R'lyeh - Turn 4
Turn 4 starts with good news (some earth gems in R'lyeh) and bad news (brigands in the Sea of Carassos increase unrest). The Sea of Carassos is the province Yöt-Webbogoth conquered last turn.
Yöt-Webbogoth continues on its rampage and subdues the northern sea of Baptizer. Barely pausing, it continues east, now accompanied by the pudgy prophet Nyarlathothep.
They're going up against a province with shark knights next. I don't want one of those bypassing the big guy and skewering the prophet. So I'm having him sneak -- the kraken does not need the smite support. The extra temple check is more important.
In addition the good and the bad news, there's also great news:
Auluudh crawls out of whatever repulsive lair he had kept himself secluded. He has slightly more magic picks than my regular mind lords and twice as many "enslave mind" attacks. Oh, and he gets fear, which the regular version doesn't have.
Note from the future/present: it's a bit strange, but more recently I've looked at him, and he had only one enslave mind attack instead of the normal two or the four he used to have. He's also properly amphibious instead of both amphibious and aquatic at once. Here's a picture of him from the future/present:
So the best way to use him is on the front. He immediately is drafted and marches (well, slithers) off to the south-east of R'lyeh at the front of the several lumbering slave trolls, a score of downtrodden atlanteans and tritons, the same number of imbecile lobo guard and almost a dozen mindblasting giboleths and gibodais. Their target: Moon Sea, a province held by one of the powerful Amber Clans.
In other news:
Maverni sends greetings. They're located on the north coast, off the Sea of Carassos. I send a reply which the aboleths have censored for some reason. Maybe Bluemage142 will leak it...
Note from the future/present: looks like he did. Excellent. Although I can't see it -- is imgur not working for you guys, too?
So far the gameplay. Instead of graph analysis, for those who like, another little story. Feel free to skip.
***
The city was in ruins, motionless under glittering schools of cod. The kelp had not yet claimed the broken buildings and tumbled towers. Nithü the Slave Mage drifted with the current, dispassionate as his eyes roamed over the destruction.
Scavenging crabs scuttled away as he passed them. A small shark circled him at a distance, just out of sight in the murky green waters of the northern seas. But Nithü had senses other than sight to guide him. There... one tower still stood.
With a measured kick of his tail, the merman propelled himself closer. It was strange, coming home like this.
Like all triton towers, the court mage's tower had its entrance at the top. Nithü let himself sink down to the flagstones. The door had been warded with certain sigils of the aquatic school. Their power had bled away with time, Nithü knew. A week ago the tower would have been hidden by the strange currents the sigils conjured.
He knew who would wait within.
The merman thumped the iron-shod tip of his staff against the door. Shod with the iron of R'lyeh, not with the mage-crafted amber he would once have carried.
"Lagash!" he called. "The kraken is long gone. It is safe to come out."
For time, Nithü waited and followed the shark's distant circles with his mind.
"Lagash!" he called again. "What are you waiting for?"
His new powers told him of a presence just behind the door. Just as he pulled back his staff for another strike, it opened a crack.
"Nithü?" a querulous voice asked. "Nithü! It is you! It is a miracle."
The slave mage studied his former teacher critically. Lagash, the court mage of the Northern Kingdom, now little resembled the well-groomed figure he had once been. His hair and beard were still green, but hung lank and bedraggled, and the wrinkled robe was in a state the triton mage would once have never accepted. He blinked in the comparative brightness.
"Nithü. When you were lost, we thought you were gone forever. Did you escape? Did the kraken attack the aboleths, too? If so, we must travel to the Southern Kingdom at once! Old grievances must drift away, we have the opportunity--"
"We have nothing," Nithü cut him off. "The Northern Kingdom lies in ruins around you, old man. The Southern Kingdom is about to fall as we speak: R'lyeh was not destroyed, but awoken. And I, I did not escape. No, Lagash, I now serve the God of Near and Close. The things I know now... you triton mages are like children. I have more power as a slave in R'lyeh than I would ever have had here in the Northern Kingdom."
"But you would have been free!" the triton quavered.
"I would have been a merman, and never the equal of you noble tritons with your precious royal lineage. Now I know the true shape of things... now... why am I even talking to you? You are an irrelevance. Leave the tower, swear fealty to the Kraken God, and you may have a future. You can run, but the sea is a circle, and R'lyeh lies at the beginning and the end."
"Run? Swear fealty? I have had enough of hiding!" Suddenly the ancient mage's eyes blaze fierce and wild. He throws wide his arms, robe swirling in the water, and shouts a word of power. A shockwave of water strikes the younger mage and whirls him against the tower's breastwork.
Nithü brandishes his own staff to answer in kind, but before he can complete the gesture, another strike flattens him against the flagstones. Blood billows from his smashed nose. As he tries to rise, the water strikes a third time.
The old triton glides up to his former student. "Now you will die like the traitor you are, merman scum! And then we will see about your masters." He pulls back his staff of hardened amber for the coup de grace. Behind him a shape appears out of the green murk, and is gone just as quickly, leaving behind a cloud of blood.
Lagash stares at the stump of his arm. The shark strikes again, taking a leg this time. Two more passes, and the triton is no more.
Nithü gets up slowly, using his iron-tipped staff to keep his balance. He knows the shark will come again, and turns to face the beast. Now it is Nithü's turn to shout a word in the language of shark-kind, which is to say it is not truly a sound. But the shark slows, passes the merman by. Its empty black eye seems to glare.
The shark turns in a lazy circle and makes for the merman again. Now the mage calls the abyss between the stars into his eyes and locks his gaze with the predator. Shark-kind has lived a long time, unchanged, not least because it knows which is prey and which is not. It knows the mark of R'lyeh, and knows better than to tresspass.
After a moment Nithü swam over to where his teacher's amber staff had come to rest. He picked it up: it would have some value to his new masters. Then he decided differently, and with a silent spell broke the staff in two. He tossed the pieces over the breastwork, where they would rest among the tumbled stones at the tower's base.
Then he sent a thought along the astral ley lines, informing the aboleth council of a new source of water gems in the Sea Untamed.