Inactive [LP CYOA] Overlord

[Nevill]

A. “If you desire my protection, I can offer you something better.” You have the villagers swear allegiance to you instead of the kingdom. If you are doing the king’s work of protecting them, you might as well collect the taxes for yourself instead of him, and have the goblins come in to assist you in management. Since this place is remote, you do not think they will take notice until at least the next tax season comes along, and by then you should have more contingency plans in place.

Take over the village. All Empires have to start with something.

2. You continue to keep it hidden. There is no point in revealing it to these superstitious villagers just yet.

And continue doing what you've been doing so far.

B. Your mana capacity and magical abilities have increased. Minor increase to Mana, Magical Attack and Magical Defense.

Specialize further. Delegate the meatshield duty to Rin - if she can't handle it, chances are we won't be able either. Just don't send her alone after some strange figures in black anymore.

A. You learn from the book of illusion. You gain the spell Another Face, allowing you to put on a limited form of magical disguise so that you look like another person.

Aw, yiss. A bit of subterfuge goes a long way.

Maybe we will be able to develop even more complex spells of that school later.

A. You touch the gauntlet to the shard. What is the worst that can happen?

Spoiler

Need I say more?

Interesting that Barzamites have carried the glove to the ruins where the former Demon Lord resided. The most puzzling thing for me is - did the crystal belong to Barzam, or was the man Rin fought an independent ally that they were wary of? However, if they were worried about the shard, they wouldn't leave the glove with the smaller force that went for the ruins.

 

[treave]

Was this Gygadine variation so flashy from the start, or has it become even more exaggerated thanks to our new form?

You didn't have the lightning wings or lightning crown originally. Since you are now a 'lord', you naturally become more lordly and regal. This is the 'battle variant' however, which is different in power output from the 'peeking variant'.

That reminds me: how related is magic and physical stamina related in this setting? Considering that the Halo recharges our inner mana, would that mean Erd is capable of theoretically casting spells all day as long as he lets the halo recharge? Is there a risk of drawing so much mana from the surroundings that the environment withers, Dark Sun style?

Draining your mana will make you tired or even knock you out, but it is a resource separate from physical stamina which relates to vitality. Someone with high vitality and very low mana might be able to run all day without getting tired, but use a technique or spell or two and that might wear him out. The physicians do not know the exact mechanism by which this strange phenomenon happens so far.

Erdrick can cast more spells than usual, and replenish his mana at a faster rate than most other mages. As for withering the environment, no one has ever accomplished that yet. But it is quite possible to change the whole world into lightning if you have enough mana to do the job.

 

[Baltika9]

C2 I'm not eager to get into a dispute with Methuss over this village for a bunch of peasants in the middle of nowhere. I can't imagine anyone in the court being happy with them proclaiming a free city. Besides, I want to move East at the first opportunity.
D Erdrick already expressed regret for not investing more in his defense and I agree.
C You know how fearsome Rin's axe is, now set it on fire.
B This is very suspicious. We're a scholar, so let's do the smart thing and research this first. As it is, this thing is throwing up red flags all over the place.

 

[archaen]

treave, does Ed think that the illusion spell has any chance of hiding his halo or wing or does he think it needs a spell of higher level?

 

[Esquilax]

Draining your mana will make you tired or even knock you out, but it is a resource separate from physical stamina which relates to vitality. Someone with high vitality and very low mana might be able to run all day without getting tired, but use a technique or spell or two and that might wear him out. The physicians do not know the exact mechanism by which this strange phenomenon happens so far.

Erdrick can cast more spells than usual, and replenish his mana at a faster rate than most other mages. As for withering the environment, no one has ever accomplished that yet. But it is quite possible to change the whole world into lightning if you have enough mana to do the job.

Conversely, treave, will being physically tired make it harder to cast spells? If you're in a fight and exhausted, I would imagine that it is far more difficult to concentrate or to speak out the incantations without panting for breath.

 

[Kz3r0]

1) C. 2
2) B
3) A
4) A

 

[asxetos]

A1. Its going to happen sooner or later. Why not now?
B.
C. Without the enchantments, our goblins will never be able to face the human armies. I would prefer A or even B but i think C will be of more use. Also, treave, can the spells be taught to magic-apt goblins?
A. Brace for Sphere Diplomacy!

 

[treave]

treave, does Ed think that the illusion spell has any chance of hiding his halo or wing or does he think it needs a spell of higher level?

It could, but since it's a low level illusion, it can also be (relatively) easily broken.

Conversely, treave, will being physically tired make it harder to cast spells? If you're in a fight and exhausted, I would imagine that it is far more difficult to concentrate or to speak out the incantations without panting for breath.

Very few people can concentrate enough to cast spells while fighting at the same time, particularly since mistakes in cadence or pronunciation can lead to spell failures, but as a former Hero you've mastered that skill. Also, you are capable of verbalizing most of your incantations in thought instead of speaking them out loud.

Also, treave, can the spells be taught to magic-apt goblins?

It would need time, but yes.

 

[archaen]

treave, second question: How fast do the Goblins breed? Can we ask them how many years from birth to warrior? It might be worth taking food from the village if we can pop boom an army in a few years. Actually, looking at the options there is no take the food option so I guess it doesn't matter but I am still curious.

 

[Elfberserker]

X
I don't really have strong option in this. This would defninately start our empire building and I am pretty confidant that our guy can handle those tax men....The only problem I have is that we then get stuck in here for long period of time without really having no information.
D
More Defence is nice, considering that we keep up ending close combat situations.
B
Healing, Fuuuuuuuck yeah!!!!!!!!
This should at least help a bit with healing potion situation right now and keep our underlings longer time alive to level-up.
Not to mention that wouldn't be on completely relied on our potion count.

A

 

[Esquilax]

1) I'm torn on this one. Laying low is of utmost importance here, especially given our obviously non-human features. We'll probably have to pay tribute to Methuss in the meantime anyways (I don't see any alternatives for now), because I don't see us getting powerful enough in just a single year to tell the tax collectors to fuck off. The responsibility might not be something that we're willing to do; given the frequency of attacks, either Erdrick or Rin might need to be around at times for guard duty. Goblins are pretty weak, and I'm not sure how they'd fare against some tough bandits.

To be honest, I never cared much for either the goblins or the villagers, and I don't see this is a great launching point for world domination. I feel reluctant to get entangled by either of them.

On the other hand, every empire has to start somewhere. But, given how new we are to the world and the fact that we have an ally in the Prince, might be better to worm our way into the existing power structure than it is to build a new empire from scratch.

C2, for now

2) We are a Magic-based Hero, but I think some versatility would do us some good:

Even though you are mentally prepared for it, your body is sluggish enough that you find yourself only able to evade instead of capitalizing on her direct charge. This is not good: getting too close at the moment will not give you an opportunity to extract that shard before getting your head beaten in by a crazy demon princess with insane brute strength. You roll across the torn-up earth, bouncing back up into a ready position only to see that Rin has changed direction and is continuing to charge towards you.

Vitality: C
Mana: B (B++)
Physical Attack: C
Physical Defense: B
Magical Attack: C
Magical Defense: B (B++)
Agility: B
Charisma: B

We've got good inherent bonuses to Mana and Magical Defense (though our attack is weak), so I'd go with the defensive boost. You never know when you'll be in an anti-magic field like we were last time. It helps to be prepared for a variety of situations.

A

3) Being able to disguise ourselves and use illusion magic to deceive our enemies creates a lot of options. If we go the Empire-building route in the first choice, it's something we will need to develop to keep our identity under wraps for the next while. The plebs aren't ready to witness the glorious pidgendom of our true form yet. treave, would we be able to pass ourselves off as the Prince if we wished?

A

4) Not sure if I'd like to fuck with things we don't understand just yet. We had the chance to ask the Barzamite mage about the gauntlet, but we passed that up in favour of learning more about angels. It wasn't a bad choice by any means, but that's the nature of a trade-off. On the other hand, I'm expecting the Codex to cave in and go full YOLOWIZARD on this. However, since we know nothing about it, I don't think we should play around with it right now. This strikes me as the PRAY option.

B

 

[archaen]

1.C2 I think we need a better power base before we declare war on any of the factions; and annexing land or territory from a sovereign state is exactly that. Money might be nice but we dont have anything to spend it on and it sounds like it wouldn't be much anyway so Ill vote to wait in case he thinks of something better. No need to show off our angel form right now, especially if illusion magic wins.

2.B I wish there was a package that had vitality and magic attack but as there isn't I am going to have to pick the magic increase as the better package due to offensive power trumping defenses in general. The geometric increase in mana at the B levels as explained in Treaves skill ranking gives us a ton more staying power. We become even more of a magic tank, and we start lifting our magic attack power up towards A where it should be.

3.A Not having to be as careful with our form will help out in using our B diplomacy and opens up all sorts of trolling opportunities.

4.A As long as we do it smart which Treave has been playing us as. This might be a good time for us to utilize the spell familiar so if we have medallion nuke part 2 it just weakens us instead of outright killing us.

 

[Baltika9]

I don't understand why we're jumping at the first opportunities that present themselves, instead of doing some shopping first.
Maybe there are better options out there than a village in the boonies that gets raided all the time and will be more trouble than its worth. We don't have to agree right now.
And why are we experimenting with a potentially dangerous artefact without doing some research, first?

 

[Nevill]

And why are we experimenting with a potentially dangerous artefact without doing some research, first?

FOR SCIENCE!

Think of all the destruction we can cause if it goes wrong! Dead gobbos everywhere, dead kids, dead Rin! Now that's evil, right?

You might have a point about the village, though, and I may yet flop to leave it be. Still...

Maybe there are better options out there than a village in the boonies that gets raided all the time and will be more trouble than its worth.

Why not take those options and the village?

 

[Baltika9]

Because there's only so much we can focus on right now, with only one lieutenant. If we get entangled here, that's one less thing we can do down the line. I don't think they're worth it.

FOR SCIENCE!

Think of all the destruction we can cause if it goes wrong! Dead gobbos everywhere, dead kids, dead Rin! Now that's evil, right?

No, it's irresponsible. All I'm saying is that we ought to read up on these artifacts and the other demon lord before we do anything.
C'mon now, magic gauntlets, daggers that drive demons mad, strangers in black cloaks. You don't think that's just the right sort of fishy we should investigate first, being a scholar, instead of just doing 'derp, let's poke them together and see what happens.'
I get it, sometimes you have to make a split second decision, but this isn't one of them.

 

[ScubaV]

A2
B
C
A

 

[Rex Feral]

Oh, dem choices.

1) A1>B2 - tho I'd rather do it more subtly, like first put the villagers and goblins in contact, have them secretly pledge allegiance to us, not just annex the village and hang our flags on every shack. Take the empire from the inside, not outright conquering it village by village.
2) B
3) B>A - maybe further with healing we get resurrection. Also regenerate missing limbs and wings at a whim.
4) A

 

[Nevill]

C'mon now, magic gauntlets, daggers that drive demons mad, strangers in black cloaks. You don't think that's just the right sort of fishy we should investigate first, being a scholar, instead of just doing 'derp, let's poke them together and see what happens.'

Don't tell me you fear the experiment!

Spoiler

 

[Baltika9]

Yeah, no. All I'm saying is that we really ought to read up on it first, there's no rush, so why are we rushing it?

treave, what's the history between the kids and their village?

 

[FrankHamilton]

We need to take over the village. There's no way the kingdom would mind. from their perspective, they had lost that village anyway. Now however, it's in the possession of a powerful mage, who has saved the life of one of the the royal family and is fighting against a common enemy. If this were CK2, we'd be getting a vassalage invitation right now (or at least one of the royal daughters to marry). And even if for some reason they hate us, they would still much rather keep us alive while fighting the bazzar(or whatever it's called) empire, not only because they it wouldn't be worth fighting us for such a measly village, but also because we're kind of antagonizing the Empire now.

Choosing A is taking advantage of our previous choices (saving the prince, the village and the twins). We need to build up on those.

 

[Baltika9]

No one likes losing tax income, I don't see how the kingdom will be happy to have a suzerain literally taken from them. We can, yeah, but they're not worth it to get tied down in Methuss.

If this were CK2, we'd be getting a vassalage invitation right now

And then they'll try to revoke our barony because of the Foreigner -20 modifier, swarming us with a 10k doomstack.
Good thing we're not playing CK2.

 

[Esquilax]

1) A1>B2 - tho I'd rather do it more subtly, like first put the villagers and goblins in contact, have them secretly pledge allegiance to us, not just annex the village and hang our flags on every shack. Take the empire from the inside, not outright conquering it village by village.

That's likely possible with C2. We leave the village alone for a while (at least for now), in favour of seeking power in different ways.

We need to take over the village. There's no way the kingdom would mind. from their perspective, they had lost that village anyway. Now however, it's in the possession of a powerful mage, who has saved the life of one of the the royal family and is fighting against a common enemy. If this were CK2, we'd be getting a vassalage invitation right now (or at least one of the royal daughters to marry). And even if for some reason they hate us, they would still much rather keep us alive while fighting the bazzar(or whatever it's called) empire, not only because they it wouldn't be worth fighting us for such a measly village, but also because we're kind of antagonizing the Empire now.

Choosing A is taking advantage of our previous choices (saving the prince, the village and the twins). We need to build up on those.

There is every possible way the kingdom would mind. If I collect taxes from some remote, forgotten shithole, it's still my shithole.

“Yes, milord. We have had enough with the kingdom’s failure to protect us. Yes, we are a village out in the middle of nowhere, but while their taxmen manage to find their way here unerringly, their patrols are constantly getting lost! We have suffered six bandit raids over the previous year, and the last has been the worst of it all.”

Think of it this way; assume that Erdrick was suddenly the lord of a vast empire. Suddenly, in a remote corner of the empire that is pretty inconsequential, some guy and his little town decide to break off and become independent. An example would need to be made of that person to reaffirm the sovereignty of the crown, if nothing else. Because if you let that slide, what's to stop the next asshole from doing the same thing?

Why do we have to jump at the first opportunity? We jumped at helping the Prince (the first person who asked us for help) and now we jump at the opportunity to take on the responsibilities of rulership by annexing a crappy little village from an already established power.

 

[Nevill]

Don't you worry. I am sure we will also be jumping on the first opportunity to betray the Prince that presents itself, too, except then it would be to the tune of "enough white-knighting, you do-gooder faggots!!!"

That said, I'll switch to 1C2 for now.

 

[Esquilax]

Don't you worry. I am sure we will also be jumping on the first opportunity to betray the Prince that presents itself, too, except then it would be to the tune of "enough white-knighting, you do-gooder faggots!!!"

It's not betrayal if you use illusion magic to take his place. We'll do that, then the court wizard will easily see through our poorly put-together ruse, leading to yet another Codexian scheme backfiring horribly.

Get your stereotype right, Nevill! That's what we'd do.

 

[Nevill]

It's not betrayal if you use illusion magic to take his place.

I'd rather have Rin do it. For reasons.