Chapter Two-Hundred Thirty-Nine

Chapter Two-Hundred Thirty-Nine

Im surprised any of the adventurers are willing to go back and try to keep scouting the Maw. I mostly had Teemo suggest they come talk to us on the off chance, but theres three groups willing to get a closer look. That doesnt count Yvonnes group who will be setting up a forward base camp, and the couple other teams who will be ferrying the reports back.

The No-Longer-Terrible Trio is even there, though theyre going to be running messages and providing a bit of security for the basecamp. They dont have any specific mental defenses, but theyre apparently strong enough to have a good shot of resisting the more dangerous mental attacks.

For the scouts, theres a group of scouts. They look like the kind of people Id expect to be in the rangers instead of being adventurers. The trio of elves look comfortable among the trees, and give assurances theyll be just as comfortable in the caves and tunnels. Im a bit unsure about letting them go down there, but they say they specialize in getting information without being noticed. I dont know if theyll have what they need to avoid the Harbinger, but theyre confident, and I have even less authority to try to stop them than I do with my dwellers.

The next is a more solo adventurer, a changeling with some kind of rogue class. She says she can literally hide in shadows, and implied she doesnt do all her work inside dungeons. While I dont know the exact countermeasures nobles and such might use to stop thieves, I have to imagine the changeling has something to get around mental detection. Shes hoping she can actually infiltrate the town. Im real nervous about that idea, but I still dont really have many options for actually stopping her.

The last is a group I didnt expect to see: a party of Crystal Shield followers. I didnt even realize any of them were participating in all this! They dont strike me as particularly stealthy, but the priest leading the small group is confident the Shield will be able to keep their minds safe, secure, and secret behind its protection. Teemo keeps pestering them for more information, and Im happier about their plan once they give a few more details. They have a ratkin member, not one of mine, who actually is sneaky. The wolfkin is usually their frontline fighter, and hell mostly be staying back to help keep the basecamp secure. The elven priest will bless the ratkin, and hell go scout and return.

Once Teemo gets that bit of info out of him, the other two teams ask for a similar blessing for their own efforts, and the priest is more than happy to provide it, once theyre actually out there and doing the job. Hell also be helping secure the basecamp, since he wont be out and about doing the scouting. I bet Aranya will be joining them all and helping ease the burden of keeping the place magically secure, once she gets here.

Which means I should probably get Teemo back home one last time before all this gets going. The healing brigade needs to be brought up, and Id like for Teemo to ask Tarl about any weaknesses the known denizens might have. A rusting attack could be nice, but I dont think anyone here has an ability like that.

Rezlar might, but no way is he going to be joining this particular fight, at least not directly. Even if he wasnt the lord mayor of Fourdock, hes still pretty young and inexperienced. Even the weakest adventurers here, Im pretty sure, have quite a few levels on him. Crazy as the adventurers are, even they are being careful around a mental affinity as strong as the harbinger.

I pull the brakes on that train of thought, not letting myself think in circles, getting nowhere. Hullbreak is a good lesson on how poorly that goes. If they decide they want to join the tunnelbore teams, I cant stop them. All I can do it try to make each strike team a threat, and hope for safety in numbers to minimize casualties. And mixed in with the various tunneling teams, will be my scions.

Once they take the field, especially if they manage to get inside the Maws territory, I think the dungeon will have more important things to worry about than my dwellers. Once inside, Rocky and Fluffles will be trying to cause enough of a ruckus to draw the attention of the Redcap and the Harbinger. With Slashs help, theyll defeat or at least distract those two, letting Nova and Teemo try to sneak off to claim the core.

Thatll be the real goal: to subsume the Maw. Well, the real goal is to protect the kobolds, and that isnt looking to be an easy task. So far, the scouts have gotten exactly nothing on their location. On the one hand, thats probably a good sign. Any rockslides close enough to try to find them have been suborned, so if theyre not trying to bait a location for the kobold enclave, they dont know thats the real goal.

On the other hand, that still leaves us with very few actual leads. From the lack of info, Im thinking theyre inside the Maws territory proper, and might even be very close to the core, like with Hullbreaks enclave. We need to get a bead on where they are and their status before we can really make any move. Not only will we want to make sure theyre safe to be able to free them, but tactically, we need to keep them safe, too. The Maw likes to sacrifice them, and it must get some mana from it. They could be an emergency mana bank, so we need to secure them before the Maw can try to cash them in.

Once we do that, then we can move on the core itself. If were lucky, theyll be far enough away that we can do one, then the other. If its like Hullbreak, well have to do both at once. If it comes to that Teemo will probably be in charge of evacuating them, possibly with Nova protecting them from whatever else the Maw might throw at the kobolds to kill them for mana. My other scions will be there, too, but in that situation, theyll probably be busy fighting the enemy scions.

Well probably have to play it by ear, even if we get a good look at the enclave and core. Stealth might be an option, and well probably give it a try, but I expect the whole thing will be a mess. Stealth will be plan A, with blitzing for the core being plan B. C will be the messy fight, and probably the most likely outcome, I expect. Either way, even taking the core leaves me with a few questions that I dont think will be answered until after we do it.

Im not quite sure whatll happen when we subsume the Maw, at least with the territory and spawners. With Neverrest, basically everything just transferred to me. The scions vanished, but any denizens that werent dead became mine. Even the scions vanishing might be more because they were dead at the time Fluffles took the core. If I dont get the Maws territory, will the denizens just be freed? Thatd be a mess, especially if the Redcap and Harbinger also get freed. Theyd be lower on power, but what if they slip away?

Those two on the loose could be even worse than them working for the Maw.