Let’s Play Invasion from the Unknown 2.0 (Parts I and II)

[Inky]

Hey, I was thinking of doing another screenshot playthrough since people seem to like them and use them as a reference. I thought it would be nice to do an addon campaign since there’s generally very little discussion about them.

Campaign: Invasion from the Unknown (IftU) by shadowm is the unofficial sequel to Under the Burning Suns. IftU and its sequel After the Storm were the very first Wesnoth addons I ever played years ago, and to this day I consider them my favorite of all Wesnoth campaigns.

I’ll be playing Part I (Seeking the Light) which is 13 scenarios, on campaign version 1.99.2 (also known as 2.0 RC 3).
EDIT: I'm also doing Part II! (campaign version 1.99.4)

Wesnoth version: 1.12.5 (Part I) / 1.12.6 (Part II)
Saveloading: I’ll only load start of scenario saves, and if I do I’ll make a note of it at the beginning of the post.
Difficulty: Hard (I haven’t played this campaign on hard before so I hope it's not too hard...)

As always comments/criticism welcome! Posting your own strategies / replays is very welcome too.

-------------------------------------
I also thought I’d try writing walkthrough entries as I play through the campaign, since I think this campaign could really use one. Here’s what I have so far – I'd welcome any help in improving the guide, e.g. alternate strategies, additions, criticism of my advice.

EDIT: I finally finished the walkthrough and posted it on the wiki! https://wiki.wesnoth.org/IftU_Walkthrough

[Inky]

Scenario 1 – Border Patrol

[Note: This is my second attempt. The first time I played I overrecruited and didn’t get enough gold carryover for Scenario 2.]

From the personal journal of Lord Galas of the Forest Elves.

Galas continues the time honored desert elf tradition started by Kaleh of spending all his time composing elaborate entries for his diary. I guess there’s just not much else to do in the desert.

Our ancestors settled this land ages ago, seeking shelter from the hostile outside world. They hailed from forests which have long withered away; the endless expanse of sand could not possibly offer our kind much more than vicious enemies and a slow, agonizing death. It is said that thousands of elves fell before the survivors finally came across this green valley. As if by the grace of the Lords of Light themselves, it emerged from the ruins of a once green and lush world in our moment of dire need.

Though many brave elves have died, at least the survivors can comfort themselves with the fact that they can finally begin to live their lives in peace…

Nevermind, I spoke too soon. Someone’s trying to kill us again.


And here’s our fearless leader Galas! Somehow he isn’t very awe inspiring though, he looks like he spent all day fixing his hair instead of combat training….

Galas, always the optimist, thinks that maybe they’re just here to be friends so we should just sit around and do nothing. Great, I’m feeling more confident with his leadership by the minute.


Spoiler alert: They aren’t friends. We’ll actually end up having to kill both enemy leaders.

Scenario setup:

170 gold versions 250 seems like it should be no problem, but this is a deceptively easy scenario, since it is absolutely essential to begin the next scenario with decent carryover (at least about 140 gold carryover on Hard). This means we must not overrecruit and must try to keep our income as positive as possible, while still recruiting enough units to finish on time.

This campaign using the two suns schedule from Under the Burning Suns, which is:
 First Dawn
 First Morning, Midday, Afternoon (3 turns of daylight)
 First Dusk
 The Short Dark (Night)
 Second Dawn
 Second Morning, Midday, Afternoon (3 turns of daylight)
 Second Dusk
 The Long Dark 1-4 (4 turns of night)

Here are the recruits available to us:

• Archers: Main ranged damage source, especially good against the mounted chaos raiders.
• Fighter: Meatshields, a couple are good for holding the line (and leadership) but hunters are just plain better.
• Hunter: These guys are amazing! Same melee attack as the fighter, 1 more movement point, a slowing ranged attack, and they can skirmish at level 2! Only downside is the lower HP.
• Scout: Good for if you have way too much gold and can’t spend it all? Not worth using at all, in my opinion. (Too expensive for the damage they do.)
• Shaman: Tragically, they do not advance to sylphs in this campaign. Even so, they’re still essential for healing and slowing, and for their magical damage when leveled.

Turn 1, First Dawn


Since the enemy armies are completely chaotic we’ll plan our main attack for second dawn (turn 7), and then use the following 3 turns of full daylight to wipe out the enemies before the long night hits us.

This means we’re pretty much going to be doing nothing for the first few turns, so we’ll just recruit up to our village limit to keep our income high, and stay near the initial keep.

Here are the enemies’ friendly humans’ recruits:

These are the 4 types of, ahem, friendly units we will be meeting in this scenario:


Turn 4, First Afternoon


We get our first glimpse of the chaos army.

Galas slowly comes to the realization that these humans did not come here for friendly forest fun, and the objectives change accordingly.

[Note: Contrary to what the objectives say, there is an early finish bonus.]

Turn 5, First Dusk


An overeager chaos raider decided to attack us all by himself, and was promptly killed by a shaman. Pretty embarrassing way to die. The rest of the chaos army is still out of range.

Meanwhile, Galas recruits some reinforcements but we make sure not to spend all our gold, as recruiting more units would hurt our income too much.

Turn 6, The Short Dark


We form a line on good terrain with elvish fighters in front and let them come to us. Fighters are our highest HP units (and there’s also the cheapest ones) so they’re perfect for dangerous jobs like this. Lucky them!

Turn 7, Second Dawn


The main army arrives - we’ll just hold the line on good terrain again and let them come to us so we can tear them apart during the day.


The only unit who can be attacked from 3 hexes is our resilient 38 HP fighter on 60% on the right, who should be just fine.

Turn 8, Second Morning


Everyone’s still alive, though one of the archers is heavily wounded so he’ll run off to a village to heal.

Since it’s full day now, everyone else just starts pounding on any enemy units in reach.


The elvish hunter on 40% is very exposed, but the enemies will have to get on bad terrain to hit him, and he will do lots of melee retaliation and should slow ranged attackers.

Turn 9, Second Midday


We lost the wounded fighter on the right and should have lost the trapper on 40%, but we get very lucky and he lives.


In fact we’ve been getting extremely good luck all scenario. We feel a little bad for the chaos army, but it doesn’t stop us from happily exploiting our advantage to continue demolishing them.


I made a mistake with putting Galas on 40% to kill an invoker, exposing him to 3 hexes (since the fighter southwest of him is dead meat). I keep forgetting how much of a wuss he is.

Turn 10, First Afternoon


Galas should have died last turn but the random number god is with us today and he survives with 1 HP.

Galas will now run away like a girl (maybe he will go write about this in his diary) and everyone else will try to kill as many units as possible while it’s still daylight.


We kill 4 units and slow 2 more – an extremely good turn!

Turn 11, Second Dusk


The three blue units all piled on the archer on 40% but two of them were slowed so they didn’t manage to kill him.
Most of the chaos army is gone at this point so we’re in great shape. We’ll try to clean up these 4 units.


We almost manage it. We managed to get Galas another kill too. Personally I can’t wait to get him to level 2 so we won’t have to babysit him anymore.

Turn 12, The Long Dark (1)

It’s the beginning of the long night, when the chaos units do massive damage…

…unless of course you slow them, and then they go back to doing pathetic damage.

We’ll spend the rest of The Long Dark advancing southeast so we can attack the southern green leader at day.

Turn 14, The Long Dark (3)


Two hunters get an amazing 0 out of 8 hits on the 50% defense bowman. THIS is what I’m paying them each 1 gold per turn for?! I want my money back…

Turn 15, The Long Dark (4)


But this chaos raider had no problem hitting the 60% defense hunter 3 for 3. Look at him, HE’S earning his pay at least. At least I don’t have to pay upkeep for that worthless hunter anymore. Good riddance.

We kill the two units here and level Galas in the process.


From the personal journal of Lord Galas: “Today I became a level 2 captain with leadership, so now I can actually do something useful for a change!”

Turn 16, First Dawn


Our main army heads south, where poor Grumnyr’s all by himself. Where’d your army go, Grumnyr?


Meanwhile, a small squad goes northeast to deal with these two chaos invaders.

Turn 17, First Morning

The main army continues south towards Grumnyr, and the northeast squad continues to provide free trips to the afterlife for the eastern leader’s units:

They’re getting some very good experience in the process.

Turn 19, First Afternoon


The main army whittles down Grumnyr – we’ll kill him next turn with the archer who levels into a ranger.


Meanwhile the northeast squad continues to make kills – the archer will level to marksman next turn, which will be very useful in killing the remaining leader.

Turn 21, The Short Dark


Everyone closes in on the final leader, staying away from the dangerous chaos invader. We’ll keep advancing during Second dawn, and we should be able to easily take him out during the second day with our marksman.

Turn 23, Second Morning


We start whittling him down. Almost there…

Turn 24, Second Midday


And the marksman finishes off Surhan. Victory! Though indeed as Galas says, our troubles have just begun…


We get a lot of carryover, which a good thing because the next scenario is unbeatable without a lot of carryover (as I found out the hard way).


We got very good luck in the beginning which let us get away with some careless positioning.
Losses: 2 fighters and a hunter


And here’s our unit list! The almost leveling units will be a big help next scenario.
Thanks for reading!

[skeptical_troll]

I love your guides to campaigns, and in particular the witty comments you drop around

I played this great campaign not long ago, and also had to replay the first scenario after being brutally razed to ground in the second, at my first attempt.

I fell into temptation of recruiting two scouts , you know, elves on horses are so cool! One didn't live long, the other one went hiking on the mountain tile at 19,27 and stayed there watching his friends fighting from a distance. He distracted a couple of enemies in the process, and incredibly managed to survive and took part to the final assault. I even leveled him up by the end of the scenario!

the other difference is that I tried to set my defense line from the forest tile at 19,20 to the 4 forest tiles just east of the encampment tiles (around 26,17). It was a bit more risky because there are few 40% flat tiles, but there is a village as well. I got more casualties than you (Galas almost dead as well) but managed to finish on turn 25 with 180 gold and 7 level 2 units (4 rangers, elvish rider, druid and captain Galas).

Looking back, I could have probably waited to level those units up, to pay less upkeep and have them ready for scenario 2, which was a bloodbath even if I survived.

I look forward to see the next one!

[taptap]

I once started a thread about the start of Invasion from the Unknown: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=37527

My takeaway was that really aggressive play is viable and even preferable in this scenario.

[Inky]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who got absolutely massacred on Scenario 2 . It seems having to replay scenario 1 for gold is pretty much guaranteed (maybe the walkthrough will help others with this). Thanks both of you for the Scenario 1 tips! I've added both of these alternate strategies to the Scenario 1 entry.

elves on horses are so cool!

Yeah! With their new sprites in 1.12 they look so awesome now (until you you see them use their crappy bow attack and miss twice). I'm amazed you actually managed to level one up!

taptap: Thanks for the link- very counter intuitive to attack at Dusk but wow, it works! Though now with the 40% carryover system instead of 80% you don't get nearly as much benefit from a very high carryover so a more defensive strategy seems to work just as well too. (Also: you beat S2 with only 130 gold on medium?! )

Part 2 coming soon!

[Inky]

Scenario 2 – A Real Confrontation

Our group was greatly weakened by the battle, so we withdrew back to the main keep in the valley. Another patrol group took our place and was scheduled to return in three days. That was not to happen. Instead, enemies came to us with our kin’s skulls mounted atop their banner-poles. Driving them forth would not be easy.

I hate to say this but Ledinor does not inspire much confidence. The guy looks like he’d lose a fight with Galas.

The good news is, we get a loyal scout (the bad news: scouts suck) and an awesome new leader unit, Anlinde:

Well, she’s not awesome quite yet, but just wait til she gets to level 4!

Scenario setup:


It’s fairly easy to defeat all leaders on Medium, but on Hard you’ll likely have to just resist until the end of turns. Fortunately you don’t need any carryover gold for the next scenario, so defeating the leaders isn’t necessary.


Well it doesn’t look so bad at first glance…but then we remember that the scenario starts during Second Dusk (just before 4 turns of The Long Dark), and Ledinor’s going to happily attack with his elves during the night, when they will die unbelievably quickly. In other words we’re pretty much going to have to do everything ourselves.

But not to worry! For we may now call upon the aid of the ultimate elven unit:

Behold, the mighty Elvish Civilian! For the low low price of 8 gold and no upkeep they can soak up a good number of enemy attacks when placed on 70% defense forest. Perfect for filling in holes in a formation and delaying the enemy units which will arrive at the end of the night.

Turn 1, Second Dusk


We start recruiting a mix of veterans and spam (civilians and fighters).

This battle has two fronts divided by the central lake: the western front south of our keep, and the eastern front south of Ledinor’s. The eastern front is much safer as there are less enemies there and Ledinor sends the bulk of his army that way, so we’ll send a small group of veterans east and send the spam southwest.


Here are the two southwest enemies: most of these units will head up the western side of the lake. There’s a third enemy leader in the southeast whose units will go up the eastern side.

In addition to the chaos humans from last scenario, these enemies recruit demons and a rather cute looking puppy which seems like it would make a nice pet.

Turn 2, The Long Dark (1)


We recall our close to leveling units, as their healing upon leveling up will be invaluable, and some more civilian spam.

Turn 3, The Long Dark (2)


The chaos army continues to grow and a small group of demons shows up in the southwest. Just great. Things keep getting better and better.


When in times of great need, just keep spamming civilians.
-Lord Galas of the Forest Elves

Turn 4, The Short Dark (3)


On the eastern front, this ranger tries to soften up a headhunter for Ledinor’s elves to finish but she is the one who ends up being softened up after taking full retaliation. What a moron!

Fortunately Ledinor’s elves will actually do something useful and will shield her on their turn.


Followed by this idiot archer getting 0 out of 4 hits on the chaos raider. We’re off to a great start, guys.

We form a tight line in the forest interspersed with civilians, who have 70% defense so can hopefully soak up some damage.

Turn 5, The Long Dark (4)


In the east we need to save our ZOCed ranger.


Everyone makes some kills except for the ranger who just runs away to heal.


In the west we’ve lost three civilians but otherwise our line is holding up nicely.


We slow the scary level 2 unit on the left, level up the archer and hunter so they can act as meatshields, and stay in line formation in the forest.

Turn 6, First Dawn


Eastern front: Remember allll of Ledinor’s elves? Well they’re pretty much all gone now. Our units run away and start healing up.


Western front… IT’S A MESS

The chaos army got full hits on us left and right last turn! Our line formation has been breached and we’re hopelessly outnumbered.


Just look at the damage taken last turn!

Getting such bad RNG on an already difficult scenario is pretty brutal, but I suppose it balances out the extreme luck we got in the previous scenario.


We try desperately to form a line in the forest again, even bringing out Galas to help, and pray that our 70% defense is enough to hold off the enemies until daytime.

Turn 7, First Morning


Yikes, things are looking pretty grim here. Our trapper in the forest is in serious danger of dying, and saving him will be very tricky due to the three skirmishing demon zephyrs here.


We don’t even have enough units left to form a line so everybody just does their own thing. The dying trapper runs northwest to heal, and the fighter and scout screen him from the skirmishing demon zephyr.


You might now be wondering what’s happening on the eastern flank. Well the answer is nothing, because with all the drama in the west I completely forgot about the eastern units this turn even though they’re surrounded by enemies.
Always press n (next unit) before ending your turn!!

Turn 8, First Midday


Eastern flank: things actually aren’t so bad here, though they’d be much better if I had remembered to move these units last turn.


With some luck (finally!) we manage to clean out most of the nearby enemies.


Western front: we’re still very outnumbered but most of the enemy units are dying so we’ll finish off as many as we can.


Can you spot the really careless mistake in this screenshot? Scroll down for the answer…

Turn 9, First Afternoon

Remember that immortal shaman on the southwestern village? Nothing can kill her in one attack right?


Arghhhhh I forgot about those stupid rabid dogs!

You know how I said they were cute earlier? I TAKE IT BACK


We also lost a ranger last turn. I’m really starting to run out of units on the west side.

On the bright side the chaos army’s running low on units too, and one of my rangers is about to level up.


Eastern flank: Anlinde misses 3/3 times with her magical attack, followed by the druid missing 3/3 with her magical attack too. I feel like this scenario so far has just been one epic fail after another…

Turn 10, First Dusk


Eastern flank: We’ll need to clean out the wounded units and stop that heavy infantryman from pillaging our village on the right.


Success! We’ve got a sharpshooter now too. The druid runs away to heal because having her attack the demoness or hold the nearby village would risk her dying.
Things are pretty safe on this front now.


Western front: Our army’s basically been completely annihilated here. Galas runs toward the keep so he can recruit some badly needed reinforcements next turn.

Turn 11, The Short Dark


We get some reinforcements, including a shaman since we lost the other experienced one earlier. Most of the chaos army is gone now so it’s a pretty safe time to try and level some new units.

The next ten turns are mostly XP farming as the chaos army trickles in a few units at a time, so I’ll skip to the last turn:

Turn 22, First Morning


We level the shaman to sorceress which will be a big help next scenario.

We also try to level Galas but it’s unsuccessful – he should be fine though as he’s got 43 HP and it’s day. Right?


Yikes! He almost died there!! This is becoming a theme in my playthrough. In retrospect I shouldn’t have risked it, even though the chance of him dying was quite small.




Despite some nasty RNG in the beginning and some bad mistakes we managed to pull through.
Losses: Level 2 trapper, level 2 ranger and a whole lot of fodder, mostly civilians


A pretty good result, in terms of XP!

[skeptical_troll]

I still have nightmares about this one, I think it is the most difficult scenario of the whole IftU+AtS saga. It's remarkable that you managed to survive with such bad RNG.

My strategy was to recruit two keeps of civilians only, than bank until turn 6 (the income is pretty high) and recall experienced units. The civilians did a good job in slowing down the wave and also did some nice retaliation (the enemy here has no access to healing at all) , so the fight with my proper army started in a favorable time of the day and with many of the enemies at low HP. Was still hard though, I got many of my level 2 units killed. I ended the scenario with a druid, a couple of rangers and 2 level 3 scouts (I know, there's something wrong with that!).
After playing the scenario I received an official complaint from the civilians trade union.

[Inky]

skeptical_troll: Nice strategy, I'll add the civilian delaying tactic to the Scenario 2 guide. Maybe the scenario would have gone better for me if I had fallen back in the west and not let them attack me during the night.

After playing the scenario I received an official complaint from the civilians trade union.

Hahaha! This reminds me of a post (in the thread taptap linked to above) where the player said they did not use any elvish civilians in this scenario "due to ethical reasons." I found that quite amusing and it makes me feel bad for doing terrible things like purposely killing my units when I don't want to pay their upkeep anymore

Scenario 3 - Memories From the Depths

We were shocked when we tallied our numbers. Barely a thousand of us survived the battle in the valley. Most of the dead likely perished in the villages burnt by our foes, helpless and frightened. Alas, they met one of the most painful deaths one could ever imagine.

After the bloody slaughter last scenario, Galas and his elves do what they do best- run away in terror – while Ledinor’s elves stay behind and do what they do best- act as a cannon fodder distraction force.


Fleeing into massive caves infested with enemies is another desert elf tradition started by Kaleh.


Since this is a very lengthy and often uneventful dungeon crawl, most turns will be skipped over.

Turn 2


We start off in the southeast corner with a long tunnel heading east. We spend all our gold, getting a couple shamans in the hopes of leveling one into a much needed second druid.
(It turns out there’s another keep right at the end of the tunnel though, and very few enemies in between, so it would have been better to wait until then to recall most of the army.)

Turn 4

We continue along the tunnel for a couple more turns…


I don’t see why he’s getting so worked up about a measly skeleton after we just got through fighting off hordes of demons and crazed humans.

Turn 7


The path turns northwest, and we get a glimpse of another keep, meaning we dragged along most of army through the tunnel for nothing.

Turn 10

We continue northwest for a few turns, making slow progress due to the cave terrain.


We come across a branching path: the two left paths both lead to the same place, while on the right, triggering a touchplate opens a path to a ring giving +1 movement.

I give the ring to the dextrous/resilient sorceress since her maximum movement is 5, due to the tragic fact that she will never grow up to be an awesome elvish sylph.
The “best” choice for the ring probably would have been Galas though, as it would make his favorite pastime (running away) easier, as well as possibly allowing him to reach keeps to recruit earlier and giving leadership to more units.

Turn 13


Our army splits up along the two western paths, and we get a glimpse of the main undead army. It's really not very impressive.

Turn 15


They manage to heavily wound several units though, with the loyal rider getting lucky and barely surviving.


In the north, Anlinde and the druid level up, and in the south we make some more kills and use a healthy trapper to block the remaining undead.

We’ve finished off the main undead army now, so we’ll mostly only encounter scattered units for the rest of the scenario.

Turn 16


Another touchplate opens a passage to two holy waters, which give arcane melee damage for this scenario only. Our best melee units (Galas and the prowler) each take one.

Turn 19

After several turns of moving northwest we come to a river crossing.


There are only a few undead around though, so we easily make our way past them.

Turn 24


After crossing the river we come across yet another keep. We have a little bit of gold now so we start recruiting some hunters. They’ll be very helpful for dealing with what comes next.
The touchplate in the north just opens a passage to a dead end and another touchplate which opens a passage later on in the cave.

Turn 28


We finally make it across the river, though it takes us several turns due to the revenant in the 1-hex bottleneck.

The path here splits into a northern passage and an eastern one which will both meet up in the far northeast corner.

Turn 31


We split up our army across both paths, with the majority going east as there’s much more resistance this way. We make sure to put our beefy 50+ HP units in front since the Deathblade can reach them.

Turn 33


Whichever unit we use to attack the southern deathblade isn’t going to be safe due to the two eastern units in range, so we nominate the new guy to do the job.

He predictably ends up dead, but he did a good deed in luring out the eastern deathblade for us to kill.

Turn 34

We start scouting in the north…


…and get a glimpse of the scenario’s final enemy, a very nasty ancient lich!



Turn 35


Before going for Mal Keshar, we first need to get rid of these enemies in the south. Anlinde gets an amazing 0 out of 4 magical hits on the Deathblade but she has 53 HP so she’s fine.

Turn 40

After several turns everyone’s ready to close in on Mal Keshar.


Fighting Mal Keshar in his castle is a very bad idea due to all the nearby undead enemies, so we try to lure him out.

Turn 41


It works – Mal Keshar’s unwilling to get onto bad terrain to kill the shaman, but he gets onto the 60% mushroom grove to hit the prowler, who manages to survive.

Unfortunately Mal Keshar's 60% defense means melee attacks are too much of a gamble since he might even heal from them. We’ll have to attack him in ranged.
The thing is, he does 16-5 magical ranged so we need to slow him first.

So, uh, who wants to go first? Any volunteers?


How about you, Máde? Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll do just fine.


It’s a suicide mission of course, but we’re counting on the 64% chance to slow.


…okay. That didn’t go so well. Goodbye Máde, you and your total lack of contribution to the team will not be missed. Seriously, we dragged her across the ENTIRE cave for this.

Sssso…who wants to go next? Anyone?

Unfortunately we’re out of cannon fodder now (I recruited another fodder hunter just for this, but he leveled up so he isn’t fodder anymore...). We’ll have to move on to our veterans.

We have a brave volunteer, everyone! Let’s see how our trapper will do:


He should live – he is resilient which gives him a much higher chance of surviving than our non resilient one.


Yeah, he did it! We’ll have to kill Mal Keshar this turn though if we don’t want anyone else to die.


Next up we use our awesome enchantress, once again pausing to cry about how she will never be as awesome as a sylph.

She gets a nice 3 out of 4 hits, putting Mal Keshar at 25 HP - almost there!


Our only other good source of damage is Anlinde so we use her and hope her magical special is working this time.


Zzzzzap! We did it! The evil lich is defeated!


He tries to talk us out of killing him by claiming to know the location of the powerful Lady of Light who can help us defeat the demons.

We’re not so gullible that we’re going to fall for his story though. Not even Galas is dumb enough to trust a lich, right?


Actually, he is.


Sorry Delenduil, but your opinion doesn’t count because all you did this scenario was autorecall yourself without asking and waste my 3 gold per turn with your useless pierce damage.


After giving it some thought, I’ve concluded that I’d rather have 1 ancient lich than 20 of you. Welcome to the team, Mal Keshar!




Mostly even but slightly positive luck this scenario.


Yeah that’s right everybody, we’ve got an ANCIENT LICH in our army now! Time to start our plan for world domination, hehehehe…

[Sire]

Interesting LP thus far. I also remember Scenario 2 being a pain (although I was playing on Normal difficulty and I like my people being alive, so...). I think in my playthrough they pushed the eastern front hard, so I had to mass civilians to slow down their onslaught while I tried to handle the western front with my main forces. However, I think I managed to rout the enemy leaders in the end, so yay EXP!

This reminds me that I need to get around to playing the revamped version of IftU, as I played the old version and stopped playing some time during Part 2. Keep up the good work, Inky!

[Inky]

Sire: Thanks for the encouragement!

Scenario 4 - Over the Sands

Northwest. That was the direction we had to go, if Mal Keshar’s words were to be believed. We were to seek our saviors in the depths of the largest mountain range within our reach; a place formerly inhabited by the artisans of the earth, the dwarves of Knalga.

According to Anlindë, he was a tormented soul. A man who began his journey fighting for what he believed to be a noble cause before veering off the road into an eternal abyss that tainted and twisted and destroyed him. Now that man’s shadow walked alongside us under the surface of Irdya. I fear what future generations will think of us who allowed such a monster on our side... if we survive long enough to leave any descendants, that is.

Galas’ journal entries are getting pretty bleak. Maybe some time outside in the sun will cheer him up?




(This is another extremely huge map so many turns will be skipped.)

Living units in this scenario will suffer from a damage penalty and HP loss during any turns that aren’t night unless they’re next to a healer.
In other words, they’re pretty useless. But we’ve conveniently got some new undead recruits available!


Two of these units are especially good: the ghost and the vampire bat, because they're fast and have no trouble flying over the sand.

Ghosts have the most awesome advancements of all the undead units, while bats are pathetic but don’t cost upkeep and are great as bait for luring out powerful units like leaders, or screening our more important units.

Turn 1, First Dawn


We start spamming some ghosts/bats and start heading toward the nearby orcish camp in the northwest. We’ll get another 4 ghosts next turn.

Turn 3, First Midday


Uh, I think you are hallucinating after all. That’s not a little elf, that’s an ancient lich!

Don't worry, just come a bit closer and Mal Keshar will be happy to teach you the difference.

Turn 4, First Afternoon


Several of these orcs were in range of Mal Keshar, but after giving it some thought, they wisely decide to just leave him alone.


We start attacking with ghosts backed by Galas’ leadership and form a line flanked by bats. We’re not that worried about losing (inexperienced) units since we’ll be able to use the orcs’ keep to recruit more soon.

Turn 5, First Dusk


The orcs waste their turn going after the two bats. We’ll try to level the experienced ghost on the dying orcish warrior and get rid of the orcish archers, whose fire damage is dangerous to the ghosts.


We use two inexperienced ghosts in the exposed flanks of our formation.

Turn 6, The Short Dark


We’ll focus on killing the two crossbowmen as they’re the most dangerous enemies.


Mal Keshar zaps one and Galas and the wraith team up to kill the other. Unfortunately this exposes Galas; I should have just left the other crossbowman alone and risk it killing one of the ghosts.


Fortunately we get quite a bit of luck and the orcs don’t manage kill anything. We easily get rid of the remaining orcish army, leveling some more ghosts in the process.

Turn 8, Second Morning


Ancient Lich versus Orcish Warlord: Anybody want to take bets?

Turn 10, Second Afternoon


In case you couldn't tell, Mal Keshar really doesn't like orcs.

We get 50 gold from the orcs, and we’re now told to start heading west.

Turn 11, Second Dusk


We use the orcs' keep to recruit some more ghosts and bats and start moving out.

Turn 13, The Long Dark (2)


We don’t meet much resistance on the way, just some very weak undead and some scorpions off the path which make a tasty snack for our ghosts and wraiths.

Turn 16, First Dawn


The path turns south, and we spot some bandits up ahead.



Turn 19, First Afternoon


Our flying units rush ahead to deal with the bandits while the foot units run to catch up (pretty much all they will do this scenario).

Turn 21, The Short Dark


Our wraith army advances on the main bandit army, while the foot units are still nowhere to be seen.

Turn 25, Second Afternoon


After an eternity, the foot unit reinforcements finally arrive! We have no trouble plowing through these weak outlaws.

Turn 28, The Long Dark (2)


We approach the bandit encampment, occupying all the good hill terrain ourselves so the outlaws have to use the awful sand terrain.
We put the expendable vampire bat in the most exposed hex.

Turn 29, The Long Dark (3)


Someone give that bat a medal! He miraculously survived being ganged up on by FOUR outlaws during the night!


As the stats show, we’ve been ridiculously lucky.


We get a glimpse of the bandit leader and continue to plow through the outlaws, using bats and inexperienced ghosts to cover the weakest points of our formation.

Turn 31, First Dawn

The huntsman leader runs out onto bad terrain to attack a lowly bat...


...and promptly gets backstabbed to death. The poor guy didn’t even manage to land a single hit on the bat! Talk about dying for nothing.


A group of suspicious humans shows up from the north. Things quickly turn ugly though. People really don’t seem to like the undead.


We’re given the “choice” of whether to leave or defeat the humans (this is supposed to be a branching path, but the other branch hasn’t been implemented yet.)



Turn 32, First Morning


I get some elves in the hope of leveling them.

Turn 36, The Short Dark


After a long trek north we get a glimpse of the human army.

Turn 37, Second Dawn


The experienced trapper slows a thug. He should be pretty safe, as it’s not even night…is what I thought.

Turn 38, Second Morning


Sadly I failed to take into account that the trapper would kill the slowed thug in retaliation and make room for another thug, and he got brutally whacked to death by the gang of thugs.

I've always thought elvish units should come with a label that says "Warning: not intended for use outside of forested terrain."


We get revenge for our trapper, and since it’s now daytime we don’t have much trouble hacking our way through the rest of the chaotic human army.

Turn 41, Second Dusk


We continue northwest toward the leader. We managed to level our shaman recruit into a sorceress, so getting the elves wasn't a total waste.

Turn 43, The Long Dark (2)


The outlaw leader runs out of her keep and completely fails to hit the vampire bat. We easily surround and kill her beat her to within an inch of her life (it seems Galas doesn't have the stomach to kill women).


She’s got a really strange idea of what elves eat…




Extremely good RNG this scenario. No one messes with my vampire bats!
Losses: The leveling trapper, 2 ghosts, 8 bats


We’ve now got a massive army of flying undead!

[Inky]

S5a - Crossfire

First, the bad news: we’ve come across a whole bunch of hostile enemies:


We’ve got these bandits in the northwest…


An army of undead in the southwest…


…and of course our day wouldn’t be complete without these Chaos Empire maniacs.

The good news is they all hate each other too, meaning we can safely focus on the Chaos Empire directly south of us while the bandits and undead waste time fighting each other.

More good news:

I’m pretty sure Mal Keshar wrote this. It makes learning the dark arts and going down the twisted path of necromancy sound fun and exciting!




Since the enemies will all fight each other, we'll only need to use about 200 gold to win.

Turn 2, Second Dusk


I recruit 2 keeps consisting of mostly level 0 and 1 units to save on upkeep since villages are extremely scarce.

Turn 3, The Long Dark (1)


Our units form a line, except for Mal Keshar who is so awesome he can do whatever he wants, so he grabs the exposed village.

Turn 4, The Long Dark (2)


Nobody even goes near Mal Keshar. We’ll kill the 4 northern enemies and then form a line.


Mal Keshar once again acts as the ultimate blocking unit. We also make sure to put the melee units in the front where the berserking chaos hounds can reach.

Turn 5, The Long Dark (3)


We got some major good luck last turn: three units ganged up on the vampire bat, who actually ended up healing from the final unit’s attack!


Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get rid of this pesky skirmishing demon zephyr.

Turn 6, The Long Dark (4)


But, in a very lucky break for us, the demon zephyr runs off to fry a deathblade.


Not wanting to take any chances, we just have Mal Keshar take back the village while everyone else just stays back to heal.

Turn 7, First Dawn


The bulk of the undead army starts approaching, and we keep healing up out of their range while advancing south.

Turn 8, First Morning


We approach the chaos empire’s leader and the main undead horde arrives. Unfortunately for them, it’s full daylight now.

Turn 9, First Midday


We start ruthlessly demolishing the undead, and whittle down the chaos empire leader who unwisely ran out to attack the shadow.

Turn 10, First Afternoon


An adept zaps the enemy leader into oblivion and levels into a dark sorcerer. We easily wipe out the rest of the undead here, leveling the second adept in the process.

Turn 11, First Dusk


The next few turns consist of a pretty uneventful trek west. We only encounter some minor bandit resistance along the way, since the remaining undead are occupied in fighting the bandits.

Turn 15, Second Midday


We split up into a northern group to deal with the bandits and a southern group to deal with the undead.

Turn 17, Second Dusk


Mal Keshar and Anlinde team up to assassinate the lich, but get unlucky and he barely survives. On the bright side, this means we can give the kill to one of our dark sorcerers.

Turn 18, The Long Dark (1)

The next few turns are instructive in that they demonstrate precisely what not to do.


Instead of waiting for the Long Dark to end and for the southern reinforcements to arrive, Galas and the northern force decide they’re tired of sitting around doing nothing and decide to attack the bandits.

The druid kills a thug but gets in range of the deadly highwayman to do so, so I use the shadow to block the hex. Predictably, the shadow dies next turn.

Turn 19, The Long Dark (2)


In the south, a dark sorcerer zaps the undead leader and the other southern troops start slowly heading north.


The disaster in the north continues, as I unwisely decide to keep fighting rather than retreat, and end up using the loyal outrider to shield a trapper who took way too much retaliation damage. The outrider’s only exposed to 3 hexes but on 30% defense this has a pretty predictable result.

Turn 20, The Long Dark (3)


Sadly, it’s the end of the road for our loyal outrider Volrand. Oh well, it was only a matter of time before he died (in my previous playthrough, he managed to make it all the way to Scenario 11 before dying).


With the northern force dwindling we try to just slow units and put the stronger units in front.

Turn 21, The Long Dark (4)


Here we have a demonstration of the principle of natural selection: the full health trapper on the village not only had the undesirable quick trait, but also failed at dodging and got hit four out of four times by the bandit. Therefore, he will not live to produce any offspring.

Meanwhile the resilient trapper probably should have died a couple times but is a dodging expert and barely manages to survive.


I place the elvish marshal in an exposed position to shield the shyde, again with predictable result.

Turn 22, First Dawn


The northern force pretty much got wiped out, but the southern force arrives to help exact revenge!

Turn 23, First Morning


We get a glimpse of the final enemy leader and Mal Keshar lures out the only remaining dangerous enemy, the highwayman.

Turn 25, First Afternoon


We finish off the enemy leader, and choose to spare his life in exchange for a ring of regeneration giving +5 HP, regenerates + 4, and +1 melee attack! We give the ring to Galas, as he has had a disturbing number of near-death experiences so far.




Despite good luck at the beginning we got pretty bad luck near the end and lost a ton of veterans, though they would have lived if I had waited until dawn/day to attack rather than trying to advance during the long dark.

Losses: the loyal outrider, the level 3 marshal, lvl 2 trapper, lvl 2 shadow, 2 bats.


And here are the units which I didn’t manage to send to their gruesome deaths this scenario.

[Inky]

S6 – Moon Valley

At times, Mal Keshar would stare at the river in silent contemplation. I wondered for how long he had walked Irdya in undeath. What tales could he tell? What scenes from ages past did he see where I saw but rushing water? How would it be to walk the world for so long, to watch civilizations fall and rise, to see everything you once knew destroyed, washed away like dust after rain? Was there anything in the old world he truly missed?

Is this Galas’ diary or Mal Keshar’s?!

We finally found the entrance to the fabled green valley. While at first the pass seemed to be completely uninhabited, the keen eyes of our scouts could discern some forlorn watch towers of crude construction.

We just hacked our way through the chaos empire, undead and finally bandits. Would a peaceful trip through the valley be too much to ask for?


Guess so.




This scenario is much easier than it looks because the orcs tend to passively stay back near their leaders, so we can deal with 1-2 sides at a time.

Here's the overall layout of the map: We have Galas in the east, the green orc all the way in the western cave, and three more orc leaders scattered around the valley.


Turn 1, First Dawn


The blue orc to our northwest is pretty close to us, so our plan will be to assassinate him before he can spend most of his gold and steal his keep.
We recruit a full keep and start running northwest with the leaders.

Turn 2, First Morning


A lone vampire bat goes southwest to village grab and everyone else runs northwest. Anlinde will be able to attack the blue leader next turn.

Turn 3, First Midday


Anlinde starts working on the orc leader while the rest of the troops run to catch up.

Turn 4, First Afternoon


The orc leader runs away in terror from Anlinde…and towards Mal Keshar. Poor guy can’t get a break. We kill him and start getting rid of his remaining troops.

Turn 5, First Dusk


We get rid of the last of the blue orcs and start using the keep to pump out reinforcements. I recruit some hunters hoping to advance them because my trappers have a disappointing tendency to die very quickly.

Turn 6, The Short Dark


I get some more units, which will be more than enough (I probably overrecruited a bit). As the minimap in the upper right corner shows, the purple and black orcs are just staying back in the western area so all we have to deal with right now is the green side.

Turn 7, Second Dawn


We start to move south in preparation for an aggressive attack during the second day and form a line on forest terrain.
On the right, I made another captain hoping to replace the marshal that died last scenario (this one is resilient so hopefully he won’t die quite as fast as the previous one).

Turn 8, Second Morning


We continue pushing south into the central forest.

Turn 9, Second Midday


A few brave orcs come forward to attack us, but the rest of the orcs don’t like their chances and just stay far away.


We form a line, sort of. Mal Keshar’s basically a god so he can go wherever he pleases (he’s been spending his turns zapping orcish slayers/assassins since he can kill them reliably without being poisoned). In the south I use an inexperienced ghost to try and block the orcs from getting 3 hexes on the trapper on the village.

Turn 10, Second Afternoon


These orcs aren’t very good at teamwork – the black orcs march to their death while the purple orcs just stand on the other side of the river and watch.


We plow through the black orcs and Mal Keshar dares the purple orcs to try and cross the bridge.

Turn 11, Second Dusk


The purple orcs understandably want nothing to do with Mal Keshar so they try to cross the ford instead.


We clean out all the orcs south of the river (except a leader by himself in the southwest), and put Mal Keshar and a spectre to block the orcs north of the river. With their drain attacks the grunts can attack them all day. I place the bat to help shield the spectre and hopefully prevent the 3 archers from ganging up on the spectre.

Turn 12, The Long Dark (1)


The bat’s died but all these swimming orcs are just easy targets now.


We now split up into a northern force to finish off the purple orcs…


…and a southern force heads toward the crossbowman leader Diglet in the south. (I wonder if he advances into a Dugtrio.)

Turn 13, The Long Dark (2)


Well now that he’s dead I guess we’ll never know.


In the north we wipe out the few remaining purple orcs, and as we advance we get an ominous warning.

Turn 14, The Long Dark (3)


We converge on the second to last orc leader, though we don’t attack since he does serious retaliation and our slowers are out of range.

Turn 15, The Long Dark (4)


And on that very eloquent note, Barglor the slurbow heads to the afterlife.

Turn 16, First Dawn


We use the keep to recruit some spam and stay cautiously back, because as the earlier dialogue warned us, the deserted northwest area is pretty suspicious...

Turn 17, First Morning

Now that the time of day is perfect, we advance northwest…



…into the rather unsurprising ambush:


Turn 18, First Midday


The guards rush out to attack, and the orc gets a bunch of reinforcements too.


We kill the guards and form a line, though we end up with some pretty wounded veterans in the front.

Turn 19, First Afternoon


Sadly the level 3 prowler died but fortunately we leveled some new trappers this scenario to replace him.

The wounded orcs have nicely lined up outside the cave for us to finish off, so we happily oblige.


The leader’s by himself again. It's amazing he's made it so far with such poor leadership skills.

Turn 20, First Dusk


With his dying breath, Kal Magar makes sure to clarify that it’s not his fault everything went horribly wrong.




Pretty good luck this scenario.


Our trapper leveling operation has been a big success, which is fortunate since the job has an unusually high mortality rate.

[Inky]

Scenario 7 - Goliath

And thus we entered the caves, leaving the bulk of our forces behind so we could explore the place without risking catastrophic losses. None of us knew for certain what kind of dangers lurked beneath the land said to be the heart of Irdya.

Great, caves again…we were just getting used to the forest too!


And it seems these caves are also quite the popular sightseeing destination.




This scenario is unusual in that the 6 units we recruit at the beginning are all we'll get for the entire scenario.

Turn 1


I go with a shyde for healing and some assorted units which I’d like to level (a shaman, two trappers, a wraith and a shadow). There will be quite a few weak units scattered around this scenario, which will be great for XP gathering.

Since the demons were kind enough to send us a greeting party, we send out a greeting party of our own to meet them.

Turn 2


We finish clearing out the demons and come across this scenario’s most common enemy, the automaton. While extremely weak in offense, they are annoyingly durable, with 50% resistance to blade and arcane.

Turn 6

We continue down the tunnel for a few turns, and get a glimpse of the chaos empire’s encampment. This is actually the most difficult opposition we’ll be facing for the entire scenario, so it pays to be careful and take it slow here.


We line up everyone on 50% defense, which is pretty much the best we can get, and hope we don’t get hit too much.

Turn 7


A good turn for us! The trapper in the north got lucky and was only hit 2 out of 6 times. We’ll just rotate the wounded units to the back and hold the line.


In retrospect, exposing Mal Keshar like this was extremely dangerous. He has 70 HP and should do fine against regular enemies but those chaos invokers with their arcane magic will do 11-3 damage to him.

Turn 8


That was close! Luckily Mal Keshar only takes 4 out of 6 magical hits from the two invokers and manages to heal from the melee attackers. (The orange side’s demon zephyr couldn’t attack him because the only hex it could reach was taken up by the green side’s headhunter, and orange comes before green in the turn order).


Saved by the RNG!


We start cautiously advancing on the chaos lorekeeper leader and the shadow moves forward so it can hopefully backstab the lorekeeper next turn.

Turn 9


The demon zephyr attacks Anlinde in ranged, dramatically shortening his lifespan by doing so.


A trapper finishes the zephyr, the shaman gets the kill on the automaton, and Galas and the shadow soften up the lorekeeper enough for Anlinde to finish him with a ranged attack.

Now that the main enemy is defeated, the rest of the scenario is easy since we will only encounter weak scattered units for most of the remaining turns.

Turn 11


We head south across the river, and encounter some free experience along the way.

Turn 13


We continue south into a chamber full of more free experience. Seriously, that blood imp is the most pathetic level 2 unit I’ve ever seen.

Turn 16


After cleaning out the chamber of weak enemies, we come across a switch in a southern passage which will open the eastern wall of the chamber.

Turn 17


We trigger the switch to open the eastern wall, and start heading into a large central area.

Turn 18


The prowler triggers the southwest touchplate which opens a passage into a central room with some more free experience and a potion of strength (+2 melee attack and +8 HP for this scenario only; one of the prowlers takes it).

Turn 22

Our forces split up into two groups, one going north and another going south (except for the sorceress running off into the middle of nowhere due to a misclick).


It turns out the northeastern passage is just a dead end room with some weak enemies (continuing the scenario’s free experience theme) so a couple units stay back to kill them and everyone else heads south.

Turn 23


We make our way down the southern corridor, encountering only minor resistance.

Turn 25


After fighting past the four level 1 guards in the passage, we emerge into a huge chamber in the south filled with…even more level 1 enemies.

Turn 26

We continue exploring the southern chamber, and – surprise! Of course there’s something else here besides weak level 1 enemies.


There’s also a weak level 4 enemy! Goliath has tons of HP and high resistances, but doesn’t do any significant damage especially when slowed.



Turn 28

Goliath comes to us and we happily start blasting and backstabbing him.


Despite Goliath’s high HP and resistance, he's extremely easy to take down, especially with his 30% terrain defense.

Turn 29


I attempt to give the kill to the sorceress since she’s the only one who needs experience but it doesn’t work, and on his turn Goliath attacks and is killed by Anlinde.


A pretty easy victory!


We were helped out a little by the RNG.


Miraculously, nobody died this scenario and we also managed to level up most of our units.

[Inky]

S 8 - An Errand of Hope

After exploring for a while, we emerged at nightfall to tell our people to follow us in. It was a difficult decision, but we feared leaving our poorly-trained civilians between the pursuing scouts and the cliffs.

The very thought of approaching the place where the Lady of Light and the Master of Darkness had been seen for the last time was good for morale. It was well that the ancient tale lit a flame in our hearts, for there was little other light to be had in those forsaken tunnels.

Ah, it’s our old pal Delenduil who auto recalled himself during Scenario 3 and did nothing useful. His hobbies include exploring caves and complaining about undead.


There are 3 enemy leaders in total we need to defeat, though checking the status table now will only display an enemy troll side.

Turn 2


We discover a keep of trolls immediately to the northwest. Spectres and wraiths are just amazing against trolls, and I recruit some ghosts hoping to level some new wraiths.

Turn 3


It turns out there’s barely any opposition at all, so I really overrecruited.

There's a cool looking bow lying around to the northeast of the troll's keep, so we'll have Delenduil check it out (maybe it will make him useful!)

Turn 4


The troll leader ran out to try his luck on the spectre… and discovered that it wasn’t his lucky day. A lowly ghost takes him out.

Turn 6


Delenduil examines the bow next to the keep. It adds an 11-3 poison attack so it’s not very useful on him since it’s weaker than his normal ranged attack, but he seems so excited about the bow that we’ll let him keep it.

Everyone else heads northwest toward the river.
(There’s a northern path blocked by a gate which will be removed when we cross the river, but there are a bunch of giant ants in the way and it just joins up with the northwestern path later so I don’t bother sending anyone there.)

Turn 7


We start crossing the river and get a glimpse of a big keep at the other side.

Turn 8

We step across the river...


…and of course, we discover the whole place is infested with chaos empire troops.


Can this possibly be true? Finally, we meet a race which doesn’t want to kill us on sight!

You have to love how practical dwarves are- they don’t really care that we’re using necromancy as long as we help them.


We can now see the full status table – there’s an additional dwarf leader far in the northwest and another enemy leader way in the northeast.

Turn 10


Galas makes it to the keep and spends the remaining gold on spectres and spam – there are a bunch of trolls coming from the northeast and spectres will be great for holding them off.

Turn 11

We split into two groups, one for each enemy army.


The western force led by Mal Keshar manages to…kill nothing at all. Great job everyone.


In the northeast Anlinde kills a troll warrior and some expendable units shield her since it’s pretty dangerous here.

Turn 12


In the west two of the demon zephyrs fried the experienced ghost I unwisely put on the northern village, and the dying zephyr fried another ghost on the southern village. I think there's a lesson to be learned here...


We get rid of almost all the enemies in the west; in retrospect I definitely should have sent more forces northeast instead.


In the northeast, Althurin rushes out to attack and promptly gets poisoned. He proceeds to spend the entire rest of the scenario dying of poison. (We stole all his villages since making money is more important to us than curing him. We’re pretty horrible people and he probably shouldn’t have trusted us.) Luckily, we aren’t required to protect him.

Turn 13


But the Most Useless Award definitely goes to these troops from the northeastern dwarf leader, who JUST GOT HERE. I bet they were just hiding in the tunnels the whole time watching their kin get slaughtered.


We clean out the 3 nearby enemies, even leveling the vampire bat on the dying demon zephyr, so now all that’s left to do in the west is to kill the leader.


In the northeast, it’s not looking so good because there were a lot more high level enemies than expected and we’re short on units.


Galas frantically recruits reinforcements and we try to hold the line. Unfortunately, Anlinde’s pretty low on health from taking the full 21 retaliation damage from trying to slow the troll rocklobber (ugh Anlinde, you were supposed to be the smart one around here!).

Turn 14


Uh…anyone still alive?!

Our spectre and wraith got brutally demolished and Anlinde has a terrifying near death experience!


Fortunately the worst is over now, since we managed to kill the most threatening enemy units and our reinforcements from the west start coming to help.

Turn 15


Aw, there goes the blood bat. Otherwise we’re doing fine here, as Galas has been using our very high income to recall reinforcements every turn.


We put a full health spectre in front to act as a shield, who should do fine as long as the chaos invoker doesn't get full hits.

Turn 16


Behold, the power of the almighty Spectre! Everyone ganged up on him last turn but the invoker only hit 2 out of 3 times and thanks to his drain attack he survived the melee units and did some nice retaliation damage too.


Now that we’ve got a massive army of veterans marching on some scattered level 1 units, this battle will only go in one direction.


Meanwhile in the west, our dark adept zaps the enemy leader and levels.

Turn 18


We continue making the really long trek northeast…

Turn 21


And after a seemingly endless march, we finally make it to the last leader!

Turn 22


All of our melee units gang up on the enemy leader and we get revenge on him for making us walk all this way.


Victory! No thanks to these useless dwarves hanging around here doing nothing, and Althurin who spent the whole time dying (well okay that was partly our fault…)


We got slightly bad luck this scenario. Losses: spectre, wraith, blood bat, 3 ghosts, 3 vampire bats


Well, at least one of the ghosts lived long enough to level up.

After our victory, the dwarves invite us into their capital to meet with their king! Finally we’ll get some new allies.


…this didn’t start off too well. (Hee hee, Althurin is still poisoned.)

What follows is an extremely long conversation where the dwarves tell us the story of how they met the Quenoth elves (basically, we get a plot summary of Under the Burning Suns, where Kaleh chose to help the dwarves). The dwarves also advise us to travel to the Far North and seek help from humans there, and finally Althurin offers to accompany us on our journey to find the Lady of Light.

[Inky]

S 9 - The Library

Certainly, as Althurin said, we would encounter all sorts of exotic creatures that could only thrive in the eternal shadows of Irdya. Most were understandably frightened by our presence. From their perspective, we were invaders, terrifying monsters who could end their pitiful lives in an instant with our fire and magic. But unlike the invaders we had faced in our Valley, we did not intend to harm or kill every living thing standing in our way.

Actually we’re going to kill anything living and nonliving we can find for the XP. Shhh, don’t tell Galas.

Deeper and deeper we went, through the labyrinthine dark caverns, until we reached the igneous passages that the late mentor of our dwarf guide first found for us.

I also cannot believe we made it this far despite being led by Galas.


Mal Keshar tells it to Galas like it is.


Get ready for another massive dungeon crawling scenario!



Turn 2


I recruit a mix of veterans and units who need experience, including a shaman who will hopefully become a druid. I already have 3 shydes but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in Wesnoth it’s that there’s no such thing as having too many healers.

The southern path leads to a dead end of impassible terrain (not even bats can pass) so everyone will head west.

Turn 3


We start marching southwest and run into some level 2 undead. Or, more accurately, the level 2 undead ran into Mal Keshar, and it didn’t end well for them.

Turn 4


See that lovely bottleneck section in the south? Well, I hope you like looking at it because we’re going to be here for a loooong time.

There's a large keep just south of the bottleneck, but it’s kind of mocking us because it will be a very long time before we can reach it.

Turn 6


The vanguard of the undead army arrives and we start camping in the bottleneck.

Turn 7


The first few skeleton riders got pounded to death by Althurin but more are pouring in from the south.

Meanwhile, we send the wraith and spectre to explore the northwest passage which was guarded by a skeleton archer and revenant.

Turn 8

It turns out the northwest is a dead end with some kind of house.


There’s a very inviting sign nearby too. Moving the bat to the house tells us that we should send a living unit there so we send our trapper. It’ll take him a few turns but it’s not like the rest of our army is going anywhere.

Turn 9


It looks like this ruined keep is the prime tourist attraction in this cave. Chaos empire and undead alike both flock here to sightsee!

Mal Keshar parks himself on the village, because nobody messes with Mal Keshar. (This scenario is blissfully devoid of those arcane damage chaos mages).

Turn 10


Actually Mal Keshar is the most popular attraction in the cave. Everyone lines up for a chance to see an ancient lich up close!


We form a line with Anlinde on the village, so that everyone gets +8 healing. The prowler takes the southwest hex, so that he can use his skirmisher ability to retreat in case he gets too wounded.

Turn 11

The trapper we sent northwest ages ago has finally made it! He examines the ruined house…


…and discovers a cowardly goblin. We let him come with us despite Mal Keshar’s protests because, as Anlinde explains, what’s one little orc when we’re already travelling with an army of undead?


Our main army continues to rack up kills but the flood of enemies shows no signs of stopping so we're going to be here for a while. Galas hopes everyone in the army has brought a good book to read. Or uh, some good brains to snack on, for the undead members.

Turn 12


Like moths to a flame, the enemies continue rushing blindly to their deaths. We clear out the dying enemies and thank them for the XP.

Turn 13


Forget finding the Lady of Light, will we ever be able to even leave this bottleneck?

Turn 14


We’re finally nearing the end of the horde of enemies!

Turn 15


The spectre even managed to get an AMLA from all the carnage.

Turn 16


That was close! The spectre gets pretty beaten up from a bunch of corpses.


We clear out the nearby enemies and everyone rushes out from the bottleneck.
Now we’ll finally be able to go somewhere!!

Turn 18


We use the keep to get some reinforcements. Ghosts/wraiths/spectres are especially good here due to their mobility, arcane damage and chaotic bonus underground.

Turn 19


The path splits into two, so we divide our forces into a western group and an eastern group.

Turn 21


The western path divides into 3 forks, with the eastern fork leading to the central southern area and connecting to the eastern path. We’ll send a small detachment exploring southwest and send everyone else northwest.


The eastern path also splits into 3, with the western fork leading to the center – we’ll send a wraith and spectre down that way and everyone else will go east.

Stepping on the purple glyphs reveals part of a larger story of the origin of the Union of Light and Darkness; here’s what the southeast glyph says:


It doesn’t make much sense until you combine it with the pieces from other glyphs and read them in order: this glyph is Part 5 of 6 of the story.

Turn 24


In the center south, we get a glimpse of one of the enemy leaders! We’ll have to wait for reinforcements before we can take on the lich, but in the meantime the spectre and wraith will park themselves in the villages and pick off the walking corpses.


In the northwest we get a glimpse of another leader! Mal Keshar goes in alone, because he’s basically an army of his own.


In the northeast we come to a dead end with another glyph containing Part 6 of 6 of the story.

Turn 25


And our small detachment in the southwest gets a glimpse of the third and final enemy leader.

Turn 27


The southeastern path is pretty much empty, save for this glyph containing Part 4 of 6, so these units will all head for the southern lich leader.

Turn 28


In the northwest, Mal Keshar’s killed the banebow leader and our bat enlightens us with Part 1 of 6 detailing the creation of the Ten Guardians, powerful beings meant to bring balance to Light and Darkness. As the other glyphs have already told us, it did not end well - Yarae and the Guardians became corrupted and had to be sealed away in Inferno by the power of the Union.

Turn 30


Our troops from the east have arrived to deal with the southern lich leader. We’ll have Anlinde soften him with her arcane attack and then hopefully finish him in melee with the spectres.

Turn 31


Success!

Here are what the 4 surrounding glyphs say:





Well, that was definitely a worthy use of a valuable glyph.


This last one is Part 3 of 6 of the Union story.

Turn 33


The western force converges on the final enemy leader in the southwest. This last glyph provides the final piece of the story and is Part 2 of 6.


In the southeast, we find a turquoise glyph which opens the path to the exit if you have the key (which is randomly dropped by one of the enemy leaders).

Turn 34


We finish off the final enemy leader, who drops the key for the exit glyph. We then open the exit and send Galas there.

Turn 38


This dialogue hints at the fact that next scenario is deep underground, meaning chaotic units get +30% damage instead of the usual +25%. I end up learning this in an extremely unpleasant way, but that is a story for next time




Slightly good luck, and no major losses!
Losses: 1 ghost and 2 bats.


Next time: An even more massive dungeon crawling scenario!

Since it’s pretty hard to read the text in the screenshots, here is the story of the Union from the glyphs, in order:

Spoiler:

Long ago, during a forgotten age, the beings of Light and Darkness waged an endless war, ceasing only when Yarae the Arcane Lord appeared and took his place as arbiter.
With his great power, he created Ten Guardians to bring balance to the factions. Upon each guardian was then bestowed control over the different creatures and aspects of their power, and other great demons were created as needed to aid each in their task.
*
Yarae had unrivaled control over the forces of Light and Darkness. Wisdom and moderation were instrumental in this role, and he brought peace and prosperity for all... until an unknown force turned him against his peers, the gods of Light and Darkness.
*
As he fell victim to that corruption, so did the original Ten Guardians. Yarae led them and their subjects against the gods of Light and Darkness, and wreaked chaos and destruction upon all that existed. In the end, the gods joined their forces in a single entity capable of fighting this new evil: the Avatar of the Union of Light and Darkness was born.
*
Wielding the power of the Union and aided by the only three guardians who chose to stand against their creator, they managed to destroy their fallen brethren one by one. Finally, they put an end to his revolt and trapped him in the Void between worlds.
*
Of the remaining Ten, Uria and (garbled) were tasked with guarding the creatures that had been influenced and corrupted by Yarae’s touch, while (garbled) attended to undoing the great damage wreaked by him and his guardians across the lands. The power of the Union was lastly used to isolate the fallen creatures in a reality set apart from our own: Inferno.
*
The Union faded, leaving behind the Body of the Union and the twin orbs that held its essence. Fearing that the successors of the Ten could fall prey to the same corruption or that Yarae might escape his imprisonment, these relics were hidden away on Ethea, Irdya, and Norsula. Should the need ever arise again, two beings shall assume the mantle to protect our reality from the threat: one blessed with the power of the Orb of Light, the other with the power of the Orb of Darkness; and once both join their spirits, they shall become the new Avatars of the Union. And thus, the cycle will repeat until the Tree withers and eternity comes to an end.

As a general note, IftU is a story based campaign with a LOT of interesting text which I mostly have to skip due to space. The best way to experience the story is to play the campaign!