[OOC] Dungeon Keepers

[Lugubrious]

Hopefully my new post will give Baudrii a sense of direction, which you can use as a basis for next post or two, Kangusto.

[Kangutso]

Well, I was going to get my keeper firmly in place before posting as him. And when I did, I would've had him training himself and afterwards be training the Myrmidons to fight in organized formations. But this works just as well.

[BBeast]

@Dawnon, Macaroth must be insanely persuasive, to sway an entire city of hundreds of thousands to his side in just a few minutes after slaughtering hundreds of soldiers before their very eyes. In most cases such a move would have the population huddled into a more protected area and the rest of the armed forces mobilised. It doesn't help that it would not be possible to simply assemble the entire populace in one place on demand. Perhaps have another post where you solidify your sway over the remainder of the city. If you read the compendium you would notice that the city is in two parts, an inner and outer city. Even with your saintly visage there will be those who oppose you, although maybe more quietly.

[Dawnon Aeris]

yeah i did think about that but i didnt want to put people through reading about that because its boring, nobody CAN resist me so i just cut to the chase, its a bit over simplified but the end result is still the same anyway, ill change it a bit however since i didnt think of it as a town of hundreds of thousands of people, its very unlikely such a population would be gathered there..but if you say so then i guess it is so because youre the gm..anyway long story short, im on it

Edit: I edited it enough i think now..also i appreciate that you didn't challenge the way i actually attacked and took over the city, i was fearing that might happen

[Cyclone]

Dawnon, to be fair the IC does say this, right at the top by the link to the map:

Also note that major cities have populations between 100,000 and 1,500,000, and a proportionally large military force including spell-casters, so conquest of such a place will invariably be a major undertaking.

It's fine that you killed a few people loyal to the fire priests and are trying to convert the city, but it's huge. With only a few hundred men Macaroth will have a very hard time controlling the city, especially if he won't resort to violence. In any case, the fire priests will probably be pissed and try to kick out Macaroth and his religion in any way they can. Terrorism, assassination attempts, and possibly even a full-blown crusade are likely to happen.

Speaking of the fire priests, once Shaige starts to ruin their plans and gather together all their enemies, I was planning on introducing their Lord Inquisitor as a minor character, and then promptly having the fire priests retaliate against Shaige. BBeast, when that time comes he probably won't ignore Calvartem either.

[Dawnon Aeris]

Ok..

Edit: There we go, no attack, nothing ever happened except political jabbing and a pissing contest, think thats more acceptable

[Cyclone]

Yeah, it makes a lot more sense now.

Did everybody simultaneously go on vacation?

[DR_TRAPEZOID]

I just finished finals today, and school ends tomorrow, so I should be able to post far more frequently. (Although on the 10th I will coincidentally be leaving for a 9 day trip, on which I will have little to no access to the internets.)

[Cyclone]

Ah, I just finished school two or three weeks ago. Well, hope you have a good break after tomorrow!

And thanks for letting us know about that trip. We'll be sure not to blow up Viktor's dungeon while you're away.

[Lugubrious]

I remain, as always. Pretty much every RP I have is slow right now, I guess it's just one of those things.

[DR_TRAPEZOID]

Question: Supposing I had a way to partially cripple their army from inside (specifically a large fiery detonation within their barracks), how large would my forces really need to be to take Altearx?
Knowing me, if I tried to write it out on my own, I would probably make an absolute orange farm of it all, and I don't really want to go through the strife of beating myself over the head with my mistake, then have to go back and make a hella lot of edits.

[Cyclone]

Well, if you want you could ask somebody else to control the defenders. Heck, I could do it if you want.

But anyways, concerning the city's strength there are a few things to take into account. The OP states that major cities are between 100,000 and 1,500,000 in population. Since Altearx is a remote fortress-city, it will probably be on the low end of that scale. Say we have 150,000 people. I'm not sure exactly what percentage of an early Renaissance era city would be soldiers, but if we just say 3% that gives us 4,500.

Let's round that and say that there is a garrison of 5,000 highly trained soldiers, many of which will be in the form of mages. As the OP also explains, even those that aren't mages make liberal use of magic in whatever ways they can: augmented bodies, enchanted weapons and armor, and so on. In a fair fight, many of them could probably stand against a level one or two creature. It would take a few to fell anything more than that.

However, this will hardly be a fair fight. Altearx is a fortress city, and in medieval times it wasn't unheard of for 500 men to hold off a siege of 10,000. If you do go the siege route, the city will be a hard nut to crack because it would obviously have a ton of food stored inside and you would somehow have to stop ships from coming into the harbor with supplies. The fact that Elysium is in an odd phase between medieval and Renaissance times means that cannons might change things up a bit, particularly because they are quite good at blowing up walls.

Since there are several thousand soldiers in addition to any forces in surrounding lands, militias, and unorganized civilian defenses, a siege is probably a terrible idea until Viktor has troops numbering above 10,000. A sneak attack is what would make the most sense. There will probably be several different barracks throughout the city, but your idea to bomb the main one would still severely cripple their defenses. Then, if you somehow managed to sneak inside the city walls, in the resulting chaos you could probably take over with just a few thousand creatures, especially if you have constructs and if some of those creatures are level 3 or 4.

Altearx really needs to be fleshed out more to talk about specifics, though. Ask questions like, "What type of magic could the sorcerers have? How could Viktor handle that?" and "Would it makes sense for the city to have tunnels below it, or sewers/floodgates that go to the harbor? If so, could Viktor's army get in through those? How would he find out about them?"

[BBeast]

Speaking of the magic, it is worth noting that the magic of the mages of a region is typically themed, not just a random assortment of magic. It has been established that Paterdomus specialises in fire and water magic, and Virens specialises in biomancy. From the Compendium you will find that Moltuspons contains, or at least once contained, powerful earth/stone mages. There hasn't been any such specification for Altearx (yet), although one could infer that there may be ice magic, considering that the enemies to the north of Paterdomus use ice magic which would imply that the northern tundra region s inhabited by peoples with affinity to ice magic. This might also give them a dislike of the Paterdomans, or it might not.

Cyclone covered it very well (good job by the way). Really it rests on you, Trapezoid, to decide on specifics of the city.

[Lugubrious]

Dagnabbit, I just realized that I made an error in the compendium entry for the Blighted Men. Supposed to say 'western plains', rather than eastern. My bad.

[BBeast]

I shall rectify that.

Also, Dawnon, your new post against the city is much better.

[R4inator]

Is my newest post good? I attempted to incorporate a small raid on my dungeon, and also, I guess I'm the first guy to make my Keeper's avatar change :D
And also BBeast, I don't think I could write a good Compendium entry for my Keeper when I'm done with making his avatar change. So yeah, just a heads up, you'll have to write it :P

[Dawnon Aeris]

ofcourse it is cause i didnt do anything

[Lugubrious]

Spode-an, you of all people know the best way to describe your own character and it's really not fair to make BBeast do something you could far more easily do yourself. By the way, you are definitely not the first avatar change. For example, Trapezoid just did it recently, and I've done it twice.

[Cyclone]

You already did make a good and rather detailed description of Lord Rain's new avatar, all you have to do is summarize that into a few sentences.

[R4inator]

Cyclone said
You already did make a good and rather detailed description of Lord Rain's new avatar, all you have to do is summarize that into a few sentences.

And that's the problem. I'm very, very bad at summarizing.