>>4046318
You’re not sure if you’re doing the right thing, but the goblin settlement is no more. They didn’t have much, some stone tools, weird animal hides and fungal tree supports. Weirdly, you couldn’t see anything that could be considered personal property beyond some differences in the amounts of stored food, hides and stone tools. You’ve found a hut with crudely painted and/or broken dwarven objects but none of these things could be found in the various other huts. There wasn’t anything of sufficient value for you either, stuff like pots or iron tools that they didn’t use for some reason. You are curious of why, since there were several mounted goblins with non- stone age equipment. Surely metal tools would give them an advantage, right? Why don’t they all use what they had? Fascinating.

In any case, all of this is reduced into burning wood chips. You were worried that combustion gasses would be a problem underground of all places, but it seems that some semblance of air circulation is supported through these tiny lava tube pores that permeate through the Labyrinth. You wonder if it is some kind of natural effect or if it was done by design to make the area habitable. You’ll need to find out more before you can reach any sorts of conclusions.

You temporarily leave your team in the destroyed village while you rapidly scout out the nearby connections to get a general grasp of the territory without endangering anyone or being easily ambushed again. The entire region consists of dozens of different caverns interconnected with a spaghetti of lava tubes. It seems to generally be a dwarven hillock, a type of Labyrinth village that mainly dabbled in agriculture. These things supply dwarven Underhomes with food and textiles and this particular cluster of settlements is linked to the particular dwarven ruin judging by the local architecture remnants.

Unfortunately, you can’t find a connection to it mainly because the entire region is absolutely infested with the goblins. There are tens of thousands of them at least all over the place in hundreds of these tiny villages some of which are significantly bigger than the one you’ve destroyed. You have no idea how the hell they manage to maintain such high carrying capacity. Even if you go ham on them with intend to eradicate them all it is likely that you’d expend over a month to find every single one of those lairs and all of the stranglers in these conditions. You write it down as a possible short to midterm project.

>>4046320
You return back to your friends and weight up your options. You could return to the first crossroads and either head home or explore the ghoul central. Alternatively, you could try exploring other openings of this node where you have three choices: the biggest one, the one with the webs and the one with a cold breeze. Then again, you came here to possibly exterminate some nearby monster nests so maybe you could clear out the biggest goblin nest? It promises to be a slog though…

>Return home
>Return to ghoul central
>Explore the large tunnel
>Explore the webbed tunnel
>Explore the breeze tunnel
>Prepare to attack another goblin settlement
>Other?

>>4046321
>Explore the breeze tunnel

>>4046321
>Explore the breeze tunnel

>>4046321
>Explore the breeze tunnel

Nice to see you back, how are things?

>>4046335
Kind of failed to maintain previous thread, it died way too quickly so no discussion happened. Sorry about that. Hopefully there would be something to talk about at the end of this thread. Also doing some reading on steam engines to prepare for the eventuality, just fyi.

>>4046321
>>Explore the breeze tunnel

>>4046337
don't worry about it, i just hope it was archived

>>4046343
It was, no worries. I archived it on Sunday

>>4046324
>>4046333
>>4046335
>>4046343
Breeze tunnel it is, writing

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483 KB PNG

>>4046360
You decide to check the passage that has a light cool breeze coming from it. You don’t really want to go to the webbed tunnel for the reason that you don’t really like spiders and your last trip into the larger pipe lead to some real danger. So, you decided to go and see what you can find in the remaining option. And, to be honest, it was not what you’ve expected.

As you continue deeper into the tunnel the breeze slowly becomes colder until it gets a bit uncomfortable to you and your friends since you have clothes for above zero temperatures. Eventually it opens up into a large elongated cavern half flooded with water. A sort of underground lake. Its shores are covered in a thin layer of ice that increases in thickness towards the other side from you while the side closer to you has clear water. On the other side you faintly see a pattern of engravings on a featureless wall that look like they form a gateway. On your side it appears as if the lake has a simple stone pier considering how smooth it is and how it has a rock pillar of the shape that would make attaching a rope easier. The water is cool, fresh and surprisingly clean to the point that normal people could safely drink it. In fact, it would be clean enough to see all the way through to the bottom if it wasn’t pitch black here without your light.

Down there in the water you can see some fishes and numerous completely flooded small tunnels. They probably come from some other connected flooded areas since there is not much in terms of light and thus food here. Deep below on the other side you can see a wooden boat frozen into the wall of ice. You take a stroll across the water surface to the other side to investigate the engravings. They are of dwarven origin, but they are made at much finer quality than what you’ve encountered in their holds. Almost as if someone used a CNC machine to do the engraving. The grooves are filled with light reflective paint of sorts and the cold seems to be permeating from beyond it. After long research you couldn’t find any evidence of it being a door or anything similar and attempting to chip it with an artifact sword had no results. While it easily sliced stone before, here it just bounces off. Fascinating.

Eventually you have to return to the mushroom area after you’ve exhausted your ideas. Haven sneezes and shivers, she probably didn’t like the cold the most in this group. Sig was fine, but Mina had a very good question: “I’m sorry, miss Agatha, but weren’t you planning to exterminate those ghouls to make the area safer? I don’t think that this place would provide much of a threat so I suggest that we could try looking into that.”

Roll 1d20 and pick an option:
>Good point, let’s have a look at the final tunnel
>The plans changed after we’ve started exploring, now the priority is to map out the local area. Let’s check the other passages
>Other?

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>4046455
Give Haven our cloack so she can feel warmer she can return when she is warmer.

>Good point, let’s have a look at the final tunnel

Let's kill the ghouls and explore what we have there, we can come here after it.

Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>4046455

>Good point, let’s have a look at the final tunnel>>4046455

Rolled 19 (1d20)

>>4046455
>Good point, let’s have a look at the final tunnel

Rolled 8 (1d20)

>>4046455
>good point
and the usual:
pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1

>>4046462
>>4046467
>>4046471
>>4046473
Writing

>>4046504
“Yeah, good point, I got a little distracted” you tell her. “we came here to eliminate possible threats for Labyrinth travel between the dwarves and the surface. These ghouls are the most common monster here so let’s start dealing with them”. In the meantime, you take your pelt off your armor and wrap it around Haven causing her to blush slightly. “Don’t you fall ill on me, ok?” you tell her with a smile as she meekly accepts the cape and wraps herself in it. You hope she doesn’t get a cold after this expedition.

A short walk up the straight wall and about half an hour of walking up the tunnel leads you back to the main crossroads where you decide to finally turn into the left tube. There you find Claudina’s camp… or what remains of it. The tent is cut up in many places and there is nothing of value to take back with you. She didn’t have time to set up here so most of her things were on her when you showed up. You suggested that you could come down for her stuff once but she politely refused that one time so nothing of value was lost.

If you were to describe the cave she was in, you’d call it… bean shaped. It is not a big cave by local standards, barely as long as the main corridor in your house. It has several dead-end connections and two large offshoots that come from its ends, one heading for south- east which is probably where the elf girl came from and one heading towards the west that had lots of ghouls. What’s curious is that she claimed that she has encountered these things in her travels so these things might be more common in the Labyrinth. But in any case, let’s try to find out where they come from.

>>4046808
And speak of the devil, with horrifying shrieking sounds one of those shadowy creatures runs out from the darkness and leaps at Mina to get unceremoniously crushed by her sword into the ground killing it instantly. It almost makes you chuckle, what did this thing try to achieve? Even if you weren’t overpowered, you are still like four well-armed people. Then again, this ghoul looks a bit… different. It has longer claws, weirdly unhinged jaw and legs bending backwards. Looks like there are different types of these ghouls.

You start off your trip into the ghoul central by blasting your high beams down the tunnel and preparing to whack whatever flies out of the dark shadows with your powers, which keeps happening more and more often as you make your way down the twisting corridor. Constant torrent of unspeakable horrors helped you with keeping to the correct paths and not steering off course. By the end of the third hour of this bullshit you’ve already killed hundreds of those walking charcoal corpses of various types: normal ones, rushing ghouls with long claws, weird headed ghouls that produced more intense fear projection, creepy tall ghouls and so on. Your powers alone were more than enough to clean the house, your companions were just around for the trip at this point even though Haven and Sig were still getting hit with psychic attacks somewhat. You were already getting tired of this when you finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel along with weird strings of black goo that started appearing along the corridor.

Inside you see an entrance to a cave with many offshoots in lots of different directions. In the middle of the cave you can see a huge chunk of glow- quartz floating in midair and it is so bright it hurts to look directly at it. Below this crystal is a giant pile of different bodies of various humanlike creatures that can be found in the Labyrinth, from humans to dwarves, goblins, some kinds of short dog- people to even some elves and what you assume to be driders, aka spider- centaurs. The varying light of the crystal causes the bodies to be projected onto the walls of the cavern in such a way as to look like their shadows are twisting in pain.

Psi energy flow around this structure can only be described as torrential, almost like a whirlpool at a density almost twice higher than baseline level on the surface. In addition, it produces incredibly high-power psychic effect to the point that even you and Mina feel like you really don’t want to be here. The tortured shadows are not helping. But you do think that it is, if not the only lair, it is a very big one indeed.

>>4046812
Then you finally see the birthing process of one of these creatures. One of the shadows twists in pain much harder for a few moments and splits off a blob of shadowy black material with awfully twisting charcoal black skeleton that oozes out from the wall and takes a shape of one of these ghouls. Wait, wait, wait, hold on, is this real life? Or did you actually stumble upon a monster hive that tortures souls of captured innocents? Even dropping the questions of how the birthing process works, these monsters are supposed to be remnant bioweapons, right? Rogue autonomous drones essentially. What madman could create such a thing?! For the sake of all that is good, you have to destroy it!

>Attempt to push the crystal out of its orientation
>Attempt to shatter the crystal
>Attempt to destroy the corpses
>Use gauntlet’s draining ability to suck the area dry
>Burn everything
>Other

>>4046814

>Use gauntlet’s draining ability to suck the area dry

Kinda want to understand more of this to try and free those souls, don't drain to hard as to not damage the artifact or the sould if we sense that their suffering increases, more like an experiment

If that doesn't work I think we can try to

>Attempt to push the crystal out of its orientation

Ask if the girls ever saw something like this

>>4046814
Suck the area dry, then burn the bodies
But make sure everyone is clear and be prepared for retaliation

>>4046814
Voting aside, that is a rather intruiging idea.
Very much along the lines of an SCP

>>4046855
>>4046814
supporting


are the bodies old? are they preserved by the magic crystal somehow? are they fresh?

>>4046872
Bodies are mummified, not fresh at all. However the shadows weirdly don't look as mummified as the bodies.

>>4046871
agreed, damn fuckers

my question about the bodies was to judge for how ong some of them might be here

>>4046881
Ah yeah, a few bodies look fresher than others

>>4046814
Try to match a shadow with a body, then burn it to see what happens.

Then we can try to
>move the crystal

And if that doesn't work we can

>shatter it

>>4046855
>>4046859
>>4046872
>>4046889
Let's see here:
Sucking area dry: 3
Move crystal:3
Smash crystal:1
Burn bodies: 2
Writing

>>4046968
“Have you seen anything like this?” you ask Mina to which she replies “Not this thing in particular, but I might recognize a fragment of it, even though it is very far from my specialization. A lot of low psi tools utilize glow quartz instead of a dedicated psi collector element but I have never seen it used on this scale. I have no idea about the bodies, my guess is that it is some kind of malfunctioning afterlife maintainer, but I can’t see its structure, only these bodies." You ask her to clarify and she continues: "How to explain this… in the pantheon we can’t make afterlife generators like elven pantheon, but we can make smaller afterlife maintainers that can’t function without the operator completely but still help to support it.” She explains. “Honestly, I think we need to destroy it outright. Even if it hurts those captured inside, it would still be better than leaving them here.” Good point, but you don’t want to cause unneeded pain if you can help it. So, let’s hope you can find a way to break it.

First of all, you pull out the artifact gauntlet and order your team to get to a safe distance. You attempt to drain this entire area hoping that without the energy the lair would shut itself down. It kind of works, the giant light stops glowing as bright and the excess energy stored in the whirlpool is sucked up into the gauntlet. Unfortunately, it fills up completely before it can do anything more. It massively reduced the quantity of psi energy in the area, but the lair still exists, even if now it has trouble assembling new ghouls and it takes hours instead of seconds to create a new foe for you to beat. Well, you've finally charged up the gauntlet at least.

Then you try to make an experiment. You take one of the bodies from the pile and match which shadow is bound to it after which you attempt to burn it. You end up putting it out almost immediately since the pained movements rapidly turn into agony. Burning this whole place would be very costly on those trapped in it, but if there is no other choice that’s what you’d have to do.

>>4047271
Then you try to dislodge the crystal. It is floating in what you think is a telekinesis field. After you push it off its corpse pedestal it reorients itself relative to your pushing force and when it is gone it floats in its new place not touching the ground. After some testing you finally figure out how it works. It seems to be projecting telekinetic force downwards and it somehow reflects from the Earth itself and returns back to the crystal where it gets reflected downwards again. This allows it to maintain a certain altitude above the ground while still allowing itself to be moved. You think that you’d take it home with you if it all goes well.

Unfortunately, the removal of the crystal didn’t do much harm to the lair. Without the light the shadows actually started forming into monsters faster and in more locations. It was not a battery, it was a containment device. It pains you, but you were forced to use a bottle of tar and torch the entire thing. It produced torturous psychic pulses that almost caused physical pain as it died and the shadows finally stopped manifesting. You’re not sure if you’ve done it in the most humane way, but the souls are now free and you hope that these people would find a better afterlife after this mess. And in the meantime, you feel like you’ve had enough Labyrinth for today. Time to head back home…
____________________________________________
And on that note, we have to pause for today. It is once again 1 am from my side so I can’t run any longer. As usual feel free to ask questions, give suggestions and discuss. I’m here all week and I’ll respond as quickly as my situation allows it. Thank you all for joining and I hope you’ve enjoyed this thread of SGQ.

>>4047275
damn, zo the crista was maintaining the thing stable and not creating more stuff, that suckes, maybe we can find a signature and discover the name of who made this, even if we don't know the owner of the name, for posterior punishment, if we ever cross paths

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Ghoul hive, colorized

>>4047326
It may have been someone else who didn’t have the heart to burn them like we do but instead did the crystal to slow down the effect as it was all they could do maybe in the past the crystal was brighter which stopped them spawning altogether

>>4047326
>>4051395
Speaking of which, are we keeping the giant hovering crystal and if yes where do we put it? In the lab to finally have some lighting there or maybe in the middle of Farsalos to set up at least some street lighting?

>>4055289
I like both Ideas

is the crystal an ordinary hovering glow crystal or does it have any other special properties?

I guess we could leave it at farsalos if its ordinary or put it in the lab if we have to further study it

>>4055300
It is a two meter tall piece of glow- quartz that is hovering and you can tweak the altitude at which it is hovering with a little bit of telekinesis. It doesn’t have any inscriptions or markings, it looks just like a big chunk of quartz.

>>4055306
neat, central square lighting and if needed later we could convert it into a river lighthouse

>>4055320
yeah, i like this idea

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>>4047275
Here is also an early sketch of Elspeth that I’ve recently received. I haven’t mentioned it before, but she does actually have a pet eagle owl called Pine which is depicted on her shield and banners.

>>4055344
noice, i think the owl was mentioned once, but it also makes sense not to have it in meetings or when meeting a potentially hostile new goddess.

>>4055344
>pet owl
cute

we should get a pet, don't know if Rheia counts kek

>>4055344
Slightly bad news, guys: Saturday thread would be delayed and I unfortunately can’t compensate for it. I have a doctor’s visit at 12 which means I’ll only start writing around 2, maybe even 3 pm Moscow time. I’m sorry, but I can’t move it to Sunday either so we’ll have to have a shorter thread this time.

>>4058014
its sad, but thats life, hope your doctors visit goes well

>>4058014
No problem, good luck at the docs

>>4058014
Alright, I'm finally home. Writing the next post

>>4061410
After the cleanup the way back home goes in relative silence. You keep finding various ghoul bodies that you haven’t killed and it seems that they died once you have destroyed their lair which is oddly convenient. Mina apologizes for being wrong regarding the crystal, but it is not like she could have known how that thing worked and it was you who made the final decision to push the crystal off the pedestal. You wonder what was the story of that place. Was the crystal needed to control the lair or did someone try to shut it off after not finding the heart to kill those who were trapped? In any case, you’ve freed them. Not in the most painless way, but that’s all that you could come up with. This entire mess left you even so slightly shaken so you decided to stop with the exploration for today. You’ve done what you’ve planned to do after all so it is time for a short break before the next project.

You also took the large glowing crystal along. At first you were thinking of finally setting up some lighting in your lab, but later you’ve remembered about the existence of “moonlight towers”. Those things were popular in 1880-1890s and could illuminate several blocks from a single point using a huge UV emitting arc light lamps. In your case you were planning to suspend this crystal above the main plaza of Farsalos from which it would provide dim but constant lighting across the entire settlement during the nighttime. Humans wanted to have street lighting for centuries but it was not practical enough without electricity so you think that it would be a nice gift to your village.

On the way back you make a short checkup on the dwarven ruin. You haven’t been there for months and it was nice to see some progress there. The settlement now contains almost three hundred people with two thirds of them being the elves, all living in a small tent city placed on top of the former farms on the other side of the river from the ruins. The cavern in which the former dwarven city stands couldn’t maintain itself with food in the best of times so the farming of spices and herbs was not the top priority anyway. All the riches were already extracted during the first month or so by the Coalition of Kings that are funding the expeditions here and now the people are mostly busy with clearing the rubble and sending remains back to the dwarven territories for the proper burial. All the rebuilding comes later. You know, if you dedicate a couple months of your time you could clear all of the rubble and get the necessary infrastructure working along with a district of houses or two which would speed up the process greatly, but you’re not sure that you have the time. You have monster kings to find and steel mills to set up after all. You place it into your project list regardless, who knows how things would go in the future.

>>4061553
Once you get out of the Labyrinth and seal the gates, your mortal friends sigh in relief. It was a surprisingly stressful endeavor for them after all. You check the time and yep, you were missing for just under a day, no wonder that they are tired! The four of you head back and your followers go to their rooms while you set up the village lighting. It ends up fitting pretty well. The center of the village is lit like in the daylight while the rest of the settlement is no longer as pitch black during the nights. It also seems that the villagers are taking this addition well as you’ve heard some cheering from 70 meters up where you were setting up the giant crystal.

After a good night of sleep, you are woken up by a small commotion outside. The merchants have arrived along with some of the villagers that were overseeing the road construction. It is finally done and the connection with Mirangi is secure which immediately became a topic of interest for some traders. It is rare for border villages to have enough resources for a decent road but in Ceno all decently populated towns are connected with a network of good roads funded by the local governments so the completion of such a road to Farsalos signified that the village was getting rich and maybe even being on the verge of becoming a real town on its own. So, along with the regular merchant guy that first started the trade route, a couple of others decided to pay a visit to this place and they are currently busy trading on the main street with the villagers. Let’s just say that they are very impressed so far and cast-iron objects such as kitchenware are in high demand. You think that this is a good sign for things to come.

Among the other news, the other monster hunter team has departed back towards the mainland with little explanations. Maybe they were hired or maybe they didn’t feel like frontier life is for them, who knows. Haven also seemingly caught a cold. She has a sore throat, she keeps sneezing and her temperature is a little high so you decided to make her some tea with honey and let her stay in her bed for the rest of the day. In the meantime, you look at what you’ve planned to do. It seems like there are a few higher importance tasks in the list that you wanted to do.

>>4061557
>Construction: Steel production is of the highest priority right now. You need around a month to finish the furnaces and the rest of the building

>Exploration: With the local Labyrinth out of the way, you remember that you still have beast- people waiting to get hauled back home. Before you do so, it might be a good idea to quickly check if they even have a home to return to

>Baiting: You’ve planned to use some fireworks in an attempt to bait out the Monster King. Unfortunately, your teammates are out of commission for now and you need to leave someone to protect Farsalos so it is likely that you’d have to do this alone

>Pantheon: You wanted to see how the discussion about you is going so let’s make a call to Nike’. In addition, the second pod is hidden so it might be the time to show Elspeth around the place.

>Social: You've promised to run a roleplay session with Rheia and there are some people you'd like to check up on

>Other ideas?

>>4061558
>>Social: You've promised to run a roleplay session with Rheia and there are some people you'd like to check up on
one day social isn't bad, also check up on our elven friend to see if she can help Haven with the cold, since we are kinda responsible she got it in the first place

>Construction: Steel production is of the highest priority right now. You need around a month to finish the furnaces and the rest of the building

in the mean time, maybe send Rheia to talk to the best-people to construct a rudementary map/directions for their village/home so it will be easier to find and have her learn a bit of the culture/language. foreign knowledge is always good, even if it is more basic

>>4061564
+1

>>4061558
Take personal care of Haven, keep her company and prepare some good cold food, keep her some wet rags to help with the temperature and stuff

We can play a roleplay game with Rhea too to keep them entertained amd see how things go.

We should also invite Sig for some drinks to unwind and hear what she thinks of things she is good company

>>4061588
And nice to look at too

>>4061589
>>4061588
>>4061584
>>4061569
>>4061564
Writing

>>4061595
For now, you’ve decided that it would be good to spend some time with your friends and acquaintances. You feel responsible for Haven’s condition and you haven’t visited Signy for a while so to kill two birds with one stone you asked her to help with taking care after Haven. You’ve prepared some nice chicken broth for her and regularly changed the wet rag on your friend’s forehead while the snow elf girl was figuring out how to correctly use her new focus tool. It took about three days to get Haven mostly on her feet but she still had a clogged-up nose for another week. Unfortunately, Signy’s healing powers are more for stitching flesh back together than for diseases, but she did what she could.

When Haven finally started feeling better you’ve decided that it would be a nice idea to try running a roleplay game with Rheia’s dice. She read about it in one of the history books that you’ve made for her and she was fascinated with the concept. On your hand you didn’t have a chance to flex your forever DM skills for thousands of years so a couple sessions wouldn’t hurt. However, one on one games are rare and not as fun for you so you decided to get the entire gang together and introduce them to some basic dungeons and dragons. Some dungeon crawling, a couple puzzles and an overarching plot, nothing too complex for the first time. Signy agreed to join up out of curiosity while Haven and Sig were somewhere between physically tired and bored so they agreed to try it as well.

Haven decided to go for an elf ranger that you’ve homebrewed to make the class more relevant. It is also the first time you’ve explained what the word “elf” means which she found bizarre but somewhat funny. Signy, of course, went for a snow elf cleric of one of the neutral good deities but she ended up hitting stuff with a mace much more than healing which she found very amusing. Sigrid unsurprisingly decided to go for a half orc fighter with some heavy armor and ended up being the voice of reason for the entire group. Rheia went for an aasimar paladin with a shield and a polearm and rolled hilariously well throughout the entire day. What’s fascinating is that she spent around 20 minutes picking a patron from the list and in the end, she chose some minor goddess protector of the starting village that wasn’t really listed among the “popular” choices.

You ended up running it about once every two days in between your other projects. The team went on some monster slaying at first to get everyone accustomed to combat after which they were hired to defend a merchant going into the human capital and many games later they ended up working with the dwarves to recover a fortress lost to a chromatic dragon. In the most glorious rolls of all, Rheia critted three times in a row and used smite to end the dragon in the end of the fourth week. It was a fun experience and the gang decided that it might be fun to repeat it at a later date.

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>>4061846
While you weren’t handling the game, you were busy with assembly of the steel mill. The technology it is based on was used even in your modern time so finally you weren’t limited with infrastructure to get the material of the required quality. It is now all a question of purity and alloys and what you have is enough to push your metallurgy all the way to the rough equivalent of the world war 1 steels. While the blast furnaces are not to full power you can’t run it continuously, but you’ve been preparing cast iron for conversion for almost a month so once you were done you’ve ended up with ludicrous amounts of steel ingots. Almost 7 tons of it or a cube slightly less than a meter on the side.

Unfortunately, that’s only the first bottleneck to more advanced technology. The second issue is manufacturing. You need a casting plant and a rolling plant to have a go at things like steel bars, rebar, piping, high pressure steam engines and so on. Maybe even a stamping press if you want lots of mass producible standard mechanisms. But for now you are going to kill the biggest precision manufacturing bottleneck of all: full steel lathe.

Lathes were known since antiquity, in fact your shield was made on one of those. Unfortunately, they were massively limited in the hardness of material that they could process. Wood was fine but bronze could only be lathed with great difficulty speaking even less of iron and steel. Full steel lathe and milling press with instrumental steel tips and telekinetic drive in your lab would allow you to finally produce parts precise enough to be used in complex mechanisms. You can have nuts that can actually screw on bolts and you can finally produce gears with machine precision. Unfortunately, the process is very slow and not fit for mass production without a separate facility, but it is the capability that counts. With this technology in hand you’ve quickly updated the machinery components of your factories making them safer and more efficient.

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>>4061849
With all of this steel available to you comes the question of updating your armor and weapons. You’ve already started making steel bolts for Haven’s crossbow and Sig’s armor is already made out of dwarven steel so you really only need to upgrade your stuff. After all, what you have now is mostly for show. Anything that can’t pierce your armor most likely would not scratch your skin. You currently use aluminum bronze laminar armor along with a round wooden shield coated in the same metal and an aluminum bronze halberd. You could just redo the entire set of gear out of steel and electroplate it with gold to maintain a similar look but then again, it is an upgrade. Maybe some silver might suit you well…

Armor appearance:
>Naked steel: new shiny steel armor suit in all of its silvery glory
>Darkened steel: steel armor electroplated with a material that makes it darker and less reflective
>Golden armor: steel electroplated with a layer of gold both to protect against corrosion and to look snazzy
>Other suggestions?

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>>4061854
Upgrade potentials: stuff here is not limited in the number of choices but some things have drawbacks

>Advanced halberd: An upgrade to your halberd design with steel central rod, bigger hardened axe head, longer and pointier spike and an overall monolithic integrated design of the headpiece making this weapon much less likely to break in the battle

>Executioner blade: inspired by Mina’s weapon, you’ve thought that maybe you could try a big sword? And this blade is big indeed. Normal human would not use something like that in a real fight but your strength and telekinesis allows for it to be utilized with unbelievable speed and grace

>Superheavy shield: a solid disk of thick steel too heavy for a mortal to lift, weighing closer to half a ton but virtually impenetrable to the majority of stuff that you might encounter. At this mass it would actually weigh down your left hand making movements even so slightly slower. Can be used as a blunt weapon with great effect and it would be masked to look like much more average steel plated wooden shield

>Springsteel bow: a war bow made from spring steel with the string of metal cable. With the draw weight of several tons it would rival ballista or early field cannons in its destructive potential flinging projectiles comparable to short spears

>Heavier armor plating: with advancements in metallurgy and manufacturing maybe it’s the time to put your old armor to rest and try something heavier such as a fullplate. Still something that can be worn by a mortal but much more protective than what you have. Very popular with Holies

>Heaviest armor plating: as you can produce as much steel as you might need there is no reason to stop. This armor would be almost a centimeter thick in some places turning you into a walking tank. Literally, you have more armor than light armored vehicles. This is probably the only armor that can increase your survivability by significant margin but no one in their right mind would mistake you for a mortal in it. It masses several tons and adds a lot of inertia to your movements.

>Other ideas?

>>4061861
>Golden armor: steel electroplated with a layer of gold both to protect against corrosion and to look snazzy

>Executioner blade: inspired by Mina’s weapon, you’ve thought that maybe you could try a big sword? And this blade is big indeed. Normal human would not use something like that in a real fight but your strength and telekinesis allows for it to be utilized with unbelievable speed and grace

>Superheavy shield: a solid disk of thick steel too heavy for a mortal to lift, weighing closer to half a ton but virtually impenetrable to the majority of stuff that you might encounter. At this mass it would actually weigh down your left hand making movements even so slightly slower. Can be used as a blunt weapon with great effect and it would be masked to look like much more average steel plated wooden shield

>>4061854
>>Darkened steel: steel armor electroplated with a material that makes it darker and less reflective
could we make the armor dark, with golden rims?
it would still look good for presentation and the gold parts can be easily covered up so its not reflective when stealthy or in the labyrinth


>Springsteel bow: a war bow made from spring steel with the string of metal cable. With the draw weight of several tons it would rival ballista or early field cannons in its destructive potential flinging projectiles comparable to short spears

>>4061888
>Springsteel bow: a war bow made from spring steel with the string of metal cable. With the draw weight of several tons it would rival ballista or early field cannons in its destructive potential flinging projectiles comparable to short spears
Perhaps we can, start looking at carbonated steels as a possibility?

>>4061934
Martin furnaces are capable of altering the carbon fraction in steel. I don't see any reason for not having access to high carbon steels or even pure iron on the other end of the spectrum. We can't get stainless steels without chromium and other rare alloying materials though

>>4061944
Understandable, atleast we have access to high carbon steel now which means more powerful tools and weapons

>>4061888
also supporting this design

>>4061882
>>4061888
>>4061970
Alright, so one guy wants gold armor and two votes for black and gold which I'll allow. Then we have two votes for the bow, one vote for the shield and one vote for the blade. I'll have to make a second round of vote on the latter subject since it implies weapon change:

>Make the halberd, don't do the giant sword
>Make the halberd but also make the sword
>Only make the sword

>>4061977
>Only make the sword

>>4061977
The sword for heavy weapon, we can use the shield with the smaller dwarvwn sword

>>4062006
>>4062003
Alright then, I guess our main weapon is getting changed. Writing

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>>4062052
First of all, let’s look at your armor. You are yet to encounter anything that could pose any significant threat. As cool as the tank armor or a fullplate might be, you don’t think that you’re going to need one. Your armor is mostly an accessory at this point anyway. So, to start off you’ll remove all of the aluminum bronze plates and forge steel replacements in the same dimensions. Then you were thinking of just electroplating them with gold to look similarly, but another idea came to your mind. Instead you would electroplate only some of the plate in gold, specifically the rims, while making most of it in a dark opaque color and allowing for some basic decorative patterns. That way the armor would still feel fancy while not being as blindingly shiny.

Then your attention falls to your shield. It served you well, but now the time came for its replacements. Thin layer of bronze on top of some wood is not the most durable form of protection and the vast majority of the more serious things that you’ve encountered can put holes through it. Your solution was to make the whole shield out of steel. Resulting monstrosity actually placed a noticeable weight on your left hand, but after swinging it around for a bit you think that you like it. The inner side of the shield would get plated with wood to make it less conspicuous and more aesthetically pleasing, but this is still over two centimeters of hardened steel between you and whatever might pose you a threat. Unfortunately, no one could even hope to lift it besides you, but you can’t have everything and your old shield would decorate your dining room from now on.

The second item that you decided to replace was your bow. While amazingly powerful, there is so much room for improvement. Making a war bow out of spring steel was not something unique as India used to have bows made from this material. However, this level of draw weight is unprecedented. You had some issues with the bow bending and not returning to its original position, but some clever composite layering allowed you to finally get this thing done. For a string you’ve used steel wire turned into a durable cable and once you tried to test fire it the bow actually ripped the layer of the skin on your fingers forcing you to add more metal to your gloves.

File: 3D-old-handed-sword-zweih(...).jpg (47 KB, 1480x780)

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>>4062382
The ammunition would change as well. Your previous bow could use essentially normal sized arrows made out of bronze or hollow bronze tubes filled with gunpowder. Now your bow would have to fire much thicker arrows completely forged from high carbon steel. They would still have similar length, but your quiver would no longer hold more than a dozen of them with the rest having to wait in your backpack. It is a decent tradeoff though, as your arrows are now unstoppable monsters comparable with the heaviest of field ballistae in damage potential. Arrow’s kinetic energy alone would be enough to kill an armored human or rip its limb clean off and it would likely punch through most of the reasonably armored creatures that you might encounter.

The last weapon that you have to say goodbye to is your halberd. It served you well and it would stay as a decoration in your home along with your previous bronze sword and hunting knife as a reminder of these times. What you decided to go for was a bit unconventional: a giant sword. There were many large swords in human history, but they were constrained by their mass. A heavier sword would get too tiring quicker. However, there were some swords that were made absolutely gigantic, the so- called executioner swords. These things were designed to be swung only once at a time during executions and thus they didn’t have the tip optimized for stabbing.

In your case, however, it would be a fully functional battlefield weapon. Inspired by Mina’s signature blade, you’ve scaled up the design of a greatsword closer to the scale of a zweihander to the point where it was standing up as tall as you in its blade after which you’ve made it a bit beefier. It is impossible to sheathe so it is designed to be carried on the shoulder more like a halberd. You ended up with a beastly weapon. While slightly shorter than your polearm, it still allows for great reach while giving you some nice chopping and stabbing potential. Unfortunately, it is a two-handed weapon. While you can use it with one hand, you’d have inferior leverage in comparison to what you’d get if you used it alone. In addition, as usual, it won’t be as good in tighter tunnels and indoors similarly to your halberd preventing you from chopping effectively. In such conditions your artifact short sword and the shield would do better.

>>4062388
You end your crafting spree by getting some steel ammunition for Haven after which you are pretty much done for a while. You’ve finally reached steel weapons, the goal that always was on the horizon. However, what would be the next step? Just better steel? Firearms? Maybe psi augmented armor? In any case, you think that you’d like to try out your new stuff. Now, where’s that monster king at…

___________________________________________________
Thank you all for joining and I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s thread of SGQ. It was a bit shorter than usual, but I think we’ve reached an important milestone. As usual, feel free to ask questions, suggest and discuss. See you all next time.

>>4062390
Cannon! Can we do cannons? Please let there be cannons.

>>4062403
We can do napoleonic cannons if we get a casting plant going. We already have gunpowder and we can get better gunpowder by getting a chemical plant.

>>4062413
I'd prefer to Psi enhance our bow. Tougher bow, maybe force a echo after launch to make our arrows go faster/hammer a target after landing.

>>4067806
The cannons would be to defend our villages

>>4068005
or to attack rival ships once we make the village into a mobile water fortress!
yo ho ya scurvy ridden scum.

>>4068010
I can't wait to teach our more primitive protegees how to use cannons lol

>>4068005
Psi enhanced ballista.

>>4062388
By the way, since over a month has passed since Elspeth called for a pantheon wide meeting, what do you think they decided on? She didn't show that Ag was that incredibly important during the meeting, but we are the first example of a whole new wave of SGs she didn't know about. Also there is the whole "messing with precog" part of Ag that might concern her...

>>4070118
i would assume that they want to see her/talk to her, to discern her motives and to try to figure out how she circumvented the precog

>>4070118
I'd say that we will probably hear from her soon, and we would either be proposed to be related to the pantheon on some form, either as part of it or as a protectorate, which I'm not against

Hey guys, bad news. I’ll have to cancel today’s game. I have a splitting headache, I can’t seem to focus and I don’t feel well in general. We’ll run next week as usual. Sorry for such a short notice, I didn’t expect it either.

>>4074985
No problem, take care and I hope things get better for you, see you then

>>4074985
oof, headaches are horrible, get well soon and see you next week

>>4074985
Thread has been archived, on time in this case