You spend an hour consecrating each of the villagers' weapons and blessing them, expending a small amount of your essence to do so. You command John and twenty of the militia to open the gates and mount a full frontal attack on the camp whilst you and twelve more sneak up from behind. With a fairly minor display of your angelic powers, you force part of the palisade aside, creating a narrow gap through which you and your followers crawl. You seal the gap again afterward.
Just before you join battle, you feel a wave of sickness pass through you, as if some distant emanation of evil had reached you across a thousand leagues of space. Just as briefly as it arrives it is gone, with no clue as to how it came or where it came from.
After a few minutes to let you get into position, your frontal assault group sneak toward the camp. They manage to get to the pile of bodies before one of the soldiers spots them and shotus an alarm. Immediately men rush out of the camp, weapons in hand and wearing leather armour and grey underclothes. One of them, in studded leather with steel greaves and bracers and a steel helmet, emerges from his tent and raises a fist to the air, chanting strange words. The bodies in the pile immediately lurch to their feet.
The peasants, untrained as they are, fall into a tactic of kiting their enemy. They hit the shambling zombies with their long scythes and pitchforks, then pull back a little. In this way they bring their full force against only half the enemy. They slowly whittle down the zombie numbers, tearing limbs and hands away with billhooks and cleavers strapped to poles. John strides into battle with a woodcutter's axe in hand, scything his tentacles through the undead horde - where they pass, arms go limb and corpses crumble.
The soldiers and their leader quickly form up, maces in hand, and run around the fight, clearly intending to flank the peasants. You and your dozen leap out of hiding, intercepting them as they pass you. Being trained soldiers rather than the undisciplined mass you command, the troop quickly deploy into a line to bring the full brunt of their force down upon you. You fight furiously, peasants stabbing wildly at their opponents whilst you lop off arms with an axe and tear bodies in twain with your
tendrils. The soldiers break arms and ribs with their maces whilst the necromancer shoots bolts of pure shadow - all of which miss you by inches. When the initial rage passes you find that only three of the soldiers are alive, the necromancer captain included. Your own men are miraculously alive, if battered and injured.
You demand the unconditional surrender of the survivors. They hastily comply and the necromancer commands his forces to stop. The zombies halt their shambling instantly. Rather than continue hacking apart the bodies of your friends, the peasants pile the corpses together and light a pyre. You deliver last rites accordingly.
Now to deal with the three captives. You could be merciful and let them go without their weapons. You could offer them the chance to repent and join you. You could keep them prisoner. You could force them into slavery to pay for their misdeeds. You could break their minds and force them into slavery as shambling wrecks. You could execute them. Or if you wanted to be especially vengeful you could burn the very souls out of them, turning their bodies to ash and giving yourself a rather tasty meal.
Victory celebrations are soon held, along with prayers and hymns. You face an interesting dilemma - although you have claimed to be a servant of the gods, the peasants are mostly worshipping you right now. You could selflessly tell them that the gods are the ones they should thank. They will dedicate the temple back to the gods once more. In the event of further attack, they will be able to bless weapons as you did today and even ward their walls against evil influence, for the gods do answer the calls of the faithful in a rather minor way.
Or you could tell them to worship you, and you alone. They would not gain the benefits of divine assistance but the power of their faith would go straight to you, empowering you to do greater deeds. The latter option will certainly give you more power in the short term, but only time will tell if such actions might earn the ire of the legendarily apathetic gods. If you take this option, you may wish to define them as a cult with a given level of organisation.
Finally, you ask if any might be willing to travel with you in the future. John immediately agrees, but of the 32 survivors only 5 are willing to give up their lives here to wander with you. This is quite understandable - the necromancer killed over a hundred people in his rampage and scattered probably a couple of hundred more. The survivors will need to search for friends and relatives and try to get the farms back in order. In addition, the village will be able to provide resources for your efforts whenever the time comes for you to request them - they offer them up as a willing tithe.
What will you do?
Name: Lvantha Talaoia
Strength: 11 manpower (+2 Smiting Evil!)
Mind: 11 menminds (+2 Smiting Evil!)
Followers: 1 luxpanap (John)
5 peasants
Slaves: 1 imprisoned necromancer
2 imprisoned macemen
Servants: 0 (Beings under your command - be they mutated mortals or lesser angels.)
Holdings:
1 village (1 Resource)
Peasant: 1 Str, 1 Mind. 1 hp, 6 morale, 1 mobility.
Luxpanap: 3 Str, 2 Mind. 2 hp, 12 morale, 1 mobility. +3 Str vs demons/undead.
Maceman: 3 Str, 1 Mind. 1hp, 10 morale, 1 mobility.
Zombie: 1 Str, 0 Mind. 1 hp, non-morale, 0 mobility. Undead fight to the death, but at half strength without a clear power source.
A fun note about the concept of faith in this game. Faith is not simply the belief in the gods' existence (or yours!). That the gods exist is never questioned. Faith is belief in the power you or the gods control. Whilst the gods are known to be all-powerful, the degree to which they actually give a damn about mortals is more important.
As physical incarnations, demons and angels command more potent faith than the distant, apathetic gods. Of course, in time all faith dwindles to mere ritual, but your physical presence certainly helps.
And dear gods, your rolls were lucky. You took out 5 zombies on the first shot, but you actually beat 2:1 odds and took out 10 of the soldiers (and wounded the necromancer) right off the bat. No casualties, whereas I was expecting serious resistance.
Author
Topic: Divinity. - Dreams Invaded: 2 (Read 58319 times)