Battle Brothers: Supply Line

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

Having made enemies of all the mountain towns of House Grimmund, the Spears spend some time back in the low lands - defending the Western border against goblin raiders who now come mounted on wolves. Pioyer loses an eye in one such skirmish.

Damn their pointy pikes!

After some days they are asked to help a large and important supply caravan reach Gerwold - the town they helped take earlier. As such Faltran and Big Mike feel indebted to do the task. It's smooth sailing at first until they reach the foot hills where a large and well equipped bandit force ambushes them.

Kamots is clubbed to death from behind and Sir Julien is beheaded before the bandits are fought off. The survivors then have to deal with a Grimmund militia force also sent to stop the caravan. While the militia captain is fantastic in keeping his forces from fleeing, they simply don't have the equipment to win the battle.

Finally the caravan reaches Gerwold, and the Spears are paid. Thanks to their now glorious name, the veteran knight and survivor of horrors, Sunbro Forever joins the company. Big Mike, also now recovered fully from Hoggart's torture, decides to take up arms on the field beside the men he commands.

Battle Brothers: Davkul is Coming

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

Finding another necromantic ruin in the swamp, Majorn is pleased when he and the Spears wipe out the zombies and their necromaster while suffering only minor wounds against a force twice their number. While camped, Fanatic converts Kamots to the cult of Davkul which leads to blows against Sahkarov who still had hope for the poor fisherman. Not anymore.

I'll beat the heresy out of you!

By happenstance the company also runs into a blood sacrifice to Davkul on the way back to town. The man, another cultist named Mole, is bleeding and speared to the ground but not yet gone. Gander removes the spears while Fanatic urges him to join the Spears so he does.

To combat the growing number of cultists in the ranks, Big Mike recruits Raven Fatbastard - a merchant business acquaintance of Sid as well as Emile the thief and Bes, a retired soldier. Together they defeat more bandits and wolf packs. On their journeys Faltran notices House Grimmund forces taking Wiesendorf village from House Folsach. Mike reminds all of them to march on and to not get involved.

Luckily they run into a troupe of traveling performers whom Sir Julien convinces to perform for free. This greatly raises in the morale of the troops.

Battle Brothers: Filling the Ranks

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

Fox, a caravan hand, joins the Spears and earns his place early as he manages to slay the bandit leader "Roderick the Slaughterer". In the same battle Sid loses a finger to a crossbow bolt, and has an elbow broken by Roderick, leaving him less effective in combat. The peddler is just happy to be alive.

That would sting.

Gander is named Sergeant shortly after, for his high resolve, and Kamots shares a story of his past revealing he is not that bright. Sahkarov takes it upon himself to try teach him, but fails and is left dissatisfied.

A few bandits (35+ since they are getting paid by head), courier deliveries and direwolf hunts later the Spears recruit a dangerous looking man named Stargazer and the disowned noble Sir Julien, who apparently was disgraced by losing his forces overseas.

They also help a deserter, William Beardguy, escape from the soldiers looking for him - in return he joins the Spears, claiming he had left due to money issues. Big Mike assures him he won't have that problem working for the Spears.

Battle Brothers: The Hungry Mountains (Part I)

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

After the celebrations where Kamots manages to get lucky with a local girl, the Spears head back on the road for caravan defense. So far these have paid well for little risk as the soldiers of the towns keep the roads pretty clear. One particular contract is quite the marathon though, heading all the way up into the cold Northern lands of House Grimmund.

It is on that journey that the Spears first encounter the ghoulish creatures called Nachzehrers. These beasts rush headlong into the spear wall too, but they have a penchant for eating dead bodies, even that of their own kin. This results in them growing - bigger, slower, but far more powerful.

All hail the chubby!

One grows so big, it swallows Donk79 whole and beheads Paleshade with a casual backhand. Fortunately they aren't invincible, and with enough damage the monsters are slain with Donk79 saved before turning into Nachzehrer shit.

With these dark events, Big Mike recruits Sahkarov - a man of science turned into a man of faith, to join the company. He also buys King the war dog (an actual dog) to lift the spirits of the men.

Battle Brothers: Hunting Hoggart

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

There aren't many promising recruits at Kielseng but nevertheless Big Mike recruits Donk79 the beggar, Gander the grave digger and Kamots the fisherman, outfitting them with some basic shields and spears to fit in with the Spears of the Church motif.

The original trio weren't particularly impressed, until they see Big Mike's tactics in action. It turns out Hoggart hadn't gone far, having returned with reinforcements at a local graveyard in preparation to raid Kielseng. The Spears raided them first, not losing a man this time. Kamots net throwing was of particular value as he disabled Hoggart for most of the combat.

Kamots doing his best Spiderman impression!

As dusk fell, four geists also manifested - screaming terrible wails that rattled the Spears morale. Fortunately they were rather weak, dissipating with one hit each for an easy victory.

Upon returning Hoggart's head to the town hall at Kielseng, the money earned lit a bright smile among the company, and a burning desire to do more. From there, it didn't take much more to convince Big Mike to hang around as the resident strategist.

Sunset Six: Looking for Group

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

The discipline of Worship holds for me, what are hands down the hardest set of tests. While comparatively they don't need as many of the exorbitant items for constructing things they are still usually required as offerings but the real challenge is that all tests needs a group of people. Let's start with the Test of Vigil.

A favored test of pyromaniacs.

In it, you build a large fire then listen to the flames for what it wants to consume. You then have a time limit to get all the said items (which can be anything in game) and burn it. The rarity and number of items increases the longer the Vigil goes on. Failure to burn the requirements on time ends the fire. You individually gain points equal to the number of sacrifices you made multiplied by the number of sacrifices made by -other people-, meaning if you attempt to do this alone you get ZERO points. Highest scores pass the test.

If that sounds tough, you should see the Test of Beacons. Doing some random mundane activity has a chance of attracting a holy altar to spawn nearby. Once it does you have three in game minutes to anchor it to this plane of existence through meditation... by three people. Once anchored the three anchorers have thirty minutes to work out the proper ritual as it only gives each of them a fragmented piece. If you manage to do all of that seven times (including anchoring) you pass.

Anchoring fail, as we needed one more person.

Sunset Six: Marriage Goods

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

Balance of Goods continues the theme of Harmony which is guesswork, only this time you need to construct something first: an offering vault. Once built you can then load it with items of your choice (one unit per item) which are then taken up by the gods. You get points for each, but you get more if no one else puts the same item in their vault that week. My optimum strategy? Put as much garbage in there as you can. :P

After passing the test, it also becomes an awesome storage space.

The final test of Harmony I'll talk about is the easiest to pass but one I'm definitely not going to for moral reasons: the Test of Marriage. Yep, pixel murdering is OK but pixel marriage to anyone else but my real wife (who doesn't play this game) is definitely off the table. Anyway, all you need are some pretty common items, an altar for a quick ceremony, five witnesses and boom, you are married. Egypt is also pretty progressive in that you can marry an avatar of any gender and once married you gain the ability to instantly warp to them. Pretty cool right?

There's a small catch: Once married your spouse has access to all your stuff and all your constructs. They can also log in as you. Good thing divorce in game is pretty easy huh? :P The most common solution it seems is that people simply make alts and then marry themselves! That wasn't the case in the next picture though.

Kokabeel and Kamots wedding!

Sunset Six: A Gearbox Lesson

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

Gearboxes are required for mechanized things in game, and they look pretty damn complicated to build especially when your only guide of building one is a weird combination like "Gearbox A250-A350 D140-200 G460-560". Fortunately Balthazarr was free to give me a tutorial at the zFree laboratory on how all this works. First thing to know is that all Gearboxes start at A1 and that position always spins at 100%. By using a variety of gears, you can manipulate the speed of the next gear as shown here:

"Same, faster, slower."

You also need to take into consideration the expenses of building the gears you use - simply put bigger gears are more costly to build. Fortunately all the math for the ratios is already done on the wiki so all you need to do is look through the range you are interested (as defined by the requirement, so A has a range of 250-350) to see which sets will be the cheapest to build. The 5/3 numbers on the side there are the number of teeth per gear to achieve that speed with five being medium and three being small.

For this range, the cheapest to build would be A333 D167 G463.

This means that we want A8 rotating at 333%, D8 rotating at 167% and G8 rotating at 463%. To get to that top line, you simply need to make a snake of gears up to the desired spot like so:

Since the gears are all the same size, D8 is spinning at 100%.

That's nowhere near strong enough, which is where using the 5/3 gear combos help to boost it up. Also, the gears can be multi-levelled so you can have a big one right above a small one or one on top of a "spacer" for example. Ultimately the final box of A333 D167 G463, which obeys the initial range of "Gearbox A250-A350 D140-200 G460-560", looks like this:

Thanks for the lesson Balthazarr! :)

Just FYI - It's worse IRL. :P