alhoon

About those essence pools. I have found a couple given to OUTSIDERS for all things. There are people working with pure-steel that have an essence pool nearby. Shaper facilities are full with those, unsupervised. At least, in the Azeraph fort of GF4 (Monarch's area) the pools were in the open with General Crawley and that Shaper woman that you trick to shape you in order to give you +1 spellcraft. Since you can't shape in combat that would mean I couldn't defeat them all.

On the contrary most places that have essence pools, have them undefended.

I have not even read a synopsis of what Avadon is, so I can't comment on that.

Most of the Drakons are as bad as the Shapers. In GF4, the Cryodrayks rebel against them. They don't quite hide their contempt for everyone else and their feelings of superiority. At least Shapers are more civil in their snubbing.

If I had to choose between Drakons and Shapers, I would prefer Shapers. Slavery and genocide? Weeeeell... I'm pretty sure Drakons would eventually enslave everyone non-Drakon. Humans, Serviles, etc. Genocide? Drakons would probably turn on the Gazers too and wipe out areas that resisted their rule.

BUT... I never saw the choice as Drakons or Shapers. Mostly like Greta\Lankan-moderates or Litalia\Drakons or Shapers. Taygen is not really a choice.

I don't think you'll be surprised, there have been hints even from the episodes I am at. Don't worry. All factions deal with his plan. You'll find out.

But if they’ve still got the power…especially if they can self-shape to make an individual super-powerful…what’s to prevent a coup d'etat? Especially if they could use canisters and geneforges to make their “civilian” masters into instant shapers themselves…the Emperor Bennhold (shudder shudder).

No, no, no! I didn't mean "Shapers taking an oath to stay out of temporal power and shape themselves to Godhood"

I meant that Shaper law regarding not shaping one self, about not shaping creations that can Shape etc remain in place!

And then, restrictions like "you need written permission by your civilian leader to have an essence pool* so you don't go Monarch and of course have the inquisition check your place for CMDs (Creations of Mass Destruction) after you make one"

and "You need permission by your civilian leader to make anything as powerful as battle alphas or stronger to make sure you don't show up with 12 war Tralls and overthrow him after cutting through his guards"

etc

* Seriously, these are extremely dangerous too. I would camp next to one, and send inexhaustible armies of creations to kill everything.

I killed Rawal extremely easily that way. Got into his compound, went for the essence pool and started shaping high level stuff. I may have lost like 15 expendable creations that way. So what?

At one point I thought to kill everything with Cryoras to just add insult to injury. Send 100 Cryoras to their death. I could do it, but it would take a lot of time.

Astoria's ending: This is the one I went for officially. However I doubt peace would hold forever. The disgruntled Drakons, probably feeling betrayed by the humans and Serviles would cook up something sooner or later in Sucia nation. It doesn't have to be EVERY dracon. A fanatical 5% going for something like Ghaldring's plan 40 years later would be bad enough.

3 Drakon Shapers to make 12 spawners each and you have chaos again.

And the Shaper Empire? There would be Alwans in the future that would strike for more land.

One thing: In GF4 it was Litalia pushing them around from the Rebel side. Once Litalia defected, the Trakovites stopped being chased by the rebels. She was adamant about their extermination in GF4.

And calling Monarch "Shaper Monarch" gives me the chills and is a worse insult to Shapers and their ideology than calling geneforge-in-basement Rawal a Shaper. Taygen may be radical, evil, outside of Shaper law, but he's not as far from Shaper morals as Monarch or Rawal are.

I understand her motives, but at some point, I draw a line over the body count.

Anyway, I understand your viewpoint, I believe you understand mine, we had a very interesting exchange of opinion but let's not derail the thread more.

Ahem, she's pretty hell-bent to punish shapers in GF4 and as I said in a very spoily reply in another thread, I really don't think what most people call "clarity" ever returned to Litalia whatever she says.

Oh, and to be clear, I find Litalia fascinating as a character.

As of the Shaping dangers:

I would totally TOTALLY get behind a movement in Terrestia that doesn't ban shaping, but prohibits Shapers from holding positions of power and institutes a kind of inquisition that checks on Shaper researchers to make sure they stay within the law. Shapers should take an oath to never hold office aside of serving as councilors.

Abolish the damn magocracy and half the problems will be gone with it.

That way you won't have Rawal-kind people with the ability to create loyal monsters. He would have to ascend a different way to become lord of all.

You wouldn't have Taygen-kind people with nearly unlimited funds for their dangerous research and power to enforce terrible and cruel laws.

You would still end up with Monarchs, Litalias and oath-breakers but Shapers unburdened with rulership would be better to deal with them.

Alberich: This is spoily

I find it amazing how these games provoke so may different viewpoints on the moral issues. I dare say they give me a better insight on what makes civil wars so terrible and complex issues.

He hasn't been there yet? Oh, I'll edit my post.

Episode 55: (The one where Blxz returns the book to Rawal)

O_O 7th time recording the episode?

And Rawal doesn't disappoint "Amazing! The details! I can see why the author had to be executed"... lol.

Wingbolts were a slight disappointment for me in this game.

I'm really disappointed I didn't hear your original reaction when you found out Taygen's mad plan.

Alas, I can still look forward to your reactions when you join a faction and be told to start the atrocities...

I am pretty sure that if you kill Platano, you'd be locked out of Taygen's faction. This is BTW the only one I haven't done: Taygen's storyline.

About the bug quest: I frankly don't remember what I did with the vial, but I think I kept it (cause that's what I would do). I can't be sure, but I don't remember it being useful anywhere except in that area to draw out more bugs for me to get XP from.

I see you found a wand of the inferno in there thanks you to your insanely high mechanics. That would have been handy...

I laughed aloud when you opened the door saw no enemy and... went for the canister without even talking to your host first. So much for your "Shaper laws should not be broken" Blxz.

Also, if I may ask, what exactly you thought an outsider mage would do when you told him you would report him for learning to Shape? Shapers would not only execute him, they would go over all his contacts probably and arrest them. They are completely intolerant of that kind of thing and it's one of the main reasons of the Rebellion.

Of course, it could have helped if the Life-crafters weren't shaped but secretly trained in deep hidden chambers for a few years. Geneforges are too damn dangerous.

Episode 56: Drayks really don't seem to hold up any more.

Episode 57:

I suggest you start enchanting your stuff more, especially the artifacts. Misty orbs and gold crystals are really good.

You also mention in the episode frame cuts etc. I didn't notice anything till you brought it up.

Episode 58:

I think it was a good choice to kill the monsters off-screen. And I totally agree that the podlings are the most annoying enemy of the game.

They are even more annoying than even Unbound that shape podlings!

I actually surrendered to the bandits of the woods, thinking they would take me to Bennhold or something. They just... murdered me off screen. Like, "they take you away and kill you".

If I may, I cringed a bit when you used so many charges of the powerful baton on the lone mage bandit. The area damage would have been handy later with many enemies.

As for the bandit fights of the episode, perhaps you could use that nice trick of speeding up the battles with music, as you did in the cave?

Bennhold? I guess that's Bennhold!

I wish I could get him to join the Rebels instead of killing him. I'm totally going to mod that in at some point...

I shouldn't do that in my busy schedule, but that's too much GF talking these days. I have to watch a couple of episodes.

when I ended up a reluctant Trakovite

Wait what? O_O

I can't say more cause Blxz is in this spoily thread, but I'm surprised.

Sage Taygen is a perfect example, I think. The fact that someone quite that insane can be handed a position of power and authority under the Shapers kinda suggests something is wrong. I agree that if every Shaper was like Alwan, the Shapers would probably be better - but they aren't. For every Alwan, there's a Rawal, or a Taygen, or any of the dozen-odd Shapers we see acting like unpleasant, bullying thugs throughout

You forget... the Monarch. A powerful guy that grew more powerful by shaping himself and then he decided that he didn't like living things he didn't make himself very much and decided to wipe them out. All. By himself. Using a trick that many shapers could do although for some reason they think it's stupid. When that stupid trick along with essence pools and a few creations that can shape required a shaper division to work with a rebel division just to contain him.

Monarch: Giving genocide a new meaning by targeting everyone not just a group.

And he started as a Shaper.

Speaking of GF4: Shaper Moseh. The guy that was hooked to a machine with tubes feeding him essence, sustained himself by draining the life out of captives ... and looked me in the eye and called me a freak and abomination because I have shaped myself with the knowledge to cast firebolts. The kettle, calling the pot black.

For me, considering the death, destruction, and hardship when the shaper's rules are broken, I think the Shaper's ends really do justify the means

The Shapers break their own rules all the time though.

In GF4, the Shaper generals (including Alwan) break the rules (Moseh, training the character). In GF5 every councilor in the game EXCEPT Alwan breaks the rules and Alwan is skirting them. And by breaking them I mean allowing rebels and rogues to settle in their lands unmolested, creating a geneforge in the basement and canisters to making weapons worse than the Unbound.

Sure, bad things happen when these Councilors break their rules.

However the fact that so many do in stress-times along with the myriad examples of breaking them in more peaceful times, clearly shows that Shapers are not reliable to yield their power without causing a calamity or more every so often.

In the end it comes to this IMO: A power-mad, controlling magocracy that is enslaving sentients or wipes them out and creates unspeakable horrors vs a congromelate of people that oppose them that range from moderate to equally power-mad and immoral and try to even the odds against that magocracy by creating unspeakable horrors.

Both break the laws of common sense to gain an edge. The first side is just more hypocritical about it.

If it may be of some help, I've made a few terrain and features for hexographer. Semi-arid plains, small towns and wizard towers may be of interest to you. http://www.filedropper.com/mysett

The pro version of hexographer, that makes the key, costs money...

Anyway, I would say that I think the scale of you map is 12 miles per hex.

Also, map of the game aside, I think the map needs more inhabitable areas. Sure Shaper-made stuff could grow everywhere and feed people, but really Terrestia seems a really inhospitable place. You're either under the full support of Shapers to have food, or famine strikes.

Coming back to that, I start to realize why so many people resist the Trakovites.

Look at these areas! Without shaping, Terrestia would not be able to support even 20% of the people they supposedly do.

One thing becomes clear by studying the map of the inhospitable Terrestia: If Trakovites think it's possible to survive there without shaping... Trakovites are insane

Yes, of course, I didn't mean to attack your idea.

I also have a similar approach: A D&D world with shapers. 6-7 kingdoms fighting over ideology and morals because they're too intolerant to accept other views. Quite like Royalists were fighting Republics and vice versa during the enlightment cause (at least in theory) they could not accept a different form of government nearby or like religious wars.

Well, if I may again: That sounds too much like a "necromancer" that makes living things instead of dead... and yes, undead under the control of a necromancer could (theoretically) go loose.

If I may suggest for the map: Hexographer allows you to save a key (I have the pro version though). Perhaps try that?

It is a pretty decent draft, I'm glad you used hex map for that and ... I already have a homebrew D&D geneforge-based setting. Not in Terrestia, but in a homebrew world. I'm using the flexible D&D next rules. I would be glad to assist you since I had to overcome a few hurdles, if you so desire.

But first, a warning: Unless you're playing with 1-2 players, be veeery careful about Shaper classes. It's NOT a balance issue; you could always put more enemies.

It's a "I have 3 PCs each with 4 creations against 10 enemies = I have to keep track of a couple dozen things in the encounter".

I use shapers as NPCs only.

Nope, I would like to listen your reactions when every faction leader asks you to do some very dirty stuff.

You may hate the rebels but they're the most straightforward in what they ask you to do...

I guess I know what choice you made... I made the same choice hence I haven't seen all the endings.

I think it was a reference on the comment "be able to keep up with Xurebx" and how it's about up to GF2.

GF3 (I'm in the middle of the 2nd island) From a Role playing point of view, or if you want, just the point of view I had in the opening... whether it is thought of as a military academy or school, in the Tutorial I see corpses of people that haven't harmed a creation (yet) and are my classmates. Sure, I didn't know them it gives a feeling of "someone is killing my friends". That moved me to somewhat pro-Shaper and I haven't seen the rebels yet doing something good and just enough to justify a change of course from my part.

For the time... I bet that's what they were thinking when they were locking everything up in Sucia.