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[IronyOwl]

I have an entry for our magic place. Should I post it to the main thread, or discuss it here to figure out our final team entry?

Spoiler: The Gate (click to show/hide)

A series of concentric monoliths mark this particular section of knee-deep swamp as something special. Of further note are the terraced rings sinking towards the center, yet not flooding. Only at the lowest point is the true significance of the location apparent- this place is a gateway to the Deep, and the other realm- and often its inhabitants- are clearly visible on the other side. Attempting to actually traverse this path from either side meets with considerable resistance, increasing for each terrace and ring passed, and it is a generally (if tentatively) accepted truth that actually crossing over is impossible for a lone individual.

Efforts matched by a being on the other side, on the other hand, are quite feasible. With a willing accomplice, creatures may trade, harvest, or outright travel to the other side, though still not without considerable effort. More powerful creatures likewise require more powerful partners, which is perhaps fortunate- some of the regulars are of horrifying strength and unnervingly silver tongue, and many shudder to think of what might happen if any random fool was enough to grant them access to the world of mortals.

Entropic Blast
Creatures of the Deep must be called into the object they inhabit, they can't flit between objects. The latter would be... very bad.

Could we invent an arrowhead that allowed them to reach out and control the body of whatever they hit, even though they're still technically bound within said item?


So right now we have:
-Light Infantry
-Light Sea Cavalry Archers?
-Medium(?) Shambling Zombies

There's a lot of possible gaps and we don't know what the enemy has, but we probably want some kind of heavy/elite forces (not that we have the resources for our best yet) and I'd like to get some air power to challenge for the Devil's Scab.

I'd also like to fix our sea chariots to contest more fully for the Shifting Isles, but that might depend on what the enemy is fielding. Our chariots might not be great against fortified ships, so it'd be kind of a waste to spend a second action on them only to want a better counter anyway.

I like the idea of Sin Eaters, but I feel like I have a better idea for once we've gained a few more resources (Apostles mounted on Boar-Apostles, if you're familiar with Berserk).

I also like the idea of some kind of specialist ranged weapon to salt our forces with, but I'm not a fan of any of the specific designs I've seen so far. Maybe just enslave a weak Deep One into a lightning grenade or wand?

Much like their smaller relatives, the giant boars of the Zehlin swamps are hardy, intelligent, adaptable, and surly, well suited to a variety of habitats. Those bred for war are also ferocious and tireless, more than capable of carrying a fully armed and armored soldier across rough terrain, into battle, and onwards to victory with thrashing tusks and sheer weight. They are typically clad in leather barding for battle, and are often given tusk-caps of various materials and designs to improve their decoration or damage.

The soldiers riding them are equipped with iron breastplates, helmets, greaves, gauntlets, and boots, providing comprehensive armor that falls short of full plate. They are also equipped with iron lances or spears and large round iron shields to defend both themselves and their mount.

In addition to their purely martial value, Hog Knights are expected to appear and act ferociously in battle to break enemy morale. Their hogs are trained to scream and squeal disconcertingly (some might say hungrily), and the soldiers are encouraged to engage in personal and macabre decoration and action. The units as a whole likewise favor terrifying charges, emerging from areas thought impassible, and grinding foes down with superior stamina.

War Owls are not lightly named. Big enough to carry off and eat a fully grown mortal, fiercely territorial, and just as silent as their smaller kin, these behemoths are rightly feared in their homeland, where the piercing cries of their disputes with each other is a welcome relief from the fear of vanishing without a trace. Raising them as mounts is neither easy nor cheap, but the rewards can be well worth it.

The riders of these beasts tend to be slight and stealthy, clad in camouflaging silks and armed with nets, lassos, and blowguns. Various unpleasant venoms are made available for use on these darts, most commonly for lethality, paralyzation, or breaking morale in those that find the victim.

Owl Knights are generally intended as solitary scouts and harassers, striking at night to silently remove, weaken, and demoralize enemy forces. The owls need little training in this business- murdering and carrying off dangerous targets from right next to their friends without being noticed is what they do. It's their riders that need extensive training in picking off sentries, entangling enemies, and most importantly, reading the signs of what their keen-eyed companion is seeing in the dark.

These fist-sized, usually spherical, thick-walled ceramic jars are often molded with skulls, serpents, or other sinister iconography. Each contains a weak but volatile Deep One dredged from its home and none too pleased about it. On shattering, this wrath is released in a modest area, generally as a burst of dark energy that can kill or wound several nearby soldiers at once. More exotic and unpredictable effects are not unheard of, presumably as a consequence of the individual spirit within.

The jars are carried in carefully padded satchels and launched using leather slings, intended as fire support and to break up troublesome formations. Some regiments have dedicated devil-slingers among their ranks, but more often they're carried among a military unit's combined supplies as specialist gear, brought out and leveraged when the situation calls for them. For obvious reasons, soldiers tend to be wary of carrying them into danger without intent to use them quickly and to good effect.

Enhanced dead:(1) DGR
Sword of the sun: (1) DGR
Sword of air: (1) DGR
Hog Knights: (1) IronyOwl
Owl Knights: (1) IronyOwl
Devil Eggs: (1) IronyOwl

Not a fan of generic "more power" weapons to just kinda throw in there. Likewise with more power zombies. Would rather keep specific strategic niches in mind, particularly until we know what the enemy is fielding and thus what kinds of random powerups would be most coincidentally useful.

[The Adversary]

Could we invent an arrowhead that allowed them to reach out and control the body of whatever they hit, even though they're still technically bound within said item?

So that's a bit more of a possibility. Control wouldn't be terribly nuanced, but psychic hacking arrows, or electrical body hacking arrows don't seem impossible. You'd need an intelligent being of the deep, one with considerable understanding of mortals, and an arrow (or at least head) capable of containing such a beast, and such control might be fleeting depending on the arrow's material.

[dgr11897]

Enhanced dead:()
Sword of the sun: ()
Sword of air: ()
Hog Knights: (2) IronyOwl, DGR
Owl Knights: (2) IronyOwl, DGR
Devil Eggs: (2) IronyOwl, DGR

Understandable. I'll vote for your stuff. We're going to have some badass knights. Who we can give awesome swords and lances later. Plus magic bombs are almost always fun.
The Death Blade
A legendary sword, or at least, an imperfect copy of a legendary blade. In the old myths, the great king George the First declared that he required a weapon unmatched. To answer each of the groups who used magic answered. The Lunacy users, Those who commune with the Deep, Awakeners, and Juxtematics, all participated, creating their grandest weapons, 20 entries, each a powerful example of its art, from each magic art, and from combinations of each art. This was the entry from a group of Lunacy users and a cult of Deep Communion users, together they forged a blade, useless as a sword, but which excelled as an instrument of death. The lunacy users carved bone and worked metal to create the body of the weapon, before transforming it, a thing of dead beings became a gateway to death, a weapon that emitted a deathly miasma around its blade, a gas which would eat through flesh and rot bone. Meanwhile, the other party in this weapon's creation communed with the deep, seeking the most powerful being of wind and killing they could. The end result, was a blade that was rotten, rotting. A thing that would shatter in a single swing if it struck a target. But, it didn't need to hit a target to kill them, for it could create and release winds that would rot away entire battalions, or create blades of air that can slice a man in half as surely as a normal sword. So goes the myth of the Death blade.
Our version, while similarly able to release winds of decay that can kill lots of people, is more of a single use device, shattering after being put under much stress. We don't have whatever knowledge they used to balance the weapon anymore. So we must make do, using the sturdiest materials, and maximizing the effect. Our version isn't durable at all, and needs regular maintenance, but it can release blasts of miasma which rots away everything it touches, concentrated by the winds controlled by the being inhabiting the blade, preventing them from escaping to poison the user, and greatly enhancing their potency when they are released, to the point that everything in the area of the blast is typically killed if they are exposed. Of course, with such a legendary weapon, we aren't aiming to produce more than one or two copies of such a weapon. And, rather than a sword, which could be considered a tactical asset, the Death blade and similar weapons are of more strategic utility. Swaying a major battle in our favor, rather than being a weapon issued to every soldier. (Second iteration of a magical tac nuke weapon, this time hopefully making better use of the combination of lunacy and deep beings. Though as it is expected to only last for one or two uses, and is intended as a one of a kind thing, it should hopefully be deployable and not be torn apart by the conflicting forces of lunacy and deep beings.)

[dgr11897]

Second attempt at some magical weapons (edit, I hope what I said in the core thread is misleading/vague enough not to be considered a breach of opsec. Because it can be interpreted one way, and hopefully gets people to think one thing, but is really the other. It's gonna be hilarious if they interpret it how I hope they will, that one of our things catastrophically failed, especially when they find out I was referring to our undead.)
Spear of the sun (Weak-ish ranged weapon for sprinkling among our forces? Also establishes some lore)
A golden spear, sharp and of good make. The key to this weapon is the use of lunacy, granting it the ability to store up sunlight and release it as blasts of energy or an aura of light around the tip that is incredibly hot, allowing it to melt through armor and flesh. This weapon is one of two traditional weapons from our mythology, said to have been made by the first king. The original spear was powerful enough to punch through castle walls and level mountains, our version is a bit more modest, aimed more at single targets and punching through armor, while also serving as a nice
Sword of starlight
A sword, with an iron blade treated to reduce rusting and decay as much as possible. It is inhabited by a Deep being with the power to see a short time into the future, about 5 seconds to be precise. It whispers in the ears of the wielder, telling them when and where attacks are coming from, and what the enemy will do next. This allows a well trained swordsman to act as though they had inhuman reflexes, blocking or dodging projectiles and attacks from behind, and allows a master of the blade to swiftly defeat opponents by exploiting openings before their opponent even realizes they're open to attack. The swords have a seven star pattern on them, based on the myth of a similar, if greatly more powerful weapon from the distant past. The sword of the first king, which let him see up to 3 minutes into the future, and predict enemy movements up to 3 hours in advance.
Chalice of woes
With a core of lunacy, a bone, transformed into an instrument of death, emitting a dark miasma, which causes flesh to melt away and metals to rust and decay at an incredible rate. To contain this, the bone, forged into a dish, is given a second component, a handle inhabited by a being of the deep, one with control/power over wind and air. Containing, concentrating, controlling the miasma buildup. This Chalice is a weapon of strategic use, unleashing torrents of destructive gas, or blades/bullets of wind with concentrated miasma in them to take out specific targets. It's also a rare thing, only one can exist at a time, but it's proper usage can turn the tide of entire battles.

[dgr11897]

-snip

(Sorry for triple posting, but I hope this should spark some discussion...)(after thinking about this some more. And to give a more direct reply.)
Um, sure, post your submission to the central thread. If you want.
I have added some new write ups for some weapons, including a ranged anti armor/miad weapon, the Spear of the Sun, which concentrates sunlight into blasts of energy.
As for heavy units, what about a unit made by stitching together corpses of various creatures and then animated by a more powerful Being of the Deep. A chimera Beast. A big Titan of corpses we can use. Also, I feel like the war owls are going to be more difficult, upon my second reading of them. And we aren't going to be fighting in the Devil's scab for a while. It might be smart to start by animating the corpses of birds and bats and such, or using awakening on them, which "Could" let us see through their eyes.

Created by stitching together parts from several different large and dangerous animals, the Chimeric Beasts are a superior form of undead. In addition to their larger forms, with more claws and teeth, they also typically have bits of plate armor bolted onto them, and are animated by more powerful and intelligent spirits. These Chimeric beasts are designed with the sole purpose of acting as ultraheavy melee bruisers, who can take and dish out significant amounts of damage. Enhanced by the use of a stronger spirit, providing more physical power and intelligence, the end result is a weapon that is not to be trifled with.

Enhanced dead:()
Spears of the sun: (1) DGR
Sword of air: ()
Hog Knights: (2) IronyOwl, DGR
Owl Knights: (1) IronyOwl
Devil Eggs: (2) IronyOwl, DGR

[The Adversary]

So we've got two people voting over here... Is there anything I can do to help things move along?

[Detoxicated]

Enhanced dead:()
Spears of the sun: (2) DGR, Detoxicated
Sword of air: ()
Hog Knights: (3) IronyOwl, DGR, Detoxicated
Owl Knights: (1) IronyOwl
Devil Eggs: (3) IronyOwl, DGR, Detoxicated

[dgr11897]

So we've got two people voting over here... Is there anything I can do to help things move along?

And it looks like it just resolved itself...

[Shadowclaw777]

I really would like to improve our necromancy style with the swamps that we are going for, eventually will probably need spells like Soul Siphon, shooting bolts of acid, or whatever the flavor of the month for us is, but let’s improve our zombies shall we?, we should eventually improve the intellect on the basic human zombies to be able to wield equipment or whatever.

Megafauna Zombify: While simple really, you take the concept of Quickening the Dead from a human corpse and change the ritual to make it be able to rise up the corpses of much greater livestock. Our native horses and oxen in their walking corpse puppetry by the Deep are monstrous and volatile, being set upon to launch at the enemy lines and cause mass havoc and devastation with their unwavering bodies, most horrifically is the hunted water Hippoes that dread along our riverbanks serve their arrow-pierced corpses serve as an amphibious monster that we can deploy. The previous frillneck species, as well can become these new corpses much more scarier than their alive counterparts serving as un underwater interceptor of sorts.

The rising rituals is more complicated to make these megafauna animals rise, it requires the casters to be more bestial and draw on their base primal instincts, the id you might say, with communing with the Deep, and the type that like to puppet and ventriloquist these creatures are . However a recent breakthrough with the ritual, has allowed us to be able to command these creatures much more effectively, their is an advanced “rearing” ritual that can be applied to the Megafauna after they are created combining with bartering the creatures with more delicious souls, reducing their temper and pure undead-testosterone allowing them to be directed by a “Beastmaster” of sorts, at least to make these creature charge or ambush the enemy on the other side.

Don’t worry I think the Owl Knights will provide as with an aerial unit but apparently we can make any random animal we desire without any drawbacks?, okay then. Secondly I will more likely vote for the Sun Spears later on, but not until votes ferment out and we try to continue our necromancy path.

Enhanced dead:()
Spears of the sun: (2) DGR, Detoxicated
Sword of air: ()
Hog Knights: (3) IronyOwl, DGR, Detoxicated
Owl Knights: (2) IronyOwl, SC777
Devil Eggs: (3) IronyOwl, DGR, Detoxicated
Megafauna Zombification: (1) SC777

[IronyOwl]

I have added some new write ups for some weapons, including a ranged anti armor/miad weapon, the Spear of the Sun, which concentrates sunlight into blasts of energy.

I'm willing to try this out but it still feels a little odd. It's a spear that shoots lasers? Why not a staff or wand from the start?

As for heavy units, what about a unit made by stitching together corpses of various creatures and then animated by a more powerful Being of the Deep. A chimera Beast. A big Titan of corpses we can use.

I like the idea but I'm wary of using The Deep for literally everything, and it still feels unfocused. Why Frankenstein monsters specifically, what shape are they in, what parts do they use, what do they do beyond punch stuff good?

Also, I feel like the war owls are going to be more difficult, upon my second reading of them. And we aren't going to be fighting in the Devil's scab for a while. It might be smart to start by animating the corpses of birds and bats and such, or using awakening on them, which "Could" let us see through their eyes.

I admit I'm not super confident on the Owl Knights, but we should be taking "free" terrain this turn and then facing our hated rivals the next. I think? GM mentioned Turn 5 but I'm not sure I understand the math on that.

I'm not sure what advantage corpse-scouts would have over trained living critters. I think using Awakening to see through their eyes would require preventing them from seeing through their eyes. That might work as remote-controlled fliers, but it'd be limited to scouting (unless they were very large). We're still probably going to want aerial attackers to actually contest for the region.

Or maybe spider-things. I was thinking we'd just bypass the whole mess, but I guess sufficiently skittery things could tapdance over them without too much issue.

but apparently we can make any random animal we desire without any drawbacks?, okay then.

I thiiiiiiiiink? Guess we'll find out when we try to make goats that vomit solid gold.

Megafauna Zombify: While simple really, you take the concept of Quickening the Dead from a human corpse and change the ritual to make it be able to rise up the corpses of much greater livestock. Our native horses and oxen in their walking corpse puppetry by the Deep are monstrous and volatile, being set upon to launch at the enemy lines and cause mass havoc and devastation with their unwavering bodies, most horrifically is the hunted water Hippoes that dread along our riverbanks serve their arrow-pierced corpses serve as an amphibious monster that we can deploy. The previous frillneck species, as well can become these new corpses much more scarier than their alive counterparts serving as un underwater interceptor of sorts.

The rising rituals is more complicated to make these megafauna animals rise, it requires the casters to be more bestial and draw on their base primal instincts, the id you might say, with communing with the Deep, and the type that like to puppet and ventriloquist these creatures are . However a recent breakthrough with the ritual, has allowed us to be able to command these creatures much more effectively, their is an advanced “rearing” ritual that can be applied to the Megafauna after they are created combining with bartering the creatures with more delicious souls, reducing their temper and pure undead-testosterone allowing them to be directed by a “Beastmaster” of sorts, at least to make these creature charge or ambush the enemy on the other side.

What's the benefit of these over war hippos or living Deep-infested hippos?

War hippos in any capacity is a great idea, though.

Enhanced dead:()
Spears of the sun: (3) DGR, Detoxicated, IronyOwl
Sword of air: ()
Hog Knights: (3) IronyOwl, DGR, Detoxicated
Owl Knights: (1) SC777
Devil Eggs: (3) IronyOwl, DGR, Detoxicated
Megafauna Zombification: (1) SC777

Gonna shift my vote to break the tie.


EDIT: We have until Turn 3 for our Magical Place so I don't want to rush things, but we should probably discuss our magic site of power.

[dgr11897]

In order.
The Sun thing is a spear because it was originally a sword, and because there's not really much difference between a staff and a spear besides the fact that one end is pointy. Plus it adds the association of being a pointy weapon for piercing things, which could make the lunacy easier? I don't know, it's also a spear because of the whole, covering the tip of the spear in light to melt through stuff, thing.
Fair enough. I have no clue.
I think he said five turns because it'll take us 2 turns to get through each area? Except the lanes are different lengths... The lengths of the lanes being different may turn out to be an issue since it means it's probably a good idea to just rush down one of the lanes and ignore everything else.
As for magical site of power...
Maybe a castle? I mention an old king in one of my designs, maybe he left behind a castle we use as a laboratory for our magic? After we overthrew the monarchy for (insert funny reason here) and installed our own new (possibly communist) regime. Or a democracy, or a theocracy. Or maybe the Monarchy is still around. Or maybe we just reunified the old kingdom after it had broken down, or maybe just part of the old kingdom, with the other part being alikai. I have lots of ideas.

[IronyOwl]

I think he said five turns because it'll take us 2 turns to get through each area? Except the lanes are different lengths... The lengths of the lanes being different may turn out to be an issue since it means it's probably a good idea to just rush down one of the lanes and ignore everything else.

That would make sense.

There's a number of problems with trying to rush down one side, though. The main one being that rushing down one side means, more or less by definition, that they're rushing down the other side(s). It may indeed be wise to focus efforts on one branch if we can get away with it, but if they're gonna sit there and flail ineffectually then anything's a good idea.

This reminds me, though: We should totally look into fortifications or infrastructure of some kind. If we can make resource producers, surely we can make castles or golem factories or something, right?

As for magical site of power...
Maybe a castle? I mention an old king in one of my designs, maybe he left behind a castle we use as a laboratory for our magic? After we overthrew the monarchy for (insert funny reason here) and installed our own new (possibly communist) regime. Or a democracy, or a theocracy. Or maybe the Monarchy is still around. Or maybe we just reunified the old kingdom after it had broken down, or maybe just part of the old kingdom, with the other part being alikai. I have lots of ideas.

I feel like our design needs obvious function and/or history linking it to the thing. In this case, The Deep. Perhaps the Royal Family has long held an obsession with the Deep and its inhabitants, and with the ways through which the gap between them and mortals might be bridged. Not all of the remains within the Royal Catacombs appear wholly mortal, and odd sounds are rumored to be relatives long thought dead, so utterly changed that they no longer walk among the world of the living.

[Shadowclaw777]

What's the benefit of these over war hippos or living Deep-infested hippos?

War hippos in any capacity is a great idea, though.

It’s simple really, these animals when unprovoked are majority being passive grazers but with the built-in rage and hunger that being puppets by the Deep causes, it allows us to command these creatures from undead monstrous man-eating Oxen to Hippoes being able to first not care about water and really can’t drown, not having their internal organs to care about and spreading diseases because these are corpses, and it will probably be much easier to maintain an army of these creatures because it’s easier to direct the Deep to cause havoc with rituals and whatnot then to try to domesticate a hippo (even elephants panic when they were fired by arrows. As well we should really be focusing on continuing our necromancy path, I am fine with the Sun Spears as a ranged option and the Hog Knights because why not, but this give our design more national identity than “beast masters” and allows us to utilize Deep Magic which we chose as our mastery so why not use it more on our designs?

[dgr11897]

As for magical site of power...
Maybe a castle? I mention an old king in one of my designs, maybe he left behind a castle we use as a laboratory for our magic? After we overthrew the monarchy for (insert funny reason here) and installed our own new (possibly communist) regime. Or a democracy, or a theocracy. Or maybe the Monarchy is still around. Or maybe we just reunified the old kingdom after it had broken down, or maybe just part of the old kingdom, with the other part being alikai. I have lots of ideas.

I feel like our design needs obvious function and/or history linking it to the thing. In this case, The Deep. Perhaps the Royal Family has long held an obsession with the Deep and its inhabitants, and with the ways through which the gap between them and mortals might be bridged. Not all of the remains within the Royal Catacombs appear wholly mortal, and odd sounds are rumored to be relatives long thought dead, so utterly changed that they no longer walk among the world of the living.

Vampires? Also, all of my yes. Perhaps it was their obsession with the deep, and surviving beyond death, which lead to their kingdom's end. A curse. Or a gateway. Or maybe... Both. Perhaps, their forms are twisted and strange, and each of the surviving royals are living gateways into the deep. They drank deep of it's power, and were changed. As for fortifications, sure, what about haunted castles?
Other thought, how cool would it be to have a flying castle, powered by the essence of the deep?
Edit: Location idea. Tell me if it's too outlandish.
The Elder Keep
A strange place, once inhabited by the old royalty of Zehlin. It possesses a connection to the Deep, cultivated over generations, a byproduct of the Obsession of the royalty, with the Deep, and evading death. You see, as his time wore on, one of the kings, told by a seer who drew their power from strange sources, told him his days were numbered, told him that his kingdom would begin to come undone when he went from living to dead. So, the king, fearing death and the end of his kingdom, sought life eternal. The answer to his problem would not be found while he remained conscious, for, after a hunting accident, he was plunged into a coma. Before dying soon after. And so it went, each successive King or Queen furthering the study of the Deep, seeking immortality and power. Eventually a ritual was devised. It would allow one to become a living gateway to the deep, letting them draw up soul dregs to consume, extending life, granting a form of twisted immortality, granting supernatural strength and speed, and so much more. But at a cost, for consuming souldregs will eventually morph man into beast, and will anger the eldritch things that live within the deep. So, two workarounds were devised. First. Through unknown means, they made it so the sun would repulse the power of the deep that came through the gate. Secondly, they, through means unknown, found a way to grant someone the ability to gain the features of a living thing by drinking it's blood. So, through consuming the blood of man, the changes could be... minimized, and so long as they remembered to stay in the sunlight as much as possible, they would be fine. And so the royalty found the answer to their problem. At a cost however, for their obsession had long taken its toll upon the kingdom, draining it's coffers, and it's lands suffering from neglect by the government. However the Royals cared not, for their immortality had been found, their kingdom would be eternal. As time went on, each successive generation of royals, upon coming of age and siring children, would undergo this process. For five generations. But, time takes its toll. One by one, the royalty lost their humanity. The whispers of the deep persuading them to consume more souldregs, to let them in, let the being's power flow through their body. The foolish, consuming the blood of powerful beasts to become stronger. Eventually, man became as monster, and the royals became abominations that would undo the world. And we rose up to put down the royals, no longer human, but monstrous beings that stalked the night, for as their power began to come from the beings of the deep, the sun repulsed them, burned them. So would we be forced to hunt down those who once swore to protect us, using weapons such as the sun spears, or raising armies of the dead to kill them. Each in turn was laid to rest in the catacombs beneath the castle. Sealed. However, even in the deepest parts of the catacombs, from before the royals found their answer to immortality, appear wholly mortal, and odd sounds are rumored to be relatives long thought dead, but never confirmed, so utterly changed that they no longer walk among the world of the living. However, even today, that castle possesses an unnatural connection to the deep. It is disturbingly easy to break the boundary between our world and the deep within it's walls, and soul dregs seems to well up and pool in the old fountain in the courtyard. The whole place is said to be cursed by the peasants. But for our researchers, our communers, our lunatics, our awakeners, everyone who uses magic, it is perfect. Turns out well over 100 years of the royals seeking immortality leaves the place well equipped for magic research and use.

[The Adversary]

I admit I'm not super confident on the Owl Knights, but we should be taking "free" terrain this turn and then facing our hated rivals the next. I think? GM mentioned Turn 5 but I'm not sure I understand the math on that.

Four turns of advancement on each front. That means that the two land based fronts will both be completely filled, 4/4. On turn 5 it's a contest of who can gain a foothold it enemy territory first.

The central lane is longer because it places the most emphasis on naval/aerial units, which will likely take longer to refine and develop.