High Rollers DnD - High Rollers: Aerois #122 | One Month Later (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

The Stormchasers return to Horizon to explore where they've been for the last month! We're sponsored by D&D Beyond! The ultimate Dungeons and Dragons toolset. Clean up your dungeon delving life and speed up your games here: http://bit.ly/HRDNDBeyond2021 Support the High Rollers and get early access to podcast episodes (and more) on our Patreon: www.patreon.com/HighRollers Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pickaxe. blue to fold drink yet. So try it while you can. Only at Starbucks. This episode is brought to you by PC Optimum. If you like a curated playlist, why not try a curated grocery list? With Swap and Save, the new feature in the PC Optimum app, you'll get PC Optimum's best price for your grocery items. Simply add products to your shopping list in the app

and it'll show you similar items at a lower cost. Add coffee to your list, then swap it for one that's cheaper. Craving chips? The app will suggest some on sale. To get started, just open the app. It's as easy as that. See the PC Optimum app for details. having successfully completed the small mission to jakesh to help kind of free this

village which was being perhaps perhaps unknowingly influenced magically through these Eladrin. The Storm Chaser makes its way back to Horizon, which is keeping on the move, but you're keeping in constant communication. And I think that maybe we're going to do some stuff representing the time that you've been spent based on some of the stuff you sent me in a little bit.

But as the Storm Chaser is traveling, first of all, you notice that after that battle, Sentry, you would have taken a long rest. It goes away straight away. But after the battle, Sentry was exhausted. As Starbreaker returns to its normal Lance form, you see Sentry overwhelmed with exhaustion and she would have had a level of exhaustion.

Goes away on a long rest, so you're fine. And yeah, it takes a couple of days to travel back to Horizon. But when you do, the great towers of the four airship towers with their arcane cannons mounted on the top, the bustling streets of Horizon, this kind of tiered city which kind of slopes upwards and ends in this grand citadel with this blazing halo of fire above it um the massive ethereum engines which have been installed into the rocky

substructure beneath the island itself kind of roaring and churning the air as horizon maneuvers through and it takes a rise some very deft uh controlled movements with the airship to land it whilst horizon is in motion however this is a practice that she's become she's become very practiced at this maneuver um the storm chaser has been ferrying you guys as well as other troops and forces all over the place. The Storm Chaser crew have become veterans in that time. They have become extremely practiced. The entire crew, in fact, have all kind of essentially leveled up as NPCs, right? They've all become very highly practiced and trained.

Lookout is now your secondary gunner. So you have Penny and Lookout manning the main cannons on the Stormchaser the Wolfpack are basically trained for boarding combat now, they're no longer engaged in rage combat, so they're now trained for that if anybody gets on the Stormchaser they will engage them in melee combat

and they've been practicing training with Aayla and with Sentry and with the Horizon Guards to do so. Kamara is basically a kind of, not first mate, but like second officer. She now runs most of the ship as well when other people aren't there, kind of acting as Oriah's right-hand woman when Lucius isn't on board. Meanwhile, all the others remain in place. There have been some exceptions.

A couple of the crew have moved more permanently to Horizon, better suiting their abilities faith being one of them uh now spends most of her time in horizon uh not with the actual wolf pack themselves um we'll come to more what faith's been involved with in a little bit um howard still remains on the ship lancean all of the others are all still there but they have been uh doing more work with that when the airship lands you are basically brought to you now have full chambers um where everything has been established uh you now have like full military quarters in the citadel uh no longer hidden away uh all of the wards that you once had still have been have still remain but also this is something we didn't go over lucius and nova you now both carry uh two amulets which nova had

commissioned uh they do require attunement i would highly recommend you find space to attune into uh these amulets nova you had commissioned you and azaria perel worked on these and these kind of provide provide a localized effect of those anti-scrying wards and they are amulets of proof against detection which basically means you cannot be scryed upon, you cannot be the source of any divine magic so you are basically protected

from any scrying attempts whilst you are wearing and attuned to those items as mentioned, Ayla also has had some upgrades to the howling tempest which has been facilitated um nova you worked on a couple of your own little projects and projects and gadgets i don't know if you want to save those for a surprise one day uh i guess one i i'd like to think that i got the amulet made in lucius's colors

so it's just like an extra little fancy like his amulet made in Lucius's colors, so it's just a little fancy. His amulet's a little bit fancy. But imagine just one day on the Storm Chaser, Quill is just standing minding his own business on the deck. Nova comes running up to him and puts a circular metal device in his hands. Look, I made this! Oh, no, what is it? It's not another bomb, is it, Nova?

It starts glowing. It's a bomb, Nova. Nova, what is this? Don't worry about another bomb. Is it Nova starts glowing? It's a Don't worry about it if you don't press the right order it won't do anything it won't do anything don't throw it Don't throw it to me ages to make that it's a magitek grenade It's not don't worry about it it's shaking like glowing alarmingly Then eventually it stops. I need to really work on making that faster. That needs to go off faster.

What do you mean go off faster? You were about to give me an active grenade, you called this? You were about to give me an active ready-to-blow grenade, and you wanted it to go off it's just a fireball spell it's just a little harmless fireball like you know that you can throw don't worry about it it's fine okay okay okay okay so these function as scrolls of fireball so you do still have to be a magic caster to use them so even though they are designed as like a grenade we kind of of flavoured the scrolls

so that you basically charge it with magical energy and then you throw it and then it goes off like a fireball spell. I have a weak bird heart, Nova. Weak bird heart. No more surprises like that. Look, though, you're fine. You're fine.

I'll take it back. I'm just going to run away. I could have been the enemy. I could have been it, sure. I've gone. Sentry, I know you had some stuff that you... Did you want to make or that you were working on for the team? Because I saw you asking questions, so I don't know if that was related.

Yeah, Sentry has been spending a lot of time on the Storm Chaser, like below decks with Howard and Grey Larno. And she's been asking some very strange questions to the Storm Chaser crew, asking what their favourite foods are, what they like, what snackos they enjoy. What is love? I'm writing them all down in a little notebook,

just scribbling away and then disappearing below decks again and showing Howard, how do I make this? How do I make this? And you've been, over the last couple of months, you have now gained enough proficiency that you can cook those foods and a few batches were a disaster, but Howard has been very eager to act as a dummy. He's been taste testing it all

He was a little sick at the beginning, but then he kind of got fine. You know, he's built up his constitution But yeah, you've now developed that and you've been up to a lot of other stuff But that was just like a little thing so century occasionally appears with like little snacks of like people's favorite foods and things like that Not just for you guys, but for the crew as well as they go around. Lucius has been, we kind of get into some of this stuff. So when you guys arrive,

you have a war room now. So one of the sections of Horizon has been set up with a large table. You've seen this before. Danica has shown you this large kind of like table with illusion magic that can kind of show different things going on. There is also a large board with a number of kind of like table with illusion magic that can kind of show different things going on um there is also a large board with a number of kind of like priority reports and communications and things like that um and what this is represented by for you guys is i have um used a little bit

of my friend matt colville and mcdm productions uh his team made a book called kingdoms of warfare i've taken some ideas from that so i don't want people to think i'm going to use the whole system because i'm not i've taken bits of it that i really liked and i've developed my own stuff around it which is a lot more simple and a bit more tailored to the way that we play we don't tend to be very war gamey so it's kind of more of sort of like just a couple of basics to give us some a little bit of flavor and feel uh horizon is now what's called a domain so it is your domain this is your faction this is your realm effectively right um and what that

means is you have you now have domain skills and domain defenses and which represent the things that your you know forces your friends your allies can all do, and sort of represents things that you want to achieve in the world that are bigger than what one person can do. So if you want to make allies with a country or a faction or a group, that would be represented by the Diplomacy skill, which is a skill that your domain has. If you want to spy on what Kallus is up to, or what's going on in Vortensarar or what's going on in Gisela, that would be using the espionage skill that your domain has.

If you want to research really big topics and find out, we want to know where the Colossus is. We want to know, is there a way that we can, is there a weakness to Kallus? All of these things, whether it's magical or knowledge, that is represented by the Lore skill. And then finally, for everything else, but also a lot of the military maneuvers like mustering troops, training troops, deploying forces, you have the Operation skill. And each of these has a rating, and you can improve those things

by either recruiting certain npcs spending money or just achieving certain goals like hey we're going to do this and we're going to upgrade our diplomacy now like because we've made friends with this really powerful diplomat we can boost our diplomacy um etc etc cool you also have three you also have three this is all from kingdoms and warfare so far this is you also have three. You also have three. This is all from Kingdoms and Warfare so far. You also have three defenses. You have communication, resolve, and resources. And these are things that your enemies, Giselle, Vortensar, and the Valkyrian Empire can attack

and that they can try and get to you guys with and maybe reduce your resources or maybe try and capture your forces or take territories or deny your, deny you diplomacy with other groups. Um, and those can all be improved and they can be, you know,

decreased and things like that as well. Uh, so what we're going to do is to kind of represent the stuff that you told me you wanted to do during the downtime. Uh, we're going to basically take what I'm going to call a domain turn. And we're going to do this whenever there's a period of downtime. So in between these little story arcs of

fighting the titans or going to Vortensar or going to find the wild elves, which are all going to be little adventures, right? We're going to have them as adventures that you do. We'll have these downtime periods of time and that's going to be a domain turn. During a domain turn, you

can do up to six things, right? So you can do up to six big things, and you've given me a big list, so I've actually already got some that we can use as an example, right? And the way that these work is you can think of a way to use those four skills, diplomacy, espionage, lore, and operations, and be like, I want to, and this is a good example

because this is one of the things that Kim said, Kim wants to find out what's going in Vortensar. To do that, that's going to be an espionage role to try and figure out what is going on and get information out of there. Now, when you use these skills, you guys, your characters, aren't the ones doing it because you guys are being pulled

away into fights like you just have. You're being pulled away to make plans, to train, to make magic items, to brew potions, to look after your allies. So instead you are going to assign a retainer or an agent to that task. And those retainers and agents are all the friends and NPCs you have made along the way. And they can only be sent on one thing per turn. So when you do something, you're going to name an NPC and that's what they're doing for that, you know, three months, two months, one month, whatever it happens to be. Right? And they get a bonus depending on their personality

and what they're good at and stuff like that. So if you pick the wrong person, maybe they don't get a very good bonus. Maybe they get a negative. If you pick a good person, they'll get a bonus and they get a bonus to the role, right? The other thing to mention is I've given you guys some war assets. So to represent the actual military forces

that you guys have control over, I'll send you all this in a document and we'll put it up on like a page so you can see it all. But you currently have the Guardian Army, which is an elite, well-trained, very sturdy army, which is represented by the forces you rescued in the City of Glass. That is a standing army that you have. You have Guardian Scouts,

which represents all of the more skirmish and light infantry that you already had some members of. You already knew some Guardians that were part of that. And they're like a scouting force. You can use them. They won't be able to stand up into a straight fight but they're good as like an additional support or they're good to scout an area or to do lots of other things and then you have the horizon city guard which are a defensive unit and they are basically permanently locked into horizon but if anybody were to attack horizon which happen, they will be the NPCs that are basically holding the line

against all of the other enemy forces, right? And again, they'll be there for that. And you also have allies. You know, you've already confirmed that you have a bunch of allies through your diplomatic talks at the council meeting. So far, I'm including the Druids of Mere Skir as one of your allies. You have the Sky City of Gusthaven as one of your allies, and the Dragons are one of your allies.

Now, these allies you can call upon to give you a special unit, a war asset, maybe temporarily. Maybe you know that there's going to be a battle in a certain area, or you want to attack a certain region, and you want to call in the Griffon Cavalry of Gusthaven. You can make a roll to do that and say

we we need your forces to support this battle that we're going to go on very cool you could also be like you know what we could use the dragons to harass uh giselle and and try and deplete their resources rather than having like an actual battle you can use your allies to boost your skill rolls when you come to do another check but again that may have consequences it may have costs and give you bonuses it's a lot of information i know tom i know no it's not this is awesome i love this this is so cool the last thing i'm going to mention is uh whenever you make one of these domain skill rolls you can spend a thousand gold to get a plus one bonus which is to represent you being like we're going to pay for you to have supplies we're going to pay for you to go off and you know bribe people

and do all this other stuff and build fortifications like we can you can spend that money to do that right um what can we actually stand financially like we've got the party fund obviously but like what yeah well the way to think of it is the money that Horizon has, that has to go to supplying Horizon. Now, things like you have your personal money. That's what I'm referring to when I say spend a thousand gold. Horizon has a resources defense, which represents it's like gold money,

it's equipment, it's troops, it's food, you know, everything that it has available to you. Now, because Horizon is a mobile Sky City, its resources are actually quite low because it doesn't have its own farms. It doesn't have its own mines. You do have Arval Dagus as an NPC and I've actually given you a plus one to that defense

because Arval is rich and he has lots of money and he can spend that money on stuff so things like that like when you have an mpc and maybe it might be like you're like hey do you know who was really awesome let's go get that guy let's go find such and such because they'd be a great person to bring to horizon you can do that and we can make that maybe like an interactive thing or maybe it happens downtime but that can be a thing that you do areas yeah okay stuff like buy on barton sir rose meadow do you want to just hop along yeah i mean you can definitely choose who you want to send so rose meadow i have is like the person that when you bought you had like a lot of potions made right like you had a bunch of healing potions century had a bunch of resistance potions rose meadow was the one

who made them and you basically paid the base price for it I basically charged you no extra because rose meadow is your ally and she's just making them for you now She can only make a certain amount in a certain amount of time But if you give her orders and you want to buy stuff you're basically paying at cost Same with magic items Azaria Perel does that all for you now some NPCs like the super powerful ones like Danica, Azaria Perel does that all for you. Now, some NPCs, like the super powerful ones, like Danica and Azaria Perel, they aren't retainers because they have their own shit that they're doing and they don't feel beholden to you in any way. But some NPCs will be under your kind of command.

So in terms of your current retainers, I've given you Rain, who's been your advisor here in Horizon. And Rain is an accomplished operations manager. So they have a very good bonus to any operation skills that they go on. Because he is used to coordinating things. He is very knowledgeable in warfare, but also in logistics. So Rain is kind of like your general go-to guy for anything military-based. Moonstar is going to be your espionage

expert she is willing to go on spy missions and secret stuff and do spying stuff for you and she's very good at that she's very stealthy she's gadgets to help her and things like that so moon star is your espionage agent the reason that i pulled faith out and this is going to tie into something that lucius was talking about i'll let trot talk about that faith is actually going to tie into something that Lucius was talking about. I'll let Trott talk about that. Faith is actually going to be one of your diplomats. Now, she's not the best at it, but she's very charismatic and she does have a little bit of training persuasion. So she's good at doing diplomacy things. You know, maybe not the best, but she's good at it.

You know, she has a flat, a pretty standard bonus. If you wanted to, Arvel can also be used for operations. Again, he's not the best at it, but he has a lot of connections. He has a lot of trade friends and agreements that he can leverage for things. And then the last one I have done is Guinevere, which is Petal. She is the daughter of a very infamous and very, very powerful mage. She's very good at researching and studying and understanding magic. And so I've put her as

like a lore focused retainer or agent and she has bonuses to doing magical research and and looking things up and stuff like that um and developing things like that right amazing again i can repeat all this because like i was working on this i didn't have a chance to send it all to you and i wanted to kind of talk about it on the stream you'll get access to this and i'll just share you in with the doc and you can see what you have and everything else um and all of that kind of good stuff yeah i mean it makes sense to me in between the downtime you guys gave me a bunch of stuff um and that's going to translate directly into us using this as a chance to show off the system but also represent the things you wanted to do so the first one lucius um do you want to talk about the the diplomacy with uh gust haven do you want to talk about what that was and what lucius was

trying to do yeah so um lucius has a meeting with sky prince uh aradan and he has a thing on his mind in terms of like refugees of you know wartime so and he knows the history of gustaven he was taught as a young boy he feels like he could help lend a hand uh with his resources and bring on faith as well as kind of like a diplomat diplomatic expert in a sense helping people basically uh bring them into gustaven using the resources of gustaven well you kind of like faith is not necessarily as a diplomat you brought her because like you know she's very good at speaking to people problems and stuff exactly right but i think over these months you know because this is something that you were doing in between going and fighting battles and coming away and researching other stuff that you wanted

to do like experimenting with the gauntlet and you know having magic items and stuff and practicing with your magic and things like that in between that time faith is the one who's been staying in gust haven and helping coordinate all of this stuff and she's been picking up this talent for like people she's very sincere and she's very believable and people find her very honest but she's also you she's kind of cunning she knows when she's being lied to and she knows when she's being taken advantage of which makes her a good diplomat right like she can figure that stuff out yeah um now the question is what do you want to get out of this like what is the idea for lucius like lucius is it just like is the idea that you just want to help people and you want to give like them a safe place to go because if that was the case that would be like something like you'd basically be improving the morale of like your domain and and your allies

right you'd be you'd be establishing that that relationship yeah i think in in a kind of almost like as a symptom or a byproduct of being trying to do the right thing i think it would influence our relations with other people's like yes we are on the right side of things and we're trying to help civilians and people as a result. Yeah. So, yeah. Wait. Yeah. So I think for me, I'm going to translate that as what you're going to do there is you can use these skills

to boost your defenses, right? And this would be a boost to your resolve because this is like, it's a really good thing. Like it's a very encouraging and inspiring thing that you're going to do. So what I'd like you to do, Trot, is you, this is going to be a diplomacy skill, domain skill, which Horizon currently has as a plus one.

Fayeth gets a plus two to it. So you're going to roll a d20 plus three. Now the DC for these things isn't crazy high, right? Because to reflect these kind of lower bonuses, that's going to be like the kind of guide for it. Yeah.

So 18 total. 18. 18 is more than enough um and you are already really strong allies with gustaven so this was a really low dc to achieve um and yeah it's gonna oh for the law fanatics out there when mark originally wrote about the sky cities uh gustaven was one of the original uh refugee um islands and and also created the accord yeah it helped to write the accords which which created like the rules and regulations of the sky cities but yeah gustaven was the first one to take people from the lowlands like they would basically as long as they had space they would take people you know up to bolster their own numbers yeah so it's like

to rekindle that that state of mind to help in a cataclysmic event that's going on let's band everybody together and help um those in need so yeah i think that like you know with it over those months faith's been working speaking with nobles of gustavion not just going prince like going out and speaking to you know common people going out to like people that have got floor space in their kitchen and like saying you know would you take people like there's this war is gonna start having casualties and we're gonna need places to send the sick and the injured and people that can't fight like would you take them and like she really spends a lot of time going around doing that and prince aradan who you have a really good relationship is fully on board with the idea and i think that we see this scene where like Lucius who is like the representative meets with

Sky Prince you shake hands there's like a big ceremony and Gustaven yeah basically agrees that they're gonna they're gonna basically act as like a spillover like a field hospital or like a place for people to take refuge can we throw yeah I'm gonna give you off the grand cathedral of siasco as well yeah absolutely like everybody the city is definitely uh enthused by the idea and like it's and it boosts the morale of horizon as well i'm gonna give you guys a plus one it's taken a beating to your resolve defense yeah so that's the other thing i was going to mention actually um at the end of the city of glass horizon had really suffered like damage and casualties and things like that because they were kind of tanking the battle in the air above the end of the City of Glass, Horizon had really suffered damage and casualties and things like that because they were kind of tanking the battle in the air above the City of Glass. That's all been worked on.

The other thing with the Guardians is you had tons of artisan Guardians, carpenters, builders, masons. They all came up to Horizon and have completed the work super fast. They have helped to work and build that, rebuild the city really quickly, which is kind of, again, earned the thing. And as a note, all of your defensive and bonuses for Horizon, I worked out based on things that you'd already done, things that Horizon already was.

So you're starting with a slightly better domain than what the kingdoms and warfare stuff would have given you. So yeah, awesome. So Lucius, yeah, that was kind of like one of the things that you did. And that's the conclusion of it. domain than what the kingdoms and warfare stuff would have would have given you so um so yeah awesome so lucius yeah that's kind of like one of the things that you did um and that's the the conclusion of it like you've you've bolstered your defenses uh if you know they if a valkyrian or any of your or giselle or uh vortensar tries to try and you know diminish your morale um it's going to be a little bit harder now because you've kind of done this amazing thing that like people are really sort of hyped and excited for uh ayla this is an interesting one so ayla katie you talked about wanting to go and spend time with the wild elves and trying to recruit them

um into the whole thing so do you want to just like do you have any ideas for like what that was like or anything like that i think she would have just wanted partly to obviously recruit people to help in the upcoming fights and battles and stuff in the wild also definitely the people to do that but also part of her wanted to see how many more people had how many more of her people had her kind of abilities or powers or like because she's met a couple of people who do but um doesn't really know the full scale of it she would have gone widespread yeah yeah so probably just a bit of kind of personal catching up with where the majority of her people are and also then trying to recruit them probably spending some time also giving them like i'm they're fighters anyway but giving them more fighting tips because obviously you have experience she's been up against hadar and starbane forces so like any extra experience that ayla has gained she wants to then pass on to the rest of the wild elves and try and sort of just strengthen that relationship

and probably part of that is making sure that the people in the cities that they go to like Horizon and Gusthaven that there used to sort of be this stigma against wild elves being horribly violent

and everything and just no good. Certainly more common in the lowlands, yeah. So I guess she wants to just sort of make sure that their reputation is on the up because they are doing a lot of good. I think that given the world

situation right now, like a lot of that prejudice is definitely not dispelled, but again, it was mainly in the lowlands in places like savona the sky cities right now they'll take any help they can get like they are more than happy and they know that the wild elves are really strong fighters as well so i think this is twofold first of all with regards to your abilities it's incredibly rare like spending time with like wild elves now wild elves tend to be quite nomadic and roaming so it's hard to like find big groups of them and even the ones that you've spoken to the ones that

live in the tundra uh the northern parts of al-saraf very hard to track down you know that they're they're aware of you and they did say that they would reach out to you and that they would you know try and arrange some sort of some some sort of thing to try and connect with these strange gods and these powers that you have with. You've not heard from them yet, but you have met with lots of different groups. And yeah, it's very rare to find ones with your sort of abilities. And they're always new to them like you used to be.

None of them display any sort of familiarity or expertise with them. And in fact, that's where your training, like you help them, you know, harness those powers and understand them and recognize them and things like that. In terms of recruiting more wild elves, this would be another diplomacy check. This is basically trying to recruit an ally

to the fight, right? Like to try and bring an ally into Horizon. You can't send Faeth. Is there anybody else that you can think of that you would want to use as a retainer? I any anybody else that you can think of that you could you would want to use as a retainer i only put the ones i could think of um but if there's other people that you can think of or that you think would be willing to help you in this uh they may they may work as a bonus otherwise it's just going to be a flat role because you're not going to

really have somebody leading this effort what about rathra like if you can find him yeah fire elf yeah rathra wasn't much of a speaker but he you know would be he would have a connection to other wild elves and he would understand the valkyrian empire um i don't think he'd be a very good diplomat but he would still get a bonus. What about Sana? Yeah, you can definitely reach out to Sana. Again, she would be more than happy to do that. Again, not the best diplomat, but still

more of a fighter. That's the problem. Aayla's friends tend to be fighters, not talkers. But you can still send them. It just means that they won't get the best bonus. But I'll also put them down as a potential agent for the future so you've got another person down. I mean, I'll put Sanne down anyway because I think Sanne is a good one to have.

And then Rathra. What do you guys think? Do you think there's anyone else? Yeah, I'm trying to think. Who can talk to the wild elves? So here's the thing. Reminder, it can't be you guys, right? Like, it has to be because you guys don't have time to, like, speak with everybody.

Whereas these NPCs do have that time. You're being pulled away to do stuff. You're being pulled away to go on fights, to train troops, to make things, to, you know, fix the ships and stuff like that. Like, this has to be NPC-led. Because otherwise your bonuses are just going to blow this stuff out of the water, right? things to you know fix the ships and stuff like that like this has to be mpc led because otherwise your bonuses are just going to blow this stuff out the water right so there's also a little bit of game mechanics to kind of get around it um but this also makes sense with the you know you guys

are busy you guys are like the avengers you don't have time to sit in meetings seven days a week i think she would maybe send rethra but given that he has abilities like she does and like some of the other elves do. He has a connection. He has a connection and he's been with us through, I mean, a lot. He's traveled very far with us. Yeah. He rescued him. He owes you his life.

He rescued him. He owes you his life. Yeah, I think it's just sort of... I think that the wild elves would probably, in Aayla's mind, respond better to a fellow wild elf who is a fighter coming to them rather than someone like Faith, who they're like, don't know you, who are you? Absolutely. So I think probably Rathra. Okay. All right. In that case, i'd like you to roll a d20

for me you're going to add plus one for horizon's uh diplomacy which is plus one and i'd say add plus two uh rathra normally wouldn't get a plus two i think he'd only get a plus one but because of the wild elf connection i'm going to increase it to a plus two so i get 16. 16. So I think that the wild elves, they understand the threat of Valkyrian. It's been passed through their history that their ancestors used to fight in the first war against Valkyrian. And they are more than happy

to fight again against Valkyrian. Basically, what that's going to be represented by is I'm going to give you guys a new war asset, which is going to be wild elf commandos who are going to be an elite force built around kind of stealth and hit and run tactics. Now, this is provisional. If anything bad were to really happen to that unit, like if they all get slaughtered or if something really bad goes happen,

that might cause disruptions with the wild elves in the future. But for now, that unit is yours permanently. It's permanently with you. It's not a temporary one. They are basically your command to use. But if anything really happens to them, that might be bad. And that goes for your retainers as well. As a point, rolling really low can have consequences on some of this stuff.

Probably for the NPCs you send along. Not necessarily always killed, but maybe captured, maybe injured. Stuff like that can happen to them. So, yeah. So, Rethra, you know, after spending time, like you go initially and you and Rethra kind of meet with a couple of Wild Elf tribes. You spend some time with them, but you are called back. There's big battles to go fight.

You need to train some of the troops in Horizon and things like that. And Rethra stays and he spends time with the Wild Elves, which he'd already been doing. And he begins to formulate. He tells stories around campfires of the rescue from Gratz, like Gratz Casino Planet and stuff like that. He talks about like the fights he's seen you do he's talked about the evil of the valkyrian empire and he stoked up the wild elves um sense of injustice uh he's told them about alfheim and their history and again this has all kind of led to this kind of fervor and when you kind of come back with the storm chaser the wild

elf one of their you know one of their chiefs this um tall woman who wears like a kind of come back with the storm chaser, the wild elf, one of their, you know, one of their chiefs, this tall woman who wears like a kind of crown of antlers meets with you, Ayla, and you both like cut your hands and there's like a clasping of hands as like a kind of symbol of, you know, warriors, warriors' blood united against this common enemy

and a platoon of these wild elf commandos. And they're covered in sort of like natural organic you know cloaks made from like leaves and things like that and when they step into the woodlands they just vanish uh just completely invisible or like covered in like face paint and mud and stuff like that very badass cool amazing nice nova do you want to talk about I can just say Nova do you want to talk about what you want to do how long have we got um no so the main thing that I want to do

specifically with the Vortar stuff yeah just on a side note I mentioned earlier that Tiangong looks bigger so I had Nova basically join the expedition so if you remember I asked Arvel to send an expedition to the mountains behind Goldthrone, the Orc Peaks,

to find that shard that I was on the way to get when we crashed at the very first episode. So we successfully recovered the shard, and that's why Tiangong is powered up now, and there's a few extra spells and things and bits and pieces that they can do now. Yes. The main thing that I want to do in terms of war assets and stuff like that is basically espionage in Vortensar.

Nova is very concerned about what is happening there. Doesn't like what her parents were saying about the kind of propaganda and the way that that vorten star turned and voted um to join the valkyrian empire so she wants to find find out how how did that happen like why like how did they manage to get like you know um i guess turn to the dark side as it were and is there anything that she can do to start turning it back you know kind of sowing those seeds of like this is not like the best thing that you've done here like the i know that you want to go home but joining the valkyrian empire you know um yeah so that was my idea i had a few in character ideas but i didn't know whether or not to mention them now because there's certain things that I had as Nova's story

that we might discover if we go there. Yeah, I would say hold off on anything that you want to do. Go there. You don't have time to go to Vortensar. Vortensar is locked down. There's no way Nova could get in. That's the other thing as well, right? You guys are really well known.

Even with invisibility and disguises, you acting on your own as independent agents would be very bad but you can definitely send people in to do this so anything like going to vortensar because that's going to be a thing we're going to do a proper like adventure where you guys go to vortensar and do that stuff but before then you might want to do some some some sneaky spines um yeah so yeah so i guess like before we make a domain move then kim what's the goal do you want to destabilize vortensar and kind of push back against the propaganda and maybe weaken them as a as a domain do you want to know certain specifics do you want to ask a question and be like i want to know what kind of troops they have i want to know uh if this you know if the seekers are active in the city i want

to know like you know are there certain things like that or do you want to try and weaken them in some way because that's what espionage is really good for it's either asking questions about your enemy or it's about weakening them basically and like disrupting their so like you could basically try and disrupt their communications you could try and disrupt their supplies you can try and weaken their resolve um you can do one of the three i don't know if this could be represented by a thing but i almost want to weaken their alliance to uh to the valkyrian empire so kind of just yeah absolutely so that would be resolved thinking like yeah yeah that's that's a perfect example of what the resolve defense would be good for like you trying to sow the seeds of like look you're being misled like you don't know what

you're fighting for you don't know what valkyrian really is and that would be an attempt against their resolve to try and weaken it um cool all right in that case so you're gonna make an espionage role now i've given you an example like you can send moonstar who's a good espionage agent you don't have to if you again if you can think of an npc who is really close to the party and owes you something that's the kind of conditions for an npc being a retainer an agent right is they've got to be somebody that is actually quite close to you guys and also somebody who would want to repay you in a big way like somebody who would want to go on these dangerous missions for you they can't just be a person you've met they have to be somebody that you know actually would willingly throw their life down for you um um so a couple of names popped up for me

one was tornado my brother but obviously we don't know where he is i don't know if i can really use him okay not yet but that would be i'll tell you something though kim finding tornado is a really good use of espionage or law so like you could task somebody with like i need to find where my brother is can you help me find him perfect use of those domain skills as well but we can come to that we're going to do the ones that everybody sent in and then we'll have a spare one left so we can do that later but that's a cool thing to do with that what's perry up to you don't you don't know yeah perry is not available to you so think of it as like somebody who's like available to you guys somebody who you know where they are somebody who like because it's

easily accessible unfortunately Perry again you've heard nothing about don't know where he is don't know what's going on with him yeah I don't want to say he's dead. You don't know? I'm pretty sure. My other idea was actually my mom, but I worry that sending her, given that she's a known... Because she has... Well, she's like a... But she's a cornerstone.

Steven Seagal, right? Yeah. So, like, you know, like... Wow. Let's not. That guy's an asshole. No, I mean... I see where you're coming from. A hundred percent.

Yeah. Your mother's not a trained spy, but there is definitely some bonus there for sure. I think if Lucius overhears you suggesting. Yeah, like you guys all know what you're all doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like perhaps someone more adept at, you know know if they get into ropey situations and whatnot i dread to think of your mom my dad in that sort of no not no uh none of your family how about no for the love of god nova jesus christ they cannot they cannot no they can't fight no let's

leave your family aside from espionage and potentially disrupting all of Walton's art and all that. They can lead happy lives. Safe. Nanny Norfear, my nanny. Let's bring in Lucius' family instead. Let's bring in your family! She's family to me, yes. However, she's highly skilled and trained at this sort of thing.

She is equipped to deal with this. Norfear is an elite espionage agent I've forgotten about nor fear so I will add nor fear she's been a double agent my whole life I don't, my mum can make a mean pizza. No, yeah, I think that's probably the better idea. I also, yeah, I don't think sending my family would perhaps be the best idea because I feel like they'd be arrested as soon as they walked in through the gates

just for being my family. They are known, yes. So, yeah. That's a really good idea. I don't know my nanny fully. I've come to terms with that now that she's led a double life. And therefore, she's the perfect choice. Wow. She's a badass.

There's a lot to unpack there. We know that. Let's keep it all wrapped up. Yeah, but I mean, it's not hard to, I mean, yeah yeah you can get in contact with nor fish she's been doing work she was spying on the cloud barons and stuff like that but you can resummon a sure if you'd like to send nor fear yeah yeah absolutely and dad definitely knows cool in that case so the domain you have for

horizon I actually gave them a plus two in espionage because I knew that this is something you wanted to do anyway. But also Danica has her own agents for things like this. So they already have like systems and things like that. Not particularly impressive. So you have a plus two from the domain. And Nanny Norfair, I'm going to give a plus four to espionage. She's very good at this stuff. This is

like her thing that she does. So this is going to be a plus six and it's against and unlike if this isn't like a normal DC, this is going to be against Vort and Sars defense basically. Yeah.

So I'm going to make a counter roll their espionage against yours with their espionage agents. So this is going to make a counter roll their espionage against yours with their espionage agents. So this is a contested roll. No. Where's my dice? I need a dice. Natural 20! Fucking great.

Unless I roll a natural 20. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. Fucking, well well so yeah so I rolled a 19 so with bonuses you're still gonna win which means what that means is

they you basically you because you beat their defense right you beat their defense you're gonna lower now normally you would only lower their defense by one because you rolled a natural 20 and this is part of Kingdoms of Warfare, you lower it by two. So they currently have a minus two to their resolve.

And also, because you've been on the contested role, they don't know what agents are doing this. They can probably guess that it's you guys, but they don't know how you're doing it, and they don't know the agents, right? Awesome. Hell yeah. And yeah, so you get reports back.

Now, this is all secret communications and things like that. Norfear goes in various ways. You get communications back that they've basically begun. They've met up with an internal group called the Seekers who are trying to kind of get to the bottom of things and uncover the truth of what's happening in vault and saw they are nor fear does send a message

back you probably would get this as a sending spell Nova idea request mission parameters am I permitted to eliminate substantial targets. I need all of it. Uh, define targets? Hell yeah, badass! Glitter cam! She would just say this, like, high-ranking members of government who are in bed with Valkyrian, promoting propaganda amongst the city base.

Wow! Valkyrian loyalists, basically. Valkyrian loyalists, basically. Valkyrian loyalists. Oh, master, who sent their regards? I mean, you could say, like, don't fucking kill them. Just, like, kill them or something. You can put a no

assassination, no disintegrations. Shit, dude. Norfyr was a legit assassin. Like, killing people is like she's just like well it's the simplest solution like they can't get up to trouble if they're dead I'm in awe

Ashurga just don't say a word I'll kill anyone who comes near you she wipes some like blood off my cheek that's from a recently used dagger. See, she simbers you with blood. Nova wanted to do this

in a non-fatal way because she's concerned that killing members of the council would make Ness turn against us. People serving the council. She's not going to be able to start killing leaders of the nation straight away. This would be like high-ranking

local people and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, if you send that back, she just says a couple more days. Yeah, it's like higher up. Norfair just responds back like understood uh you know no fatalities oh no fatalities again norfair is used to like working like she would normally take a client that she'd work for somebody it used to be lucius's father and like the the nobles of gust haven but like no like she'll she'll take orders like she's just like yeah fair enough you don't want to kill people that's fine it makes my job a bit harder but i can do that um yeah she just responds and says it's easier so when we get our full

herous animated show tv show on yeah prime slash. You know, whoever will pay the most. We'll do origin stories of all of our retainers and NPCs, right? Okay, not Nickelodeon. North is dark. Not on Nickelodeon. Maybe a movie then. A movie deal.

Yeah, you know, this is the Black Widow movie. North, their origins. Cool. Alright. So Nova, this is like an ongoing process movie. North of your origins. Cool. All right. So Nova, this is like an ongoing process, right? So right now that domain is weakened and maybe next week or maybe the next time we take a domain turn, I will give you more information

and you'll kind of see that. But right now you can know that they are weakening the hold of Valkyrian on Vortensar. Now they'll, when we finish, I'm going to take a domain turn for your enemies, and I might be able to increase that, or I might be able to strike back at you guys

and do that other stuff, right? So as a point, and I'm going to make this clear now, Giselle and Vortensar, they're a little, you know, Giselle is a bit bigger than Horizon. Vortens star is about the same size as a as a power faction right the valkyrian empire is very big compared to you guys but it's limited in how much it can bring to bear so if you guys um i think i put you guys as a size

rating of two vorten star is also a two just sell is about a three the valkyrian empire is a six it is so much more influential and powerful but it can't bring its full weight to bear just yet it's limited in what it can do yeah holding up for that so just just as a point uh right let's move so quill uh this was actually something century wanted to do as well but i'm gonna make it your like thing quill um you wanted to improve communications and stuff but I'm going to make it your thing, Quill. You wanted to improve communications and stuff like that, but also do scrying and lore stuff. So what do you think you want to do? If you've got one, two, three,

you've got three of these domain actions left between you for this downtime, what would you like to do? Work on the communications, improving those between the allies, or do more loreorry stuff i would uh i think in the in the time that we've had i would probably spend some time returning to uh the arakokran homelands above the valley of storms and all of that because uh mother kala mentioned that um the messenger guild was in a bit of a disarray at the meetings, and I think I'd want to not rebuild that,

but rejuvenate that in some way and assist in any way I can with sending, with message, with scrying, with the Eye of the Storm, all these different things, and some way to rebuild communications in the Messenger Guild homeland. So I'd spend some time with Mama Kalah,

finally, geez um and also as a personal thing it's like a personal growth thing i think spending time in in hespa territory i would try and uh sort of grow a connection with i guess not hespa anymore but now siasca so as a personal growth thing that's not something i would do there too but um but yeah ultimately working on communications, sending messages, assisting in that way, get forces in the right places, get people where they need to be in this entire war effort.

I think that's perfect. So that would basically be increasing your communications defense. That's what it's going to be represented by. How do you want to go about that so you know some of the skills are really obvious like nova wants to spy on stuff that's an espionage check lucius and ayla wanted to make allies that's diplomacy with stuff like boosting your communications defense you can it's up to you how you want to do that so like are you going the more magical route by using like scrying and things like that to try and bolster it that would be a law bonus um if you want to try and make it more of like a like a physical operation like military operations like organizing their

routes organizing the way that communication is transported putting people in charge that's more of an operations thing you could also maybe enlist the aid of other groups like the dragons or gustaven and that would be more of a diplomacy thing you could maybe make it so it's an espionage thing and say like we're going to do all coded communications now so that our enemies can't you know figure out what we're doing um it's this is like where your creativity can come into it like you tell me what of those four things is the way you're approaching this bolstering of communication yeah i mean i at the moment the messenger guild is like this global erosion thing that is like a service for all to guilds yeah um yeah and i i it would be

a huge effort to make it work but making it something that gisella now no longer has this asset anymore like it's like a privatized thing within this war effort on our side and they now have no access to the arakokra i mean it does mean turning the arakokrans and the entire messenger guild to our side but i mean if that's something you can do that would be pretty that is something you can do for me that that is basically using diplomacy basically you're going to use diplomacy to speak to the arakoka and the messenger girl and say you need to stop helping them like they are now our enemies and they are they we do not help them anymore like they are we you you are not neutral, Messenger Guild.

You are with us. You are with the Horizon Alliance now. So that would be a diplomacy. I think that would be using a diplomacy check. And do you have an idea of a retainer or an agent? I mean, it does feel a little cheap to use Mama Kalah because, I mean, it's like, obviously she's okay to help me out because she's Mama Kalah because I mean, it's like obviously she's okay

to help me out because she's Mama Kalah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, she's like high up in the Messenger Guild in some form. Absolutely. She has a little bit of experience with diplomacy and operations. I'd say, you know, not the best, but

pretty good. She does have that connection to the Messenger Guild. The other thing is, I don't mind using mama koa because if you roll really badly something bad happens to her so it's all this is out you know what that makes me want to use it the whole family involved so horizons domain bonus to diplomacy is plus one um I would say marika would normally have a plus two let's make it a plus three because she's dealing directly with the messenger guild which she has authority in so this is going to be a plus four bonus total plus four to a regular d20 18 18 yeah i mean i'm waiting for that one uh yeah marika basically spends that time speaking with individual members of the messenger

guild speaking to nations speaking to countries and at the end of it you kind of rejoin her for this final kind of talks marika delivers this speech which is to the essence of they are our enemies now we cannot work with them we cannot sit on the fence of this conflict. Our skills will ensure victory for the true inheritors of this planet. And there's this big sort of like, she's right. We need to go with Marika's plan and with Quill's plan. And they agreed to it basically. And cool. Amazing. Marika here. So that's going to increase your communications defense by plus one.

Wasn't that for 20? It doesn't reduce theirs. It doesn't reduce theirs. So the way it wouldn't work is like they will have their own network of communications that aren't going to rely on the Messenger Guild. You're basically just turning the Messenger Guild to only benefit you, which is going to give

you a bonus, but it doesn't take anything away from them because they'll have their own systems in play. So like you did before the messenger guild came onto your side so um but that's still a good thing having a plus to these defenses is really handy um yeah cool start the war makes sense to work on defense rather than attacking yeah absolutely yeah and it's uh the i don't want to do like full warfare because from the MCDM booklet, there is a whole thing of units and combat. I'm not going to go into that stuff.

We're going to resolve battles just more like you're going to send units and maybe we make some simple dice rolls based on those units and what bonuses, kind of like we're doing now, but you'll pick and choose where those fights take place. Or it will be more like an XCOM where I'll say like,

oh no, Valkyrians are attacking this town. You better send a cool squad to go and help them. And then like, you just, we send a squad, right? And then you go and do that stuff. We'll cross that bridge. Cool. So that's four of your six domain actions used. Sentry, you had a lot of stuff you wanted to do and all of it could be any of these things.

It was like, I want to work on communications with the dragons. I want to train all of the forces in Horizon. I want to send scouting units to go and find the other teleportation circles and arcs and destroy them. It was like you had a big list of stuff. So for now, do you want to just pick one thing that you're going to do and we'll pick that one I think after

the recent encounter we've just had I think setting up guardian patrols around trade routes and trade towns is probably going to be on my mind the most we need a guardian in every city like bolstering the harvest guard protecting routes around like gust haven port

around there an armored shell around the world yeah i mean that's so that is a perfect example of the operation domain skill so that's like a more military bent uh do you have an idea of who you would like to assign to it for organizing that kind of thing this isn't necessarily somebody who's leading it this is somebody who's coordinating it from horizon mainly yeah so rain would be good yeah yeah rain's like this is this is exactly what rain is is kind of not built for because he's not a guardian uh but this is what he's trained for like coordinating military units and understanding logistics um transporting troops, using the airships and air skiffs to get people where they need to go.

He's more than happy to help you coordinate with this. So operations is actually one of your strongest abilities. It's a plus two, but it's on its way to becoming a plus three. So operations is base is a plus two, and then rain has a plus four to operations. This is exactly what he's designed for. So this is a D a plus two and then rain has a plus four to operations this is this is exactly what he's designed for so this is a d20 plus six watch this drive oh 21 21 so actually i should have asked this before the roll. So you want to set up these patrols.

What's the goal of the patrols? Is this to protect the resources of Erois and the Alliance? Is this to protect things like that? Or is this to just fend off Valkyrian attacks and things like that? What's the actual, like, what do you want to get out of this? Yeah, so it's to protect mostly the trade routes, attacks and things like that what's the actual like what do you want to get out of this yeah so it's um to protect mostly the trade routes to keep cargo safe um from like maybe the potential wind baron attacks valkyrian attacks um keeping supply routes safe like even even like looters or

like rep like people who are just going to take advantage of like you know this kind of chaos really like this upcoming chaos. That's perfect because that is that's easily represented by the resources defense of Horizon. So we can just basically improve the defense of that. So we can just give you a plus one for that role to represent you sending these additional forces to protect that stuff. Cool. So does that make sense? Like it's very abstract because there's a lot of room for creativity right like you can use these four skills you have these three defenses and i'm

gonna do stuff to you you can do stuff to like the enemy factions um you have the war assets that are going to be useful when you want to like actually fight stuff which i'm going to maybe do next domain turn because i need to figure it out a bit more um you have the allies and stuff like that any questions about any of this stuff yeah how often do these things actually take place or is it just when we have downtime we'll use these things or how long do these events these actions take to complete the the time exactly will vary the idea is that in between these big story arc stuff that we're going to do so like the way and we'll get to this because we're about to uh you know we've got a little bit more time but the idea is the next thing you guys are going to do is probably go after one of the titans because valor has found one of them once you come back from that fight because that will probably be

a little mini dungeon when we come back from that which might be like a couple of sessions or something like that when you come back from that we'll probably do like another month goes by of this stuff right and we'll do another domain turn then maybe you know depending on stuff that happens maybe that's when you go to vortensar maybe that's when you go to al-saraf to meet with the wild elves that want to speak with ayla we'll do another sort of mini dungeon thing there then we'll do like another month or two months of the domain downtime, more stuff happens. So on and so forth and so

on and so forth, right? Does that make sense? I was going to say with the sixth action we've still got, like, maybe I mean, Valor has found a Titan now, sure, but like, using Petal as a retainer to assist in the lore of Valor's research and discovery of these things as well.

The one thing I'm going to put... That's the one thing you can't use lore for, because Valor is the only one who can do this. Right. The Titans have divine magic that mortals... A mortal mage could not find these pocket dimensions. Even looking at the lore of the

titans, even understanding their history isn't going to help you find them. Valor is the only one who can and break into the space. Most often Valor can find them easily enough. It's learning how she can break into their dimension and it also serves as a way of me padding that

time out where i can just say valor's found another one you better go and do it now like you know it's a bit gamey but the idea is that valor is the only one who can do the time makes sense now petal like you know if you want to research things like oh we want to you know for example i know lucius wants to do some research onto dispelling hadar energy and stuff like that that is something that maybe petal can help with because there are you know you have resources and things like that now it's actually more of a kind of dealing with an energy source rather than it is like finding a divinely hidden pocket plane um or it could be things like uh do we know if Kalos has any weaknesses because like

you just captured a summer Eladrin you're going to have your soldiers will find prisoners will capture intel that might give you clues to that stuff it just depends on what you roll and how hard it is you know depending on the information you want things like does Kalos Starbane have a weakness probably going to be a very high

DC to achieve that but if you want to do things like hey can we find out any intel on where that fucking warforged colossus is that could be a thing that you can use the lore check for um you know stuff like that i mean there's also gisella like that entire continent we haven't even thought about there's uh they yeah there's definitely i would say that the two months after the flight from the city of glass just seller is not very happy um you they they basically believe they have all the rights in the world that you are the villains you came into their land and you

attacked their military forces um and you've stolen you know a bunch of traitors and all this kind of stuff. They are playing the victims in all of this. They were attacking the city. Whatever, screw those guys. Or city of glasses on their turf. That's their property, just the way they see it.

It's like, oh, that's ours. We can do what we want. There was also, I've completely forgotten his name now in the meetings, who was saying, if anything changes, we'll join your side. Yeah, that would be the grand strategist of Zephenna.

Grand strategist, yeah. So maybe that could be the sixth action of communicating with this dude, getting him on side. I figure this is like an incurrent discussion, like you guys in the war room, right? Like figuring out, you know, this other thing that you guys want to do as part of this break that you took. I think that's a brilliant idea.

I feel like we have more than enough evidence that could turn the tide for them, make their decision up. Yeah. I mean, we've gained an entire Guardian army and a flying city and a successful attack, well, defense from Gisela, all the allies we've made, I think that must be enough for the Grand

Strategist now. We've made some very impressive steps forward. Okay. We could also give them the information about Zarkira siding with Hadar. Because if a leader is not able to control his own forces and his own lieutenants, you know, that's a pretty big sign of weakness, frankly.

Well, I will tell you this. You do not need to spend an action to send this kind of information to the Grand Strategist. You can get this information to them. And the Grand Strategist's response is thus. I am very compelled by your arguments and by the evidence of which I've been presented, but also the occupation of my own city. It seems that sitting on the fence is not something that this Valkyrian takes lightly.

I'm more than happy to lend my aid to your cause. If only I am able to escape my own palace. If you can send forces to help me to help... What's the word I'm looking for? Extract me and bring me to Horizon. My forces are yours.

I would be glad to count you as an ally for a timely rescue. Though I am not being ill-treated, I am also not permitted to leave, something I find too uncomfortable for my own tastes. So what this means is, so Zephenna is a big continent south of Jakesh. What this means is, rather than, again, you guys trying to get him out could be an adventure like we could make that a thing that you do um or you could also try and

send one of your war assets to extract uh the grand strategist which will save you time because it means you can do other stuff yeah one action left so this would be an operation yeah um i mean also before we go too far with this i'm was there anything else anyone wanted to do with this last action just in case there was research or something like that i think there's lots of things but you'll get another one of these where you'll get another six actions and stuff you You get to decide what you want to do. Yeah. Okay. So in terms of who we use. Yeah.

We have. So this isn't. So with this one, this won't be one of your agents this time. This will be one of your war assets. So this would be like a military force. Right. So this would be your guardian army, your guardian scouts, or the newly acquired wild elf commandos. Those are the three, because horizon guard can't be sent on missions.

They are locked to horizon. They are here to protect the city. Well, the wild elf commandos are stealth and skirmish. Stealth and smash and grab. So that sounds good, right? In a city, though. That's the difficulty I mean

Xifena does have jungle areas the city itself will be you know cultured and stone and it will be like a place yeah also lowlands wild elves cities they don't do

perhaps guardian scouts then yeah I guess it's more for the dragons Wild elves, cities, they don't do great work. Perhaps guardian scouts then? Yeah. I guess it's more for the dragons, but this isn't a blow up and burn kind of job. No, so that's the other thing, is if you want, you could actually try and recruit one of your allies. So if you want, you could try and use diplomacy to get the dragons to go and do this mission instead.

So rather than you making an operations role, you basically make a diplomacy check and then I make a role for the dragons to see what they do. But their units are generally pretty good. So the three that you have access to is the Druids of Mierskir have a special unit of what they call healers or land shapers.

So they can actually do a lot of like, you know, rebuilding the terrain and stuff like that. City of sky uh the city of gust haven sorry has griffin cavalry large regiment of griffin cavalry and then the dragons their special unit i've just called war dragon which is you get a fucking dragon you get a big ass fucking dragon it's like fully armored and like you know oh cool it's yeah it's not quiet it's not quiet it's not quiet it's powerful but not quiet it'll probably do it but or that's also the other thing is if you fail on the diplomacy that means you can't send a unit this domain turn if you if you fail on the diplomacy role to convince the dragons,

it means that they're like, sorry, we don't think this is a valuable use of our time. You know, we do want to be allies, but we can't commit to this mission. So it could be a waste. So it's like a gamble. What's it going to be? Anyone got any particular favorites

on strategy for this plan? I do kind of want to send a dragon, though, you know? Yeah, a dragon is cool. I think it's a bit much. It's a bit much. I don't think it's a thing for a dragon. I personally think guardian scouts.

Yeah, I think scouts are probably an approach. So I'll tell you, I'm giving each of these war assets just keywords. I'm not giving them stats, I'm just giving them keywords. And then certain keywords, I'll be like, yeah, that keyword kind of fits. I'll give them a bonus. The Guardian Scouts are elite, which means that they just inherently get a flat bonus because they're really good, they're trained at what they do.

And then they have adaptable, which means that they're very good at chaotic situations or things that need to rapidly change because they've got all these different purposes and skills and tools and stuff that they can use for it oh cool oh that works then i think and then the guardian army has elite so they're an elite unit as well and then they have something called stalwart which means they're very good at defending things they're an elite unit as well. And then they have something called stalwart, which means they're very good at defending things. They're very good at, like, holding a region. They're not that great at attacking,

but they are really good at just keeping a place defended. That's kind of the Guardian's whole thing, the Guardian Army, the Guardian soldiers. They hold the line. Awesome. Cool. Well, do you want to send the scouts? Scouts work, I think, yeah.

I should do it. Yes. All right. Send in the scouts. Who wants to send the scouts scouts work i think yeah i should do it yes all right who wants to make the d20 roll on this who wants to be the readers riannon wants to make the roll so don't forget you can spend a thousand gold to give a plus one bonus and there's no critical failure as well there is a critical failure but yeah it's not an auto fail okay let's just do it all right how bad can it be all right i haven't even told you the full bonuses but you're rolling i love it doesn't matter it doesn't fucking matter rolls an 18 so uh you send in the guardian scouts which is um led by scout and uh and those guys tracker and stuff like that and uh yeah they send you a communication like they basically send you a pre-op communication through like a scroll of sending which is sentinel prime we're about to

we're about to engage the mission we have zephenna in our sights our sights. We believe we know where the grand strategy is being kept. We'll report back. If you don't hear from us, I'm afraid the mission went very badly. And then there's a few hours of silence where you don't hear anything else. And then you get a very hasty, very out of breath or kind of like panicked scout who's just like, well, we did it. We've got the grand strategy out. We think we've escaped a detection.

We're not making our way to the extraction point where the storm chaser's gonna meet us we'll take us a few days but we'll bring him back as soon as we can and then that kind of cuts out and yeah so by the time the next after you complete this titans thing the grand strategist will be back in horizon

and will be considered an ally cool is the storm chaser like a unit as well? Or is it just like a transport in this sense? It's your transport. So it probably

wouldn't have been the storm chaser that went to pick up Scout. Actually, it would have been another airship that they're using. The storm chaser is your transport,

so it's never used as like a war asset because it assumes that you guys are using it to do all this other stuff that you're doing, basically. you know it's it's the storm chaser is taking ayla to meet the elves and then it took you to go and meet the messenger guild and then it took you know so and so and so and so forth it's like oraya is like ferrying you guys all over the fucking place and then when it's not when it's not ferrying people places azaria perel and thalia are

basically converting it into a fucking astral warship you know they're they're fucking putting the work on it that was an incredibly successful round by the way that was very successful so the general rule is like if you fail check its degrees so it's like oh you failed it by like one or three something bad probably is going to happen but it's not the worst if you fail to check, it's degrees. So it's like, oh, you failed it by like one or three. Something bad probably is going to happen, but it's not the worst. If you fail it by like more than five, it's pretty fucking bad. And if it's a natural one, it's really fucking bad. Like it's the kind of degree I gave it.

You guys just rolled super well, even without big bonuses. Very cool. Yeah. yeah very very cool and this was all taking place like while you guys were doing other stuff and like some of it's still going to happen eventually but this has all kind of been going over um and this is what danica's like been briefing you on so like she brought you back to kind of go over the the results of all of this stuff she's informing you that the messenger guild have agreed you know go and congratulate them ah yes the wild elves we've just you know we've had their wild elf commandos come in rain's putting them to work as is you know she's kind of briefing you all of that and then eventually uh valor and maximilian um maximilian uh looks like one thing you would

have noticed is over the two months maxim Maximilian has started properly looking after himself. He does eat, he does train. He won't leave Valor's side. He doesn't go anywhere else. But over two months, Danica has become more comfortable with the idea and she has allowed them to kind of wander around. Like not, they have a guard with them at all times. Like they have like four guards with them,

but they do have a bit more freedom to move around. She's beginning to trust Valor a little bit more. And Maximilian is taking care of himself, but he's still very wary. Quite a few times he's probably come to your suite where him and Valor are staying, and you've heard him loudly complaining about how the city is poorly managed.

He complains that there is crime. He's just like like i saw a pick pocket and they escaped and he's he's flabbergasted that this is a thing that can happen um he is you know he thinks that danica is a really weak leader he's just like she should have killed me yeah he's like um but he's also just yeah it's like he's falling back into uh you know himself um he's just highly critical of things that aren't the valkyrian empire he's just very judgmental he's just like crime gross you know sorry do we have any giant demons running casinos around here max that was not in gideon that was not in gideideon- That was not in Gideon Prime,

Keelakad Kalah. I understand- the demons do have- You got rekt. I have a problem with the demons, but Gideon Prime is far beyond this need. There is no crime. There is no poverty. I saw beggars with addictions

to drugs. Disgusting. I mean, they have none of that in Gideon Prime? Of course not. No. If somebody needs something, they are given it. They have housing, they have jobs, they have food. Things like drugs are stamped out as a sin. It's evil. How long until we can go out to the Astral Sea?

I'm into it I'm not saying any of this yeah but yeah so max is weird but valor kind of comes in with max this is you guys have just got back from that mission where you fended off the Aladrin valor comes in and you can that vala again over these two months she doesn't seem to have gotten any older again which you've noticed before when she got close to siasca she seemed to become more of like a young adult um but she's so regal like the way that she moves the way that she stands there's just an it's like an aura around her which is just uh magical you know like her hair seems to just like kind of gently float around her um you've kind of seen it but yeah there's just

she's coming into this power that you can see um and in fact i don't even think she walks into the room i think that there is basically you see like a line appear in space like a purple kind of shimmering line, and then she parts it and her and Max step through. And you see Max kind of like, ugh, that happens too often and he doesn't like it. And she's just like, ah, you're all back, marvelous. How was the mission? Is everyone all right?

Everyone's okay. Yes, everyone is totally fine. All civilians rescued, so great. And we had to fight a load of trees. They bashed me a lot. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope that their bark was worse than their bite. She kind of looks at you like, I made a joke. She raises her eyebrows at cool, like, hm eyebrows we set something on fire oh that would probably be very effective against tree creatures I imagine

awful yeah Max probably is just like Max folds his arms he's like we had a few rebellions around the fey realms putting their tree warriors to flame is an easy way to disturb their morale also had some intelligence regarding the valkyrian empire and their next step

max turns sour when you say that and he just steps away and valor just looks looks back and says i'm sure commander rain will be very delighted to hear that i'm not really my area of expertise but i do have some well i wouldn't say it's good news i mean it's ultimately going to be an incredibly dangerous thing but i think i found one of the titans i think i've managed to translocate them now it's i know you wanted me to try and find a telekis but he's proving the hardest to find i think i found zephir there's a disturbance there's been lots of reports and i tracked some of the magic and it really has the strong aura of zephir out in the sea i think i can open a portal to it now we'll need to head down there we'll need to have a ship a vessel uh knowing sophia her realm will be oceanic we'll want something that we can stay on i don't recommend we take the storm chaser we

might be better if we find a more sea bearing vessel um great job fella well done i know that took a great deal of effort i mean effort not so much lots of very boring meditations mainly it's weird doing nothing is surprisingly hard work yes it's uh tricky but i think i've found zephir and the energy i'm sensing is chaotic and violent. I think that you should expect a battle once you arrive. Zephira has always been tempestuous, reckless even. I think that the idea of a battle against Kallus, the idea of giving up her divinity, I think it's broken her. I think she's seeking death. I think she's just... I think she's seeking death.

I think she wants to go out in a blaze of glory, but in our own terms. I don't even know if I can make sense of it. Right. We'll expect the worst then. I would do so, yes. She looks at Aayla. Expect thunder and lightning as well.

Luckily, I think Aayla is quite equipped to deal with that. My favorite. Don't doubt. Zephira is powerful. She's one of the stronger titans. To face her head on, she's weakened, but it will be a difficult battle. And remember that it is her realm.

She'll be able to control everything that isn't the ship and yourselves. I think I can open up a passage wide enough for a ship. We may want to consider who exactly we take as a crew. But yes, I would make preparations to locate that sort of thing. But yes, remember that she has full control of the realm. The oceans, creatures that may be living there, herself,

the weather, all of this will be tools at her disposal. And how will this affect you, Valar, opening a portal this big for a ship? Sounds like a lot of power. It is. I think I'm up to the challenge now.

I've been training, I've been practicing. I managed opening rifts between space, and this is perhaps something that Nova, I think you and Tiangong understand quite well. It is not actually that complicated. It requires an amount of power, but actually doing so I find quite simple now. The difference here will be the scale and also piercing Zephir's defenses itself. Now the difficulty will be, I need to come with you and I will need to keep that, I need to basically give her get us a way out

once you've defeated zephyr i before the space collapses i'll need to give us an escape route so i will need to come with you and max has assured me he will not leave my side so i don't think you need to worry about protecting me i'll create a shield to protect myself but i will need to be there with you um and i'm not sure if i can do much to help you once we're inside okay okay so assemble a crew find a ship head straight into zephyr's lands and uh take down a god right a god a titan technically a titan but yes certainly very powerful foe with godlike powers well let me know when you're ready never

I don't think I'll ever be ready the sooner the better though Quill yeah I'll be ready perhaps you can enquire with Miss Oriah I know that she used to be a sailor perhaps she may

know somebody who can give us a ship or provide us with passage true but until then just come come and gather me fetch me when you're ready to go and she just nods she's like max let's go get something to eat i think that we've both earned a bit of a rest you just kind of very well my lady he just follows him behind her and she raises her hand he's like please lady valour we can walk to the kitchen we do not need to teleport she looks back and she's like oh fine and then the two of them kind of

make their way out of the room also it's been so long that we've streamed I forgot we're supposed to end at 8 it's been a really long time've streamed, I forgot we're supposed to end at 8. Yeah, we are supposed to end at 8. I was wondering if you were just going. I didn't realise. I was just like, I'm having fun.

My stomach is rumbling. I forgot. I was like, we finish at 9. I was like, we finish at 9. That's when we finish. I'll die. It's good to be here. It's been so exciting hearing what everyone wanted to do and like

catching up on the world yeah when you said Sentry has a lot of things to do I looked at the time I was like it's 8 o'clock go Sentry with all of these things you want to do yeah love our time but yeah that was cool i really love the

uh the uh what is it called sorry domains yeah domains from kingdoms and warfare by mcdm so again i've butchered the system i've done my own spin on it but a lot of the stuff like the skills the defenses all of that straight out of kingdoms and warfare um very very cool if you want and also it's got some of the coolest fucking monsters i've seen in ages in that book highly recommend cool well there you go thank you so much i'm sorry to sorry i went for like another 30 minutes but good stuff uh welcome back we're back we'll be back next week yeah it's great i'm playing d D&D with my friends. I love it. Goodbye. We love you. Bye.

Check out D&D Beyond in the link. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Have a good week. Bye. Love you. Bye. Love you.