Komodo 64: Where The Wild Things Are Year 1: Autumn

Turn 7 - ~~War~~ Colliding With Fomoria

Meeting Fomoria (and killing mercenaries).

Oh-ho-ho. Two battles in the same province? What could this mean?

The first one is Spike Jonze ruining some militia as planned. They have better magical support than usual, in the form of a Cloud Mage and a guy with a trinket that summons skeletons.

Spike Jonze is impressed by neither a level 1 Air mage nor some skeletons so he drops lots of fireballs on everyone and they all run away.

During his traditional post-battle victory lap of the province, however, Spike Jonze is rudely interrupted by an enemy force marching into Jabbernia.

:0

They're a band of mercenaries called Dante's Stingers. I haven't talked about mercenaries yet because I can never really be bothered to use them (although evidently the AI can), but I will summarise here: you can bid against other nations to hire ready-made mercenary squads, they're fairly mediocre but can be useful for expansion, sometimes they are mages. That's about the size of it. These guys are competent slightly-heavy spearmen:

Led by someone called Dante:

They put up a decent fight, closing on Spike and poking him a bit with spears.

Until he tears enough of them apart that they decide to leave. It looked like Dante got away with a handful of survivors, but apparently not?

The independents have been wiped out after every battle because they have nowhere to run to, but I would have expected mercenaries to flee back to the nearest friendly province. Maybe Spike Jonze ate them on the way? Doesn't matter, they're dead now.

A successful defence, and with these battles we have suddenly acquired A Border.

I sent Spike in this direction last turn because I was worried about the number of black candles we could see across the water: these indicate the presence of an enemy Pretender's dominion. As it turns out the enemy was closer than I thought! The battle in Jabbernia wasn't actually an attack, but rather a collision: both Spike and our neighbour targeted the same independent province, and Spike got there first meaning. Dante's Stingers marched into Jabbernia expecting to pacify some semi-armed peasants, and instead found themselves pacified by a divine firespitting bird of prey. Unlucky.

The Stingers were hired by a nation called Fomoria, The Cursed Ones. Here is their in-game summary:

They're one of several nations in Dominions inspired by Gaelic and Celtic mythology and by early British history; their rivals in the Early Age are Tir na n'Og, Land of the Ever Young, populated by the Tuatha, their Sidhe descendents and more Fir Bolg.

The Fomorians are the antagonists of early Irish myth, giving battle to the various magic elf-people who come out of the West to claim Ireland. I have a book which describes them as "a huge, misshapen, violent and cruel people, representing... the powers of evil." Apparently later legends begin to identify them with pirates from overseas - the Fomorians are eventually driven out of Ireland to an icy northern realm (the Hebrides?) from whence they sail forth to harass the later Tuathan kings - but the book guy is confident that they are "divinities representing the powers of darkness and evil. There is no legend of the Fomorians coming into Ireland, nor were they regarded at any time a regular portion of the population. They were coeval with the world itself."

Illwinter, because they have mad skills, weave all these strands together in their portrayal of Fomoria. The Fomorians of Dominions were giants who guarded the realm of the drowned dead (and so minor divinities, coeval with the world itself), but after being banished by the Pantokrator they sailed into the real world and settled a fertile land (Ireland), which they war over with the various invading fairy races. They're not evil as they are in the myths, but they do use lots of Death magic and they are horribly misshapen so you can see why the Tuatha would talk shit about them. That their freakiness is the result of a curse adds a sympathetic element largely absent from the source material, and is a classic Illwinter move that I'm sure we'll see lots more of.

Our first neighbour, then, is the Irish giants. I like Fomoria a lot, but they're a potentially dangerous neighbour, particularly with the two water provinces dividing us: Fomoria can travel both over and under the waves, making it difficult for us to protect our chewy heartlands from their forces.

They have a force of Fir Bolg warriors in the forest next to Jabbernia, and I'm not entirely confident that Spike can crush competent national troops like the Fir Bolg just yet. Adapa is heading up the Gala research team back in Ur, hoping to uncover some defensive techniques for Spike to test out in the field. For now, though, I'll rely on Province Defence to ward off future attacks.

Province Defence is like an indie garrison force; they stay in the province they're built in a try to fend off attackers. I've been getting a couple points everywhere because it's good practice to ward off ambitious raiders, but I'll bump it up to 10 in Jabbernia. Still fairly modest, still quite cheap, and might discourage Fomoria from launching any attacks while there're still indies to batter. I'm actually not sure we're at war yet - the battle this turn was because of a collision, so the AI might not launch any proper attacks until it's issued us with a formal declaration of war. We'll see.

As if to demonstrate his disdain for the Fomorian war machine, Spike flies off to bully some more peasants.

Those three darker green provinces are all swamps, which are of cultural significance to the nation of Ur, so I'm gonna snap them up.

After reinforcing on the eastern front, our Enkidu army is once again on the warpath. Rob Brydon and Carol launch a joint attack on another forested province, and Sendak tags along to provide spiritual counsel and skybolts.

This will be the biggest force we've mustered so far, and definitely overkill for the handful of Lion Tribe warriors we're expecting to meet in battle.

I could order the two forces to hit two separate provinces this turn, but I want them to rendezvous so I can reassign troops - Rob Brydon's force is a lot stronger than it needs to be, and Carol's is a little weaker than I'd like. That's all for this turn!

Spike attacks a swamp, the First Enkidu Expeditionary Force revs up, and also scouts go everywhere (those are the grey arrows). Maybe we're at war with Fomoria, maybe not, but apart from that we're completely worry-free. Good times!

...

but wait

What's that flag?