Intermission 7 Page 9
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After arranging plans for a (potential) drop off of goods in the future, Ricki leaves the bandit behind and continues on to the caravan itself.
Eventually she comes upon a train of five wagons, all seemingly disconnected from whatever animals once pulled them. A handful of people are camped out nearby. She walks up to them while the more overtly suspect members of her party hide in the bushes.
“Hello! I’m Ricki! Me and my friends heard there were some people around here who need help with a dungeon?”
“Yes! Absolutely!”
“We’ve been stuck here for DAYS waiting for the Guard to show up! My friends are still in there!”
“Well, that’s probably something we can help with! Why don’t you tell me a little bit about the problem?”
“Okay, okay… if you heard about our situation, you probably know we were attacked by bandits just before this dungeon appeared…”
“Some of us managed to escape early, but there are three merchants and several guards who didn’t. Some may have died, I’m not sure.”
“And then, shortly after, wolves appeared and went into the dungeon. A few minutes later, they pulled out the remains of our horses. We keep seeing them off in the trees, watching. We think they’re going to attack again if they get hungry!”
“So you want your friends rescued. Preferably before the wolves come back for seconds.”
“Yes, please. But…”
“Well, we also need at least SOME of our cargo. If we can’t make our monthly delivery to the Guard in the capital, we’ll default on our contract. They’ll seize our holdings and remaining wagons. We’ll lose everything!”
“Listen, I don’t know who you are, but we’re in real trouble here. If you can help us, we won’t tell the Guard that you went into a dungeon without authorization. I promise.”
“We can even pay you! 20… no, 25 gold. We can spare that much if we get our shipment back, and enough of us to bring it out of here on foot.”
“Got it. We’ll head inside and see what we can do.”
Having met representatives from both the bandits and the merchants, the only thing left to do is to head inside the dungeon and take a look around. Ricki tactfully avoided making promises to either faction, so she’ll be able to make her final decision once she has all the info she can get.
Hmmm.. given the choice… If we had to choose just one, I’d say merchants.
The paws discount is uncertain and even if it’s something like 10%, we’d have to spend 250 gp on basic gear to match merchants reward.
Emphasis on basic.
It probably won’t include pricier things like wands.
The as flat 25 gp means we get more money for manor upgrades which I consider more of a priority.
We only buy thieve’s picks, rope and rings right now from paws.
It’s a dungeon main quest so I feel more than 10% isn’t unlikely.
But I’m actually leaning towards the bandits for RP reasons. We basically have their story confirmed now, with how Paws (who must have some knowledge of their operations) didn’t call BS on it and how the merchants literally admitted themselves that all their cargo go straight to the Guard. Plus, I doubt Paws would associate with them if they were the evil ruthless “pillage and burn” kind of bandits.
So on one side, we have our friend Paws’ associates who are on the run from the Empire and turned to crime to survive like us. They’re so relatable to our group they’re practically our people.
On the other, we have merchants who got wealthy by supplying the Empire’s Guard, our enemy. Giving them the cargo is giving it to the Guard. They’re even the kind of people who would report us to the Guard for entering a dungeon if it wasn’t for a quid pro quo. They’d most likely treat us like the tavernkeep did back in dungeon 2 if they knew our identities.
I say fuck the Guard and their bootlickers.
Not necessarily disagreeing, but adding that this means that they will probably turn us in if we help the bandits.
So we’ll have “going into a dungeon without authorization” added to the list of crimes the Guard wants us for. Oh wait, the Guard already have caught us red-handed doing that and worse. At least twice. Not that it would matter considering we’re already on their top-wanted list given how they react on seeing Kamau.
The merchants reporting this to the guard NOW (as in, after the dungeon, because we didn’t help them), might still give the guard a trail to follow and eventually find us.
With the merchants saying nothing, the guard may not have even an inkling of where to look for us (depending on whether or not our “friend” with the star wolf sigil and/or the mysterious person in the red tights and cap blabbed towards them already). For now.
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A one armed, bald, poc male is something rather distinctive, after all, and will likely draw the guards attention, IF the merchants spot Kamau and include him in their report.
Actually, what the merchant said is, that they would not report our team going into the dungeon unauthorized.
I totally bet they will describe to the Guard when they are asked who helped them. They might simply keep mouth shut about the “dungeon” thing showing up and just say our team helped with the wolves who ate the horses.
They never promised not saying a word about seeing our team and/or describing whom they saw in our team.
We can solidly guess LSN’s opinions on the guard from past interactions and his Twitter handle. So the people supporting the guard are probably the (more) bad guys.
I feel like giving us the option between helping the less bad guys for a small reward or the more bad guys for a larger reward is a pretty common game thing to do.
I agree that helping bandits is probably better option here. But while I see the math behind 10% guess, I still think that the 20-25gp might be actually the smaller reward.
Aside from “moral” choices, I perceive this choice as money-in-hand vs money-invested-longterm, and as such, in games, usually, the long term goal is better, as it gives us unlimited gains (although stretched over time – even if that’s 10% and 200-250gp to break even, we CAN go past the break even point; while in the other case we’ve got specific, instant amount, but limited).
Ah, but instant money can be invested. If nothing else, there are several upgrades available that give us ~1 labor for 10gp. So we also have to consider the interest from having the money earlier.
Also, hard timer sounds like wolves spawning. We should prioritize saving people over looting to start, but I’m just speculating right now. We’ll know more at dungeon start. Super excited!
Totally not speculating. Wolves are there, lurking around. And we’ve heard they can enter and exit the dungeon. I am absolutely sure that we will be having here at least two timers.
First, softer, the wolves. We know they got some food, but we know they’ll get back. It was spelled out clearly by Ricky.
Second, harder, …. the Guard. This merchant waited for them to come. So they were notified. They’re not hurrying here, but I bet they will come, and that will mean we’ve got to GTFO ASAP. We’ve already seen how effective they are in cleaning dungeons.
It might also be a small hint that we’d better not 100% clean every mob there, so if/when wolves and Guard show up, they have something to play with.
So we know the shipment is intended for the Guard (and is thus likely weapons and armor), but could be anything they regularly need
We know the Guard is in the habit of raiding apartments of oppressed minorities with lethal force (see the Warrens)
We’re actively on the run from the Guard ourselves.
We don’t really know much about the bandits, but the Guard seem like they’re actively making life terrible for a lot of people (when not dealing in summary justice via execution)
And we know the bad outcome for the merchants is declaring bankruptcy.
We should side with the bandits rather than the merchants in order to disrupt the Guard’s supply chain to the extent possible
We even know a nice, move-in ready alleyway that the merchants can huddle in once their assets have been seized.
Bankruptcy for the survivors. We do still get the choice of whether or not we save the living merchants on the inside.
Other merchants will provide for the guards if these fail to deliver. The merchants are the ones who will suffer The most if we do not help their side.
Getting on the good side of people close to the empire is also a good tactic if we actually are deliberately trying to screw over the empire (are we? I thought Ricki just wants to make a home for people)
The empire would still lose their first choice for this contract. And the runner-ups might ask for more upon learning these woods have empirebound-caravan-targeting bandits that became better equipped than ever. Bandits for whom the cargo is a question of life and death.
The weaker the empire become, the safer a home is for people like Ricki&friends.
I’d like to point out that this could also backfire and cause a crackdown because needed supplies didn’t get through. The empire isn’t gonna fail because one supply delivery didn’t get through, but if one supply delivery not getting through causes the guard to decide to send people to check things out…
They seem nice.
While i think raw gold will be more useful (how many basic items are we planning to buy?)
Bandits offer is much more interesting
so bandits it is
I don’t think we’re supposed to decide now.
makes me think that we’ll get the info which deeds are necessary to “succeed” /fulfill the needs of either side (possibly we could even do both? But more likely they are mutually exclusive, because the “boxes of wares” will be limited and there will be only “enough” for ONE side). So we can still decide while in the dungeon, maybe even switch goals in between.
I wonder if there will be a “clear” condition again. Might be nice.
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(I’m going out on a limb and say that the “farm” didn’t really have one, because while I didn’t do the math, I think it would have been impossible to clear out the whole dungeon in 40-ish turns, especially with atk and def values getting nerfed as the time progressed.
Then again, if we had found the garden gloves sooner, we wouldn’t have spent so many turns harvesting stuff, so who knows. Did anyone actually do some calculations on that topic?
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I’m still miffed that the opponents were immune to the “soothing smell”, it doesn’t make any sense. LSN could at least have written something along the lines that cornknights and tomatochets don’t have noses and that all the chickens had a cold or something to hint that they will NOT be affected by an omnipresent smell.)
Why choose a side? Just wait a turn and Merchants & Bandits alike: “Welcome.” On the other hand, the caravan might have loaded ketoconazole, itraconazole, fluconazole, fosfluconazole, voriconazole, posaconazole, isavuconazole, griseofulvin and terbinafine.
I think the barn would have been possible if we had burned the scarecrows so that the crows did a lot of the work for us and then left, either used the hay bale to kill the pumpkin or pacify the mammoth, and didn’t waste as many actions screwing around.
In other words, not feasible since we could not have reasonably known a lot of those things, but potentially possible.
Saving people from wolves feels right. It doesn’t matter if the people are rebels or merchants.
The rebels need some goods? The merchants need some goods? We might want some of the goods for ourselves? If “some” is compatible with our storage space (and available time and access), I am inclined to help everyone with something. But if the “something” for the merchants is a death star for the Imperial Guard, I would not give it to them.
About the time limit: wolves get hungry, guard arrives, sky falls.
As we have a really bad tradition of leaving dungeons between “late” and “much too late”, I suggest leaving the dungeon before turn 40.
If I had to guess, each side will probably want either ~50% of what’s available (to make it technically possible to help both, but difficult), or something like 51% (to make it impossible).
We’ll probably find out Monday.
I also imagine that if this is a series of mini -escort quests as I’m guessing it will be, NPCs will object to us simultaneously escorting both sides.
At least at merchant’s side, some of the NPC will be guards, I think they will simply be hostile do bandits and will attack them on sight — they know the bandits attacked the caravan earlier.