With that existential crisis handled and the next one scheduled for… what, two months from now, Teemo?
“Sounds about right, yeah,” he answers with a smirk as he works on the shortcut to the cathedral. “You’ll either have enough on your plate that you’ll overthink things, or have things wrapped up and trip over it while looking for something to work on by then.”
Thanks bud. We both enjoy having a bit of fun, both of us trying not to worry too much. Pul says it’s time to leak Rezlar’s secret to the thieves. It’ll still be a day or two before he makes the dead drop, but the clock has officially started now.
Thankfully, I think we’re about as ready as we can get. I’d still like for Pul to officially be a ninja before we move forward, but class things are hard to predict. He says he can feel it in the distance, but Freddie and Rhonda both said it’s pretty obvious when it’s close. If he doesn’t think it’s close, it’s not, and waiting risks us letting the thieves do their plan without a hitch.
It’s still tempting to wait anyway, but it’s a temptation I intend to resist. We went through a lot of trouble to infiltrate the thieves, and I don’t want to throw that away. In fact, we’re already forcing them to change plans.
Onyx says that Cappy overheard Toja giving Bernuth a new assignment to delve and get stronger. It could be a punishment for him getting fired. They don’t seem to like delving, for whatever reason. But Cappy said she seemed friendly about the order, rather than unhappy.
That sets off all kinds of warning bells, enough that it’s difficult to decide why she’d do that. Well, she’s probably going to get more info on me, for one. I’ll need to make sure to keep up the stupid dungeon facade, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ve been playing dumb for the Earl’s delvers, so it won’t be hard to do the same for Bernuth. It could get awkward if he tries to party up with any of the civilian delvers, but they’re usually not as informed nor observant as the proper adventurers.
I feel like there’s more to it, though. If it was a punishment that Bernuth is supposed to hate doing, there’d be more scowling, veiled threats, overt threats, that sort of thing. It’s never a good sign when a villain is all smiles and sweetness. That’s usually when they stick in the knife. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies, but I’ve got a bad feeling. She has something planned, probably something Bernuth won’t like, and something I probably won’t like, either.
Whatever it is, we’ll just have to keep an eye out for it. And we should also prepare. Tarl and them have finished with the deeper delves into the Tree of Cycles, so it’s the perfect time to upgrade things and make their reports obsolete. You know, to let them know I care.
I mull over my options, trying to remember what my plan was. More upgrades, certainly, but which spawners? Where’d I put my list… no, that’s my old notes for making a normal speaker. Ah, here it is! Now, what did I have marked? Right, pitcherplant skeletons and puffball zombies! They probably won’t be the simplest to get into a position to mess with the thieves and their plans, but they’re still an upgrade I want to get into. My poor undead have been languishing pretty badly behind just about everything else.
I upgrade them both and make sure to pick the new denizens, and eagerly watch them start to come out of their crypts. The zombies are… actually kinda cute. They’re puffy and rounded, looking like an overstuffed zombie toy. It’s equally adorable and disgusting, I like them.
The skeletons look a lot more intimidating. The pitcherplants look a lot more aggressive in wrapping them than the vines and moss of the verdants have. With them, it looks like they grew over old bones. With the pitcherplants, they look a lot more like the cause of death, rather than just coming along way later. Several pitchers cling to the bones, with each placement being unique to the skeleton. There’s usually one or two in the rib cage, at least one sitting on the pelvis, and always at least one on the forearm.
It looks like the one on the arm is used for specifically attacking, while the others effectively give the skeleton a damage aura. The new zombie heads deeper into the complex, but the skeleton heads out to the Forest, looking to get some bees for even more fun.
What next? I like where my plants and earth elementals are, at least for now. The combo of the plants with the soil elementals are fun, and the delvers have been having to get creative to deal with what amounts to regen tanks between the two of them. I should upgrade my bruisers, the bears, to give my delvers a more classic tough opponent. It should be good against the thieves, too. Sneak attacks are more or less designed to deal with single hard targets, but that just makes the bears great bait to make them overconfident and overcommit. They’ll be even harder to get into a good spot than the undead, but I think they’ll be worth the investment.
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The first dire bear just barely manages to squeeze out of the cave the spawner is in, and I make a note to have some tunnelbores come in to widen the area a bit… or maybe get the plants to make it a little roomier without needing to dig. Either way, the dire bear is huge. I think it skipped polar bear size and went right to elephant. It looks oddly primal, too, with a thick frame and a few boney ridges sticking out through the fur. It looks slow and lumbering, but that’s because of the size. It doesn’t have a good top speed, but it can keep that pace for a long time, and once a foe is in range, it’s plenty fast enough with its attacks to keep a delver on their toes.
Yeah, they’re going to be a great addition for the delvers looking for a straight up fight.
Hmm… should I upgrade the hands, too? They’ve been languishing along with my other undead. I take a glance at the spawner and nod to myself. They should definitely get an upgrade. More magic is never a bad thing. I upgrade them to magus hands, and they stand out pretty starkly from the arcane ones. The previous tier look like lich hands, kinda boney and desiccated, and it’s difficult to tell what kind of spells they’ll do before they cast them. The magus hands, though, have mystical swirling tattoos all over, with crystalline fingernails that look more like claws. They’re color coded for their spells, but that’s not going to help out very much. Their magic is a lot
Between stronger spells from the hands, control effects from the other undead, and bears for the frontline, what else could I ask for?
Flying units, that’s what. But who should get the upgrade? Some of my fey fly, but their spawner isn’t really specialized for flying denizens. Taking a closer look through the options, I could pick flying options from here on out, but I think I’m going to be taking a mix for them. Right now, I kinda want my specialist fliers, which means either my birds or my bees.
My first thought is: why not both? Well, with the other upgrades, they’re going to be a bit more expensive than I’d like. They’re both going to be maxed out, so that last push tends to take a bit more. So what would my options be? I already know what I want for the bees: Royals. They’re really going to be able to bring together the different bee varieties into a whole greater than its parts. The only real issue I have is that bees are more defensive than offensive. While I do believe the best offense is a good defense, I think the bees will be better suited to guarding my territory, instead of going out to strike at the thieves and their plan.
They could be good for defending the Hold, but I think it’ll take them more time than we have. Not to mention, if they start building hives out there, the Earl and the thieves might get desperate. I want them to think their best opportunity needs to be taken quickly, not their only opportunity. If I make them act quickly and confidently, I can hopefully corner them before they realize they’re in trouble. If they start out desperate, they’ll only get worse if things start looking bad for them.
The bird option is one I thought I was familiar with, but clearly not: harpies. Specifically raven harpies. I’m used to harpies being half woman, half bird, all trouble, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with these. I mean, they’re probably still going to be all trouble for anyone who means harm, but the rest of them doesn’t much match what I think of when I hear harpy. At least they’re still birds… if really creepy ones.
If they’re just sitting down, they don’t look too different from the dire ravens, but that’s a carefully crafted lie. Their bodies are shaped more like an elf, with wings for arms and black feathers all over. The really creepy bit is their neck. It’s long. Really long, more like a flamingo than anything else, but they usually keep it curled up beneath their feathers so nobody can tell.
They have a fear aura, which feels like overkill to me. Just imagining a dire crow unfolding into a person, their head almost looking like it’s floating around, eyes locked on you… yeah, they’re going to give the thieves nightmares. Probably my delvers, too, but hey, the canopy of the Tree is not a place for the faint of heart. Despite the creep factor, I pay to max out my birds, and watch the first one exit the spawner.
I don’t know if it’s trying to make me like it better, or if that’s just how they are when they’re not looking to fight, but it seems… kinda goofy. It chirps happily and trots up and down the branch, the long neck stretching forward and reeling back in, like its dragging the rest of itself along at the whims of its curiosity. Well, either way, I’m feeling better about the purchase. A lot of the last denizens look pretty intimidating at first, but you can’t judge a book by its cover.
It stops and gives a creepy smile, but that’s probably my fault. I can’t wait to have these guys also yelling at Tarl to greet him!