Inactive [LP CYOA] Overlord

[FrankHamilton]

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.

Yeah, after the war. They need more troops right now. How many soldiers could that monthly tax get? 10-20? How many soldiers could us and our army kill? We can just summon 20 wolves out of boredom.

Do you really imagine them throwing us away for some measly village's monthly tax?

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.

They almost lost their prince in a battle. How well do you think the war is going?

An example will be made when I have the fucking time. For now pragmatism is needed

The reason against jumping at the opportunity before was because we didn't want to anyone to take notice of us. That ship has sailed now. Both factions know of us, have a rough estimate of our power and have an idea regarding what our allegiances are (right or wrong). We need to take advantage of the string wind and fuck more whores.

If you think that the village is not worth it, fine fair enough. But don't pussy out because you think the kingdom will declare war on you, because they won't. By the time they find out, the story will be that we by ourselves managed fend off an entire army that was giving their prince and his army a brutal ass wiping. They will at worst file us as a something to be dealt with later, which is a file we were under anyway, because we're a crazy powerful mage.

Edit: Also, how does anyone know that we took over that village? Most likely the king or queen or whatever would just say they offered us the village in exchange for our help. Or any number of things. It's one village while 3 others are under danger of invasion right now. This is the best time to act.

 

[Nevill]

They almost lost their prince in a battle. How well do you think the war is going?

The prince was sent into a trap with a force of 10 knights to fight off bandits who were not really bandits.

Barzam Empire does not dare take direct action, instead trying to frame its neighbour.

The fight we won was a skirmish against a small group sent undercover into enemy territory, not really an army. An army numbers in the thousands.

They have an angel, a supposedly major powerplayer, and a run-in with another one of those nearly cost us Rin.

I think they should not be underestimated, and therefore should not be provoked. That said, I can think of several solutions to that particular problem.

 

[Elfberserker]

Flopping to C2ABB
I think we got the best assets we could get from the town; The twins and a cow.
As tempting as it's to start empire building montage, but we still know jack shit about power dynamics around the area. The reason we saved the prince was the reward and friend in high place at cost of barzam diplomacy.
I would prefer to gather bit more information, before we start building our overlord army.

As for stats....Well, it's safe to assume that we will end up in melee combat far too much for magic user type, so building up our strenghtening that aspect of our character insn't bad idea. I honestly wanted to buff our magic attack and vitality, but I Like high Hp characters, so magic attack upgrade will have to wait.

As for fun it's trying to test two unknown magic thingies together, I think we should save Yolo wixzarding to later in character development.

 

[Nevill]

Be the first to choose it, make a big deal about it

One throwaway phrase is a big deal now.

But I am glad that my conspiratorial talents finally got the recognition they deserved.

In your mind, we're already married to him

Sorry, I don't share your homoerotic fantasies. Or any of your erotic fantasies regarding the LP, for that matter.

Oh, and betrayal is very possible if one side views you as an ally, even if you didn't explicitly promise them anything.

 

[Quetzacoatl]

C2
D
A
A

 

[Grimgravy]

A2
D>B
B>C
A

 

[Storyfag]

A1
B
B
B

 

[Azira]

A2
B
B D
A

 

[Kipeci]

I would really like to eradicate bandits in this area and show that our rule establishes an order to the area while also integrating the people with the goblins, which is definitely what A does. I have a bit of a hang up about what sort of troubles we might get into with Methuss, but at worst we can just sit on the taxes and give them over when it's tax season. There's some room for negotiation; while I have no doubt that they're never going to declare the village as a de jure belonging of ours without getting into a messy display of force, if we just play ourselves up as the extremely powerful yet kindly old mage (who saved their prince, remember!) providing a protection for a weaker part of their dominion at the borderland in exchange for minor payment, I think we could get this to work out. So, A.

As to the one and two parts, eh. I don't care. The villagers are also supposed to be really anti-goblin from their religion, but we see that in practice they're rather more pragmatic about the manner. We may have developed a bit of an odd view of how humans view creatures touched on in their religion considering how the first folks we ran into were from the Barzam Ecclesiocracy, which from the name would seem to imply that they're more dogmatic than the others. Hey, treave, any chance we could have asked the kids what they've been taught about Carnage Pigeons? I'm leaning towards 1 for now, but I'm also fine with them not knowing. I just think that deception here tends to give others a sort of rug that might be swept out from under your feet at a critical moment; ex. Rin was remarkably cool about hearing how we ate her father's heart when we directly told her at the start, but if she didn't know that and had to figure it out later from her suspicions, I'm not sure it would have gone over so well. I'll leave this undecided for now.

For the next choice, it kinda depends. treave, for option C (the going on the attack one) was Physical Defense supposed to be Magical Attack? Or is that just an all physical package? I think it's really very important that we have a boost going on to our Agility, we're always getting into some sort of trouble because we're just too slow. It's lost us a wing, got us in trouble with the Rin fight, and it'll be a problem for us later. I want to keep a focus on magic also, specifically going on the offensive I think because while we have stupid amounts of mana that can provide more power our attacks when not packed up with all our mana have seemed a bit underwhelming, see the electrical wolves and so on. I'd like to beef those up on the attack so that we can get a bit more bang for less mana. So if option C is supposed to have Magical Attack too, then that's great and I'll vote for that. If not, while I think our defense is generally good I'm kinda more magic focused so I'd like to go for D. It would help to be less squishy even when the magic is turned off, and we'll approach a rank increase for Magical Defense which is really great. I would still prefer the offensive ones since they're still way back at rank C, but Agility seems most critical to increase.

Then again, now that I look over them they were all in cases where we were fighting Rin. She can go one plus rank above us currently until we start using Gigadyne... maybe I'm being too agility centric? I can also see the benefit to B. More magical attack is good for the reasons I said, but we also wind up with more mana to slam in for that extra edge (and near the rank up, which will give us a lot more from many of our spells specifying numbers of things they provide by levels of rank atttained) and the magical defense is even greater. We wouldn't have needed to be so fast if we could have magically tanked Rin's stuff a bit better. The only problem is that we effectively have no benefit going on if we wade into another anti-magic field, but that didn't turn out to be all that big of a problem last time. We need to find some way to quickly counter those in the future, though. Eh, I'll just call this as B.

Continuing on, the choice seems kinda obvious to me to go for healing. I don't want to have our overlord sneaking around and stealing someone else's face, that's something for a slime lord or something, not an angel with lightning raining out from his ass. Magical weapons are nice and all, but they can just as easily be used against you (see overlords taping magical swords and so on to any random mook they send against a hero only to be stabbed with them later on in many RPGs) and there's no way to guard against that other than hoping your guys do well. Meanwhile, it's the first chapter in and we're losing wings, hands, imagine what more stuff we'll be losing in the future! We have a handful of healing potions and nothing more for medical care, and I don't think we're liable to pick up better healers than the traditional goblin ones any time soon. We've got to be our own Cao'er for now, so let's start right on that track so that we can deal with the more serious ones that we will come across. B.

It's stupid to vote for A, but I'm already gone and committed myself to the full retard options since Epic in the hopes of getting that adorable pet sphere. Messing around with voids and powerful magic seems like as good a way as any to go about it, so let's got for that and hope that the scrapes are only minor so that we can heal them. A.

All together, I'm voting ABBA and waiting before I decide for 1 or 2.

 

[lightbane]

Well then, time to vote:

1. C2. These villagers are completely useless to us and currently suck as a fighting force. Taking over the village would give us very little in exchange of the political shitstorm it would entail. As such, we'll delay our choice for now... Until we complete that "Angelic Transmogrification" ritual and we need a few test subjects, that is . Also, I see no point in subchoice 1 (aka revealing our form), since if they freak out we'll have to ensure their silence permanently, making the whole choice pointless. Also, I'm still waiting for that cool hat they owe us.

2. A. More Vitality= More hp, which one can't never have enough. Plus we can't rely on our magic all the time, as that battle demonstrated. The other stats can be grinded for later, once we have enough time.

3. Here I have a question for you, treave: depending on the grimoire we choose, will we be able to naturally develop more powerful spells based on the branch whe choose, or would that require the usage of another grimoire with more advanced spells? In fact, would Erd be able to read other "advanced grimoires" if they don't belong to the branch we took here?
In any case, I vote for: A>B. Disguise is our first priority now. Otherwise, we wouldn't have bothered with hiding our features until now.

However, magical healing is not a bad alternative. Although, just to know: does Rin's axe count as "mundane" for the purpose of this spell? How high is the attack gained from Magic Enchant? Lastly, which are the limits for the "Minor Healing" spell? As in, I assume missing limbs cannot be regenerated, but what about minor stuff like broken ribs/limbs/open wounds/etc.?

4. Hmm... What about this?

C. You make a goblin with minimal arcane capability do the deed while keeping a safe distance from yourself and the village, just in case. Of course, you and Rin are completely battle-ready for combat if the need to do so arises

A successful Overlord doesn't risk his own skin when he has minions to do it for him.

 

[treave]

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.

Rin tells you that they reach sexual maturity at about 5 years of age, and their life-span is around 30 years. They can bear 2-6 kittens in a single litter, and the gestation period is approximately 3 months. However, they don't simply mate whenever the need takes them, as a community there are rituals and councils involved.

If you take the food they originally offered as payment, they would only give you enough to feed one person, which is you. That obviously won't be enough to support an army. You also need to consider how much surplus the village grows in the first place. Their food is not infinite. Even if you only left the villagers with barely enough to survive, you would still not be sitting on enough food to support a million-goblin army. Now, if you went ahead and started improving their agricultural system, you would of course be able to get much better results.

Anyway, if you want to devote the village's food to feeding your goblins, the choice to take is A at this point, because otherwise your only option is to wait until your goblins are strong enough to invade the village and enslave the villagers by force.

treave, would we be able to pass ourselves off as the Prince if we wished?

You could, but it might be better to find a more powerful spell for that. You could pass off your doppleganger as the Prince, though.

As I have said before, the best way of impersonating the Prince was to kill him and wear his skin.

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

You haven't asked yet because you are not very interested in that. Arlin seems okay with them, perhaps Aria is just going through growing pains.

Hey, treave, any chance we could have asked the kids what they've been taught about Carnage Pigeons? I'm leaning towards 1 for now, but I'm also fine with them not knowing.

The usual fairytales, you're basically the boogeyman. Of course, the kids already know about your angel identity. They were frightened and Arlin pissed his pants, yet fascinated after they realized you weren't going to cook and eat them. If you make a diplomatic first impression instead of starting off with a slaughter, it is possible that people might not overreact and force you to kill them. But that might not apply to everyone you meet, of course.

For the next choice, it kinda depends. treave, for option C (the going on the attack one) was Physical Defense supposed to be Magical Attack? Or is that just an all physical package?

It is my mistake, Physical Defense should be Magical Attack, yes.

We wouldn't have needed to be so fast if we could have magically tanked Rin's stuff a bit better.

Her attacks are physical in nature, increasing your magical defense will not help much since your primary means of blocking physical attacks, Spellshield, is limited to blocking attacks of C-rank and lower. It doesn't scale with increased Magical Defense. With your current level of Magical Defense, you could have stood there during the Erise battle and tanked most of the spells the enemy mages cast at you without using a defensive spell of your own.

3. Here I have a question for you, treave: depending on the grimoire we choose, will we be able to naturally develop more powerful spells based on the branch whe choose, or would that require the usage of another grimoire with more advanced spells? In fact, would Erd be able to read other "advanced grimoires" if they don't belong to the branch we took here?

As long as you learn the language, you can read books. As for naturally developing spells, you do not really need a more advanced grimoire to do so, but it would speed things up if it is a spell that has already been created: why reinvent the wheel?

Although, just to know: does Rin's axe count as "mundane" for the purpose of this spell? How high is the attack gained from Magic Enchant? Lastly, which are the limits for the "Minor Healing" spell? As in, I assume missing limbs cannot be regenerated, but what about minor stuff like broken ribs/limbs/open wounds/etc.?

No, her axe is a magical weapon. The attack gained is not very significant, but it grants the item the ability to attack certain "things that can only be harmed by magic" such as low-level elemental summons. Higher-level elementals or magical defenses would be too powerful for this particular spell to affect. You can also enchant the item with an F-rank spell effect, which is probably the more useful function. Minor Healing only affects cuts and wounds, it is not enough to mend a broken bone.

You make a goblin with minimal arcane capability do the deed while keeping a safe distance from yourself and the village, just in case. Of course, you and Rin are completely battle-ready for combat if the need to do so arises

You try it. But for some reason, just like with the shard not reacting to the goblin, the gauntlet will only respond if you are the one holding it.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

A2 - again, consistency. Let's prove ourself through our actions first. Actions of building up an empire that no one would dare succede from, that is.
B - that last battle proved how powerful our lightning form could be. The drawback is that we don't have the mana to maintain it for long.
B>A - We must raise Meiren's head from the dead. And more seriously, grow back our wing. And/or pull a "instant-regeneration" whenever someone cuts off a limb. (In the distant future, obviously.) Alternatively, an illusion spell would be useful in maintaining a secret identity. (Though with the voters' schizoid tenancies, I doubt it'll be possible to maintain it for long regardless.)
B - having Zeus/masters flashback fsr. Seal them away.

edit:

 

[Esquilax]

Now that I think about it, I am uneasy about the A2 combination. The goblins are deathly loyal to us, but wouldn't A1 make more sense if you want Empire-building? Thus far, the human villagers see us as a powerful mage and adventurer, but we'd need to convince them that we are a whole hell of a lot more powerful than that if we want them to swear allegiance to us. To convince these people to secede from Methuss, we have to convince them that we are powerful enough to hold our own not only against bandits, but against Methuss itself. Look at it from their perspective; right now, they are grateful for our help, but really, Erdrick is basically still a mercenary in their eyes.

Revealing that we are a powerful, terrible creature of legend that has shown a willingness to protect them will ensure that Erise will be "all-in" with us. I don't think that simply being a very powerful mage will give us the legitimacy and the aura of power to make swearing fealty an enticing enough prospect to risk Methuss' wrath. If I were Chief Enzel, I think I'd rather risk getting cleaned out and having a few people die from bandit raids than I would pissing off Methuss.

Of course, there are downsides to this, foremost being secrecy. In the shot-term, that won't be a concern, because very few people come here, and the locals will know better than to blab.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

A powerful mage is a lot more trustworthy than a powerful monster. They've likely all been raised on tales of evil carnage pigeons. It's one thing to ask them to follow a strong leader, but you are asking them to make a deal with the devil - actually, something far worse than a devil in their eyes.

Just because we protected them once, doesn't mean we wouldn't kill them later. After all, from their perspective, we could have just been following our instincts to destroy when we killed the raiders.

 

[Esquilax]

A powerful mage is a lot more trustworthy than a powerful monster. They've likely all been raised on tales of evil carnage pigeons. It's one thing to ask them to follow a strong leader, but you are asking them to make a deal with the devil - actually, something far worse than a devil in their eyes.

Well, they have surprisingly tolerant views on goblins, I wonder what they think of carnage pigeons. treave, do the villagers have any thoughts/superstitions regarding angels?

That being said, if they hate angels, then that makes this prospect of empire-building extremely premature, IMO.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Eh, we keep it a secret for now. With the food supply from the villagers, our goblins will breed up an army. (Of course, we'll make them go off into the woods for their orgies because we do not want to see that.)

 

[treave]

Well, they have surprisingly tolerant views on goblins, I wonder what they think of carnage pigeons. treave, do the villagers have any thoughts/superstitions regarding angels?

The fairy tales involving genocidal angels are very well-spread throughout the human kingdoms. Almost every child knows of them. But there are no particular superstitions concerning angels in the Methussian region that you are aware of. The villagers will definitely be terrified of you. How they react after that is something Erdrick cannot predict accurately at the moment.

 

[Esquilax]

treave, how does the average goblin compare to a human physically? What sort of attributes (i.e. strength, speed, size) do they excel at compare to humans? Would an adult male human be able to beat up most goblins? They seem rather small and weak:

A tall, muscular goblin – he reaches almost up to your chest, rather than your waist like most of his kind – strides in confidently, wearing one of the few remaining helmets in good condition that they had salvaged from the ruins. He is missing an eye, an injury he displays proudly like a badge of honour. After all, it is not every day that the Demon God returns and accidentally scorches out your eyeball with a stray bolt while making an easy example of the flaming tyrant that once lorded over your kind.

Given that Robust is the greatest physical specimen that the goblin species has to offer, I'm not very encouraged by their potential for ass-kicking.

Eh, we keep it a secret for now. With the food supply from the villagers, our goblins will breed up an army. (Of course, we'll make them go off into the woods for their orgies because we do not want to see that.)

That's a whole lot of goblins fucking, then.

Elite: 5
Spears: 40
Slings: 20

Okay, so assuming that this is all mature, male goblins (ignore Petze, let's assume the females don't fight) in their physical prime in the village of Grahferde (which makes sense, they're primitive, and anybody who can use a sling or thrust a spear is technically part of our forces), we'd have to wait five years for the first goblins in our super-secret goblin ubermenschen breeding campaign, where we utilize Robust and the elites as our "stallions" to produce our first batch of big, strong, tough, super-gobbos. Assuming there are 65 females of breeding age (equal to the number of men in my hypothetical model), at 4-6 goblins per litter, that would leave us with a maximum of 490 super-gobbos - and an exhausted, possibly dead Robust - for the first "batch" in five years.

That's assuming if we, as treave mentioned, improve the village's agricultural systems and gear it towards feeding an army. We still have that bottleneck of waiting for the army to mature, and even then, I'm guessing 500 super-gobbos are still going to be mincemeat in front of a real army that is better equipped, experienced and almost certainly much, much larger.

Then there's the question of what to do about tax collection when the Methussians inevitably come to Erise. We'll have five years of ensuring that every tax collector that comes by to Erise either suffers a mysterious accident on their way to the remote village, ponying up bribes, or perhaps best of all, calling in a favour from the Prince to ask him not to send tax collectors to Erise for the next few years so the inhabitants can recover from the devastation of the recent attack. But, if you ask me, that's a waste of a perfectly good favour.

Every empire might start from humble beginnings, but this might be a little too humble for my liking.

 

[treave]

treave, how does the average goblin compare to a human physically? What sort of attributes (i.e. strength, speed, size) do they excel at compare to humans? Would an adult male human be able to beat up most goblins?

Goblins are sneakier and faster and excel at scouting as well as hit and run attacks. A trained adult soldier would be able to defeat the average goblin one-on-one in a straight fight, but it would not be a curbstomp in their favour.

As for armies, if you raise a goblin army at the moment they'd probably only be used to hold down the fort and guard the villagers should you enslave them, or train the villagers if you plan on diplomatically absorbing it into your territory. You would still be dealing with any human armies by yourself for the most part. Of course, if Methuss gets provoked into a war with any of the other kingdoms, they probably cannot afford to send any more than a meagre force towards Erise should it declare independence.

 

[Bibbimbop]

treave, how does the average goblin compare to a human physically?

Large Meerkats. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

Given that Robust is the greatest physical specimen that the goblin species has to offer, I'm not very encouraged by their potential for ass-kicking.

That's why we breed them for magical aptitude, not this crude physical matter. Imagine 500 gobbo uberkatzen eugenically selected for the ability to cast magic missiles and other minor spells. Weak physiques, small targets, ability to scurry away and hide when approached for melee. A bunch of guerilla magelings.

at 4-6 goblins per litter, that would leave us with a maximum of 490 super-gobbos - and an exhausted, possibly dead Robust - for the first "batch" in five years.

From village to locust swarm in 15 easy steps...

You might be pardoned for thinking that Gigadyne is the most powerful force in the universe, but it is, was, and always will remain compound interest (or exponential growth).

Anyway, I think people are being short-sighted by not choosing crafting option. All Overlords craft magical gear, like awesome rings to in the darkness bind them. It's also a spell category that we can teach our magelings. Rank F spells on weapons are pretty powerful. Circle of Darkness on cloaks for gobbos, leveraging their night vision and small size, makes them hard to target and hit when you can't see how small they are.

I will flip the flop back to ABCA for goblin exponential shenanigans.

 

[Esquilax]

That's why we breed them for magical aptitude, not this crude physical matter. Imagine 500 gobbo uberkatzen eugenically selected for the ability to cast magic missiles and other minor spells. Weak physiques, small targets, ability to scurry away and hide when approached for melee. A bunch of guerilla magelings.

Everybody underestimates physical prowess until the big fucking barbarian splits your head open with an axe. Or when you can't use magic, as we already experienced. Anyways, the problem with goblins is that they don't seem particularly smart either:

Rin tells you his name: Runde. In his green-flecked, slitted eyes, you see a spark of intelligence beyond that of the average goblin.

As the quiet and shy Runde begins working with you on the spell, you recognize that he has a keen sense for magic. He’s not as good as you are – obviously – but he is talented for a goblin. Thanks to his help, progress on the spell turns out to be faster than you expected. Within two weeks, you have a working prototype.

Runde is pretty smart, but that's about it. Doubt any of the others have the aptitude for magic.

An army is just as much about quantity as it is about quality. I suppose being quick and great at hit-and-run attacks is useful, but that seems more situational (i.e. ambushes) rather than something we can consistently rely on. They aren't Zerg, ffs.

 

[Bibbimbop]

We don't need gobbos to have the intelligence to explore new aspects of magic, create their own spells, and lust for ultimate arcane power. They aren't intended for high-level achievement.

They just need the ability to wield simple magics in paint-by-the-numbers simplicity. We lay out the steps to cast magic missiles and circles of darkness, easy rank F trash spells, in easy illustrated cartoons; breed the ones that can follow the guide, and soon we can volley thousands of magic missiles at an approaching army and then scamper away in a field of darkness. They don't need the physical prowess even in a magic-dead area, because they are naturally adept at sneaking and escaping to better ground. They choose the ground, and they have stand-off capabilities that are more accurate than bows and arrows.

And if some of them can use shocking grasp in a fishing pond, or magic missile to hunt deer... they become apex predators capable of driving their own exponential growth themselves without villagers giving them tribute.

 

[Esquilax]

We don't need gobbos to have the intelligence to explore new aspects of magic, create their own spells, and lust for ultimate arcane power. They aren't intended for high-level achievement.

They just need the ability to wield simple magics in paint-by-the-numbers simplicity. We lay out the steps to cast magic missiles and circles of darkness, easy rank F trash spells, in easy illustrated cartoons; breed the ones that can follow the guide, and soon we can volley thousands of magic missiles at an approaching army and then scamper away in a field of darkness. They don't need the physical prowess even in a magic-dead area, because they are naturally adept at sneaking and escaping to better ground. They choose the ground, and they have stand-off capabilities that are more accurate than bows and arrows.

And if some of them can use shocking grasp in a fishing pond, or magic missile to hunt deer... they become apex predators capable of driving their own exponential growth themselves without villagers giving them tribute.

I could be wrong, but I'm getting the impression that a lot of these goblins aren't smart enough to read or comprehend the most basic of magic. Can't say with certainty because I don't know how magic works in the setting, who can learn it, and what sort of aptitude is needed.

The other problem is that if we do choose to "breed" them for intelligence, we'd be using Runde, who is also scrawny and weak as hell, even by goblin standards. Even bows require some strength to operate and they would need to be nimble enough to get to safety despite being physically weak. So if the enemy closes in, they would be fucked. If there were some way to experiment to create goblins with Robust's physical traits and Runde's intelligence in some sort of goblin eugenics program, then that might work, but it's an entirely different project altogether. It's one befitting a mad scientist Overlord, of course, but it's different than the matter at hand.

Then there's the issue of "is Erdrick willing to get off his lazy ass and teach them magic?" He wasn't willing to teach them his language, I'm not sure if he'd be willing to teach a bunch of dummies how to cast spells.

 

[Bibbimbop]

I dont think any of them need to read spellbooks themselves, only to remember the gestures and phrases that we show them from the books that we have no trouble reading. The important thing is whether they are attuned to magic in the first place. On average, they aren't intended to cast difficult spells that need understanding of the steps that they are taught. Some eventually may, though, if we breed them well.

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

It would need time, but yes.

This is the known basis for teaching them magic so far. Some are known to be magic-apt and teachable, and with their short gestation periods and large litter sizes, even a small sample of magic-attuned gobbos will be a eugenicist's dream-come-true. We can sort out the magic-apt males and mate them. Alternately, we could mate half the females to magic-attuned gobbos, and half to more physical ones, I suppose... But I prefer going all in on magic.

 

[Kayerts]

A2 - At some cost, we've kept our Carnage Pigeon identity a secret. If we let the villagers know, all it takes is one disgruntled peasant to blow it.

B - oh, I know this one! Unlike most heroes, Storm Spirit's ability to do damage is largely contingent on his mana pool and regen, due to his ultimate ability Gigaball lightning's lack of cooldown and the low cooldown on his other active abilities!

B - I didn't get terribly involved in the debate about our tendency to suck at playing villains, but I do think the charge has merit. Part of the issue is that heroism is much better at supplying a consistent motivation for making decisions (generally, this group settles around "save the most lives while touching the most butts"), whereas freeform villainy doesn't work very well because in real life, evil is a side effect of actions rather than a primary goal. Without a consensus on how and why we are evil, we make inconsistent and seemingly schizophrenic choices. Murdering Rin wasn't the right way to resolve that, but I think a lot of the support for it as a choice came from a desire to have narratively-ratified character motivation. Toward the goal of getting a villainous persona that works for our little angel, I personally dig setting ourselves up as a false messiah.

A - "What's the worst that could happen" seems like a clear sign that truly terrible things will happen, but the signaling is overt enough that I'm hoping it will be the grand Sphere Diplomacy / Marius Hax level of terrible rather than Shinoseki's "I want to be a hero!" type of terrible. Could be persuaded to flop to B if someone makes a compelling argument for why I should hate fun.