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[Strongpoint]

If the consensus is to abandon Fellshore, we could leave some minions working on some presents for whoever tries to attack it. We could even just have it continue operating with slaves and merely move our important assets out of there. Then we could have a messenger inform us if it is attacked so that we have advanced warning.

Well, my plan above assumes that we leave behind lake things, undeads, black imps and even two novice mages to oversee the place.

It is a nice corrupted place with a maze-temple that can be a good hideout for our supernatural forces. Yet we can't keep pretending that this is a normal village

[10ebbor10]

The problem is that the black Imps are kind of needed for the Mining plan.

[Strongpoint]

The problem is that the black Imps are kind of needed for the Mining plan.

a) We need some time to convert all miners anyway
b) It is very trivial to create more black imps. Also, we can split imps
c) We can and should link the maze-temple and the mines. It is miles long tunnel and can't be completed instantly but soon we will be able to dig from the other side.

9) Create an undeground mushroom that can be brewed in a beer-like beverage. It is meant to be consumed by Black Imps but humans can drink it too... for a price. Men who drink this brew become more black-imp like.

[10ebbor10]

a) We need some time to convert all miners anyway

My plan explicitly has us kill all the miners we can't convert after a short period of time. Building the Labyrinth is expected to take 2.5 more months, and that is assuming we don't need to rededicate any power to other projects, which we will.

Add to that your tunnel, which I expect to cost even more, and your plan consumes the attention of the entire cult for the next half year

b) It is very trivial to create more black imps. Also, we can split imps

No it isn't.

They cost 0.5 Mental and Physical power each. They're not exactly cheap.

c) We can and should link the maze-temple and the mines. It is miles long tunnel and can't be completed instantly but soon we will be able to dig from the other side.

Honestly, I see no reason at all as to why to do it.

These are our assets in Fellshore :

- 10/10 progress worth of small Labyrinth
- 56/200 and 98 RU worth of medium Labyrinth
- 32/100 worth of Wall

Trying to save Fellshore is the epitome of a sunk-cost fallacy. The only thing worth anything in Fellshore is the Labyrinth, and the only benefit that had was that it improved secrecy. Considering it's location is revealed, that makes it useless. We can rebuild the Small Labyrinth in a week, and none of the other stuff is functional or will be in the near future. There's literally nothing I can see that we gain from it.

On the contrary, there's very much too loose.

[Strongpoint]

My plan explicitly has us kill all the miners we can't convert after a short period of time.

Short period of time is a very relative term. If you want to do this almost instantly we will get very few specialists and can just go for black imps immediately because it is a safer route. Recruitment is a slow process unless we do it ourself

They cost 0.5 Mental and Physical power each. They're not quite exactly cheap.

They are expensive if we spend our own essence on them. They are not that expensive if we use other sources of evil

- 10 Power worth of small Labyrinth
- 56 power and 98 RU worth of medium Labyrinth
- 5 power worth of Wall

Also, we spent our own power to corrupt it, we have quite a lot of evil leaked in the area. We have tentacled beasts here (we can move them elsewhere, but where?). It is close to the place of our birth.
Labyrinth is a damn deadly place to enter and it is more than just a method to hide. It is a fortress. You need the angel herself or a team of potent mages\priests to storm it.

[Strongpoint]

10ebbor10 BTW, I think you misunderstand roles of our cultists\slaves and this makes your plan suboptimal

Followers and Slaves and Stuff :

Leadership :
          6 Wordbearers : Learning Magic > Nope. They do various cult-wide jobs. In fact they represent a large chunk of cult's power
          1 Duke : Being a Duke
          1 slave high priest : Nothing > Wrong. slaves contribute to cult actions. High priests likely participates in corruption of the castle

Civilians
          156 cultists : Cultist stuff
          3 fungal druids : Tending the fungoid forest
          10 black imps : Mining

Scouts
          3 Smokewraiths : Scouting (where?)
          15 spectres : Scouting (where?)
          4 ultraviolet imps : Converting

Regular forces :
          8 cultists (armed)
          29 trained cultists (armed)
          40 mercenaries (armed)
          7 knights (heavily armed)
          7 slave guards (armed)

Harrasing units :
          8 Brutewolves : Gathering humans
          3 giant-rat-packs : Nothing Nope. They contribute to province wide suffering. That thing that gives us regular power

Big dangerous unit :
          3 lake-beasts? : Nothing

Fodder
      8 skeletons : Nothing
          4 Hollow Remnants Nothing
          6 zombies : Nothing
          4 slave priests : Nothing > slaves contribute to cult's power. In one of the recent updates it was mentioned that those priests preach heresy to the townsfolk

[10ebbor10]

Oh, feel free to change that then. It's just stuff which I didn't know was doing anything, so it's not that bad.

[Strongpoint]

Thinking... actually we can take black imps away from the labyrinth and come back later to benefit from the abandoned site. It is just true that imps will be more useful at mines. How about doing this:

Spoiler: 10ebbor10's plan (click to show/hide)

The Mine :
-The Duke will hire outside experts to organize the Mine. Initially, it will be operated by cultists (also as labor) This should limit explicit resistance, as the Duke doesn't need to go on a big recruiting rampage to provide the initial staffing. He can just take the usual criminals. This phase of operation will last untill we corrupt the mining engineers. This is expected to happen quite fast, with all of the engineers we can't convince after a short period getting an unfortunate accident. Once we have our skilled engineers, we will unleash our black Imps to increase production.

Then, we can largely remove our cultists from the mines, only keeping them as overseers. This allows us to utilize far more of our Cult's power. After all, Imps keep the mine's production at the expected level, meaning that no one will suspect that the Cultists aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. Conversion rates will also be boosted, as people see that the cultists are treated far better than them.

The War : To be honest, I see no reason for a war. It will only be a distraction as we need to look for the angel.

Double Misha's allowance, with the message that results should occur in the near future.

Dealing with a wizard

Have our duke covertly contact an assasins guild of sorts (surely one exists), to murder the annoying wizard in Oegoerda. We're also a bit lacking in high offense stealth units, so that can fill in the gap

The Rat Catcher

We need to spread our cult. Gather the giant rat packs, and send them to a variety of nearby villages. The rats will harrass the villagers, destroying harvests, eating small children. After a short period of distress, our cultist will arrive, and use a magic flute and the word of [I forgot the demon's name] to gather the rat and drown them in a local river. (Rats, of course, can swim, so we can reuse the trick a few times).

+

The last party of Fellshore
1) Wait till the magical education of Mischa's group ends and call those cultists(and their smallish undead army) back to the village. Same applies to all Fellshore villagers. They should see the end of the village
2) Order cultists to get few good men and women to be sacrificed during the incoming feast
3) Run a little tournament with 9 nails as participants. They should fight to the death till only one will remain. This one will receive a new set of weapon and armor enchanted by you and will be the first to be raised to the finger status
4) Launch a feast with a special addition to menu: Raw flesh of the fallen nails and sacrifices mixed with raw flesh of Fellshore livestock. Be sure to give some share to our tentacled servants and eat some yourself.
5) During the feast cultists should burn the village they once loved as a landmark of the final abandonment of the old life and becoming true followers of the New Way
6) You, Mischa, Kate and her students should do a joint ritual to raise souls(and\or skeletons) of cultists fallen in the tournament as powerful undead guardians.  This guys should be strong enough to create some problems even to mighty beings
7) Expansion of the labyrinth should be halted till we come back here to build a proper fortress. Black imps should link the lake and the labyrinth creating even deadlier place. Our undead army should stay in the water hidden till they will be needed (hopefully they will not rot too much...)

We do lose some nails but I think tournament like this is a proper form of worship and ordering our cultists eating their friends and relatives is a nice evil act. I also hope to get strong undead warriors, hopefully strong enough to at least wound the angel should she dare to come back to the lake.  We preserve Fellshore as some kind of undead\tentacled fortress that can be used should we ever come to the open warfare.


New cult power distribution
2 recruiting in Nuulyd. Focus on the mayor and remaining rich townsfolk
6 training cultists (combat)
2 training cultists (magic)
8 power - Copper mine part of the plan
2 power - Rat part of the plan


This halts further recruitment in Brulyb because it is a crawling pace anyways and if we want to make it full dark fortress we should do it ourselves. It also reduces power spent on recruiting people in Nuulyd because we need only the mayor anyways. It is the last turn when we enjoy benefits of the labyrinth and starting from the next one we will have to reduce power spent for more secrecy

[hachnslay]

There are several occurrences that can be combined.
Have the cultists from the old village (i suck at remembering names) go to the duke, report the destruction of the village by creatures rising from the depths. Ask for help. in his helping manner have the townsfolk be recruited to reopen the mine. Add additional people that know how to operate a mine and turn the unfortunate occurrence into a fortunate one.
After a bit of digging they will find a large cavern (prepared by us) with meaty mushrooms. Given that the rations have been reduced(order of the duke created by us) the overseers will get the idea to see if they can be eaten. some cultists will of course volunteer.
Have the mushrooms convey the black imp features slowly.

[10ebbor10]

And what are the actual benefits of that?

The villagers are our cultists. They don't need a detour via the Duke to end up in the Mine. We can just order them to do it.

Similarly, the black imps will attract attention whether it's by being summoned or by having a muchroom that transforms people, so that doesn't help.

[Strongpoint]

go to the duke, report the destruction of the village by creatures rising from the depths.Ask for help. in his helping manner have the townsfolk be recruited to reopen the mine.

The last thing we want to do is informing the world about existence of the things from the depth. Official version should be - Fellshore was attacked by same bandits that destroyed Leps and there were no known survivors.

After a bit of digging they will find a large cavern (prepared by us) with meaty mushrooms. Given that the rations have been reduced(order of the duke created by us) the overseers will get the idea to see if they can be eaten. some cultists will of course volunteer.
Have the mushrooms convey the black imp features slowly.

This may work but I prefer to delay it to the later date when mines will be more developed and soaked with evil giving energy source to mushrooms. I think 10 imps\some specialists\criminals is more than enough to have a steady supply of copper. Oh, and we created thiks place to give Mischa material for experiments, She likely needs uncorrupted human beings

10ebbor10, do you support my second version of the "leave the Fellshore plan" and Cult power distribution?

[10ebbor10]

Sure.

[omada]

The 10ebbor10 + Strongpoint plan 2.0 sound nice. +1

by the way, nice organization of the human resources

I think the only influentional people from nuulyd that wasn't converted was the mayor.

Now that we know her weak points we can focus on her and then later go back in the prison guards, maybe with her we can dismiss some and hire cultists and that sort of thing

 ( So we can convert the criminals freely and transform the prison a kind of small secret fort inside a walled city that should be linked to Nuulyd's temple by a underground tunnel like that old plan)

I'm going back to edit my accidental double post but i still write down the scouting suggestion. Not the church part as the high priest is still  helping converting brylib and i tought that he was just doing nonsense in his corner. (add 1 or 2 power in castle converting)

EDIT: Okay, just needed a small edit to make the church part useful again so i'm posting it here.


Scouting stuff:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spectres and Smokewraiths: They already worked together, maybe the smokewraiths should get some kind of authority in scouting, get most important scouts missions and slowly learn how to translate the riddles of the spectres and give the complete info to us.
 
 We will "give" 5 spectres for each smokewraith.
 
We already know about forts, now 1/3  should gather information about other key places.

 1/3  should continue to inform us when someone is getting close or in our way so we won't get caught by surprise

 And 1/3 should discover where the fuck the angel went, if possible, they will begun searching in caves and stuff, if they find that she left the province, it's another plan, or not. I don't think a demon would just "forget" in such a small time. When done they should help to scout key places too.

Of course, when needed we can call them at anytime and scout something in particular

Key places (Not exactly in order):
1. Bandit camps. They are easy to recruit. And if not that easy (maybe are just rebels?) they will be nice "workers" in our mine
2. Ruined places, abandoned villages and unchecked cemeteries. There must be bones that later can become fodder or stupid workers.
3. Landmarks: caves, mines, lakes, weird obelisk in the middle of jungle and that sort of thing. places where people or beast probably hide. Sure, not all lakes will be worth of noticing and couting, i'm just saying that they should report anything useful or weird

Church sabotage:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The high priest:
1. There is someone superior to him? find out

2. He must still be helping in the conversions of castle brylib when done, another plan will come in action.

3. A Wordbearer should puppet him, he will call the priests saying he got info of his superiors (be it a kind of pope or god) that must be passed down urgently in these though times. He shall plant misinformation in the priests minds, be it a seed of doubt or corrupting into the new way, when these priests are out from the village will be when the whole giant rat plan will be taking place. The villagers will get easier to convert without the local priest guiding them. And when the priest got back he will be a little more inclined into the new way, both by what the small blasphemies that high priest said, both by the "heroic deeds" of the New way that the villagers will eventually talk about.

4.If the priests begin suspecting, they would maybe get another reunion like the one in Nuulyd and they maybe will invite our ordinary slave priests. If they do that in a city our priests will go together with a Sacred Wordbearer and discover what they know and see if we can either convince them about the goodness of the new way or sabotage their plans. If they do the meeting in the middle of the jungle or a hidden place we can just eliminate them...

[Strongpoint]

I think that plan above is more risky than I like. Priests have ways to detect evil in the wordbearer. Priest have ways to detect when something is wrong with the soul (or there are none). Priests may be warned by that *^&#@! angel.  We and our corrupted servants should avoid priests unless we try to kill them on the spot. Let the high priest to be a generic point in the cult power.

If we want to try to mess with the church, actual not brainwashed priest(we have one in the cult) can do the job better but I prefer not to. Priests and wizards are the only mortals that can detect us. Priest and wizards are #1 candidates for the angel to contact.

[NUKE9.13]

Right, so, is everyone on board with ebbor+Strongpoint's plan? Get your +1s in now.