Mid Summer-The news from the attack on Ermor came early this morning. The attack went much like the ill-fated one before it; the first Ulmish troops crossed the border of Merovia, home of the Ermorian cults, lead by the prophet of the Iron Faith, last time Urist but this time Knave. As they approached the Ermorian fortress defenders swarmed out of the surrounding buildings, more than there had been last time. We were better prepared this time as well, however, and even this first smaller group of Ulmish infantry outnumbered our initial attack all those months ago. The Ermorian troops seemed confident until the new recruits joined, even more numerous than the Ulmish troops already present. These infantry and crossbowmen, aided by the Master Smiths and the small regiment of black knights, did battle with the Ermorian defenders and won.
This was the group of infanty and slingers we were up against. It's quite the group, considering it's basically entirely province defense. 
This is us. We have a much smaller group, but they're Ulmish, so they're better. Stats-wise our troops are (almost literally) twice as good as theirs and that translates into being worth more than twice the number of crappier troops (against this enemy anyway; against something that does a lot of AOE damage or magic damage in general our troops aren't quite as valuable).
We had... a lot of Smiths attacking with our troops. There were 13 commanders total, two of them were Knights (Knave and the other Black Knight Thug), one was the siege engineer from a long time ago, and the remaining ten were Smiths. Two of them started the battle by buffing our troops with Legions of Steel and all of them proceeded to launch Magma Bolts. Imagine this picture ten times per round and you can imagine a fair number of the Ermorian troops died before they even got to us. Not as many as I'm used to with other, more mage-heavy, nations, but still quite a respectable number.
This battle started out like most of the other battles I've screenshotted. The mages and whatever archers I have whittle down the enemies a bit, the infantry clash with their infantry, and the knights run up the side to kill 
It changed a bit once the knights actually got to the back. They didn't quite make it to the slingers before they decided to start attacking stuff, so they went after infantry. Their orders of "Attack Rear" actually mean "run back for a ways until you get distracted, then attack whatever's close" but that's still mostly good enough for knights. It turns out attacking the infantry was a good thing though. The ENTIRE block of Ermorian infantry turned around from the front and started trying to swarm around the knights. In the next round of combat our infantry pushed in and did enough damage that about half of the remaining infantry routed right there. Eventually the Ermorian infantry kind of had the knights half-surrounded, but these knights just didn't care. They didn't take a single hit and each of the two commander knights took out at least two infantry each turn, which kept them from being completely surrounded.
Knave was doing well for most of the fight, but about 3/4 of the way through he stopped doing anything. Turns out that extra 3 encumbrance matters more than I thought and he hit 100 fatigue so he would just sit there until he recovered, run up and hit something, and have to sit there again. This WAS pointed out to me in the thread, I just didn't have any example battles to really gauge how much it mattered. In the end all it meant was a couple fewer kills for him because the other knight thug was taking point and was more of a target for all the infantry around them.
In the end, some of the Ermorian troops routed but most of them died. The slingers were throwing rocks the whole battle with very little consequence except that they hit two Smiths at some point. One was just a no-name magma thrower, but the other was the Smith with the HP boosting heroic ability (Eshten was his name I think). He had been diseased so he was a bit of an easy shot once a rock managed to get to him, unfortunately.
The troops got through their infantry eventually though and the slingers and the commanders routed while being chased by our infantry and knights and being rained on by magma.
We won with only a few losses (sometimes I wish province defenders showed up in these reports...).With the defenders defeated, the combined forces of the Ulmish army bore down on the fortress and began their siege.
It seems that even with this victory, the "natural" disasters do not cease. There was a hurricane in Epernia this month. A hurricane inland! It came without warning and left the same way, leaving only destruction in its wake.
I'm not sure about the exact results of a hurricane. I think it kills off some of the population in the province, which is a bit of a pain, but not terrible.We may need more magical might if these turn out to be attacks, rather than a simple streak of bad luck. Fortunately, in my travels to the swamps and marshes I uncovered sites of power home to two more groups of mages who will be most helpful.
A Temple of the Turning Tide. This site could be very, very helpful if I had an Astral mage capable of casting Wish. Wish is an alteration spell waaaay down in the research tree (level 9, which is the max level of research for a school) that takes Astral 9 magic to cast. It literally lets you wish for whatever you want though, and you get it. There are a couple limitations (no wishing to win the game instantly or anything quite that big) but you can wish for gold, any unit in the game (with one exception I think, but even so this makes some VERY powerful supercombatants available), dominion, or gems. Wish costs 100 astral gems to cast, but the "Alteration bonus" on this site means there's a 20% discount on all alteration spells cast here. Basically what it comes down to is that you can Wish for gems and the discount is enough that you can turn all those gems back into astral ones for a pretty tidy profit. Plus you can always wish for units with a lot of Astral access to make more Wish casters, so you can see how this can snowball. Unfortunately I only have access to Astral 3, so Astral 9's a bit of a ways off. This site's useful for another reason though.
I'm not sure how useful these guys will actually be, but they're water mages (our only ones so far other than Selene) who can travel underwater and can bring 10 troops with them. There are items I can make that let me bring troops underwater too, but it could be nice to use these guys to help me out if I need it.
This is the other site Selene found. The site itself is a little less exciting than the other one, but the mages you can recruit here are nicer.
Enchantresses! I think this might be the first time I've actually seen these. They start out with Nature 1, not very exciting, but they have some good extra picks when you recruit them.
That's a lot of paths. They get one from the first row and one from the second every time and 50% of them get one from the third row too. Enchantresses are a bit expensive, but they can get you access to a lot of paths you may not have another way to get in to which is nice.Finally, a report came from Stene this month as well. In it he mentions that he is quite ill and that this will likely be his last report. He included his map of the known world with the landmarks he had mentioned in the past annotated.
Aww Stene you will be missed. Right now he seems to be at C'tis's westernmost border, so you can get a feeling for how bit they are. He didn't run into any other nations though, and everything northwest of him is mountains and snowy wasteland, so Jotunheim, Vanheim, and Agartha are probably all in the chunk of land south of Stene and west of R'lyeh. We'll see though, I guess.The siege on Ermor continued this month. More damage is being dealt to their walls and gates each month, but to aid in the effort I recommended a traveling mercenary Nature mage be hired. It was a little difficult to convince the council that he should be hired until they saw the large group of giant boars that followed him around.
Here's Baratus himself. Nothing extraordinary, just a Nature 2 mage. Could be useful if you didn't already have one I guess.
This was the reason I bothered to hire him. Sieging a fort is partially just a numbers game; the more things you have attacking the fort, the faster the walls go down. I'm not sure how much these boars count (whether they're worth 1 infantry each or less/more) but there's a fair number of them, so they'll help regardless.While the army was occupied with Ermor, R'lyeh hired an elephant-riding mercenary and his band of misshapen troops and attacked Tirannea. The provincial defense had seen much more difficult opponents, however. The only threat in the attack was the elephant the leader rode, but even that was quickly countered by the pikes that over half of the defenders carried. In fact, the harvest wasn't even interrupted and the bounty was enough to offset another blight ravaging the Marshlands.
I don't know HOW tax losses could be 80 gold, that province only makes me 5 gold per month.When the Iron Priests integrated me into their dogma, it introduced me as the only actual being associated with the faith. There had been no one to pray TO before, simple doctrines to be upheld. With a deity figure the people took hold of the faith and it seemed to spread like wildfire. When belief increased, I noticed an increase in my powers and have found myself able to sense the state of the land in faraway provinces. As the months have stretched into years and I've traveled across the expanding Ulmish territory, I've been investigating the reason for why the land itself seems so content to be controlled by Ulm. I've used my increased powers to drawn information from farther and farther distances but the pattern is the same wherever I search within the dominion of the Iron Faith. It seems that this land was once corrupted. Many years ago it may have been a land of plenty, but now it lies ruined, a fraction of what it was.
In recent months I've noticed that the Iron Faith, and my abilities to scry the land, has begun to spread even within Ermor. I have seen glimpses of the profane rituals that the priests of Ermor practice and seen how they torture the earth, ripping the dead from its grasp to bolster their armies. This month, however, I could see nothing of Ermor or its rituals within their walls. In fact, it's strange, but their corrupting influence seems to have disappeared almost entirely and reports of miraculous good health and vitality are coming from all corners of the nation.
I had enough Nature gems and I love this spell, so I cast it. As it says up there, it increases (doubles, I think) max health, slows aging, and heals afflictions (this includes disease, limps, battle wounds, and even missing limbs). 
The announcement of it being cast is... lackluster at best, though.
As an example of the increased health, this is what Knave looks like with the spell in play. His health is boosted by 1)being a prophet in friendly dominion, 2)his heroic ability, and 3)Gift of Health. He is now way more durable than he should be. Unfortunately his health WILL go down if he leaves friendly dominion, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue because our dominion's pretty strong.The siege on Ermor continues, but now I'm unsure what the army will find behind the walls.
Mid Fall-Our weakened spy networks have recently taken inspiration from Stene's sacrifice and have begun exploring lands to the west. The nation of Jotenheim was discovered, their borders within sight of R'lyeh.
On our northern border, The lords of the Stone Grave Mountains have discovered a large quantity of silver and have built a mine to begin mining it.
Ahh, I wish these kinds of improvements were buildable, but this is just the result of a random event. 40 gold per turn will be really nice, though.The Smiths have been doing research to apply Wallin's remote site searching spell to other magic paths and have discovered the answer within the school of Thaumaturgy. With these spells it should be possible to search for Earth, Fire, and Air associated sites, and possibly more. At the end of the month news came from the army that the gates of Ermor have been breached. The fortress will be stormed next month.
I just hope that the unholy priests of Ermor aren't waiting in ambush beyond my sight.
Late Fall-A messenger from the Ulmish army in Ermor arrived this morning with a report. He described a scene of such horror that a few council members had to dismiss themselves from the room. I'm unsure whether I should be worried that I seem to now be able to stomach this kind of death and destruction.
When the gates were breached, undead did not come streaming out, as expected. There were no spells being cast, no traps waiting. The antechambers were empty, although some had remnents of what may have been undead several months before. The central chambers and courtyards were battlefields, but the battles had been long over before the army even arrived. Many of the once-living Ermorian legionnaires present in these rooms seemed to have been killed by Ermorian weapons, some still being held by skeletal hands. As the Ulmish troops moved inward towards the throne rooms it became increasingly apparent that something had gone horribly wrong and the priests had lost control of the undead. They found the bodies of the priests guarding what had been a gargantuan cyclops before it was mauled by crazed undead. I had been using the increased power of the Iron Faith to scry distant lands, but it appears that the priests of Ermor had taken it further and used the dominion of their cyclops to control the undead. However, when their people lost faith in the power of their demigod, they paid the price.
Well, it looks like Ermor went down via domkill after all. I think what MIGHT have happened is that they had quite a large number of priests to summon their undead, but when their dominion was at risk they switched more and more of them to preaching. Preaching lets priests spread dominion, but only within the province they're located in, so I typically don't find it all that useful. It might have been keeping Ermor alive, though, because I DID notice smaller and smaller groups of undead coming out towards the end. I guess they just didn't have quite enough to keep up though.
But to the victors go the spoils!
And the spoils are quite good.After seeing the trust and power that the Ulmish people put in me and the fact that that power was used to dulled and eventually break the threat of Ermor, the council members offered me the position of lead councillor. With this position comes the power to suggest new directions for the country and have these suggestions be taken without having to fight and argue for them. Unfortunately I have never been in a position to have this kind of power and I'm at a bit of a loss where to go now that the threat of Ermor has been neutralized.
So help Selene out, what now? Here's what Ulm looks like now: and here are the troops we have: 
We have about 60 more troops total in Ulm/Fever Fens and Sermioc, half crossbowmen, half infantry. I let the Boar Mage's contract lapse, because Selene's a better nature mage and we really don't need 40 boars.
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Topic: Dominions 3 LP - Time to take out some indies! (Read 19702 times)