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[frostgiant]

Wellwood Flute: (4) NUKE9.13, DGR, Jilladilla, Frostgiant

[Shadowclaw777]

Wellwood Flute: (4) NUKE9.13, DGR, Jilladilla, Frostgiant, SC777

[Man of Paper]

Embralish Defining Tech: Stone Age Revision

Proposal: Wellwood Flute

A wooden flute made from Wellwood, it would be given to the scouts of the embral people. The great harvests and steady thrum of their drums would often attract neighboring villages, seeking plunder or discoverer the source of the flourishing jungle life. while lacking mighty warriors in comparison to their neighbors, the Embrace people posses two defenses that served to well protect their people for long into the future.

The first is the rampant growth undergone by the jungle surrounding the village. Without Harvest, The jungle would grow season after season from the beat of the wellwood drum, creating a maze of dense foliage and all the animals and predators that moved into the jungle to exploit such flourishing life. Every season the edge of the forest was required to be burned and slashed back, lest they devoured the field.

The second defense came in the form of woodsmen, equipped with wooden masks and wellwood flutes. When invaders would attempt to cross the dense forest, the Woodsmen would begin playing a haunting melody, just outside of sight of the men, constantly following them unseen. The early melody created by the flute would slowly begin to drive the raiders mad with fear, as every shadow look to be hiding a predator and their paranoia runs rampant.
Such panic would quickly lead to the death or retreat of the hunting party, as they either fell prey to the jungle or fled.
In order to protect themselves from the panic that they can quickly create through the melody of the flute, The scouts harvest bee's wax and fill their ears with it when preparing to begin their duties. The wax deafens the scouts, and while it's not enough to render them immune to the music it lessens the panic-inducing song enough to bring it down to merely an eerie feeling, made more manageable by knowing the source of the said feeling lies with the flute in their hands.

 This method of defense would establish a reputation of "Evil forest spirits" inside of the jungles, who possessed wooden faces for the few to have seen them.

Difficulty: Hard
Result: (6+5)-1=10, Superior

The wild, untamed jungles surrounding Embralish lands during the beginning of their journey as a legitimate civilization were a dangerous place on their own: venomous creatures, stalking predators, territorial primates, twisting vines, thorned bushes, and pockets of mud that could swallow a man whole prevented most from attempting to pierce through it. Some peoples though were drawn by tales of a promised land within the heart of this vibrant hellscape. The Embralish took it upon themselves to add yet another layer of protection to their homeland: Woodsmen armed with a wooden mask whose mouthpiece jutted forward. These masks bore the visage of fanged demonic entities meant to strike fear into those who gazed upon them. The effect was amplified by the mouthpiece carefully built into each of these masks. After tying the plant fiber cords around one's head to secure the mask the wearer could purse their lips and blow into what Anthropologists refer to as the "Wellwood Flute". By blowing into this device the wearer could create a blood-curdling, and for lack of better words, pants-shittingly terrifying noise that was capable of striking fear into anyone who lacked hearing protection. The Woodsmen themselves blocked their ears with earwax, and while this wouldn't negate the effect entirely, it was enough of a dampener for the Woodsmen to resist the urge to flee as fast as their legs could carry them.

Research has shown Woodsmen sending large parties scurrying in terror, corralling them with their Flutes until they fell into a prepared ambush, where they would descend upon them with clubs, "screaming" as they went.

Click To Hear Your Flute Noise

----

The Bronze Age

With a homeland well-protected by both nature and dedicated warriors the Embralish had to deal very little with outsiders for a very long time. The biggest issue they had to tackle was a persistent issue of plantlife withering away and dying off. The accelerated growth of crops and other flora drew nutrient from the soil at an unnatural, unsustainable rate. The problem was eventually solved thanks to the introduction of crop rotation.

As society continued to advance the barest forms of metal industry appeared - first in tools, then in weapons. The rest of the world was also progressing, and eventually the savage people of Embral drew the attention of a rapidly expanding empire. They had no qualms cutting through jungle, tearing root from earth just to improve their chances of finding Embral and taking it's rumored riches for itself. The isolated people of Embral were no push-overs though, and made this advancing menace regret every foot of ground they defiled. This did not stop them from building fortifications within rightful Embralish territory, claiming what they could as their own in their conquest and greed.

Your design this turn will be the thing that aided most in your ability to assault these fortified locations and push back into their own homeland. These guys are the equivalent of the Roman Republic and it's legions; well-trained, well-armed, and, up until their encounter with Embral, largely undefeated. This design will be seen as the biggest contributing factor to a string of defeats up to and including the sacking of their capital.

IT IS NOW THE DESIGN PHASE.

Spoiler: Preliminary Proposals (click to show/hide)

Wellwood Bass Drum: A large man-sized drum made of Wellwood harvested from a Well with an animal hide stretched over it. A steady rhythm helps stimulate plant growth. It isn't a drastic change - a season of growth won't be cut down to days - but harvests tend to be more bountiful if Drummers maintain the beat.

Wellwood Flute: A mask-like instrument worn over the face that creates an unsettling, terrifying shriek when the mouthpiece is blown into. It's hands-free to allow the use of weapons by the wearer.

Unique Resource - Wells: Wells are strange, relatively poorly understood subterranean environs housing any number of forms of cave-adapted life whose parts can be used to manipulate the world through sound.

[frostgiant]

Horn of The spirits Fist:

Known as the horn of the spirits fist, this man-sized piece of well-wrought Horn and wood has been designed and molded to wrap around the upper torso of its musician, an having the large end protrude from a little over their shoulder. This allows an increase in the total length of the horn to increase the sound along with having the heavyweight of the bronze sit stable on their torso and shoulder.

The Sounds produced from the Warhorn are tremendous, with most of the sheer noise being channeled out and away from the virtuoso who wields it, who are typically picked for impressive lung capacity and size. When the horn is used by the Virtuoso wielding the result can be compared to an ocean, breaking a flowing around you as you attempt to keep yourself from being carried away. Those who are to close to the WarHorn a very likely to be heavily injured by the deathly Sounds of the Virtuoso, with blood leaking out from many an orifice for those who are too close, and those farther away acting like they have spent the day drinking the finest of spirits back at camp.

This makes it quite simple to quickly assault a fortification, rendering the defenders dead or dazed as our warriors attack, quickly entering the perimeter. Any attempt to group up and push back the attackers quickly Disrupted by the Virtuosos of the Horn, as they release their wall of sound upon the enemy formations and chokepoints.

Gale arrows:
A Metal and horn tipped arrow with a special head, The Gale arrow Produces a terrible keening, whaling sound as it flies through the air that is rather disconcerting, albeit nowhere need the level of the Woodsmen's Mask. Instead, the Horribly noises produced by the arrow is but a side effect Created as the wind whistles through specially designed grooves, producing rapid vibrations.
When this arrow impacts a surface, the rapidly vibrating head will, of course rapidly lose that energy. However, The rapid vibrations allow the arrow to slice deep into its target, and the vibrations introduced into the impact area are very unhealthy. This gives the arrow power that would match bows many times bigger than itself as it splinters shields and ruins limbs.

Loosed from hunting bows originally designed for bringing down game inside of the tight quarters of the jungle, the Gale arrows serve to make up for the power that would be lost from the smaller design. In turn, this allows the hunters to stay more mobile with their short bows and fire faster compared to the large bows of the enemy's.

Spider:
Made from wood and the fibers of the tree's near the homes of the Embral people, the Spider is a weapon designed for a siege. Perhaps one of the first of its kind in the world. Taking advantage of a torsion set up, the spider posses 4 arms, each with a heavy piece of Rope attached. These arms are cranked back in order to create tension along the main channel, upon rests a metal ball the size of a man's fist.
When released, the arms snap forward, dragging the ball with them and sending it flying, creating a remarkably simple and effective long-distance weapon.
With the spider, the embral people were able to lay siege to the invaders fortifications from a distance, raining fist-sized metal orbs unto them from which they had no recourse as they could not match the sheer range of the weapon, and any attempt to foray out in order to destroy them were quickly ambushed and eliminated by Embral woodsman who had been lying in weight.
While the actual damage caused by the spider is minimal, lacking the power to punch down all but the weakest fortifications, the danger of a ball of metal appearing out of nowhere was enough to keep the defenders heads down, providing ample time and opportunity for an assault on the walls, or even just waiting for the enemy to give out as they slowly starve to death.

[NUKE9.13]

The Sau-Cihare

Historians have long debated the cause of the Embral people's victory over the Samnite Empire. It is, after all, universally agreed that the Samnite legions, rich with experience and equipped with well-made iron arms and armour, could not lose in open battle to the loosely-organised, inexperienced, and bronze-wielding warriors of Embrallia. The consensus amongst non-Embralish historians is that it was not anything the Embral people did, but rather an internal collapse within the Samnite Empire that happened to coincide with the Samnite-Embral Wars. This explains why the Samnite legions were consistently short on supplies, and made many strategic blunders, as the civil war siphoned away resources and capable commanders. That there is no other evidence for this supposed civil war is generally ignored.
Embralish historians claim that the Embral people's long history of ambush warfare allowed them to whittle down Samnite numbers and sap their morale, without having to face the enemy on the field. According to them, the Embral people had unwittingly built up a society that was uniquely capable of facing such an invasion, and trained in precisely the sort of unconventional warfare that the Samnites were weak to.
Fringe historians, generally ignored even amongst Embralish scholars, ramble about a secret society that ruled Embrallia from the shadows even before the invasion, and was able to quickly bring together the divided people, before using their skills at espionage and sabotage to cripple the Samnite war machine at every turn. They claim that this organisation, the Sau-Cihare (Hundred Faces in ancient Embralish) were preternaturally skilled at disguise and stealth, as well as being master manipulators after subtly steering the course of Embrallia for centuries. They go on to claim that the Sau-Cihare never disbanded, and continue to influence the politics of the Embral Empire to this day. This is, of course, preposterous.
   -An Introduction to the Samnite-Embral Wars

---
   
The mythical Sau-Cihare would initiate new members by having them spend three nights in a Well. This would either result in babbling insanity, in which case the unfortunate candidate would be quietly disposed of, or 'endarkenment', whereby the fledgling member would come to understand that nothing was truly real, that all the world was malleable to a greater or lesser extent, except for one, permanent, unchangeable thing: the Darkness. This was not, to be clear, some sort of 'evil' philosophy, though it did lead to a degree of moral relativism that at times resulted in the Sau-Cihare doing whatever was necessary to achieve their goals, no matter the cost.
Understanding that all was malleable, even themselves, made the Sau-Cihare masters of disguise and infiltration, as they could become someone else in their own minds- they would not consider themselves to be wearing a disguise, and thus displayed not a hint of nervousness or uncertainty (It also helped that they were quite capable of creating wigs and applying makeup to provide a physical reinforcement to their mental transformation). This combined with a carefully honed gift for tongues ensured that a Sau-Cihare agent could be caught, identified, escape, and then return the next day without being recognised.

By the time the Samnite Empire invaded Embrallia, the Sau-Cihare already had dozens of agents scattered throughout every aspect of Samnite society. These served as informants, allowing the Sau-Cihare to coordinate a response to the invasion that perfectly anticipated the enemy's every move. Chieftans who considered surrendering or cooperating with the invaders suffered unfortunate accidents, and were replaced by more staunch proponents of resistance. But perhaps most importantly, when the Samnites built their forts in Embralish territory, the Sau-Cihare were able to infiltrate their walls with relative ease, where they were capable of destroying supplies, poisoning wells, assassinating commanders, and eventually- once the garrison was diminished and demoralised- opening the gates to Embralish warriors.
The Samnites were- quite deliberately- allowed to delve deep into Embrallia before the counterattack begun. By the time they realised what was happening, entire legions found themselves cut off from supplies, deep within hostile territory, with commanders dropping like flies. Forts fell like dominoes, and with an unstoppable momentum, the now seasoned Embralish warriors, armed with the weapons of their fallen enemies, pushed into Samnite territory. Long-since subjugated people suddenly arose in rebellion, their discontent having been carefully stoked by Sau-Cihare agents, and joined the Embralish advance. City after city fell, their gates opened from within, their leaders found dead in the streets.
Their success surprised even the Sau-Cihare- perhaps it is true that the Samnites had grown complacent, too trusting, too vulnerable, or perhaps the concept of spies was simply so foreign to them that they did not realise what was happening. Whatever the case may be, the facts are thus: Embralish troops sacked Samnium, and whilst the Samnite Empire did not collapse overnight, the defeat spelled the beginning of the end for them and their hegemony, and the beginning of the beginning for the Embral Empire, which claimed swathes of Samnite territory in the ensuing peace. The Sau-Cihare, so instrumental in the victory, received no praise, were not recorded in the history books, but quietly retreated into the shadows once more, to guide the Embral people through this new phase of their development.

[frostgiant]

Bronze age design

Sau-Chiare (1): Frostgiant

Intrigue option is a go.

[NUKE9.13]

Bronze age design
Sau-Cihare (note spelling)(2): Frostgiant, NUKE9.13

Alright then.

[Jilladilla]

Bronze age design
Sau-Cihare (2): Frostgiant, NUKE9.13, Jilladilla

[dgr11897]

Bronze age design
Sau-Cihare (4): Frostgiant, NUKE9.13, Jilladilla, DGR

[Man of Paper]

Embralish Defining Tech: Bronze Age

Proposal: The Sau-Cihare

Historians have long debated the cause of the Embral people's victory over the Samnite Empire. It is, after all, universally agreed that the Samnite legions, rich with experience and equipped with well-made iron arms and armour, could not lose in open battle to the loosely-organised, inexperienced, and bronze-wielding warriors of Embrallia. The consensus amongst non-Embralish historians is that it was not anything the Embral people did, but rather an internal collapse within the Samnite Empire that happened to coincide with the Samnite-Embral Wars. This explains why the Samnite legions were consistently short on supplies, and made many strategic blunders, as the civil war siphoned away resources and capable commanders. That there is no other evidence for this supposed civil war is generally ignored.
Embralish historians claim that the Embral people's long history of ambush warfare allowed them to whittle down Samnite numbers and sap their morale, without having to face the enemy on the field. According to them, the Embral people had unwittingly built up a society that was uniquely capable of facing such an invasion, and trained in precisely the sort of unconventional warfare that the Samnites were weak to.
Fringe historians, generally ignored even amongst Embralish scholars, ramble about a secret society that ruled Embrallia from the shadows even before the invasion, and was able to quickly bring together the divided people, before using their skills at espionage and sabotage to cripple the Samnite war machine at every turn. They claim that this organisation, the Sau-Cihare (Hundred Faces in ancient Embralish) were preternaturally skilled at disguise and stealth, as well as being master manipulators after subtly steering the course of Embrallia for centuries. They go on to claim that the Sau-Cihare never disbanded, and continue to influence the politics of the Embral Empire to this day. This is, of course, preposterous.
   -An Introduction to the Samnite-Embral Wars

---
   
The mythical Sau-Cihare would initiate new members by having them spend three nights in a Well. This would either result in babbling insanity, in which case the unfortunate candidate would be quietly disposed of, or 'endarkenment', whereby the fledgling member would come to understand that nothing was truly real, that all the world was malleable to a greater or lesser extent, except for one, permanent, unchangeable thing: the Darkness. This was not, to be clear, some sort of 'evil' philosophy, though it did lead to a degree of moral relativism that at times resulted in the Sau-Cihare doing whatever was necessary to achieve their goals, no matter the cost.
Understanding that all was malleable, even themselves, made the Sau-Cihare masters of disguise and infiltration, as they could become someone else in their own minds- they would not consider themselves to be wearing a disguise, and thus displayed not a hint of nervousness or uncertainty (It also helped that they were quite capable of creating wigs and applying makeup to provide a physical reinforcement to their mental transformation). This combined with a carefully honed gift for tongues ensured that a Sau-Cihare agent could be caught, identified, escape, and then return the next day without being recognised.

By the time the Samnite Empire invaded Embrallia, the Sau-Cihare already had dozens of agents scattered throughout every aspect of Samnite society. These served as informants, allowing the Sau-Cihare to coordinate a response to the invasion that perfectly anticipated the enemy's every move. Chieftans who considered surrendering or cooperating with the invaders suffered unfortunate accidents, and were replaced by more staunch proponents of resistance. But perhaps most importantly, when the Samnites built their forts in Embralish territory, the Sau-Cihare were able to infiltrate their walls with relative ease, where they were capable of destroying supplies, poisoning wells, assassinating commanders, and eventually- once the garrison was diminished and demoralised- opening the gates to Embralish warriors.
The Samnites were- quite deliberately- allowed to delve deep into Embrallia before the counterattack begun. By the time they realised what was happening, entire legions found themselves cut off from supplies, deep within hostile territory, with commanders dropping like flies. Forts fell like dominoes, and with an unstoppable momentum, the now seasoned Embralish warriors, armed with the weapons of their fallen enemies, pushed into Samnite territory. Long-since subjugated people suddenly arose in rebellion, their discontent having been carefully stoked by Sau-Cihare agents, and joined the Embralish advance. City after city fell, their gates opened from within, their leaders found dead in the streets.
Their success surprised even the Sau-Cihare- perhaps it is true that the Samnites had grown complacent, too trusting, too vulnerable, or perhaps the concept of spies was simply so foreign to them that they did not realise what was happening. Whatever the case may be, the facts are thus: Embralish troops sacked Samnium, and whilst the Samnite Empire did not collapse overnight, the defeat spelled the beginning of the end for them and their hegemony, and the beginning of the beginning for the Embral Empire, which claimed swathes of Samnite territory in the ensuing peace. The Sau-Cihare, so instrumental in the victory, received no praise, were not recorded in the history books, but quietly retreated into the shadows once more, to guide the Embral people through this new phase of their development.

Difficulty: Normal
Result: (6+6)-0=12, Unexpected Boon

Being familiar with striking from the shadows in the jungles, it was only a matter of time before similar tactics were utilized elsewhere. The Sau-Cihare do not exist. They never have, and they never will. The Samnite Empire was weakened from within due to political and religious schisms in no way influenced by an outside force. There is no evidence that states otherwise. When Embralish soldiers marched on Samnite forts imposing on their territory garrisons would turn on one another as disagreements between commanders on how to deal with the jungle-dwelling savages turned into arguments and then open conflict. As the Embralish pushed back against their enemies in an attempt to secure their homeland the Samnite forces were disorganized, with whole armies often out of position, showing up to reinforce or defend cities well after the token resistance offered by their garrisons had been overcome - if the cities had fought the approaching Embralish forces at all. Embralish banners were raised in city after city, fortress after fortress, solely because Samnite governors and generals sought the security they saw in Embral. The conversion of Samnite territory spread like a plague.

A cabal of powerful Samnites in the capital of Samnium saw to the assassination of their Emperor as an Embralish Army made it's presence known in the nearby countryside, and imperial power was turned over to the leader of the Embralish people. The Embralish Empire had risen, thanks solely to the Samnite infighting and nothing else.

The Sau-Cihare do not exist.


----------------


IT IS NOW THE REVISION PHASE.

Once again you will be given some leniency on what you can do with your revision, but note that these revisions should be used more for bringing past advancements into the current age.

Spoiler: Preliminary Proposals (click to show/hide)

Wellwood Bass Drum: A large man-sized drum made of Wellwood harvested from a Well with an animal hide stretched over it. A steady rhythm helps stimulate plant growth. It isn't a drastic change - a season of growth won't be cut down to days - but harvests tend to be more bountiful if Drummers maintain the beat.

Wellwood Flute: A mask-like instrument worn over the face that creates an unsettling, terrifying shriek when the mouthpiece is blown into. It's hands-free to allow the use of weapons by the wearer.

The Sau-Cihare: A series of syllables that holds meaning with nobody.

Unique Resource - Wells: Wells are strange, relatively poorly understood subterranean environs housing any number of forms of cave-adapted life whose parts can be used to manipulate the world through sound.

[NUKE9.13]

Water-driven Wellwood Drum
When Ancient Music was discovered, it was believed that only the creator of the instrument, who had faced the trials of a Well, could play it. It soon turned out that anyone could play them with the correct training. Later, it was discovered that it was even possible to have an instrument 'play itself', if set up correctly. In fact, in some cases this turned out to be more effective.
Wellwood Drums were the foundation of Embralish prosperity, but as farms expanded and labour specialised, having people play the drums became less practical. Some flirted with slaves as a way of manning drums, but slave takers & traders tended to have extraordinarily poor life expectancies for some reason, and so an alternative solution was devised. Waterwheels, initially adopted to drive millstones, were adapted to power a rudimentary array of pulleys and levers that would rhythmically strike at massive drums- too big for a human to play, they covered a larger area, and the mechanical precision improved performance over the at times irregular human-operated drums.
To ensure a steady supply of water to drive drum-wheels, dams and channels were built to regulate waterflow, which incidentally helped improve irrigation.

The culmination of this hydraulic expertise was the Flooded Citadel, a towering stone monument to Embralish prosperity. Rising almost 40 meters over the de-facto capital of Embrallia, the step-pyramid shaped structure featured a complex system of interlocking cisterns, pumps, and waterwheels, which pulled water from the Nadi River to the top of the structure, from whence it cascaded down through a series of channels, driving more waterwheels as it went, which in turn powered a variety of instruments. By adjusting floodgates, the masters of the Citadel could direct the flow to different wheels at different speeds, allowing for complex melodies to be played that could be heard for miles around.
Unfortunately, the Flooded Citadel was irreparably damaged by a catastrophic earthquake less than a century after its construction. The same earthquake redirected the Nadi River, dooming the city around it as well. Modern day archaeologists have uncovered what they believe to be the foundation of the Citadel, but disagree as to whether it actually lived up to the stories told of it.

If no one has any alternative suggestions, consider my vote to be for this. I'll wait on starting a votebox for a moment so as not to discourage others from proposing something.

[Shadowclaw777]

Water-driven Wellwood Drum: (1) SC777

[NUKE9.13]

Water-driven Wellwood Drum: (2) SC777, NUKE9.13

[MaxTheFox]

Water-driven Wellwood Drum: (3) SC777, NUKE9.13, Max

[frostgiant]

Water-driven Wellwood Drum: (4) SC777, NUKE9.13, Max, Frostgiant