards already seem close to the belief that the bloodguards have gone insane or been otherwise compromised we could try to incite a revolt or at least convince a group of people to escape towards the stronghold we just destroyed. Our army will have no trouble killing those and the enemies' main fighting force would be both diminished and demoralized.

>>23771124
Yeah, but if the blood guard start dieing the soldiers might do something, especially if we can frame them.

>>23771017

Most Blood Guards aren't tall and freakish, just for those who weren't hear for Chapter 1. We've seen plenty of regular human-shaped Blood Guards before the freak shows turned up here in Summerbridge.

>>23771081

Yes, they have bows and arrows.

>>23771045

Completely cutting them off from any part of the village is basically undoable during the battle, yes, but you could force them to take some long detours to get to certain parts of the village (like the southeast or northeast sections, for example).

>>23771142
We can probably hit a bunch of guards with delusions that the blood guard hare keeping them there simply to kill them systematically. That'll get them trying to flee even if it doesn't quite start an insurrection.

>>23771177
Was rather hoping that they came to Sunnybridge expecting a melee and didn't have ranged equipment on hand. But I guess even if they didn't they certainly could've scavenged some from the dead villagers.

Do we know how many delusions we could manage before needing to rest?

>>23771189
We wouldn't even need to maintain the delusions for more than a couple minutes. They are close enough to what they most likely think themself for it not to be reconsidered. Just hit one or two of them with it at a time, maybe add a "I should organize more mutineers so they cant simply kill me when they find out." every now and then.

>>23771189
We should start doing this to a degree that doesn't tax us, and making more soldiers try and desert.

>>23771153
Do consider the possibility that someone may be making them do this. If so we'd be poking at them, possibly prompting retribution. If possible, we should capture a blood guard to interrogate.

>>23771218

Considering Summerbridge is kind of automatically a ranged battle, they were definitely not expecting a melee. You can use Delusion about 15 times before you get tired enough to notice (breathing heavily, slowing down in fights, etc. etc.), about 25 times before it gets to the point where you start stumbling around and go into zombie mode from exhaustion, and after about 30 times you'll black out completely, and might not wake up for several days. This is assuming you fire and forget, trying to maintain more than one at once will, of course, wear you out a lot faster.

Assuming you remain incorporeal, you could delusion a solid ~22 soldiers one after the other without taking any real risks, though you'll want to rest for a few hours afterwards.

>>23771237
> delusion is not suggestion

>>23771332
If we try to do that I suggest we just tell Olberek or Jens to do so during the battle. It'll be easier to capture one of the blood guard when there's very few remaining and we have a lot of bodies on our side.

>>23771332
I don't think this would work very well. We have been warned that there are techniques against Delusion.

>>23771351
I say we use delusion on about ten people, five of those with an added line (not at the same time but immediately after removing our first delusion) about how they should organise a group in order to survive the bloodguard. It would be wasteful to make everyone desert manually, the atmosphere is bad enough that a few delusions will be the final straw to turn this into a hell hole. 15 Delusions in total should leave us with enough energy if something unexpected turns up.

>>23771389
"In order to survive I need to organize a group." or "They will kill me if I do this alone." are not suggestions. In fact they appear obvious enough that at least some of them should believe this by themself.

>>23771489
How about we delude them with "The blood guards will kill everyone if you don't run away". Trying too hard to make them work together might make the delusion mess up; it's implicit in the statement above and if that doesn't do it then it's likely we couldn't have made them work together using delusion alone anyway.

>>23771646
If we do that we can at most remove 25 people from the camp. Given how close they appear to a mutiny already, having five people begin organizing a revolt might turn the whole camp against the bloodguard while still letting us have energy left.

>>23771676
If we get 20-somethign guards making a run for it then the rest will start to follow. Especially if they start shouting about it, though I can't think of a phrasing that would make that likely and still count as delusion.

>>23771727
>>23771676

This looks like one of those things where we'll debate it for three hours and then come to a random conclusion by way of exhaustion, so let's roll it. d100, highest wins.

Rolled 2

>>23771750
Ok. Rolling for plan "Try to get 5 people to organize more."

Rolled 25

>>23771790
Well, this is settled.

Rolled 9

>>23771646
Rolling for this one.

Rolled 75

>>23770152
rolling

>>23771801
And yet it was still oddly close.

>>23771817

I'm not going with this because the option suggested is completely different from every other plan and has received no discussion or support. Unlike the options I asked for a roll over, it's not one of several equally popular plans, it's a dark horse option and I won't let the dice overrule the voice of the players. Which means we're going with ~20 or so single delusions in order to try and incite mass desertion because of the amazing winning roll of 9.

-----

The trickiest part is finding guards who are on their own, but once the delusion begins to take, the guards start running away more or less en masse. The Blood Guards, being a bit outnumbered, eventually begin dropping down from below, drawing their black steel scimitars to begin hewing the guards apart outright. This turns into a messy running battle on the forest floor as the Golgothan soldiers draw swords and lower spears to defend themselves.

>cont.

The battle favors the Blood Guard initially. Though outnumbered, their opponents are primarily concerned with getting away, and the Blood Guard are better trained. The ones on the ground also enjoy an incredible height advantage. Up above, scattered across a few separate platforms, a half-dozen or so of the normally shaped Blood Guards watch the battle impassively.

One of the taller Blood Guard appears behind one of the shorter ones and kicks him down off the platform. He is silent as he falls, but the snap as he hits the ground suggests he won't be getting up. The taller Blood Guard then moves to the next platform, where three of the normal ones wait. They turn towards him as he approaches. Almost imperceptibly, the tall Guard nods his head towards the battle below. The others do not move.

"Traitors," the tall guard says.

"Not us," the leader of the normal ones responds. "You make a mockery of Razag's justice." The tall guard draws his scimitar, and the normal ones do likewise. "My only regret is that your death will be swift," the leader of the normal guards says, and attacks.

The height advantage isn't enough to make up for being outnumbered three to one. The fight is quick and bloody, and at the end of it, the tall guard lays dead. Two of the normal guards turn towards their leader. "The savages are purged already," he says. "We should have left long ago. Ready the horses on the east bank. Then burn everything. Starting with the bridge."

>wat do?

>>23772008
Huh, that went fairly we-

>Then burn everything. Starting with the bridge.
Goddamnit. I thought the bridge was stone?

>>23772008
Let them go, get our minion on ahead to warn the army.

>>23772008
blind and kill before they actually get to doing that

>>23772038

How would you build a stone bridge on a tree?

>>23772055
Yeah, we need to get our murder on and keep that bridge in one piece.

>>23772182
Lets stick with the murder everything philosophy then. Kill any sods that get too close to the bridge, protect the supplies too if we can manage it.

Utilize our standard array of Blinding Darkness and Paralysis Delusions as necessary.

>>23772182
How many are left? We're more the subtle kind of murdermachine.

>>23772182

You blind the Blood Guards. They don't react initially, though they do stop moving. Silently, they wait, with scimitars drawn. You creep up behind one near the edge, turn corporeal, and grab him by the foot, intending to yank him over the edge. This one is ready for you, though, and shifts his weight to his other foot, smashes you in the back of the head with his scimitar. The other hand darts out to grab your arm, and clumsy though the attempt is, he nevertheless manages to find your wrist and get a vice-like grip on it, then swings down at the approximate location of your head. He's only a few inches off. You revert to shadow form just in time not to get split in half.

"A spirit," the Blood Guard says, "blinded me. Turned to nothing in my hand."

"The shadows have returned," one of the others responds. Each of them remains still, slowly waving their scimitars back and forth, hoping to catch you on the edge of them. You are, of course, incorporeal, so no luck there.

>wat do?

>>23772310
Use suggestion to make the leader think that another bloodguard is us. Should break their formation

>>23772310
Delusion, on the one that just grabbed us.

"The spirit has just posessed one of the other blood guards."

>>23772335
Do this then grab a bow lying around and put an arrow through the eyes of one of these guys while they are distracted. Since they're blind they wont have much to go off of except hearing the twang.

>>23772335

"One of the other Blood Guards is possessed," you say. The two you aren't delusioning turn their heads towards you. You can see the darkness gathering about their eyes, but it still looks like they're glaring at you.

"A trap," one of the other Blood Guards says, "we are not possessed. It is an illusion."

"Both of the other Blood Guards are possessed by the spirit," you insist.

The ensuing fight is kind of funny to watch at first as one of them swings blindly in the general direction of the others. Once their blades meet, though, and they know where the other is, their training takes over. The result is quick and bloody.

"Summon him," one of the Blood Guards says, and then turns his sword on himself. The other follows suit immediately.

And their blood begins to boil on the ground.

>wat do?

>>23772484
"You are unable to move. So are you" *Stab* *Stab*

>>23772484
Disrupt the blood any way we can: kick dirt into it, throw a liquid into it to dilute it, or anything else that immediately comes to mind. If that fails, wait in shadow form quietly and observe for a moment.

>>23772484
First, try to disrupt the summoning. Pour water or bad wine or whatever is on hand into the pooled blood. If that doesn't work, we can delude try deluding it with "The bridge needs to stay intact at all costs" and hope it sticks.

>>23772600
By "it" I mean whatever is being summoned.

We could always delude whatever is summoned that everyone here is a traitor.

>>23772707
There's nobody left here. The last two killed themselves to summon this thing.

>>23772600

There's not much around but leaves and dirt, but you chuck it in hoping it'll slow the ritual down. The blood boils and gathers and doesn't seem to be much impeded by your efforts. Finally, a finished creature emerges. A blood construct in the image of its master, the creature is from the waist up a lithe human with feathery wings and a long, tapered sword. From the waist down, it is a churning whirlpool of blood.

You've encountered these things before. They retain all of their master's Thaumaturgical powers, but none from any other Talents. Fortunately, Razag always preferred Fleshshaping, and his other Talents were a bit underdeveloped. Unfortunately, the only way to kill this thing is to wait for it to burn itself out. Less fortunately still, one of the Thaumaturgical powers that Razag does have is the power to cancel Talents if it manages to hit you with a sigil. Most relevantly, this can force you back into corporeality if you hold still for long enough for it to draw the symbol on you (which will only take a second, perhaps two). It's also a mindless, thoughtless construct which is thus immune to basically all of Dementation.

But the good news is that this thing must be running on default settings since Razag himself is nowhere to be seen, which means specific commands like "destroy the bridge" won't be programmed in. It'll probably just start killing everything nearby that isn't wearing the right uniform or that doesn't say the right code phrase.

All in favor of running away?

>>23772894
Aye

>>23772894
No. We can't have this thing still around when our army gets here, we need to find a way to deal with it.

FYI: A discussion on Skype has led to the important clarification that this thing can eat blood to make itself last longer.

>>23772966
Why not both? Draw its attention, turn on our Benny Hill music, and lead it the hell away from the village. There's way too many corpses here for this thing to feed off of and it will just get rediculously beefed up if we let it go.

>>23772997
Yes. Except instead of away from the village, lead it on to the bridge. We'll see if we can trick it into falling off and into the river.

>>23772980
How well does this thing work when blinded? Do we know?

>>23773132

You're not sure of its exact capabilities and limitations, unfortunately, just a basic idea of how it works. You know those wings its got are completely useless, for example, even though Razag totally can fly, so it might be the same thing with its eyes.

>>23772997
>>23773024

Let's roll between these two.

>>23773024
Rollin.

>>23773184
Let's blind it while doing whichever wins! For science!

Rolled 30

>>23773184
Alright.

>>23773024

Rolled 51

>>23773214
I cannot into rolling dice.

Rolled 2

>>23773184
I vote for the "do both" suggestion. Why would we want to choose between stuff if we can do both?

>>23773254
Again, really?

>>23773227

You begin leading it towards the bridge, and blind it for good measure. Its advance is halted immediately, and then it lifts its head up to the air and sniffs a few times. And then it turns around and begins sprinting (well, moving faster on its blood whirlpool base thingy) towards the melee still ongoing on the east bank of the river.

>wat do?

>>23773304
Science is awesome.

>>23773304
We are still in the trees with the fighting below, right? Is the construct avoiding trying the direct route or does it have some means of navigating around obstacles?

>>23773367

Yes. You are up in the trees, fighting is down below, and this thing is taking the most direct route possible. It can't even see obstacles in the way, so when it bumps into one, it just starts following their edges in the general direction of the melee. Constructs have pathfinding problems sometimes.

Rolled 77

>>23773304
We'll have to get a bit lower down, so they can hear us from the battlefield. Wait for it to start chasing a target that it can't immediately attack and delusion the person its targeting with "That thing can't follow you over the bridge"

>>23773413
Forgot to remove my dice.

>>23773405
I wish we had some way to physically interact with stuff in our shadow form. It most certainly has some means of detecting humans, but shadows don't have smell or blood to sense.

Is there any obvious way to make it fall down? Materializing on the other side of a chasm or hole and taunting for example?

>>23773413

The construct finally manages to find its way around all the buildings and drops down to the battlefield below. Unable to see who's wearing what, it begins heedlessly hewing its way through everything in sight. "That thing can't follow you over the bridge," you say to a Golgothan soldier just as the tall Blood Guard he'd been fighting is cut down by the construct. The guard bolts for the walkway leading up to the bridge, and the construct follows after, letting out a gurgling roar of fury and hunger.

Unfortunately for the soldier in question, it totally does follow him over the bridge, since it is chasing immediately behind and thus follows him up the walkway. Bright side: It's now on the west side of the river where there aren't any corpses to consume, and only has a few hours worth of blood.

The battle down below is beginning to resolve itself. The Blood Guards' lack of numbers and ranged weapons means they've fared poorly, and the thirty or so surviving Golgothans are beginning to flee into the woods to the east.

>wat do?

>>23773686
We got it to the bridge. Let's try the obvious; delusion on the guy the construct is chasing saying "Jumping in the river is the only way to escape".

That probably won't work so let's do a quick area scout to see if there's somewhere we can trap it.

>>23773686
This thing could turn out to be entertaining. If we get it down to the ground, it could take it ages to find a way back across. Unless it just walks straight through the river, which would be a bit of a buzz kill.

>>23773686
>and the thirty or so surviving Golgothans are beginning to flee into the woods to the east.

Isn't that where we parked Mari? Who was sleeping last we checked?

Rolled 20

>>23773751
If this fails we bait it ourselves, then go shadow form in the water to just waltz on out.

>>23774272
Forgot to remove dice.

>>23773751

The guy immediately tries it because the thing is impervious to physical attacks so it's not like he's got anything better to try. Hell, he might've gone for it if you'd just regularly suggested it.

He veers hard right and jumps off into the water. The blood construct is too stupid to interpret audio cues and too blind to see the water, and thus plummets straight after him. The Golgothan soldier is swept away and winds up a few hundred feet down the river, exhausted and half-drowned but alive. The blood construct is technically still there, but is swept up in the current, and will thus be little more than a red streak that eventually dies. Even if it does somehow manage to find its way back to land, blood constructs can't hunt. Animals see them coming a mile away and they'll usually bolt, so its blind chasing of the nearest living creature is just going to wear it down to nothing anyway.

In the trees east of the village, there is a soft moaning sound. Three of the Golgothan troops dangle from nooses pulled tight, two caught around the neck and a third dangles by his wrist with an arrow through his throat. A half-dozen more nooses dangle about, attached to a delicate weight such that tugging on the noose will cause it to pull tight. The moaning comes from a Golgothan who has stumbled into a fairly shallow pit trap (only about four feet deep), which has neverthless led to his being impaled on multiple tent stakes buried in the ground point-up. He occasionally makes an effort to pull himself off of them, but it's too painful for him. A trail of blood suggests that another victim of the trap managed to get himself off and make it at least a few dozen feet into the forest. You don't see a corpse, though. Probably he didn't get stabbed very deep and was able to get away. With any luck the wounds will fester and off him within a few days, though. Or he'll just run into your army and get killed that way.

>>23774310
Find Mari. Make sure everything's alright with her, and fill her in on the happenings. Then we camp out int he village to make sure nobody sacks the supplies or bridge until our forces arrive.

>>23774310
I genuinely did not expect that to work.

Let's go have a look at this Golgothan caught in the trap, and if there's any way we can keep him alive. If we can find a way to free him and get him medical help, we can offer to do so if he'll do as we say afterwards. Be unspecific as to what we want from him.

>>23774457
>>23774442
Well find Mari first if the guy is not in immediate danger of expiring. We did keep her like half a mile out of Sunnybridge so unless she got really unlucky and a mob of blood guard strolled by she's probably fine.

>>23774442
Seconded. Make sure Mari is safe.

>>23774442

Unsurprisingly, Mari is in a tree nearby, an arrow nocked in her bow and with the odd look of someone who is both exhausted but also extremely tense with adrenaline. She's looking at the Golgothan trapped on the stakes below and has her bow angled towards him. She hasn't drawn the string back yet, but it looks like she's lining up a shot. "Wait," you say.

"He's beat," she says, her voice quiet, "you're supposed to kill them quick when they're beaten."

"I want him alive," you say, and then descend back down below. "I can keep you alive," you say to the soldier, "but only if you do something for me later."

"Yes, anything," the soldier says, writhing in agony, "just make the pain stop..."

>wat do?

>>23774457
What do you want from him dear anon? We're catching so many Golgothans lately, we might as well rename the quest to PokeMortal.

>>23774597
"I'm going to blind you for a moment, bear with it. Come help me get him off these stakes."

Help Mari get him off and defer to her without saying her name about how best to treat the injuries. Also make sure we blind him, of course.

>>23774597
Well we keep him alive. Do what we can to free him from the trap and stop him bleeding out, while complimenting Mari on her trapping skills, and lamenting that we couldn't see it in action. Be casual about it and tell her she can relax for now. Ask the soldier what his name is.

>>23774675
Gift for Jens and Olberek. Let them ask their own questions so we don't have to explain shit. He can explain what happened at Sunnybridge before we got there and how the guards went insane and started fighting the bloods, etc. He can also give them what tactical information he has. Saves us the time and effort of doing so, and lets them ask any questions they want to know that we might not have.

>>23774722
Yes, this is exactly why we want this guy alive. Glad to see there's some consensus.

>>23774722
And if we can get him to switch sides to our "cause" all the better, since we can start opening Jens and Olberek up to the idea of converting enemies instead of mercilessly slaughtering them. We don't much care about their lives but it's not our style to charge in, swords drawn and pitchforks raised.

>>23774756
Yea, that seems like something they'd do. It's not like these guys barely tolerate their neighbor villages to take them as slaves. I suppose they MIGHT be convinced to ask this guy a question or two before killing him, though. Maybe.

>>23774836
I said "start". I don't expect them to keep him alive post-interrogation, but it's just to plant the idea that we don't have to murder everything. They'll need to start recruiting more allies eventually, and drawing traitors and converts from the enemy is an ideal way to do so. Besides, all these large-scale battles are not our thing and if we can turn them, even slowly, from a direct war on Golgoth to a more diplomatic approach - especially once we've done enough damage to Golgoth they'll want to reciprocate - then we can really come into our own as a manipulator daemon.

>>23774687

Mari climbs down the tree, taking a lot of slow, deep breaths to calm herself down, and then helps you pull him off the stakes. Then she finds her pack in a nearby tree and pulls out some of the tent material. "This is clean enough and we can use it to bandage up the wounds," she says, "but all that'll do is stop the bleeding. He might die anyway unless we get him to a shaman or something soon."

>>23774934

"There's some supplies in Sunnybridge if there's anything useful there," give the guy a nudge as we say this so he knows we're addressing him, "but if not we'll have to wait until our 'friends' get here. Shouldn't be too long."

Then to Mari directly. "You did excellent work with these traps, dear. I almost regret not seeing them in action; this unfortunate soul not withstanding. You look like you need sleep though. Take some time to rest if you need to; I'll keep watch. We'll be fine for a few hours."

>>23775163
If it needs to be said, this is exactly what I'm thinking.

>>23775163

Now that you're using the name in actual dialogue I have to wonder if you are actually aware that the real name is Summerbridge. It doesn't really matter, but I'm curious.

-----

The soldier doesn't really know anything about medicine, because that was the medic's job and the medic was killed two days ago but the insane tall Blood Guards. Mari, meanwhile, thanks you for the praise and finds her way back into a tree to go back to sleep.

The next day, Mari disarms her traps and falls back in with the warriors of Estercoast Village, deflecting questions as to where she's been. Several of the warriors are impressed with her trap-making handiwork. "Three kills in one battle at your age, lass?" one of the older warriors says, "that's an impressive feat. You'll be something when you grow older." Mari practically glows with pride.

When they reach Summerbridge itself, and see nothing but Golgothan corpses, they immediately begin to wonder as to the culprits. Someone eventually asks Mari what she saw. She claims she doesn't want to talk about it and, when no one's looking, fleshshapes some extra eyes onto a few corpses. The soldier's recollections are scattered, talking of the Blood Guard who were stretched into a bizarre shape and then went mad and turned on their own.

The fate of the soldier is undecided. A Golgothan bondsmen would be rather exotic, but carting him around for a military campaign is troublesome in a way that bringing him home after a raid is not, and besides he's already full grown, and those are always hard to break.

Come nightfall, everyone's talking about how some mysterious spirit snuck in and drove all the Golgothans mad, twisting them body and mind until they slaughtered one another. A rumor starts about that it's the vengeful spirit of the villages the Golgothans have destroyed.

>>23775604
Well, seems both sides of this conflict had the same idea of what happened here. And we are both vengeful and a spirit, so the rumor does make me feel a little good. We should listen in on what they plan to do from here. They might need help making the right decisions.

>>23775604
Well it's not mentioned but I'm assuming our captive soldier gets questioned at some point. If that's happened or going to happen then we don't especially care about him any more.

Check those corpses to see if Mari got any more precise with her fleshshaping, but don't talk to her about it while the military is around.

Find Olberek and give him a quick run-down of what we did specifically, tell him to question the captive if he needs more details, ask him what his plans are now.

See if we can't bolster some belief in that rumour about vengeful spirits. Believing that their dishonoured dead are driving them forward for justice would be a morale-booster.

>>23775863
Eh, Olberek doesn't need to know exactly what happened, does he? How we conduct our business is, well, our business. Tell him about the blood construct though, that's useful tactical knowledge, if he wasn't already familiar with them.

>>23775959
Probably not, but he is more or less directing the army. Well, Jens is as his proxy anyway, so maybe we should go tell Jens that we instigated an internal fight and cleared the way for him. We do need to talk to Olberek about that blood construct and Razag though, and the distorted blood guard under his influence.

>>23776065
We are SO going to see Jens. He fucking hates that.

>>23775863

Olberek's current plan is just to follow the army around and have dire wolves kill things. He's basically letting the mortals figure out for themselves how the campaign is supposed to go. Jens, Vierre, and Dekker, meanwhile, are deliberating where to move next. "With Summerbridge basically razed, we need Norfin and Clarbel Village more than ever," Dekker says, "we have to try and gather them up."

"Word of the fall of Guille is going to spread," Jens says, "we've already intercepted one messenger. They might not even bother sending another. And once they realize Guille has fallen, they will entrench their position in the west. It's a risk taking a detour. Gives them more time to dig in."

"We don't need the help of other villages anyway," Vierre says, "let us press the attack while Golgoth is still reeling! Golroute and Deeprock are the more powerful villages anyway, and will be more valuable allies. If we detour to outlying villages we risk losing them to Golgothan attack in the meantime!"

"True enough," Jens says, "but if they've lasted for a year they're likely to last for another month."

"The same is true of Norfin and Clarbel," Vierre says.

"But there will be little use in rallying them after Westercoast has already fallen, and we'll have to double back a ways to collect them if we push west now," Dekker says.

"If we spend time gathering forces, Golgoth will spend as much time building defenses. Or bringing in new troops from across the sea! It will be the same odds either way," Vierre says, "but if we press forward alone we won't have to contend with other villages. Every army we add brings more contention to our alliance."

"And splits the spoils another share," Jens adds with a cynical tone.

>wat do?

>>23776184

They should send out messengers with a small escort to the smaller villages, which tell them about our plan to advance west. Tell them a location where our armies meet in case they send reinforcements. Meanwhile, our main force advances to this rally point. In every case, the messengers are to return to this point as soon as possible to inform us about the decision of the village councils. Then, we will know whether we should wait for them or advance alone. While waiting for news from the other villages, our main force can rest for a day or two, so they don't wear out too fast. To be polite, we should ask Jens if he proposes changes to this plan, so he doesn't get upset again.

>>23776346
This pretty much covers it. Also sneak off and ask Girdin if any of his sleeping buddies are along the way forward.

>>23776346

Okay. How do you plan to communicate this to the leaders? Jens is the only one of them who's spoken to you so far.

>>23776346
Do you want to barge right into the middle of this conversation? It may be very unwelcome. Jens doesn't particularly like anything we say, the others have no idea we exist and would probably be quite alerted by a voice coming from nowhere.

>>23776346
Was just about to post along these lines, only using Olberek as our proxy. That way we keep ourselves mostly unknown; only Jens knows we're even here and he has no idea who or what we are. We should keep it that way.

Make sure to emphasise that they shouldn't care too much about spoils; if they lose to Golgoth because of infighting there will be nobody left to bring any home.

>>23776453
Olberek isn't participating in the discussions. His orders were "kill" and he's probably sticking to that, not to mention he'd likely just be offended if we tried to use him that way and refuse simply because of it. We'd probably have the best chance of being heard by addressing them directly.

>>23776512
He did it for us the first time we wanted to relay our opinion to them. Sound judgment is all he seems to really care about, so I doubt he minds.

>>23776529
Well we could try asking him, but I don't think he'll actually bother. Lots of spirits would see this discussion as being below them. He gave his orders already, he's not going to hold their hands. At least that's my impression of him.

>>23776613
And now I'm using the word spirit instead of daemon. Oh well, it's pretty much the same.

>>23776613

I had a conversation with Olberek the general gist of which was this, and it was boring and I couldn't figure out how to make it not-boring. So yeah, Olberek just scoffs and says that they can figure out for themselves, all this menial "strategy" stuff is the whole point of having pet mortals.

>>23776656
Well leave him be, I guess. We'll have to introduce ourselves then. Jens knows of us, so we'll just sneak in and whisper to him that we'd like to introduce ourselves. Let him warn the other army leaders, then step out in view, still in shadow form. Introduce ourselves as "Anna Malle, a name you should find comfortable." Say we're an ally of Olberek, but due to our nature prefer not to be seen. Then we detail >>23776346 with the emphasis from >>23776453

>>23776751
Supporting.

>>23776656
Well, I'd say we've already proved to ourselves that we're pretty okay with meddling in the affairs of mortals. I vote we promote ourselves to the rank of general and give our oh so polite and informed opinion.

>>23776751
Is that the name we gave Jens? Have we given him one at all? I don't remember, but it would be good if that matched up.

>>23776863
Uh. I don't think so. I'm pretty sure the only person we introduced ourselves to is the shaman, telling him we're called Anomaly. I don't remember all the conversations we had with Jens but I'm, pretty sure all we did was tell him not to claim Mari as a bondsman back in the village, then annoyed him with questions about how he compares to Golgoth. I don't think we named ourselves in either case but I'll go check.

The conversation with Jens and the others is stretching out a lot. Which is fine, because I'm good with dialogue. But it also means that now I need to be off and unfortunately I have no juicy plot to give you before I leave. Oh, well. See you guys tomorrow, for when we continue marching west.

>>23776987
Thread over? Okay then. Just throwing this out here though; I just finished checking and while we've spoken to Jens three times we never actually mentioned our name. Probably why he doesn't like us.

>>23777121
Yea, I guess that's a little rude of us. So is not showing our face. But it's probably also because we keep telling him to do things. And because really he just wants to be home right now, skinning a bear or whatever.

>>23776987
Alrighty, I'll archive this.