Naturally, then, attention turned to clearing out other, stronger lairs. This one was infested with boars, but thanks to a bit of trickery and a strong hero, they were easily dealt with.
That hero, by the way, is a Warrior Mage. As you'd expect, he's a blend of a warrior and a wizard, having several powerful spells, casting skill, and a strong ranged attack, but also good defense and melee attack. His defenses are further boosted by Agility, a skill that grants additional defense per level. His version is a boosted variant of it, which grants 2 defense every other level instead of 1! And to top everything off, he gains mana while engaging in melee. Scary stuff!
In the fight above, he helped by casting flight on himself, then buffing the griffins with cloak of fear, letting them attack the boars with near impunity. Then, as if to add insult to injury, he blasted them apart with his ranged shots, while being completely impervious to them - in this game, flying makes a unit immune to all regular melee attacks. The opposing unit needs either breath, thrown weapons, or its own flight to be able to fight them in melee.
The monotony was broken with a second campaign launched against Merlin, this time targeting his settlements on my starting continent. By now he had picked up Prayer, which was rather concerning as it raised the hit rate and evasion on all his units in battle by 10%. This may sound insignificant, but it really isn't - they apply to every single attack and defend, respectively. To put it simply, every single point of attack rolls the unit's hit rate to land, and every single point of defense rolls the unit's evasion to block damage. This makes for a slightly swingy, yet surprisingly deep system, with a fair bit of nuance to each unit's stats.
Mechanical talk aside, the buff did swing the fight in his favor, with the ghouls rendered nearly helpless, but the griffin riders, with some buffs cast on them, and the two heroes prevailed. My second hero in the combat here was the War Monk, a beefy guy with high defense from super Agility, complete immunity to all curses from Charmed, a considerable boost to my wizard's fame, making him pay less in troop upkeep, and two healing spells! Talk about a beast, heh.
The fight did cost a considerable chunk of the army, however, so they had to wait for reinforcements, which would come from the random mercenaries approaching my wizard. In the meantime, though, they spent their time beating up Merlin's scattered forces and trying to raise them as undead. They even got a few units out of it, but unfortunately, Merlin was capable of exorcising them in combat. Exorcism is an instant death spell designed specifically for killing the undead, gaining a whopping -3 resistance modifier against them. Thankfully the spell was single target, so with enough of a mass, it wouldn't be a problem, but it was still quite obnoxious.
Eventually I raised a core of sea hags and crusaders, and they were pretty well suited to the job, with the sea hags being capable of targeting the Klackon soldiers' mediocre resistance in multiple ways, and the Crusaders having high defense as well as a charge of Holy Armor, which buffed the evasion of its target by 10%. As I explained earlier, this stat, despite seeming mild, is actually quite impactful. 10% in particular is actually a fairly big swing, considering that almost all units start with only 30% hitrate and evasion! Anyway, with this army I cleared off Merlin's easternmost settlement on my continent, but this city remained out of reach, thanks to the presence of a Dervish buffing the resistance of its garrison considerably, and closing off potential use of my tools against it - at least not without killing him off!
On the diplomacy front, things remained quite cheerful, Merlin's war aside. My scouting spirit got me in touch with another Death wizard in the distance, Resheph, and while there was no meaningful interaction possible, he was quite glad to meet another wizard with a real passion for Death magic, and traded him Shadow Strike. Kali meanwhile traded him this, which is an unassumingly powerful instant death spell. Yep. You heard that right. It's "balanced" by keeping the target alive for the duration of the fight, and being capable of being dispelled, but it's still exceptionally strong for what it does.
With that, we end this session. Here's a look at the map in its current state:
Our empire has grown considerably, hasn't it? The western part of it is a bit vulnerable, as it's close to Merlin's core territory. There's also considerably more of the world that needs to be uncovered. Hopefully, it shall keep growing and being prosperous, and hopefully there shall be fewer roadblocks going forward. Until next time!
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