Well this clearly didn’t account for a potential thrashing, and a thrashing is just what I got! Nevertheless, many, many lessons learned.
Ricky, the Reptilian Whipmaster and and Donnie the Duneborn Defilist unveiled a Caravansary on their second revealed tile and took the opportunity to travel Southwest to Nemsynet. This happened to be the city-state we chose to gain reputation with at setup, and our Caravan Master’s alignment promised further (positive) reputation should we make it to the city in good shape. It was an easy ride with meager rewards, but that left us both healthy enough to take some employment on arrival. Between our reputation bonuses and the fact that both our professions (Sapper and Assist, my first big mistake) pay extra in this city, we earned a mint.
We made a quick detour just outside the city to attempt mission for the next city we planned to travel to, which we failed heroically. We got lost doing this and faced a magical flaming tiger, which almost wiped us out completely. However, thanks to a special item earned from our first Caravan Master, we could now take this enemy knowledge to the next city for rewards and turn “magical beasts” into a preferred enemy. Nice!
We hoofed it back to Nemsynet to heal up, but this was when we recognized our first big strategic mistake. The Sandworm made its first appearance on turn 2 (max. 4), and it wasn’t until it was about to reappear for the second time that I recognized the trigger for Act II: Have Remnants (prior worm locations) on 50% of revealed tiles… I had three revealed tiles. It seemed pretty obvious that moving into the second (of three) acts within the first few turns would lead to disaster, so we made a hasty return to the wastelands to explore instead of spending another turn in the city to train.
We had an easy ride out, but the events tanked our food supplies. We did find an oasis and got to stock up (and my lizardman learned how to not eat along the way—nice!), but that was more time spent that should have been spent elsewhere. After we cleared a mission and powered up a little, I was feeling a little less fragile, but we failed our navigation check (this happened constantly, it needs to be said) and wandered into a silt sea where we encountered a colossal locust swarm that sapped our health and energy for up to 4 turns.
The locusts were non-lethal damage, but after two turns of that we were already down to 1HP and 0 energy. So naturally we drew an enemy encounter, blew our flee rolls, and then blew our skill checks so that we earned a disease on top of a double-K.O.
Brutal. Just brutal. But man, what a cool damn experience! I’ll be looking forward to squeezing in another session soon, but for now it’s time to recover some table space a little sooner than expected.
