Intermission 5 Page 14
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“That’s a pretty big house. Bigger than some of those Goblintown apartments.”
“It looks like it’s been abandoned for years, judging by the overgrowth. There could be a lot of internal damage.”
“But look at all the open space! Even if the house falls down, there’s plenty of room for all of us!”
“Yeah, and lots of places where the dungeon might have formed.”
“I don’t see any outbuildings, so unless there’s a hidden wine cellar or something, it must be the manor itself.”
“The guy who sent the letter said there’d be more instructions waiting at the entrance, right? Let’s see if there’s something posted on the door.”
“…Hmm. Well, there’s certainly SOMETHING there.”
“Uh oh.”
“Isn’t it past your bed time, Ricki?”
To do list:
Explore the Dungeon/Home.
Bring Lohk to the Dungeon/Home.
Wrong order, but nice to have one done, right?
lol
BAAAAAAHHHH incoming!
Well played. The star was staring us in the face all along – Lohk sent the request.
…Except there are a few gaps. It could just be that Ricki was wrong about Lohk not having the money to bail her out, but the presence of that mysterious benefactor has been hinted early. The caped figure on the roof could be a red herring, introduced immediately after the letter but not actually tied to it.
Lohk could have also just talked to Paws, though she did beat us here despite the party thinking they snuck away while she was asleep. Those two are most likely in on this together, which might be why Paws was so willing to come back and get Lohk.
Maybe. Sounds good. However, here on second panel Paws seem genuinely surprised.
I don’t think they wasted time during their way here. Lohk surely had some ace in the sleeve, like ability to teleport, or walking out of the city’s front gate and taking much shorter route.
For a moment I thought the caped figure could be Lohk. But the drawing does not match in the slightest, so unless she’s a master of illusion or a shapeshifter, it was not her.
And then, Ricky’s posture on the first panel. Ears down. Oh, she’s prepared, she knows she’s going to hear it 🙂
Someone about to get their ass cut.
Busted.
Flashback: Ricki as a young child, Lohk looking the same as always.
Lohk: “Strong in this one the Force is. Teach her I will.”
Lohk is obviously Yoda’s sister – how could we ever miss it?
See Daisy.
See Daisy shit.
Shit shit shit.
While I’m pretty sure Lohk won’t be helping us in dungeons, that did get me thinking about who we might swap out of the party. I think it’d be Lara, it’d hurt to lose the inventory space (assuming here that the other person has closer to 5 encumbrance than 10) but most of her abilities are tied to Corruption we don’t want to use, and her level up abilities don’t seem to change that.
Macadamia will be a liability in the dungeon itself (though we spend a lot of actions opening chests and pulling levers, which he can do just fine) but we’re leaving free stats behind for every empty ring slot, and he has three separate upgrade paths for Ringsmifing (better rings, different rings, more rings) which make those options better. Every ring smiffed is basically a level up we can move around (even if not moving them between turns).
Kamau completely distorts how we can play with healing and combat, but he has 11 available inventory slots and can put all the armour in one place to protect everyone. Also roughly as much HP, Atk, and Def as everyone else combined, though better equipment helps close that gap.
Now that I write it out, if we got a healer, swapping Kamau out would make sense. Enemies usually split attacks along attackers in ways that let us use equipment on multiple people, and with a healer and no threat of Remorse we could relax a little and patch up damage that gets through. Of course, we keep seeing enemy groups that could kill Ricki if they felt like ganging up on her, so it’s hard to say “sure, we can spend some HP” when “some” could be anywhere from 1 to 6.
There’s also the point that Kamau cannot benefit from bond points from additional dungeon completions. In that way taking him but leaving Lara wastes EXP in the form of bond points.
I’m not as concerned about that, the opportunity to advance bond past a threshold seems out of our control and there’s pretty clearly more dungeons than necessary to fill the bond track. I guess it’s generally worthwhile to try to fill the bond track before it’s needed. Unlikely to come up, Lara will be hitting a bond threshold on next dungeon completion so they’ll both be capped.
Light is another reason to leave Kamau behind, he’s the only one who needs light to see. Only important when he’s attacking, and Macadamia should generally have a hand to spare for holding a torch.