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And here is a world map.

>>26290427
>Unfortunately your fireballs aren't exactly an explosive sniper rifle either.

It's explosive, though, so it doesn't need to be as accurate.

My plan from last thread hasn't changed, so copy pasting:
Well then, we're still talking long-range combat under cover of dark, aren't we? Be in motion, perhaps even aided by celerity to be safe, while firing the first fireball, that will make us much more difficult to hit. Isrameth should be in a safe spot while performing this, no reason for him to get accidentally murderized.

>>26290515

You change locations while Isrameth goes to find some of the smaller Golgothan patrols lurking around, kill them, and zombify them while you deal with the enemy daemon(s?). You toss another fireball into the camp and then wait for the response. The beam cuts through the air again, chewing through trees and ground and headed straight for your chest, but you duck under it and it passes harmlessly overhead, and you immediately respond with another fireball aimed at the source of the beam. Certainly the fireball explodes right and proper, but you can't tell whether or not it hit the target. There's no retaliatory beam, but maybe it just has a cooldown period longer than three seconds. That isn't too uncommon, especially with particularly nasty powers.

>now what?

>>26290802
What is the current time, roughly?

The overall idea is that if these daemons won't fight us directly, we'll just keep hitting their mortals from afar, using hit and run tactics. Basically causing some damage here and there, retreating to a distance for a while to recover, then repeating the procedure. In the course of just a single day, assuming we're hitting critical targets, that should cause damage severe enough that they simply cannot ignore it.

>>26290888

Somewhere in the dead of night. Going by the position of the moon, probably somewhere around 1 or 2 in the morning. You've got several hours of darkness left.

>>26290974
that's good. Just an hour of rest should help a lot for a daemon, right? So let's pull back a distance to be safe and rest up for an hour or two so we don't tire ourselves out, then resume the bombardment.

>>26291077

So long as you aren't wounded or exhausted, yeah, an hour of rest will get you from "really tired" to "perfectly fine."

>>26291132
Lets retreat and establish a secure easily defended camp, then rest to restore our energy.

>>26291132
Great. Let's play it safe and rest up, then. After all, the point was to bait them out and it would be bad to be dead on our feet if they decide to take it.

>>26291162
>>26291194

You pull back and find a place with a high vantage point and some decent tree cover. It won't stop the nastier Talents like whatever that beam attack was, but it'll hide you and block arrows and any less potent magical attacks just fine. Plus, the high vantage point means you can see your enemies coming long before they're within range. You find Isrameth and tell him to bring his corpses up there so he can start posting some zombie sentries. Leave them lying around looking like extremely convincing corpses with instructions to pop up and murder everything that comes close and isn't you or Isrameth, and you're golden. The noise will give away people trying to sneak up and they'll probably be able to down a few panicked mortal soldiers if the Golgothans move up in force.

In any case, you return an hour later to continue the bombardment. The camp below responds with another beam attack, so clearly whatever's doing that isn't dead yet. This time, however, the attacker gets lucky, and you barely have time to react before the beam carves its way towards you. You duck a split-second too late and one of your wings is cut off. You wince and barely manage to keep from crying out. No need to give them any more clues as to your position.

>wat do?

>>26291329
Well shit. We can't stop now, they'll know they got a hit if we do. Did we catch the direction of the source? I say we carpet bomb that hole with a handful of fireballs in rapid succession spread out slightly while moving just a few steps between each. Retreat quickly afterwards since that will be the perfect opportunity for the mole to attack.

>>26291567

You blanket the area in fire, spitting out fireballs until your breath comes in short gasps. In the middle of the barrage, another beam shoots out, but the angle is botched. Clearly your attack has mucked with their aim, and the shot goes far wide. It's unlikely your enemy survived, but on the downside between your wound and the half-dozen fireballs you just spammed, your vision is beginning to swim. You beat a hasty retreat back towards the camp, but the Golgothans mobilize up towards the hill again. Looks like someone down there knows you're vulnerable now. Still, it should be difficult for them to track you in the dark and you have a headstart...

You make it back to the camp and Isrameth has a pair of zombies on guard duty (so he tells you, anyway, you didn't look around for corpses on the way up), but Golgothan patrols are headed up to the foothills in force, and that mole is probably hiding somewhere underground, and there could be more of them on top of that.

>wat do?

>>26291782
No panic. I had hoped not to resort to such methods, but the actual outcome is even better than I'd hoped. After a show like that, we obviously need to get out of the hot zone, entirely. The question is, where to? Obviously we could start moving back across the valley towards the Gigan army, that would provide some safety. But maybe some of the areas around us could be even better, I don't really know the lay of the land here. A summary of what we know would be helpful.

>>26292043

Well, there's mountains nearby but without any Stoneshapers or wilderness experts, those will be as difficult for you to navigate as your opponents. The open valley between the two armies is difficult to hide in and within reach of Golgothan skirmishers, so definitely not there, and the plains on the other side of the army are on the other side of the army, so you'd have to sneak around while they're on high alert and that's unnecessarily risky. Heading back to the Gigan encampment is probably your best bet.

>>26292102
Heh, wonder if that mole can dig through mountain rock as well as it can the softer ground. Probably best not to push the luck any further. Besides, we've at the very least severely wounded one enemy daemon, inflicted whatever damage that burn did to the mole, burned fuck knows how many supply tents and probably killed a few soldiers in the action. That's not a bad night at all, even with the time pressure.

Now if only we could also convince Vigoth to let the Gigans in that would be even better, but I'm not sure even our impressive presence will convince them, and even less sure how else to go about it.

So yea, I say make for the safety of the Gigan army.

Oh, and here's a completely unrelated question for you if you have the time.
Imprisonment in oubliettes seems to be a very common ailment for daemons around here, and there are a few things I'm curious about regarding them. Like how long do they last if the seal isn't broken, what do they look like to those that can see them... Oh, and the really big question. What are they actually like inside?

>>26292244

Oubliettes last for tens of thousands of years if the seal isn't broken and it's in a vacuum, but after the first five hundred years or so the seal gets weak enough that triggering the unsealing is likely to happen by pure accident (for example, after a thousand years or so a stubbed toe could open one of Razag's oubliettes).

From the outside, oubliettes look like a circle drawn on the ground in faintly glowing blue light, filled with a large magical symbol the exact shape of which varies depending on what the requirements for unsealing are, who the daemon doing the sealing is, and who the sealed daemon is, and with the negative space of the symbol filled in with thousands of tiny little runes. They take like six hours to set up, which is why daemons never try to imprison someone in an oubliette unless they're tied down or effectively dead. You never, for example, try to make an oubliette under someone's feet in the middle of a fight.

An oubliette can hypothetically be like anything. You can make a little apartment in there if you feel like being sporting and some daemons actually do, but as a general rule you end up stuck in an apparently infinite black void unable to move, with nothing to entertain you but the hallucinations induced by lack of sensual input. Anomaly and Tallorn were both stuck in one of these non-deluxe versions when Razag imprisoned them.

---

You head back towards the Gigan army before
the Golgothan patrols reach you and alert someone dangerous. The trip back is mercifully uneventful, and by dawn you're safe back on Gigan's side of the battlefield. You've got at least 24 hours before Razag shows up, maybe a few days more (but Razag is basically instant death so gambling that he shows up late is very risky).

>wat do?

>>26292552
>An oubliette can hypothetically be like anything. You can make a little apartment in there if you feel like being sporting and some daemons actually do

That. Is. Awesome. How's that work, the creator just imagines what they want the oubliette to be like or does it require some actual effort?

For starters, we should probably get rested up to as well as we can get with our current condition. After that... well, we're here mainly to deal with enemy daemons, but did we ever ask the Gigan general what his actual strategy for trying to win this battle was? If we did, I don't remember what it was.

>>26292761
Adding on to this guy's questions, is there a nearby river that leads out of the valley/North? It would be a good escape route to cover our tracks if we stick to the shallows.

>>26292761

Duke Golant's plan for the battle is to use the mountains as as much of a chokepoint as they can, forcing the Golgothans to come to them about a thousand at a time and thus nullifing their numerical advantage somewhat. Problematically, this means that the Golgothans will be free to seize Vigoth whenever they can spare the troops to go and seize it, but if they try to meet the Gologthans in the valley itself they'll be slaughtered, so it'll have to do.

>>26292827

There is that runs through the valley, although it's not especially close to the city and is not considered much of an obstacle to either of the armies. It heads east from Vigoth and makes the plains near Ommos extremely fertile, which is why that area is the breadbasket of Margell.

>>26292924
Well, I'd say resting up for 2 hours or so would probably be necessary. Even if we were to flee now, if we ran into an enemy daemon, we'd be in quite some trouble.

>>26292924
Could we, as I suggested, potentially use the river as a means to disguise our trail so long as we stuck to the water? If the current flows well and the water is deep enough we might be able to swim. Not that Tallorn likes water or swimming much at all, but its better than nothing.

>>26292862
Well that's a boring plan. He isn't expecting any reinforcements that could help gain the advantage?

Also, reposting question because I really want to know.
>How's that work, the creator just imagines what they want the oubliette to be like or does it require some actual effort?
Add to that, is there a limit to the "inner size" of an oubliette?

>>26293006

If he's lucky Golant might get a thousand or so soldiers taken from Untos, but with the forces at Menteraki reduced to a skeleton crew he's unlikely to get even that. Even if he does, it's a thousand men. Decent, but not spectacular.

The shape of the oubliette is part of the runework. The upper limit on the inner size of the oubliette is about fifteen feet cubed, it can only contain one daemon, and it collapses as soon as that daemon leaves it, which means for secret hideout purposes it is sub-optimal, but if you just desperately want to be alone for a few centuries and don't mind cramped living conditions, you could have someone stick you in an oubliette willingly. That said, the sealing daemon doesn't get to choose the release condition (otherwise everyone would choose stuff like "when I say the word 'marmalade' at this spot"), so you'd be stuck in there until released as normal.

>>26292989

Yes, using the shallows to escape would make you much harder to track.

>>26293220
I'll keep that in mind then. Have we informed the Gigan leader of our attack on the enemy encampment? He could probably use some good news and the intel is important.

>>26293350

Not yet, but you head over to do so. Duke Golant is both pleased and grateful with the news, though he is also distressed to find that the enemy apparently does in fact have demons on their side. "If you can sabotage their supplies badly enough, they'll be forced to retreat to Ommos to resupply or else fight hungry. If they retreat, we can take Vigoth from the Ommosi troops while they regroup, and if they fight hungry, we will be able to overpower them on the field. But, with respect to your divine power, I do not think the loss of a few dozen supply tents will be enough to cripple an army of this size."

>>26293449
Ask the Duke what he recommends we destroy then if we can have a second round with the enemy. Destroy more of their supply depots or does he have something else in mind?

Also remind him we either badly wounded or killed one of their spirits to help ease his mind.

>>26293593

The supply depots are probably the best targets, it's just the scale of the destruction needs to be larger. Not a whole lot larger, but at least two or three times more than you've done so far, preferably more like four or five.

'Course, problem is you could barely manage that if you went from perfectly healthy to black-out tired. Seeing as you're wounded and you need to conserve energy to retreat when the enemy responds, it's not really feasible to do that kind of damage in one night. If you could wait another 24 hours, Razag *might* catch up and then it's game over, but there's also a strong chance he's still at least two day behind you, quite possibly three or four. But just maybe he *is* just one day behind you...

Choices.

>>26293764
Fuck that, I'd say we rest for two hours, do some damage, rest again and then flee while we still have a headstart. Maybe use the time to lay a false lead and then use the river to escape (can we actually fly? Not long-range, just from false track to river?)

>>26294022

You are made out of rock and your wings are thin leather and your wingspan barely reaches your total height. You are basically exactly the opposite of aerodynamic so without magical assistance you aren't flying anywhere.

You head over to the Golgothan camp again. The woods are still dense with patrols, but less so than before, so you should be able to evade/murder your way through them, but Golgothan response time will be faster this time. Doing some damage will be trickier and is also something you will have to deal with next time, as right now I have to go. Quest should run against at...Some point tomorrow. Follow me @MCJohnnyQuest and I'll tweet you when it start.

>see you then