>>4001699
You and Mina quickly make your way back to Farsalos. Flight really is convenient for travel, especially once you go over the uninhabited areas. You drop your companion off at her home in Nike’s temple and head back to your own place to digest the mountain of information that you’ve received from Elspeth. To sum up your meeting, it didn’t go as well as you’ve hoped, but it went better than it could. You were lucky that she started crying instead of getting angry at you due to the slap. You wonder if Dan’s connection to her was deeper than you thought, or maybe it was one- sided from her side since he didn’t follow her. You hope that your uncle is still around somewhere. He’s the only family member from the old world that you have any hope of meeting again…

The parts about the world, the Labyrinth and Psi cause a lot more questions than they answer. It seems that Elspeth doesn’t know much about the former two, while she probably withholds the latter to gain your favor in the future. And while she wants you to join the Ceno Pantheon, she doesn’t seem to be terribly hellbent on it which suggests that you are in a very interesting position. If you set up your own thing in the border region, you’d still be very useful to Ceno as a buffer state. Looks like Elspeth is pretty smart, which is not surprising considering her position as a head goddess.

The number of major states that exist on the continent was a bit surprising to you, but considering that it is supposed to be a landmass comparable to Australia it is not out of the question. In fact, the wilderness probably prohibits long range exploration to the point that some of these new nations never even encountered each other officially. Regarding other pantheons, you were slightly influenced by local superstitions about them. Not surprising, considering your limited information sources. While it is a fact that holies have limited religious freedoms, they are likely not all religious nutjobs while Valistrat guys are most likely not school bullies turned synthetic gods either. However, you’d have to look into these things deeper when you have time. Maybe even visit those places in person eventually.

>>4001703
You ended up chatting a bit with Haven and Sigrid on the subject. Both were a bit horrified that you managed to slap the head goddess and they were surprised that she wasn’t mad at you. She doesn’t seem to have a short temper in myths, but she is a leader of the pantheon so it wouldn’t be strange for her to have a little bit of pride. Your two companions seem to be a bit out of their depths on other subjects but they are glad that the meeting went relatively well. Haven for some reason fantasizes that your uncle might be some Apollo- like figure to attract such goddess as Elspeth, to which he’d probably laugh out loud considering that he always was a little bit on the heavy side and had a sense of humor connected to his own body.

Eventually, the sense of things that need to be done urgently make you stand up from your table and start gearing up along with your friends. With the month passed, you need to recover those that wanted to stay with you from the tribal village. Luckily you polished your understanding of their language sufficiently not to require Signy’s assistance, but you still have to take your friends and some of the local guards to assist you with the boats. Time to see how many of the tribals wish to stay with you…

>Roll 1d20 for encounter

Rolled 19 (1d20)

>>4001705
Yay its back

Rolled 4 (1d20)

>>4001705
A nice boatride, enjoy the view and chat with Haven while we are at it, what she thinks our littlw border town needs to be more...confortable and inviting?

And now, a 1

Rolled 3 (1d20)

>>4001705
Welcome back
And I am here for that nat 1

Rolled 12 (1d20)

>>4001705

>>4001728
>>4001720
>>4001717
>>4001714
Writing

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>>4001743
With a little bit of your help the ships get lowered into the water again and towed to the pier where they get boarded by your friends and Farsalos militia volunteers that would assist with rowing. You don’t really need rowers near to Farsalos since you can easily push all of the boats telekinetically. However, such display of power might frighten the tribals so as much as you’d want, you can’t do this task alone.

The trip itself ends up pretty calmly. Farsalos river, as it is apparently called, is the namesake for the village itself and its current is always pretty low making it easy to travel. It still has these piranha- like fish the size of an American football but those are not group animals and they don’t chew on wooden boats so it is not as bad. Monsters seem to avoid crossing the river without a real need so your protection was not really needed. You wonder how well would shipping go without your direct involvement. Maybe it won’t be that bad to let the people handle it themselves…

In any case, your ships arrive to the Ghape settlement. Since it is your second visit, the locals are not as freaked out by appearance so you and your allies are welcomed and led towards the biggest building in the middle of the settlement. It is some kind of a hybrid between the dwellings of the tribe’s chief and a communal “dining hall”, if that word is appropriate considering that they eat on top of carpets and don’t actually use tables.

There you meet with this settlement’s chief and one of his granddaughters. The name of the chief is Ishkur and he is in his 80s with grey hair and one of his horns is missing. His granddaughter is that horned woman that you’ve saved and she is the current chief of the other village’s remnant and she looks way less tense than before. Her name is Alease, which seems to be pretty close to Alice which is how you’ll remember her.

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>>4001776
They brief you on the situation, and it is not what you’d expect. Essentially everyone who was originally from Ghape decided to stay there but they would like to trade with your people for tools and stuff. Those who were mainly from the other village are split between just joining you or rebuilding their settlement. Those who wish to join you would prefer to stay with their rebuilding brethren if you decided to assist them. Ghape, while large for a settlement, won’t be able to support that many people so those who wish to rebuild would attempt to do it themselves if you won’t assist them. So, you basically have two proposals right now: you can take whoever wants to only live in Farsalos or you can help or even construct yourself a separate settlement for these people which would attract more of them but it would be more self-governing and you’d have less oversight on them from Farsalos.

>Take only those who wish to stay in Farsalos. This would give you around 50 tribal villagers in Farsalos who wish to integrate
>Offer to rebuild the destroyed settlement in its former place. This would form a 150 people village on the river bank in the forest
>Offer to build a separate village for them. This would form around 100 people village in a more convenient spot of your choice
>Offer to expand Ghape enough to accommodate for all of these people. This would not form a new village but Ghape expands to almost 400 inhabitants which rivals Farsalos
>Other?

>>4001778
Farsalos village is 250 people not counting the cat- woman's guys who are leaving. They are in fact significantly larger than us

>>4001778
some questions tho.

The problem with rebuilding is that they could just be overrun by the slavers again, even easier now since most of their warriors and such probably died in the first attack.
It is pretty risky and we would not be able to help them in time, and we are willing to help them.
Ask them if they are ok with all that.

I would like that some of them moved to Farsalos to help integrate and mix the two communities, serving as traders and a cultural bridge among both people.
As for the rebuilding, if they understand those risks and want to put themselves in danger we won't object to help them, but advise them to stay here and we can expand this village.

The end goal I think is integrating all these people in our "domain" we should do some exploring around here to see if we can find any valuable resourse for them to work with

>>4001778

>Offer to build a separate village for them. This would form around 100 people village in a more convenient spot of your choice

Maybe finding a safer, closer place.

>>4001784
Good point. If we rebuid the village it would be almost 2/3 female due to most men dying in the raid. However, we can construct defenses and provide weapons that are much more efficient than what they had. Farsalos militia easily beat back the previous attack with gambesons and bronze weapons after all, imagine what some steel could do. They seem to be ready to equip the women with weapons though and I wouldn't say that they understand the risks, it is more like they live with such risks anyway.

Good idea on the cultural bridge, some of these people would not mind to live on two homes moving between the new village and Farsalos. Resources would need to wait for your official survey though.

>>4001788
Rebuild their village then, and make it stone age raider proof I guess.

We ahould give them some sort of device to signal us, that would make a good emergency button, maybe a psy infused firework that they can activate to get our attention or from the people of Farsalos if we are not around

>>4001795
Firework could be missed and it is a bit too far for the signal fire. It would be possible to use smoke signals though

>>4001797
Than the smoke would do

>>4001795
+1

>>4001800
>>4001795
>>4001785
Two for rebuilding, one for new village. Rebuilding wins. And we are doing cultural bridge. Writing

>>4001805
You decide that the best option would be to rebuild the existing village using your relatively advanced technologies. These people can’t work stone and don’t use metals. Farsalos militia easily managed to dispatch a raiding party much more numerous than them only by using gambesons and bronze weapons. Once you get steel going the danger of the slavers would be all but gone. With some training and tough walls, the new settlement would be resistant to any further slaver attacks.

Even though the majority of the rebuilders are women, they are stone age people and thus they are incredibly fit and can all operate their primitive weapons. If they couldn’t, they would not survive in these conditions. With some gear and mild assistance of Farsalos militia they could form their own efficient fighting force which would protect them from small monsters and other tribes. And in the meantime, it would be nice if some of them stay in Farsalos for a while. Currently only you and Signy know both languages well enough, it would be a good idea to form a cultural bridge between your people. Someone who would travel and do the trade. Both chiefs agree with you and both of them would send some of their people to permanently live in Farsalos and learn the language and customs.

For now, you’d scout out the second village area for any resources that they might use for trade and assess what you can do. Judging by hut carcasses, this village was built for around 200 people and from the defenses it had only a short palisade. No wonder it was overwhelmed. The skeletons suggested that it was not even possible to collect and bury them. The tribals have heard of your powers so you didn’t have to hide them much after this. All it took is a small walk around the area to collect over 60 different incomplete human remains that would get buried by these people in the next few days.

>>4001848
From the resource standpoint, the settlement used to be placed in a small artificial clearing in the forest with not enough cleared space nearby for farms or anything like that. It was close to a large flint deposit, but while being extremely important for stone age people, it is of little interest to you. After some probing you’ve discovered that the most common bedrock in the area is in a form of various types of slates. Some of them have uses in high temperature ceramics which would be useful for various types of forges. You’ve also discovered a large and pretty pure deposit of coal as well as Shungite and Graphite, former of which is used in metallurgy as carbon source (like coal coke) and latter needs no introduction. You’ve also discovered that one of the hills in the nearby area was caused by an old impact of a blob of magmatic material highly rich in limonite. This ore is used to make iron but also it contains 1-2% of Nickel along with Magnesium and Silica. Nickel is used in creation of military grade steel alloys and you didn’t have sufficient source of it before now. There doesn’t seem to be any other significant deposit in the area.

With this all in mind, you came up with the design: a compact town with a main road parallel to the river. After the plans are made, you’ve decided to ship those willing to settle there to Farsalos temporarily. Ghape would have trouble supplying them while you already have the food and housing. Once you are done with the settlement, you’d ship them out along with any required supplies that they’d need. This entire project also gives you an excuse to work on something in secret. This idea came up to you once you arrived to Farsalos and Mina had a message for you from Nike’: “Elspeth called for a critical importance meeting that’s mandatory for all Ceno gods, and looks like you are the main subject of it. Congratulations, she doesn’t do that often. I’ll have to tell her most of the stuff that I know about you, but I won’t touch that pod. I’ll leave the decision regarding it to you whether you’d want to give her to us or try to unlock it yourself.”

>>4001849
For a while now you’ve had the second nanostasis pod with presumably a little girl inside. You don’t want to give it out to Ceno pantheon and because they know about you means that they could come around for a visit and potentially find it due to its emissions. So, you decided to hide it somewhere at the distance from Farsalos. However, all of your projects so far had understandable goals for the locals. It would be suspicious if you start hauling building materials far into the woods and they probably won’t lie to their pantheon about it if time comes. So, you need to decide where to hide it.

>Eh, keep it in your home: If it is found, you can demand from the pantheon for it to stay with you anyway.
>Dead drop it into the forest: You can quickly cast a small solid shell lead lined bunker with no entrance for the pod. You don’t intent to visit it anyway, it needs to be placed there now and then extracted when you have the means to get it opened
>Field lab: You can create a large secure lab somewhere in the forest that you can access at any time. Since you can access it you could potentially store more sensitive objects far from Farsalos and experiment on the pod. However, the risk of discovery would be higher
>Former shelter: You could potentially refurbish the shelter that you’ve been sleeping in for thousands of years. However, it is not that deep underground and you’ve left it open so something could have made it its home already…
>New facility: You could start construction of a new facility such as a steam powerplant foundation or a steel mill and you could hide the pod somewhere deep in its foundation. Sometimes the best way to hide is in front of everyone…
>Other ideas?

>>4001850
>New facility: You could start construction of a new facility such as a steam powerplant foundation or a steel mill and you could hide the pod somewhere deep in its foundation. Sometimes the best way to hide is in front of everyone…

We've got lots of projects planned in the near future for industrial stuff that will need huge foundations and will probably be built next to each-other meaning we can create a vast network of chambers under them for our own use.

Not to mention that we need power to bring this pod online: although suspicious if our industrial site draws more than it should, it will draw less attention than a power grid being built separate for seemingly no apparent reason; even if we are months or years off of using electrically powered machinery to make such a plan work it still would help mask it.

>>4001850

>New facility: You could start construction of a new facility such as a steam powerplant foundation or a steel mill and you could hide the pod somewhere deep in its foundation. Sometimes the best way to hide is in front of everyone…

Probably better to hide it in a pratical building so that it won't attract suspicion when we visit

>>4001850

>New facility: You could start construction of a new facility such as a steam powerplant foundation or a steel mill and you could hide the pod somewhere deep in its foundation. Sometimes the best way to hide is in front of everyone…

Make sure to mount some rudimentary balistas on the new settlement.
Ask what name it will be too, I'd like to know the towns under our protection.

>>4001850

>Field lab: You can create a large secure lab somewhere in the forest that you can access at any time. Since you can access it you could potentially store more sensitive objects far from Farsalos and experiment on the pod. However, the risk of discovery would be higher

>>4001861
>>4001858
>>4001857
>>4001856
New facility it is. Writing

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>>4001872
You decide that the best way to hide your pod is to hide it in plain sight. Well… not quite plain sight, you are going to put it into a hidden room inside a foundation for one of your future projects. You have lots of stuff planned for the future from steel mills to powerplants. Few people would question a door with “danger” written on top of it in such places. But what should you build? It is unlikely that Elspeth would pay you a visit right now, but anything you’d like to construct would still require some time to set up, so you might as well do it now. The new settlement can wait a few weeks.

For option one you can settle for a steel mill. A workshop would be a bit too small for the task while a full-blown factory would process more stuff than what your iron production could support even after you finish it. So, the obvious choice is steel manufacture. It would be the single largest building that you’ve built yet supported through cast iron reinforced concrete and cast support structures allowing you to cover the size of nine workshop sized buildings. However, it would include only three Martin Open Hearth furnaces. They are pretty big, but they win in metal quality compared to early converters and you don’t have time to mess with pressurized oxygen yet so they are the perfect choice for you. Flux, cast iron and alloying materials go into the furnace itself while coal coke goes into gas generators that would blow burning hot coal gas above the liquid metal heating it up without dirtying it with carbon. This would allow you to finally use steel in construction and basically outfit everyone with steel tools and even provide militia with steel weapons and armor. It is a big undertaking though, luckily the foundation would take around a week to build, which is what you’d focus on.

For option two, you think that you might try to build the first hydroelectric generator. A small facility housing a battery of water wheels plugged into a giant prototype of an electric engine, construction of which was enabled by your new pure copper production. While you lack insulation, you can only place it close to the existing factories to recharge lead-acid battery banks that power copper electrorefining baths, but it is the first piece of electric equipment that you can assemble at the time. You doubt that it would even give you a kilowatt of output though, so it won’t help with pod opening.

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>>4001928
For option three you want to look into an actual coal firing steam powerplant. It would require a large foundation as well as steel production along with the rolling mill to set up the actual mechanisms, but it could potentially power your factories without the reliance on crude water wheels. Right now, you could create only the simplest steam engines barely useful for something like water pumping, but once you gain access to steel you could increase the pressure of the boilers and steel lathes would allow for much finer tolerances. If you build a steam engine’s piston now you could use the gap as a giant coin box.

The last option that you came up with is a psi reactor powerplant. By using the heat of those rods that you’ve recovered you can use principles similar to nuclear powerplants. A single “reactor core” that would heat the water which would power a steam engine assembly. With all the issues of a smaller steam powerplant, this would be a monumental task requiring a huge amount of heat resistant materials, steel and cast iron, but it would be something that could power the entirety of Farsalos many times over. It might be even enough for some early powering experiments with the pod.

So, you need to choose what foundation you need:
>Steel mill
>Hydroelectric plant
>Steam powerplant
>Psi reactor powerplant
>Maybe you could look into something else? Like a chemical plant or glassworks?

>>4001931
>Steel mill

The steel is required for most other things so let's go with that

>>4001931

>Hydroelectric plant

>>4001931
>psi reactor powerplant

>>4001931
lets go with steel

>>4001931
>Steel mill

I want the psy plant but I think its too much for now, when we have the steel manufacture and can do the components I think it will be easier

>>4001949
>>4001965
>>4001971
>>4001973
>>4001977
Steel it is, writing

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>>4001991
Steel, one of the most important structural materials of your time. Even in the age when nanomaterials were being introduced, few things could match steels in their combination of cost and mechanical properties. This is the material type that cladded first manned spaceships that headed for Mars. Everything from tools to structural elements of large buildings relies on steel. Steel bracings can be added into concrete, steel bars formed skeletons of skyscrapers, steel ships swam across the oceans. There is no field of engineering that wasn’t influenced by mass production of steel and you were about to look into getting your hands on some of it.

Unfortunately, the steel mill that you’ve planned would be too enormous to be constructed rapidly. The structure requires a huge amount of cast iron supports that your iron workshops can’t provide quickly. However, you can still set up the foundation and construct the rest later. With all the concrete setting it would only take you around a week to set it up.

To simplify logistics, you decided to place your steel mill adjacent to your iron workshop. In addition, it would allow you to constantly process and cast-iron supports while you are excavating and casting lower layers of concrete. You needed several concrete and cast-iron pillars to anchor the entire structure to the bedrock plus reinforced furnace tubs for the future Martin furnace arrays.

In the upper part of the foundation you planned an array of various rooms, some of which have purposes such as being emergency shelters, storages or serving as recreation rooms for the workers. One of those rooms is rocking a heavily reinforced locked door with the key only in your property. This is the place where you hid the pod after quietly sneaking it out under the cover of the night. As a finishing touch you surrounded the entire facility with a palisade and plugged it into the road network. While the footprint is comparable to the workshop clusters, it still looks very impressive and you are proud with yourself for this work.

But it is not the time to rest. You have stuff to do, again. Lime kilns are fired 24/7 and area for basalt quarry is blasted out, it is time for some city building. Let’s see how it goes…

>Roll 1d20, let’s see how it goes

Rolled 11 (1d100)

>>4002059

Rolled 8 (1d20)

>>4002059

Rolled 14 (1d20)

>>4002064
Fucked up the roll

And that mention of Mars got me curious on how things are going there.

Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>4002059

Rolled 5 (1d20)

>>4002059

>>4002089
>>4002080
>>4002075
>>4002068
>>4002064
Forgot to say writing. Sorry, posting

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>>4002199
Well, you are not sure what you’ve expected building in the middle of the wilderness. You’ve arrived easily with lots of raw materials and cleared out the land with little difficulty after which you’ve excavated the terrain and started casting the sewers, piping channels, shelters and so on. Roads followed soon after. Now since you’ve had access to iron you decided to go for cast iron piping and bigger multistory structures that would individually be their own tiny fortresses. You based them off that communal building that you’ve constructed in the outpost. Four story tall structures with square-ish footprint and a small open area in the middle for a nice tiny garden.

You went for a large middle street going through the center of the entire settlement parallel to the street and set it up for becoming a marketplace. Warehouses line the dock side with smaller buildings that could become commercial spots like shops and diners lining the opposite side while residential zones are placed further from the river in a grid pattern.

Then you plopped in a water powered pump and filtration system on the river’s edge to supply the water tower after which went the docks. You didn’t have time to do anything except a pier similar to what you have in Farsalos, but you think that it would do nicely and it can be expanded if needed. With everything finally done, you’ve decided to look into defenses… and that was the mistake.

You really should keep in mind to set up the walls first. Weeks of construction noise have attracted some kind of monster horde that was going through the forest. Instead of just being wolves, it also included some things that you’ve never seen before. Huge scaled beasts with clusters of three eyes on each sides of their shelled head along with large mace- like growths on their tails. Larger of them had spiked growths while smaller possessed blunt “boulders” at the tips of their tails.

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>>4002201
The other type of creatures can be described only as a “swamp monster”. Strange creature that remotely looks like a two-and-a-half-meter tall human twisted in half and covered completely in various mosses. They have one large red eye above their maws which are filled with incredibly sharp teeth and they make weird creaking sounds as they move as if a tree is straining as it is bent.

The last creature in the roster seems to be some kind of owl- man. Perching from the tree tops a dozen of these horrifying creatures look down at you with hunger in their eyes as they do loud clicking sounds with their beaks. They look frail, almost naked with patches of feathers all over their bodies which suggests that their arm-wings are not adapted for flight. What they are adapted for is ripping flesh apart with those huge talons longer than your hunting knife.

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>>4002202
Well, this doesn’t look good. Luckily for you, the horde doesn’t seem to approach from the same direction as the tribal village so the tribals are more or less safe for the moment. However, that settlement is close enough that if you decide to flee there is a high chance that the horde would crush it. And you decided not to bring your armor and heavy weapons since it was supposed to just be a construction project. Oh boy…

So, tactical summary: you are being attacked by a monster horde. There are almost 60 wolves, 18 mace- tails, 7 swamp monsters and 12 owl-men. Main attack vector is from South-East-East of the new settlement. You are basically armed only with your artifact sword. Whatdo?

>Roll 1d20 and strategy ideas welcome. Going ham with psi powers is considered viable a strategy btw

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>4002203
my best idea would be close in and go ham once, then lure the ones still following away from the building and village.
after that hit and run with trees in the faces

Ps pls don't be a one
pls don't be a one
pls don't be a one
pls don't be a one
pls don't be a one

Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>4002203
separeta those quicker by running into the wood, crush what we can with tk but conserve strenght

use the sword to chop whatever gets close and use the tk to dodge attacks and keep monsters away

we don't want to get tired.


make sure to wipe them all out


this is a good opportunity to test small projectiles with tk, using them like bullets and what not

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>4002203

>>4002218
>>4002246
>>4002248
Writing

>>4002273
You decide that the first thing that you need to do is to draw these creatures away from the construction zone to reduce damage and to separate them based on speed. You open your attack with a barrage of bricks accelerated with your powers into randomly picked creatures. A wolf’s skull gets shattered and the creature dies instantly, the owl-man eats a hit to the chest which breaks something and it twitches for a while after which it passes out, but the armored mace-tails and the large swamp monsters manage to tank your shots with relative ease as bricks shatter against their armor or deal next to no damage and get stuck or fall off from their bodies.

You accelerate with telekinesis to something like 300 kilometers per hour and zip past the crowd dodging and slicing with your sword after which you zoom into the woods and turn to see who has followed you. Several of the owls predict your path and jump at you as you skim past the horde but with some impressive blade work you reduce one into chopped chunks of flesh after which you shish-kebab another one through its ugly head. Unfortunately, few of them follow you since they seem to mostly be attracted to your creations. The wolves start scouring through your streets, owl-men jump from the roof to roof and mace- tails and swamp monsters start attacking the walls and smashing into buildings.

It looks almost as if they have a general plan and they are cooperating. The owls are seeking out the targets of opportunity, the wolves scour the area for prey while the heavy hitters make holes in buildings so the wolves could get in. This forces you to return and go on the defensive. You end up having to pull out and crash wolves who are rampaging inside of the housing district while the rest of the beasties seem to be running interference to you as their friends destroy as much as they can with no regard for casualties. In the end, over half of what you’ve built is in ruins. Luckily the underground infrastructure and stuff closer to the docks was not hurt, but screw you, whatever masterminded this attack. I hope you’d get fingered by Edward Scissorhands, you bastard!

>>4002344
Well, the good thing that resulted from this slog is some understanding of the local monsters. Owlmen seem to be very weak to damage but they are still quite capable of eviscerating a human and they are very fast in addition to their uncanny ability to jump and glide wherever they need. The wolves you have already encountered, they are pack monsters with very good hides for light armor… as long as you don’t reduce them to paste with telekinesis as you tend to do when you are pissed off. The swamp monsters appear to be very weird as they seem to have a “core” in their head that once destroyed kills them. If it is not destroyed, they can be cut into pieces and still come at you as they rapidly regrow lost limbs in minutes. Inside they seem to have no organs and only wood- like hard fibers that luckily burn pretty well, just in case one attacks Farsalos.

Most interesting creature of all of them is that mace- tail. It seems to be immune to the tele- crush as it is only stunned when a wolf gets its insides splattered across the neighborhood. It is covered in plated shell almost a centimeter thick that is comparable to carbon fiber in its mechanical properties but is a bit heavier than that. It would still be amazing for something like light armor though. It would be worse than what you have right now and worse than steel, but that’s still something. The tail is just a large ball of this material connected to lots of muscles and it actually hurt to be smacked by one on accident, but beyond that it is just a very weird warm-blooded reptile.

You look over the battlefield with a sad expression. You’d have to rebuild the entire residential district now. The streets are painted in blood and ichor of the monsters and the gibs are everywhere. There is lots of cleanup in your future, oh boy…
_______________________________________________________
And on this note I have to wrap up for today. Hope that you’ve liked this small adventure and we’ll continue here next week. As usual, feel free to ask questions, give suggestions and discuss. As a new subject I suggest whether you’d want to change something in your gear once you upgrade to steel. Maybe a full metal shield or heavier armor? Or just mimic what you have and electroplate it with gold which is surprisingly cheaper for you than aluminum bronze now. See you during the week.

>>4002352
thanks for running!

>>4002352
thanks for running
best to keep some of that mace tail armor handy, might make for good shield matirial for the militia

>>4002408
That is a good idea, the tribals could make good use of that.
Maybe test the owl's tallons against the armor too to see if it's worth it to weaponize them.

And that's further evidence that we need to deal with that "monster king" since it is very organized and hell bent on destroying whatever we build.

>>4002352
Quick update: I finally finished with the Valistrat pantheon. Feel free to check up on the pastebin for more information.

>>4006384
i am just reading up on them

Ombris is basically a stoner, with his famous "tool" of glass, kek

>>4002352
Player notice: next thread would be moved to Sunday due to some IRL schedule shifts. So far it seems to be a single occurrence

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>>4006690
I was actually thinking of a mobile hookah. It is a type of smoking implement that mostly uses steam and not smoke. I guess the closest thing to it that people here might be more familiar with would be those large types of vapes that run on liquid.

>>4002352
Good day, everyone. We'll be starting a bit later than usual today. I have to do some immediate chores.

>>4018763
Alright, I'm home and writing

>>4018930
After several weeks and lots of words you wouldn’t want Rheia to hear you’ve finally finished the repairs of the new village. The last monster attack didn’t produce any damage to the underground infrastructure which made repairs somewhat easier, however the damage to the surface buildings was extensive. You essentially had to demolish a dozen or so residential buildings and rebuild them from scratch due to the severe structural damage. Luckily you didn’t have time to install furniture before the attack so it was only the buildings themselves that had to be scrapped. Construction waste and rubble was pulverized with your powers and buried in a deep hole nearby forming a tiny hill at the outskirts of the settlement.

This attack did teach you a valuable lesson: if you want to build something in this area you have to start with defenses. And thus, even before you cleaned out the bodies of your vanquished foes you started the assembly of the walls. Unlike Farsalos, these walls would be made out of basalt giving them a nice black and grey color instead of a still very pretty clay red. Also, while wall structure is similar to Farsalos defenses, it is overall shorter because of one side being protected by the river and thanks to a somewhat denser city planning. You decided to add three gates, one looking to the south- east, one to the east and one to the north- east for the sake of a later expansion. As a finishing touch, you’ve added your brand of palisade around the entire nearby area and cleared some trees to establish better line of sight observation from the towers. After that you’ve forged and dumped full stores of bronze spears, knives, helmets and some gambesons into the armories inside of the towers. These people had trouble learning siege engines so while you’d add a few scorpios, you don’t expect them to be used for some time.

With all the stores set, gibs cleaned and buildings finished, you take a look at how long it took you. Just over a month, it’s May already. In your round trips for resources you’ve kept some eye on the situation in Farsalos. With the new cows and manpower, the fields are finally being planted with none of your assistance, cast iron is being sold and your workers are being paid. Elspeth’s people still haven’t showed up yet, which is… good, you guess. There was a minor monster attack almost at the same time as yours, but it was much smaller and only had wolves and those swamp creatures. Apparently, they hate being shot in the face with explosive bolts from scorpios. There weren’t any dead and only a couple wounded that were caught outside once the attack started, but they don’t seem to be too terribly hurt and they’d be alright in a couple months.

>>4019035
You finish your large project by shipping off the people that wanted to go to this new village. It only takes a single trip and you decide to leave two of the boats there. Advance and Alert would stay at the village port for civilian use, after all you can’t keep personally shipping food, people and gear around, right? The village is not self-sufficient, it does not have its own farming and all of the food that they can produce either has to come from fishing or gathering in the forest. However, you’ve set up the mines for all of the local materials meaning that the tribals can now use the raw minerals to trade for excess food and new metal tools with Farsalos with the help of the river connection. In addition, a couple of the Farsalos miners in and several of the villagers decided to accompany these people to their new home for some time to assist them with their skills. You wonder what would come from this endeavor.

With all the immediate projects solved, you take a look at your to-do lists once again. With all the latest progress, you wonder what important project you should tackle next…

>Construction: You have lots of stuff to do here. From finishing your steel mill to finishing upgrades on your metallurgic workshops just to count what you’ve already started. And what about mines, roads, defenses or even other manufacturing chains like chemical industry or glassworks
>Research: There are always lots of new techniques to learn, new mechanisms to prototype and new things to discover. For science!
>Exploration: The local area is not well mapped which means you don’t even know what resources you might have just under your nose! In addition, there is always the Labyrinth that needs to be studied and hopefully some area of it can be subjugated. From the more recent events, you have to look more into the Monster King since if it exists, it is the reason for the unusual coordination of local monsters
>Social: You’ve been working for a while, time to talk with people for once. You have a team of new monster hunters you know nothing of, you’d like to spend some time with Rheia and your friends, you need to see how the cult is doing and so on and so forth.
>Other: Anything else that might come to mind…

>>4019036
>>Social: You’ve been working for a while, time to talk with people for once. You have a team of new monster hunters you know nothing of, you’d like to spend some time with Rheia and your friends, you need to see how the cult is doing and so on and so forth.
did we keep some of the chitin creature hides for shields?

>>4019036
Take a couple days break to talk and drink with our friends, see how things are and maybe play a little with those dice we gave Rheia, then we should.

>Exploration: The local area is not well mapped which means you don’t even know what resources you might have just under your nose! In addition, there is always the Labyrinth that needs to be studied and hopefully some area of it can be subjugated. From the more recent events, you have to look more into the Monster King since if it exists, it is the reason for the unusual coordination of local monsters

To look into the monster king situation, and a good opportunity to spebd some time with Sig and Haven, I miss them.

>>4019044
Oh, right, forgot about them. Yes, you did, but owlmen claws were not that useful. I threw them into research but basically they can't be shaped and are useful only for some armor elements.

>>4019045
>>4019036
Supporting

>exploration. monster king seems like a timebomb.

ask our monster hunter allies about monster kings, especially intelligent monsters and such.

we and Mina can travel pretty quickly and thus safely in the forest, so maybe do that to find points of interest/monster concentration/unusual psi. exterminate anything we can trivially handle.

go in with a larger and slower team once we know what we're fighting.

>>4019051
>>4019045
>>4019044
Alright, writing

>>4019063
You make your way home and plop on a sofa in your living room to get some rest. Haven and Sigrid join you eventually as they come back to your home after their own days of hard work. You get some drinks and chat for a bit about what’s been going on around the place. Haven and Sig ended up participating in some minor monster hunting around the area along with some part of village militia. They managed to nail a few of the wolves that hanged out near to Farsalos and at this rate Militia would be wearing their pelts as a part of their uniform. For now, it is reserved only for those who actually killed the beast as a sort of symbol of excellence, which is interesting. Looks like your pelt won’t be exceptionally cool for long, but it is still warm, comfy and durable enough to protect against arrow fire. Small part of you hopes that you won’t be the cause of giant wolves becoming endangered animals, even though they are monsters.

As the subject progresses you end up talking about that monster wave that you had to fight and your concerns regarding the Monster King. Sigrid mentions that her sister mentioned various types of monsters that are more intelligent and can coordinate other monsters in the area. In the worst cases it can be a type of local monster which makes their elimination very difficult. In some cases, they can even be sentient, but either massively sociopathic or just not relating to humans to the point that next to no communication is possible. When they seem to want to communicate it always turns into a trap and that’s the main reason why certain types of “Subhuman” people are so disliked on the surface. In the civilized areas these types of monsters were basically wiped out completely, but the memory of them still remains. We are likely dealing with it because we are in a frontier. Wiping it out would massively lower the local threat and make colonizing easier for the entire region.

However, the issue is… how do we find it. If it was that thing that made loud sounds then it can still be anywhere within hundreds of kilometers of the wilderness. We can’t just scout it all rapidly, it would take months or even years to do it thoroughly enough. Haven suggests to try to bait it with some loud sound like those fireworks but even then you need to somehow catch up to it before it flees even deeper into the forest and when you do catch it you have to hope that there is not a single one of those left. They can be smart enough to lay low for months or even years. While monster attacks would decrease it does not mean that this is permanent.

>>4019145
Well, there is always an option of methodically slaughtering all monsters in a certain area. That would decrease a general threat to the locals while also clearly displaying the Monster King not to show up in the area unless it wants to lose lots of its pawns. You’re not sure that it is such an amazing option though, you feel like it might work for Labyrinth more than for the surface.

In any case, something tells you that the whole Monster King issue might be staying with you long term. You could start doing something to solve it… but there might be other priorities...

>>4019146
Monster King projects:
>Farsalos area extermination: Methodic extermination of anything that looks threatening in the general area of Farsalos and 5 nearby wilderness sectors which should lower monster attack threat for your main living area and your most important projects
>Ghape area extermination: Walk around and kill every monster in the general area of the primitive settlements. This should lower their general risks of monster attacks and hopefully it won’t scare the locals
>Provocation experiment: Load up a firework mortar and set it off in an uninhabited area in an attempt to draw out a monster horde and hopefully the Monster King itself. In any case, a fight would be guaranteed. Probably some good training for the militia, right?
>Blind search attempt: Take Mina and attempt to blindly comb through the wilderness in attempts to locate something that looks like a potential Monster King… or at least deadly enough to warrant attention
>Megastructure planning: Well, a giant wall kind of worked in Pacific Rim, right? Let’s cut out a massive section of the local area and wall it off to prevent attacks from anything not strong enough to break through. It promises to take forever though…
>Other ideas?

Other exploration projects:
>Local Labyrinth Extermination: We need to start clearing out the Labyrinth from the common monster if we wish to establish the connection between the surface and the dwarven ruin below
>Labyrinth expedition: Labyrinth is a mysterious formation that hides many weird and fascinating secrets as well as horrifying dangers. It is time to take a look at what it has for you once again
>Western Wastelands expedition: The areas devastated by Jane the Mad Goddess during her recent attack. While it doesn’t seem like a hospitable place to live with all those remains of biological structures and dead trees, it might still contain untapped mineral riches for you to discover
>North- West past the Farsalos River expedition: The River has provided Farsalos with natural defense against whatever the wilderness on the other side holds. It is time to take a look on how things on the other side are going.
>North deep forest expedition: Expedition into the direction against Farsalos river’s flow further than Ghape. You wonder where that river starts…
>North- East deep forest expedition: Expedition into the direction of the former slaver settlement. You don’t know much of that area beyond them and you expect that’s where the mace- tails come from
>East past Limestone Basin expedition: Expedition into the direction of Ceno- Valistrat border, even if you are unlikely to reach it. You expect to see more of Ceno border villages and less in terms of actually dangerous stuff due to it being a border region and not the wilderness. The number of wolves in that direction seem to be growing…
>Other expeditions such as to other states or into Ceno proper

>>4019147

>Local Labyrinth Extermination: We need to start clearing out the Labyrinth from the common monster if we wish to establish the connection between the surface and the dwarven ruin below

Since it's the first level take Mina, Sig and Haven with us but not the militia or others.
I want that cleared out, mapped and explored for resources before the dark elves finish to settle in the ruins

>>4019177
>>4019147
i support this, with the recent attacks it is unlikely that the monster king will attempt something again so soon, so this might be the best chance to do this savely

once we are done, we should try out the provocation, the king would have a chance to gather followers so it would be a bigger fight, everyone would need to be very much prepared and trained

>>4019147
>Provocation experiment: Load up a firework mortar and set it off in an uninhabited area in an attempt to draw out a monster horde and hopefully the Monster King itself. In any case, a fight would be guaranteed. Probably some good training for the militia, right?

But don't take the militia there, If the thing is really smart It may attempt to attack the town while we are there

And after the battle we


>Local Labyrinth Extermination: We need to start clearing out the Labyrinth from the common monster if we wish to establish the connection between the surface and the dwarven ruin below

For other material and safety

>>4019201
>>4019195
>>4019177
So both, I guess. And Labyrinth first. Writing

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>>4019232
After some consideration you decide that the best way to look into the Monster King is to attempt to bait it. You’d have to create another load of fireworks and fire them off in the wilderness and try to detect where the command sound is coming from while fighting whatever would come to meet you. You don’t think that it would be a good idea to involve the militia since you don’t want the village to remain undefended while you’re doing some of the less than safe experiments. If it is smart and figured out your existence it might attack Farsalos instead of the bait. In addition, they could get seriously hurt once a wave of monsters attacks.

However, you’ve recently fought off one of the Monster King’s waves so it is likely that it is low on forces in your general area. Thus, your provocation would be less efficient and you’d be missing out on the opening in monster activity that you could use for something else. You decide to use this opportunity to explore more of the Labyrinth and to clear out the nearby area from the monsters. This would potentially uncover more resources that you could use and it would make the travel through the Labyrinth safer which should help with the future dwarven and underground elf resettlement.

Thus, you direct Sig, Haven and Mina to gear up and set off to the entrance. While it would take a dozen people to open the massive cast iron reinforced door, you open it easily with telekinesis and the four of you walk into the Labyrinth… ramp? Entrance? How should you call this mile-long shallow pipe that goes from the near surface into the upper first layer? In any case, you straight away notice some scratch marks on the Labyrinth side of the door. Looks like it was a good idea to install it. You wouldn’t want whatever has those claws to get out. It looks as if something has long daggers for claws and lives somewhere close by. A small part of you suddenly doesn’t want to continue, but you overpower it easily and proceed with your descent.

At the base of the ramp you find three main lava pipes large enough for exploration that you haven’t looked into well enough yet. One pipe goes to the left and at first it enters into that small chamber where you’ve found Claudina but it continues beyond that. The other path goes forward and down at an almost 30-degree angle making it a bit difficult to walk. The third one goes right and forward in an arc and it is the biggest one from the three. There is the fourth one that goes past the acid lake and to the dwarven ruin but it has no useful appendages.

Roll 1d20 and pick a path:
>Left to the black ghoul central!
>Forward into the depths!
>Right and forward into the large opening!
>Other?

Rolled 18 (1d20)

>>4019378
>>Right and forward into the large opening!
with those claws its safe to say its big, better kill it now when everyone is fresh

also:
pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1

Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>4019378

>Right and forward into the large opening!

Large opening, large things!

Rolled 19 (1d20)

>>4019378
>Forward into the depths!

Make sure to bring the bracelet to heal our friends if needed

>>4019378

>Right and forward into the large opening!

Hope we can do something to make Haven blush again.

No 1 pls

Rolled 3 (1d20)

>>4019419
The roll

>>4019420
>>4019419
>>4019414
>>4019407
>>4019396
Writing

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>>4019504
You decide that the best option is to go through the larger opening. Dangerous monsters are most likely large and thus clearing out that path would secure the area against more dangerous of the local creatures. Militia can probably handle something human- sized but this hole is enough for something comparable to an elephant to pass through. And large claw scratches that you keep meeting on your way give you some thoughts on what could be living there.

You know, that perpetual lantern is probably the best purchase that you’ve done in a while. It produces constant bright light that lights up as much of the Labyrinth as is realistically needed. You can see all of the walls and far into tunnels with it with only the thin “fog” of the Labyrinth forming a natural horizon of sorts. While you don’t need it, your companions definitely do. Unfortunately, they aren’t in the mood for a talk right now and you are the only person who is somewhat relaxed in your group. Haven constantly looks down the long stretches of corridors with her crossbow at the ready while Sigrid has her shield up and threads extra carefully. Mina is a little more confident but she still looks focused on the surroundings in expectation of a lethal jumpscare of a monster variety. You tell yourself that for you it is ok to be more chill since you can react much faster than all of them.

The path is not very straight or open, it waives and twists and it has an abundance of basalt debris, stalactites, stalagmites and stone dust. Not the fun way to go, however you do find some interesting things on your way. Once you manage to find a hole that was just a little bigger than what you could squeeze into with your gear and inside you’ve found a geode formation of sorts. This time, however, it was an empty almost perfect basalt sphere with almost no access to the rest of the Labyrinth except that one hole you managed to get through. This hole seems to be unintentional and almost melted into already pre- existent structure of the basalt sphere. At the top of the sphere there is a large glow- quartz crystal cut into a hexagonal shape that provides warmth and light to a four-meter-tall oak tree contained inside. The tree is probably ancient but it has completely ceased growing. Inside of its branches you can see a few small squirrel- like creatures that feed on its acorns. You explore the place a bit more and all you can gather is that this is probably some kind of a biological time capsule preserving an artificially created tiny closed ecosystem indefinitely. It definitely wouldn’t work for hundreds of years if it was just an oak and squirrels after all. You can’t find any author signatures or anything more worth of note. You could probably take the “sun”, but you’d be destroying the beauty of this microcosm. A peculiar discovery, you wonder who has decided to create something like that.

>>4019861
Further along you’ve discovered something by its smell. You couldn’t mistake it for anything, it was crude oil. How it managed to occur in an obviously volcanic terrain didn’t matter at this point, you are way beyond caring at this point. You’ve found OIL! You couldn’t get to it directly, but the hole was just enough to barely get your head through to see a large lake of carbohydrate goodness filling an uneven basalt geode. Your companions are a bit confused why you are so happy to find black sludge but they can’t even guess how amazing this is! Rubbers! Plastics! Petroleum! All of this is now within reach! The issue is that it is WAY too far away from the Labyrinth entrance. You can’t just pipe it, you’d have to package it in-situ into large tanks and haul it manually. But still, this is way better than no oil at all.

As you continue your way you start seeing an interesting display of tiny lights in the ceiling, walls and later even the floor of the tunnel. Tiny spheres made of glow quartz are sprinkled all over the area embedded in the lava tube rock. Peering into one of the clearer ones shows that these are a small form of geode. In this case, you’re using the term correctly, not just to refer to spherical Labyrinth formation. They are hollow and have jiggered crystals inside of them while outside they are spherical and partially embedded in the basalt rock of the wall. They range from the size of a basketball up to the size of a pinhead. Once you turn off your lantern it looks as if you are seeing the night sky. Pretty.

>>4019870
As you continue down the Hall of Stars, as your companions have dubbed this place, the tunnel eventually and unexpectantly runs into another lava tube going in parallel. For you it is an incredible sight: Four hundred meters in diameter, this tunnel goes from high above down beyond what you can see. The deeper side seems to be getting bigger giving it an overall elongated cone shape. It is littered in various types of rocky debris but also the bottom is covered in a layer of something organic of a light grey color, like a moss or fungus. It is all covered in the tiny quartz stars giving it some degree of illumination and Mina immediately tells you to shut off the lantern. Urgency in her voice causes you to flick it shut putting the four of you into the darkness.

“The Path of Giants” Mina whispers into your ear. “Very dangerous, we need to head back immediately”. Just as she says it an echoing roar is heard from the depth of this formation. You narrow your eyes and see a glimpse of a creature much bigger than the forgotten beast that you’ve slain. It is so big that even you get chills running down your spine. You couldn’t take a closer look, but you’ve seen tentacles and giant limbs tipped with humongous blades. It doesn’t seem to have seen you though… You quickly think over your options and notice the claw marks that suggest that whatever scratched the door climbed into this tunnel from this place…

> ”Yeah, let’s try another route or go home…”
> ”You guys wait here, I’m going to take a look…” and roll 1d20
> “Head back, I’m going ahead alone” and roll 1d20
>Other ideas?

>>4019874
>> ”Yeah, let’s try another route or go home…”
once we got a good bit away, collapse parts of the ceilings regularly to blockade the way

>>4019891
Unfortunately, that is not feasible. The tunnel is too large and the ceiling is of the Labyrinth rock. It means that the structure contains tangled diamond strands which makes any form of digging very difficult. It might be possible to concrete the path up or make a gate with the door or something.

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>4019874

> ”You guys wait here, I’m going to take a look…” and roll 1d20

>>4019874


> ”Yeah, let’s try another route or go home…”

It can't follow us back due to its size right?

Lets explore the middle tunnel next

>>4019891
>>4019907
>>4019944
Two people want to go back and one wants to scout it out. Going back wins.
_____________________________
Unfortunately, it is midnight here and I have to wrap up. Thank you guys for playing and sorry for a shorter session. Hope that you've enjoyed, feel free to ask questions, make suggestions and discuss stuff.

>>4020019
Thanks for running

>>4020019
thanks for running, see ya next weekend

>>4020019
Well… you don’t think that fighting the biggest thing you have ever seen is a good idea at the moment. Even if you want to just scout out the formation there still might be a risk even for you. After all, Nike’s Muse seems to think that it is too dangerous. There is also a high chance that the big monster is not the only thing that could be found there. Taking all of this into account you’ve decided not to touch the Path of Giants for now and return back to the “crossroads”.

After you’ve made some distance from it you’ve asked Mina on what she knows about these “Paths”. She claims that it is a relatively common type of formation in the Labyrinth. It is a web- like network of giant lava tubes in the lower half of the first layer and it has angled offshoots that go into the upper first layer which is what we ran into. Due to the size of these tubes, these things contain the majority of the bigger monsters that could be found in the first level. Some of them can overwhelm individual or even small groups of Cup Bearers so she doesn’t recommend going there for any reason. However, they are also the easiest path to the lower sections of the first level. Trying to get there normally would take much longer due to unpredictable and unmapped nature of the Labyrinth while the Path offshoots are essentially straight ramps going down there.

It doesn’t take as long to get to the crossroads as everyone was walking way faster on their way back. You suspect that your companions were a bit scared and thus considered the threat of staying anywhere near to the Path higher than whatever they could run into. It is kind of funny that the Muse of Courage, out of all people, was a bit unnerved as well. Luckily, you’ve made your way back with little in terms of incidents. You had to plow through a few straggling black ghoul things closer to the crossroads, but they aren’t really considered a threat to you in such low numbers. And as much as you’d want to destroy their hive or wherever they reproduce, you decided to explore the one path you know nothing about. The tunnel that goes straight down…

Roll 1d20 for encounters

Rolled 9 (1d20)

>>4032226

Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>4032226

Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>4032226

Rolled 14 (1d20)

>>4032226
ok, now my usual chant:
pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1

>>4032229
>>4032235
>>4032240
>>4032242
Writing

>>4032252
The way down was not the most comfortable experience. The basalt that forms the floor is very slippery and after just a few minutes of telekinetically catching yourself and your companions you’ve devised a way to make the descend safer. By using a sliver of your amazing powers you’ve managed to create a small field around yourself in which the force of gravity is perpendicular to the “floor” allowing for you and your companions to virtually just stand on the “straight ground” even as the path gets steeper. As a test you do manage to successfully walk up a straight wall and stand on the ceiling with no discomfort along with your companions so you consider this improvisation a success. It will definitely stay in your arsenal.

On your way you find a Y shaped fork with one of its ways going further down while the other goes up at almost 80-degree angle and in the distance, you see light pouring into that vertical shaft. A short investigation reveals that it is another giant geode made out of glow- quartz. It is smaller than the one you’ve seen near to Lamia Village, but it is still a hollow sphere around 15 meters in diameter filled with colorful glowing crystals. There is a large crystal going through the center of the structure forming a giant pillar and, unlike the previous example, geode is not filled with carbon dioxide which allowed for a species of black moss to claim this area as home. This moss can’t grow directly on quartz, but it can attach to the basalt making large soft pillows in the areas where the tunnel is lit by the quartz light. Quick examination shows that the moss is jam packed with sugars in addition to random inedible minerals that it probably collects from the rock it grows on. It is mildly toxic upon consumption, but it is harmless. You assume that it is some kind of common local lifeform since you suspect that it is identical to the moss found at the bottom of the Path of Giants. Your companions don’t think that tasting random Labyrinth moss is a good idea though... You wonder how you could mine this thing considering that it is a 90-meter climb directly upwards. Maybe you’d have to do that manually someday.

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>>4032274
Continuing on the way down the path keeps getting more and more vertical until you are basically walking on the wall of the lava tube. Eventually the path enters a large cave formation… from the ceiling. This cave is not lit by any glow quartz, but its entire floor is covered in glowing mushrooms of various sizes. Some are even rivaling some surface trees in size. The air is thick with yellowish lightly glowing fungal spores, but they won’t be an issue for a human with a functioning immune system. A filter mask would be advisable mostly for the sake of convenience. The floor mat between mushroom caps is covered in that black moss that probably uses chemiluminescence of the shrooms to grow. You can’t really see any animal life in the cave and it is not well isolated from the Labyrinth. There are dozens of differently sized paths going from various walls of this cave and even in the floor in some cases. Maybe it could be a good place for some kind of forward base for further exploration, but getting a staircase all the way here promises to be a pain. Maybe a lab only for you?

>Explore the mushroom biome more
>Explore the biggest tunnel
>Explore a random human sized tunnel
>Return back and explore ghoul central
>Return home
>Other ideas?

>>4032277
just to be safe let's cleate tk "bubble around us to keep the spores away from our friends

take a few samples to see if they are edible, this could be an awesome underground farm for the refugees or for trade and then

>Explore the biggest tunnel

>>4032287
+1

>>4032287
>>4032277
i support this, maybe try cloth as an improvised mask for now

>>4032302
>>4032292
>>4032287
Hey guys, I want to go get some food so the voting period is extended. Sorry about that

>>4032307
Keep fed qm, make it tasty.

>>4032307
WHAT a QM that EATS?
NO WAY
just kidding, bon appetit

>>4032307
I'm home and writing

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>>4032366
While the spores don’t seem too dangerous you still instruct your friends to use cloth as improvised masks. It’s not great but it should help to protect them from inhaling too much of the stuff hanging in the air. You should really get that chem plant going soon to get some activated charcoal for actual gasmasks, but one thing at a time. You also project some of your telekinesis to push away most of the spores from the area where you slowly glide yourself and your friends in. You want to take a few samples…

The area itself seems to have several still fresh water holes around which the bigger mushrooms grow. It takes you around an hour but you manage to take and test a few samples of the local life and you can definitely say that nothing here is edible. Not like it is poisonous, only a few mushrooms that you found were, but nothing here has a pleasant taste or good nutritious values. Basically, everything here either tastes like cork or also has a nasty flavor in addition to that. The fungal wood, however, has a nice blueish wood- like texture of the “trunk” and is comparable to hardwoods in mechanical properties which might be useful.

Every mushroom in the area is, however, highly rich in phosphorous and nitrogen. After a little digging you discover that basically the entire floor of this cavern is a huge layer of phosphorite. Just several centimeters below the soil is an amazing and rich deposit of this mineral. This is great news since it is one of the two main chemical fertilizers. A sprinkle of this material restores more phosphorous than a whole shovelful of manure. A great place for a phosphorous mine. In addition, some of these mushrooms seem to be optimized for sucking up nitrogen from the air and depositing it into the soil. In fact, the entire field seems to be in a very tight relationship with some species of fungus optimized for certain life support duties. Some are oxygen pumps that funnel air into the mycelium, some are chemical miners that degrade rock for minerals and so on.

At one of the far edges of the cavern you find several relatively large openings that lead into the Labyrinth at large. One of them has a far echoing sound that you can’t quite discern and it is pointed roughly in the direction where dwarven ruin should be. Another one at the other edge of the cavern completely and you can feel a cold breeze coming from it. The third one has large strands of fibrous material attached deep inside like spider webs but much thicker and the fourth one is the biggest of them all and has no other features.

>Follow the echoes
>Follow the breeze
>Follow the fiber webs
>Go into the biggest hole
>Other?

>>4032421
Echoes
We might find anot her way to the dwarfs

>>4032421
>>Follow the echoes

>>4032421
Lets go with the echoes then, if we confirm its another way to the dwarven ruin we can come back and follow the cold breeze

>>4032429
>>4032435
>>4032440
Alright, writing

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>>4032454
You decide to follow the echoes first. Judging by your keen sense of direction, you must be roughly at the bottom of the dwarven ruin and that particular tunnel is leading roughly in the direction of the ruin itself. You don’t expect to find a way to enter it, but it would be nice if you manage to locate the area on the other side of their sealed gates. Thus, you form up with your friends again and start making your way deeper into the tunnel.

The tunnel goes on for quite a while with the usual number of dead ends and offshoots too small for a human to fit through. If you were to explain the experience of traversing the Labyrinth in one word, you’d call it “trypophobic”. There are holes of various sizes everywhere in the walls, ceilings and some even in the floor and you always get a feeling that something would leap out of those holes and try to burrow itself in your face. All in all, not the best place for a relaxing walk. Luckily, it seems that the big majority of the holes are dead ends and with your enhanced senses it would not be a problem to detect anything springing out and shoot it down in fractions of a second so you and your companions are safe. They don’t feel that safe though...

In any case, after about ten minutes of walking you are finally getting closer and closer to the source of the sound and just in case you start walking slower and quieter. At the end of the tunnel it enters a small cavern lit up by a large piece of glow- quartz in the ceiling. Quick look around tells you that it used to be a dwarven homestead. A small farm, basically.

“Used to” is an operative word. A former two-story building at the far edge is collapsed, the field is ruined and in the middle of it you can see a palisade made out of fungal tree stakes that surrounds a tent city. Some of it is made out of the fungal wood but other tents are made out of animal hides and large bones of creatures that you don’t recognize. It is also jam packed with humanoid creatures that are less than half your size.

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>>4032602
These beings have large thin ears, small fleshy tails and varied skin colors from dark blue to green and even purple and they seem to be some kind of minor stone age civilization. Obviously dwarven skulls on the stakes at the entrances to their village tell you that they would likely not be your friends. They have animal husbandry in the way of pens that contain weird large flightless birds of almost rainbow colors with huge serrated beaks. They somewhat remind you of Kakapos, a species of largest flightless parrot in the world that was under the threat of extinction in your times. Kakapos used to grow up to 6 kilograms in mass, but these birds in size are rivaling big breeds of dogs. For these small creatures they are proportionally more like cows or large horses.

Then you hear something from behind you. The sound of soft feet going over the rocky floor, not something that a normal human would feel. It is accompanied with a very nasty smell, but your companions haven’t noticed it. Looks like on your way you’ve missed several of these “goblin” outposts and now this is biting you in the ass. Simultaneously, the activity in their village seems to be growing and starts to look more and more like a mobilization: animals in the pens are getting mounted by warriors with flint spears while a horde of their infantry starts to slowly pour out of the settlement’s gates. Well, who would have seen this coming?

>roll 1d20 and propose a strategy

Rolled 19 (1d20)

>>4032606
Mina takes one side we take the other, Sig deals with stranglers and Haven snipes important targets she may spot.

focus on using the tk defensively so we and our friends are not overwhelmed

use our awesome sword for awesome swording

and now a 1 to make all the strategy moot kek

Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>4032606

>>4032620
Time to make Haven's heart skip a beat with how galant Ag is.

Rolled 18 (1d20)

>>4032606
Throw "stone bullets" to counter their charge
Keep them away from Haven, if anyone touches her they become red mist

>>4032643
>>4032620
Well, considering how well we rolled, I feel like the real question is if the village survives our onslaught. So yeah, ethics time. Is it ok to kill them all to a man? Only kill whoever attacks? Destroy them but let them flee? How should we act?

Rolled 14 (1d20)

>>4032606
make sure everyone knows we are surrounded

pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1

>>4032647
i would say kill them all, but make it quick, since they do seem like a very violent "civilisation"
if one of them surrenders they have the right to flee, but can not come back
burry/burn the corpses after making sure there is nothing worth noting left

>>4032647
two things, what do our friends know about this guys, are they a nuisanse? will they be trouble if left here or the labyrinth usually takes care to keep their numbers down?

I say we kill until they stop attacking, then we raze their village and "evict them, sending them away ratther than anihilating them

>>4032662
They seem to be hostile to the dwarves judging by the engravings. There is insufficient time to ask your friends on their opinion before the fight.

>>4032647

Let them flee if they surrender, send them away.

>>4032620
>>4032630
>>4032643
>>4032648
And yeah, writing

>>4032679
You shout “AMBUSH” and turn just in time to telekinetically stop a thrown spear just half a meter away from Haven who yelps in surprise but quickly recognizes what’s going on and nails a crossbow bolt in between the eyes of one of these goblinoids that went too far out of its cover. You order Mina to cover the front while you cover the back since the front wave won’t hit until later. Sig will be dealing with stragglers while Haven is going to be busy shooting at whatever shows up. Your halberd is useful only as a spear in such a narrow tunnel and after you shank one of these creatures it ends up stuck so you pull out your sword and prepare to reduce some things into finely chopped meat.

These creatures don’t seem to be too intelligent, preferring to overwhelm you with numbers. Short observation shows that the ambush party consisted of only 20 individuals and with a flick of a wrist a hail of flying debris reduces that to zero allowing you to focus on the main wave. You have to be honest, this is way easier than Mad Goddesses minions. They are capable of feeling fear and their giant parrots seem to be just animals that aren’t even properly trained for war. You throw around a couple area of effect telekinetic pulses sending most of their military flying into the sky and then to their deaths which causes the entire attack to crumble sending survivors fleeing past their tent town and into the Labyrinth. They didn’t even attempt to surrender…

That’s… a lot of death though. The whole field is covered in blood and remains of hundreds of these tiny people. You really hope that you haven’t caused a destruction of an actual society along with hundreds of cases of homicide. Well, they were armed… with stone spears and fluffy beaked mounts… not that threatening. And you feel sad for all of these giant birds who would look adorable if they weren’t mangled by your powers. Were you disproportionate in your actions? You decide to ask your friends who by this point clearly understand that it is over.

>>4032937
After some discussion you manage to form an opinion based on Mina’s explanation and Haven’s knowledge about the dwarves. Mina claims that they are a type of aggressive intelligent monster common in the upper half of the first level of the Labyrinth. They seem to form small societies but they refuse to communicate and savagely attack anyone coming into their perceived territory. They have the urge to deface and/or destroy things produced by sentient beings such as tools, buildings… bodies… Mina says while pointing at all of the skulls. “Oh, and they also attempt to… forcefully copulate with surviving female humans and close to human races. No one knows why since they don’t use that in their reproduction”.

Haven says that these things are the long enemies of the dwarves who consider them as a form of humanoid pest. They think that these creatures are not self-aware, but they behave as if they can feel fear, pain and have some semblance of civilization to cause actual beings to potentially pity them. Basically, they behave like rabid tool using monkeys. It is considered that if you let one go it would breed and return later in attempts for the crudest form of revenge. Dwarven military forces are known to burn everything and kill as many of these things as they can to prevent further infestation.

You’re going to call these things “goblins” mostly because they kind of look and behave like them, they are small, aggressive and fight with dwarves so they fit almost all checkmarks. You wonder if they are in fact sentient or sapient, but you don’t want to dig out philosophical zombies out of their graves. Just killing them all to a man, woman and child rubs you wrong. But if you are to retake this territory for the dwarves someone would have to clear them out. And thus, you pull out and light a torch from your bag. It is time for some demolitions…

____________________________________________________________
And on this note I have to wrap up for today since it is midnight here in Moscow. I hope you’ve enjoyed and see you all next time. Quick reminder: I am here all week so if you have questions, suggestions or if you want to discuss something please feel free. I’ll reply as soon as I can.

>>4032942
thank you for running, we kicked some major goblin ass, goblin slayer would be proud

>>4032942
thanks for running, see ya next weekend

>>4032957
hell yes, i am still a bit uncomfortable of the close to genocide we pulled here, but hearing that forced rape stuff makes me feel alot better about killing these fuckers