Tempting as it is to listen in on the birdkin Seasons having their meetup, I have my own meeting to pay attention to. Not long after dawn, people start showing up, and it doesn’t take long at all for everyone to get here. We use the war room with sea access so Hullbreak can have a voice, and Violet eagerly sends Onyx to represent her, too.
If it weren’t for the distance, I wouldn’t be surprised if Southwood would have sent the Stag, but short notice and long commute makes that impossible. Teemo greets everyone as they arrive, and everyone chats as they wait for the others.
If this keeps up, we’re gonna need a bigger war room, Teemo.
He snorts at me and nods, but raises his voice to address everyone instead of just snarking at me. “Alright, since everyone’s here, let’s begin. I’m sure you’re all aware of the Harbingers that attacked, but I don’t know if any of you know there was a fourth scion that tried to get the Boss’ core. This was a coordinated attack from the Betrayer, an ancient evil dungeon that was sealed away a long time ago.
“It’s been slowly slipping out of that seal, though, and tried to kill the Boss the other day, and he’s not going to take that laying down. He’s planning to attack it right back, once he gets some more info.”
While most of the people exchange concerned looks, Aranya speaks up. “How can we help, Lord Thedeim?”
Teemo smiles at her. “He’d like to tell you all to just sit back and let him handle it, but that didn’t work for the Maw. And like with the Maw… he doesn’t think he’s going to have the luxury to refuse any help. The Betrayer is ancient and powerful, and probably has a bunch of new tricks… or tricks so old everyone else has forgotten them. Either way, he’s going to need help not only from the enclaves, but the delvers, too.”
Nimis looks uncomfortable as she speaks up. “You didn’t mention the military? While I’d like to offer our help… we can’t mobilize without an order from the Crown.”
Teemo nods at her. “That’s what Boss figured, but that’s fine. You’re supposed to protect Fourdock, right? Boss is going to be leaning on you to be able to protect the homefront.”
“I can request reinforcements from the Crown,” suggests Rezlar. “Suppression of and protection from murderous expeditions falls squarely under the responsibilities of the military.”
“That’d be great, yeah. Boss is planning to leave Grim behind as backup, as well as Tiny and a few other scions, not to mention the denizens, so the army won’t be completely on their own.”
“The Captain will help as well, Admiral. The seagulls and other sea birds will monitor, and his crabs can function on land at least long enough to help defend, should the need arise."
“Violet wants to help, too,” speaks up Onyx. “Cappy is doubling down on expanding his coverage, and I think Violet is going to upgrade one of her spawners soon to try to have something else to protect people with.”
Teemo beams at her. “And I bet the Southwood would be happy to send some reinforcements, especially if you get him a dino spawner like you did with Hullbreak, Boss.”
I should definitely ask the compies if any want to go join Southwood, yeah. I’d almost give some to Violet, too, but I think she should get another expansion or two before we need to worry about getting her an extra spawner.
“Boss is also going to be needing to upgrade his spawners before he’s confident with being able to raid the Betrayer. Karn, Jondar; is there anything you need Boss to do to increase delving? He’s close to getting to float the first sphere. Is there anything he should try to add to it?”
The two guild leaders share an awkward glance before Karn speaks up. “I’m not sure how much more delving my guys can actually do.”
Jondar nods. “Same. My elites could use a few more challenging encounters, but I don’t think they’re going to be able to add too much more.”
“There will be the reinforcements from the other gods,” chimes in Torlon, drawing everyone’s attention. “I know the Shield is planning to send as many paladins and other combatants as It can, and It told me to prepare to host at least a college of Laermali’s battle scholars. Order and even the Raven are expected to send some of their followers, too, but I think the Shield and Laermali’s forces will be the majority.”
Old Staiven nods and speaks up. “Them and the army will be a good bolster, once they arrive. And I have something that should help with Thedeim’s mana as well.” He pulls out what looks like a mana potion, but I can feel the mana practically boiling around the simple looking flask. “Regulations prevent me from brewing these at a whim, but I’m sure the Lord mayor can help me get the permits and such to step up my production.”
He smirks over at Teemo. “Or I could just so happen to lose track of this one and lament that the dungeon figures it out on its own.” He hardly gets to finish his sentence before a swarm of ants rushes the flask and drags it into a shortcut, much to the amusement of the old ratkin alchemist. “It works by enhancing mana regeneration, instead of simply restoring internal reserves.”
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Tarl nods and speaks up. “That’s why they’re so regulated. They agitate mana even more than ordinary delving. It can play havoc with mana flows outside a dungeon, and give a dungeon even more mana than usual when used inside. For a dungeon like Thedeim, that’s no problem. For a dungeon like Neverrest, though, it’d make starving out a murderous dungeon even more difficult.”
He looks over to Rezlar. “You’ll probably want to talk to Telar for how to get permits. The Dungeoneers are involved in imposing the regulations, after all.”
Jondar speaks up again. “If that’s mana solved, how’re we going to attack this Betrayer?”
“That’s the hard part,” admits Teemo. “It’s in what you guys call the molten abyss, and even the gods don’t know exactly where.” He lets that sink in for a few moments, making sure everyone understands the severity of the situation before he continues. “But Boss has a rough plan to find it and invade. Order, the Shield, Laermali, and the Raven are going to use the captured scions to track down exactly where the Betrayer is, and the Boss will use his magma dragons to scout it out as best they can. Once we figure out a good place to attack, Boss will have Nova and some of the other scions handle transporting as many of our forces there as possible. It should work similar to the assault on the Maw, with delvers, denizens, and dwellers working on handling the spawns while the Boss’ scions strike deep to take out the core.”
“How strong are its spawns?” asks Jondar. “Do they all have mental affinity? Those Harbingers were nasty pieces of work. It takes a good mental affinity to resist, or a lot of practice. Or both.”
“We’ve seen some of what we expect will be the spawns when fighting the Maw. The least are about the size of wolves and have bladed limbs and a head like a leech. Individually, they’re not too bad, but it looks like they’re not expensive to spawn. They can also be put into a sort of hibernation, so the Betrayer could have untold numbers of them waiting around. There’s also lessers, which are… kinda like twisted centipedes. They help coordinate the least, and have vicious tentacles on each segment. They’re a support unit, from what we can tell, and will make the least a lot harder to fight.”
Karn and Jondar don’t look happy at hearing that, and Teemo nods as he continues. “Yeah, we only know the first two spawns. Boss has a few guesses for what the later ones might do, but he can’t guess the specifics.”
“Even that’s better than nothing,” speaks up Tarl. “What does he expect from the later spawns?”
“Well, something tough, definitely. The two spawns we know of aren’t too difficult to kill if you can get in position. Boss is betting on there being something that leans into the carapace heavily, aiming to take the hits the others can’t handle. He also expects some kind of ranged specialist, maybe a caster type. If you can establish a frontline, the ones in the back can focus on an all-out ranged offensive. And for the third type, probably what he calls a shocktrooper, something designed to break a frontline. The armored ones might fill that role, or there could be something dedicated to it.”
“That sounds like party formation theory,” pipes up Rhonda, and Teemo nods.
“It does. Boss might be overestimating the Betrayer, but I think he’s onto something. There’s also at least one other spawner type that we know basically nothing about: his fly spawner. The other scion was called the Unseen, and it was a small fly that was easy to overlook. On the bright side, the Unseen was a normal small fly, no weird tentacle abomination. But on the other hand…” Teemo drifts off, looking to Tarl, who sighs and picks up the thought.
“On the other hand, just knowing it’s a fly spawner doesn’t let us narrow down the potential spawns much at all. We can probably rule out the resource focused lines, but that’s still a lot of fly options.”
“We can narrow it down a bit, at least. The Unseen had shadow and fate affinities for sure, and kinetic wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. It didn’t have any affinities that really changed how it looked, so probably no fire or illusion or other things like that.”
Tarl ruminates on that for a few moments. “That narrows it down, but fate and shadow have some nasty combinations, usually an assassination style denizen line. I’ll look into it and see about making packets on what we’re likely to see.”
Teemo nods and looks at Karn and Jondar, as well as the representatives of my enclaves. “Are you guys willing to go up against stuff like that?”
Karn speaks up first. “Definitely. We already did once, so why not again? I think my people might be better suited to securing places, rather than forcing through to capture strategic points?”
Jondar nods. “My adventurers will agree to that sort of arrangement, yeah. What about you guys?” he asks, looking at my leaders.
“With Lord Thedeim’s blessings and works, I believe we can stand against whatever the Betrayer might try to throw at us. He’s recently introduced a new method of enchanting, which I believe will make his unique armor even more durable,” speaks up Aranya, with Larx following up.
“We had been resisting delving Lord Thedeim, not wishing to take up room for delvers that actually produce mana for Him. But if that mana potion works… we may be able to repay Him a small fraction of what we owe by delving. Not only will He get mana, but we’ll get valuable training.”
There are many nods around the table at that, so Old Staiven speaks up. “Then once the meeting is over, it sounds like I and the Mayor should go to the Dungeoneers and sort out the permits.” He pauses and smirks at where the potion had vanished to. “It’ll be a race, I suppose, between bureaucracy and Queen to see who can get the potions produced first.”
Teemo laughs at that. “Then I think that’s just about everything for now? If anyone wants to hammer out details, feel free, but I don’t see any reason to keep Old Staiven and Rezlar at the starting line any longer. Queen is definitely using her head start to figure out that potion.”
Staiven chuckles as he stands, and Rezlar moves to leave with him, the meeting officially over. Most of the others stay and start chatting in groups, either hammering out what to do while they wait for information, or making deals to pool resources so more people can work together. We’re going to need it, too. If the Betrayer really has been able to stockpile least for the past… however long, it’s going to be an even bigger fight than I was expecting.
And it’s not like I was expecting this to be a cakewalk.
