Then we should have them as special guests at our television show, let normal human children tell everyone that they are still alive and about what they experienced in the orphanage. If possible, also broadcast Sergeant's hopefully recorded words about how he is willing to kill and torture the children. Spread truth and propaganda.
Honestly, having their recruitment base collapse on itself over the mutilated corpse of their best instructor is a setback enough. Killing children is not what we do.
Hrm. I suppose, if things continue to go well, we should give some/most of these kids, especially the ones picked to show on the telly, a choice between being released as is, to face the world as it is, or a choice of joining us as part of our family, with a place, acceptance, and as much security as the lair offers anyone of their type and caliber?
And various confusing things can be done to the ones who seek to rejoin the cruel outside world, to help ensure they are unable to help locate our base (maybe those that are to be released are simply taken to some other location, not ever shown the lair, just in case they have some sort of super-locating abilities?)
I could support this idea, as a compromise. But I still say we should simply mutate everyone we get our cogs on, period. I wanted us to convert Knighthowl even, after all. Some will die in the process of conversions. Most will die at some later point in our adventures.
(Speaking of our forces dying on missions, and the depth of our losses this time... Besides, we have lost quite a bit of troops here.
Actually, we haven't. We did lose Borble, which was unbeknownst to us apparently a single use Dark Minion in any case (and if that is true, we got an utterly awesome use from it, in a mission that needed the help, since elephants which don't forget can still be forgotten )
shadeknight123, I utterly adore your writing, writing style, story, humor, reasoning, decision making style, and the sheer quantity of time you give us all in the production of these amazing tales and our choices. I love improv, and think your work is a shining example of a form of improv done right. I do tease - heck, I identify most with Psysquid in this tale. But it's all praise from me, even the teasing. So please don't attach Chemistra to any of my loved ones, alright? Cause some of them are already in your power, being some of your characters, even though they're not fully human anymore
And we lost the Dark Minion IT. I do regret that, but not overmuch. For one, IT really wasn't that powerful, at least on this mission in either the initial control roll (+.25) or during the fighting within the mission (+.75), and it revealed no extra extras upon peril and reality of IT's death (unless you want to count exploding in a pile of vomit and alcohol, which happened but did nothing to change the odds of the battle). It is true that IT could have been very useful (somehow?) for the start of destruction missions or in some other fashion (IT's have traditionally been very good at finding things, getting into and back out of secret and hidden places, and occasionally even sleight-of-hand style assassinations)... but somehow I think we're fine with this loss.
If we are not, well as IT was a summoned being, there's a chance we can summon another IT... if we REALLY want to. IT is probably a highly dumb idea to ever try for again, after all remember what happened when we originally summoned IT...You grimace, and then you head over to the Sad System.
You grab a pickaxe. Then some bars of precious metal.
You start to feel slightly cold as you add in gems, magical and not together with luxury items.
Your skin itches, as a few socks and the corpse of a rich guy -now nothing more than a rotting mass- enter the altar.
You're really starting to believe this is a bad idea.
You then grab the cat, the animals from the zoo that still remain...
The shadows around the altar start to grow even darker, if that is possible.
Then you pour a generous dose of booze, some metal spikes and some hair from your stubble.
You don't know why you write a 'Store Item in Stockpile' note, or why you then place it in the mixture...
What you know, is that then you pray to whatever dark god there is that you will not fail to control the results.
And then, you begin the summoning.
I call you forth...from the deepest depths of nothingness and evil, from the darkest places ever to be generated. COME! I SUMMON THEE!
You are...
The ground trembles, as fire and magma erupts from the altar, burning and sizzling the contents until a charred obsidian lump remains...which soon starts to crack and give way.
Your voice trembles as you bring up your unholy rosario.
it's...it's...
Then the obsidian cast breaks apart.
1d12= 8 + 1(Unholy Rosario) + 1 (It's habit) + 1 (Sad System)= 11
The thing that emerges...is a strange brown mass of pulsing flesh and fur.
It quivers, before spikes emerge from its entire body hidden by the fur.
You have no idea what the thing is...
It slowly looks around for a moment, before gripping at the dirty room and suddenly moving to tidy it up quickly.
What the hell is it?
"Ehm...what are you?"
The Dark Minion stops and looks at you for a moment, cocking its head to the side.
Its spikes retract.
"IT."
You summoned an IT!
You don't need many objects to summon something. It actually has the opposite effect. Fewer but more specific you use, the better.
As a Hint, 'if a normal person saw all those things on a table, what would he think of' is the correct thought-process.
We all know of dwarf fortress. Average guy doesn't. You want a dorf...what would an average guy associate with a dorf?
Yep, we hadn't even wanted IT in the first place, we wanted a dorf. And we had all kinds of bad foreshadowing as we went about getting IT and even more during trying to control IT. I say, good riddance - but thank you for the show, you were awesome, scary, and thankfully not as terrible as you could have been.
And we lost 'all' of our mooks, which you might be focused on. But that's alright - that's what mooks are for! We can make them up to 10 at a turn, they're faceless, nameless, and worth nothing more than their bonuses to the story save for when the story briefly needs or allows them to be more - or save when one of us reaches out and claims one, as happened with our most excellent Lord Gamington.)Yes, we want these children. We want them alive, we want them out of the heroes system and ideally mutating into their places in our forces. Failing that, we want them out there in the world, just not bound to the hero system. Failing that, we might prefer them alive still, though we'll have to fight and perhaps kill them later - or not. Remember, growing up takes years. This likely is NOT our only shot at saving/freeing/capturing/rescuing the kids that survive this place's demise and don't come with us. It might be a while before we have another chance, but growing up and growing into superpowers takes TIME. And so far, we have time.
We'll use a couple rounds of that time to recreate our lost mooks.
Only thing I'm worried about at this point is taking too many kids to keep track of and control over, and rushing for 'their sakes' or to 'preserve our sense of our standards' enough that we don't properly inculcate our values, standards, and traditions into their personalities, allowing them to foolishly think they should rebel against us or something.