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[E. Albright]

R'lyeh isn't really about horrors, though. They're about all the other weirdness in the Void, but not horrors. Hence their lack of blood, or much of anything relating to horrors. Saying R'lyeh needs to have features relating to horrors because they're a Void-oriented nation is a bit like saying Oceania needs to have features relating to Atlantians because they're an ocean-dwelling nation.

[Kagus]

R'lyeh isn't really about horrors, though. They're about all the other weirdness in the Void, but not horrors. Hence their lack of blood, or much of anything relating to horrors. Saying R'lyeh needs to have features relating to horrors because they're a Void-oriented nation is a bit like saying Oceania needs to have features relating to Atlantians because they're an ocean-dwelling nation.

Thing is, when the horrors got expanded beyond just Lesser/Normal, a lot of the designs were inspired by Lovecraftian mythos. They're also some of the things that can come out of the summoning portal to attack failed rolls, and the only things to attack people lost in the Void. There just seems to be this bizarre, unclear split between kosher voidlings and the off-limit voidies that a bunch of other nations get to play with.

In other stories... Uttervast as a pretender chassis. For those who don't want to risk not getting a lucky vastness freespawn in the first year.

[Cruxador]

Yeah, horrors are different entities entirely from the void things that R'lyeh works with. They're based on the ones from Earthdawn, and the new game timer is basically the Scourge from earthdawn lore. However, this distinction doesn't really make much sense, since Earthdawn's horrors are basically an overall group that includes all kinds of nasty void things, and August Derleth's united mythos stuff (including, but not limited to, Lovecraft's works) included many beings very different in nature. So putting them in the same universe does leave a very similar category of things - however they function differently in a narrative sense. I'd be in favor of the lines being blurred as long as they maintain their unique mechanics.

[E. Albright]

They're also some of the things that can come out of the summoning portal to attack failed rolls, and the only things to attack people lost in the Void.

My many Otherness-crushed former portal-tenders wish that was true. The last time I lost someone into the Void (MA R'lyeh, Dom5) I was attacked by a Great Otherness. Anything that can attack you at the Void Gate can attack you in the void.

Horrors have their own agenda and creep into the world when it catches their eye. The other void beings are generally off minding their weird tentacular business until something with more tentacles than them persuades them to come drive fleshlings mad.

[Micro102]

I had a Golem left on the battle field, basically immune to the infinite swarm of insects and undead that were being summoned, but I guess the turn limit kicked in as he routed but did not actually retreat... he just disappeared. It says he died but the battle logs don't say how. Anyone have any ideas?

[Karlito]

Routing Golems stop providing leadership for themselves, so they dissolve. The manual has a little more detail

Mindless units
Mindless units need to be under the control of a commander. If there are no unrouted commanders on the battlefield eligible to command mindless units, remaining mindless units on the field are automatically subject to mindless dissolution.
If all eligible commanders (i.e. commanders who can command mindless units) have been killed or routed, the mindless beings become immobile and have a 33% chance each turn of dissolving and vanishing from the battle. They will not move, but will attack adjacent units.

[E. Albright]

In Dom4, a humble Handful of Acorns would have stopped that. I don't know any reason to think it wouldn't now, but it might not.

[Micro102]

Well the acorns give 1 magic command, but the thing is a golem has astral magic so it already has magic command.

[Kagus]

Well the acorns give 1 magic command, but the thing is a golem has astral magic so it already has magic command.

But does the astral magic command boost get "applied" before or after mindless removes it?

...actually, does mindless even remove leadership? Ivy Kings are still mindless, aren't they?


Also, huh. Don't think I've ever actually seen normal void summons show up in "lost" events. And between the belly maw, mind slime and potentially also float cat horrors, I'd say that the "horror" voidies are at least as tentacly as the non-horrors. They're just less prone to cooperation, apparently.

It's strange. I mean, elder things are supposed to actually be fairly civilized (they were also somewhat hilarious with a fire bless in Dom4), so one could imagine a pact-like agreement between them and the starspawn, but that doesn't really work for any of the other ones. Hell, the horrors seem to have more of a communal civilization than many of the void summons, which again could make sense if you were venturing into the aether as a tentacled lion tamer and binding the wild beasts to your will, instead of trying to deal with a "neighboring" civilization that really doesn't like you very much.

But that doesn't exactly work either, because how the heck are you supposed to "tame" an otherness? You can't even mentally dominate it, because it doesn't have a mind to begin with. And what about the immobile ones? "Behold! I have journeyed into the weird mists and braved many horrifying challenges in order to present you with... this moderately-aggressive houseplant!"

For someone who just doesn't "get" it, the line of distinction isn't very clearly drawn.


Also, since blood empowerment is horror-marking now... That still leaves mindless/inanimate commanders as good targets for blood empowerment, because horror marking doesn't work on them. Neat.

[E. Albright]

It's not mindless removing it - mindless leaders are fine, if uncommon - but #noleader. And the Acorns come after that. Hence why large MA Agarthan statue gardens should always have a Marble Oracle with a Crown or some Acorns.

Although hmm, test this. The bit about Inspirational Leadership not giving command to scouts in 5.16 is probably just the bless, but it could have been more general.

Were Ivy Kings ever mindless? Other ivy things were and are, but Kings aren't and weren't in Dom4...

[Kagus]

Were Ivy Kings ever mindless? Other ivy things were and are, but Kings aren't and weren't in Dom4...

...y'know, of all things, I think that may actually have been something from Dom1. That's the only other time I remember having summoned them. Either that or I'm just getting confused with ancient memories of GoR'ing a vogre, giving him two vine whips and a crown, and pretending he was a king.

[E. Albright]

Ivy Kings were introduced in Dom2, the one I played the least of. And now I need to go bleach my eyes from looking at its (demo's) UI right after looking at Dom1's (demo's) UI. *shudder*

[Kagus]

Alright, I must just be misremembering something again. As per usual.

And yeah, haha... Good lord, Dom1's UI was... Painful. Both to look at and to actually try and use. Remember having to type in the province code for every targeted ritual? And having to assign individual researchers to different projects, since they weren't managed by the research screen? And having to manually assign tax rates in each province, especially if you took Turmoil scales which just added unrest every turn instead of directly affecting income?

The one singular thing I liked about Dom1's interface was actually the way the map was handled. Yes, it looked like a somewhat moldy orange peel, but the pixellated display let it do those fun things with representing a province's climate, and how things changed over the course of a game.

Dom1 was also the "bad old days" of clamspam. I think they only cost something like 10-15 water gems, and *every* nation could use pearls from the get-go because you could use them to directly boost research.

[E. Albright]

Dom1's UI was horribly clunky, but the painful part is how it still managed to *look* so much better than Dom2's, sigh...

(Random !FUN! fact: you could bypass the can't-research-past-lvl-4 limit in the Dom1 demo by spewing out enough pearls to go from lvl 3 to lvl 9 in one turn. Clamspam beyond compare...)

[ThtblovesDF]

Sounds funky...

Looking forward to Dom6, maybe in full 3d or something.