Egh, level 5 gives 2 lore scraps and we're at 3.
it only gives 2 scraps if we're at lvl 3 or below, so no, we only get the one.
Also just to point out: whole I know we've been getting lucky with not scouting the Canterlot expedition and getting lucky brute forcing it via Name, we should probably consider scouting Part 3 considering it's a long expedition (read: VERY DIFFICULT) and the fact that heavily warded doors in the depths of the earth never are there for benign reasons, and I would like to know ahead of time if Biedde and/or Mareinette and/or Velvet needs to tag along.
On an unrelated note, no Frangiclave expedition costs means we have the financial wiggle room to summon MitLs! Also also, technically, if we study that Lantern 4 artifact, any of our Confidants would be able to cast RotT with reasonable chances of success.
with low-mid tier expeditions I think it's fine to not scout. Part 2 was kind of at the edge of what's fine not scouting, really.
Sure, Doa needed to roll 70+, BUT she could have tried multiple times and probably only lose time with the failures.
That said, part 3 is likely to be even harder, AND probably to include combat. So Either we send a big team, OR we scry.
as a nice aside though, with Lantern 4 and SH 3 artifacts we CAN have basically ANY follower scry for us if we want...
"The Reflection of the Tapestry"
-CD: SECRET HISTORIES 60, LANTERN variable
-Cost: 30 bits on materials. (Originally 35)
+30 from SH artifact, +40 from Lantern one.
Selene is now fairly good at it actually (25 + 30 and 25 + 40), Even Comet and Rarity are not hopeless at it.
Though of course Jade and Baldomare are still far better, but Jade is better used on Memory of Light and Baldomare on giving us SH influence for Sacrament OR on searching for the Outsider... unless we have really important and DIFFICULT objectives to scry for, of course.
Nothing says we can't do our personal sacrament first afterall.
well, we KNOW we can't get two sacraments.
That said, it would make sense that Axe could still open the portal even if we're already sacramented. It would no longer be for her Sacrament, but it's possible we'd make a different deal instead.
I suppose we could've just accidentally freed the Daughter of Axes by doing the sacrament anyway without knowing and saved Baldomare's action, but we did get the information we sought.
in theory, yeah, but I expect we would have waited a bit more for this sacrament normally.
We now have one more reason to hurry up!
We're so close to the Moth sacrament though.
Just have Marinette Grail bomb Cheerilee for a turn or two before having Velvet leash her.
With the one Moth scrap from deciphering the Moth Book we'd be ready for our sacrament.
The Knock sacrament options on the other hoof work best when we can dedicate all of Velvet's actions in a turn to take advantage of an influence.
Reminder that we do not all agree on taking the Moth (and Grail) Sacraments in the first place.
That said we're now extremely close to SH and Knock ones, Lantern is not THAT far away (1 scrap from artifact, 1 from lesson, 2 from influence, we could be there in 2 or 3 turns if we wanted), and so is Edge (first we heal the scar, then we challenge Biedde).
4 Sacraments could potentially all be ours in the space of 3 or 4 turns.
Technically more if we were willing to go for Moth and Winter ones.
As an aside, while we could probably afford to read one of the books rather than giving it to Baldomare, we could also use that action to study both the Lantern artifact and the Knock artifact we've got sitting in our back pocket.
That's a good point. Artifacts have potentially useful effects, and even if we don't get scraps from Knock artifacts it might still be worth it.
Then if we do get another Level 5 book later, it's not actually a problem anymore and we can read the Moth 5 book and sacrifice the new one. But reading it right now is a bad idea. If we find a new Level 5 book in the meantime, then we can read the Moth book and still get our +1 Moth scrap. If we don't, then we can prevent Baldomare from being desummoned. If we read it now, and don't get a new Level 5 book, Baldomare gets desummoned for 3 turns and we'll have to spend a bunch of bits resummoning her.
As far as I can tell, there is zero benefit to reading it next turn vs. waiting until later.
Also, my apologies regarding what I thought your motivation was. It was actually Iustus who wanted the read the Moth 5 book because they thought it would be more interesting for the lowercase-L lore, my brain got a bit scrambled there, apparently.
Agreed.
We want to read Knock 5 (probably) so we can start working on Knock Sacrament, but we're in no rush to reach Moth 5 (we don't have a minion for it, AND we're not yet sure we WANT to go for it).
So we read Knock 5, we start working on Knock sacrament (and probably finish SH Sacrament), maybe we even go for Lantern Sacrament, who knows...
Moth stays there until we either have a minion ready to "sacrifice" for the sacrament, OR we give it up to Baldomare.
...so. I just realized. We could do something
very funny next turn.
We could potentially get both our SH and Knock Sacraments in a single turn. It would require getting Baldomare's SH Sacrament instead of our own (which would make me kind of sad tbh, I want our history-vision to get better), but it would only eat 1 AP, and we could feed the other 2/3 (depending on what's happening) into DoA's Knock Sacrament, if we ask her for a Knock lesson to get us to 4/4 scraps
In theory we could still do it with personal.
Next turn:
Baldomare: SH Influence
Axe: Lesson
Velvet 1: SH Sacrament
Velvet 2: SH Sacrament
Velvet 3: Knock Sacrament
Velvet 4: Knock Sacrament.
Probably unwise though. We also want to heal our scar, and there's Biedde's Sacrament too...
I'd say we should finish SH next turn, try to study book + artifact, and then the turn after we do Knock or Edge Sacrament.
Probably Knock, considering Axe would expire otherwise. MAYBE if we don't get hurt in Axe's Sacrament action we could even try Biedde in the same turn.
Followers:
Rarity + Comet Feet (leader) to the Grave on the Hill, with our Artifacts
Jade to scry for Windy
Biedde to find and remove Copper
Baldomare's Sacrament
Ask for a lesson of Heart from Mareinette
Ask for a lesson of Knock from DoA
Selene to learn her Winter skill and ???
Velvet:
Baldomare's Sacrament
DoA's Sacrament
??? x 2
Rarity should either work or do Commission if her Work is not at risk.
we need ALL THE BITS.
Send Selene to the grave expedition instead. It's supposed to be a simple one, and we can give her the SH, Heart and even Lantern Artifacts to help, she should be fine.
If we work on SH Sacrament, we probably want SH Influence and a conditional "2 actions if the first one doesn't use the SH Reroll" to try and finish it all at once.
Also we need to decide if we want to go for proto-hive and/or Canterlot part 3.
Optional in that we'd be presented with the choice of giving it to Axe, or keeping it for our own use. Perhaps the Frangiclave stands as the Knock equivalent of Moldywarp's Stone, a frighteningly powerful Name-artifact with abilities beyond common adept-made trinkets.
very likely, considering in canon CS it could open the Peacock Door (it would be the Mirror Door here, the one we found already broken by the Forge) without breaking (normally it required lantern-mirrors, and they broke and had to be repaired each time).
This raises an interesting thought, that Sacrament-expeditions in general might offer more opportunities than just the sacrament itself, opportunities for loot, knowledge, and unique narrative consequences. Personally that hypothetical is one more reason for me to prefer Baldomare's adventure with the Secret Histories, we might get to bring back a souvenir.
keep in mind that Axe's sacrament does NOT "unlock" an expedition. Baldomare's explicitly talks of expedition, Axe's just says we can and will have to invest an unknown amount of actions in it.
We don't have to pay Bits, we don't have to pick other people to come with us. It's not quite an expedition, though there's some similarities.
And finally, we have at last gotten results from our Bureau, time for our constables to do what they do best and start kicking some doors in. I wonder if it would be possible to send Biedde to sabotage the Changeling defenses to give our lot an advantage? I'm honestly inclined to just let them at it without any meddling on our part, just to see what happens mechanically when the Bureau gets an entire pile of expedition loot to pick over. It's still our operation after all, we'll still get to use it, especially if any particularly curious trinkets allow us an excuse to get a hoof into Midday Dew's door. National security and all that, since the Dust proved so ineffective we can argue more direct insight is needed in order to support field operations.
Edit: Actually, since we have Shining and Cadance in our Definitely-Not-A-Conspiracy, I wonder if we could manage to directly fold Biedde into the raid as some sort of undefined "Special Agent" assigned to us by the Crown as a wartime asset. Basically, "The Princess wants this done properly, this stallion has been assigned as backup and insurance."
And then Celestia comes to ask how Cadance found this
interesting fellow she loaned to the Bureau.
Keep in mind that if the expedition is done
officially, then we're forced to basically share everything we find. If we want to keep things for ourselves, we should go ourselves first (or send our Names).
If we research the Lantern Artifact that allows us to scry more stuff more easily due to basically making every follower decent at it. Selene is not that bad at it, for example.
You want wipe out an entire race of manus beings...
We literally already did that with the pony race that stayed behind in the Woods instead of leaving like the three tribes.
That what created this new race.
them being a "fourth tribe" is just your assumption.
but yeah, we DID have them go extinct. Regrettable actions are regrettable, as usual.
Which yeah would be a pretty rad plan to do but still genocide.
eh, they're spirits of hate and suffering. "genociding them" is basically a public service, and closer to exorcising them/putting them to peaceful rest.
I'd compare it to "genociding" some of the worst races from 40k (necros and daemons, mostly) or, say, the Dalek and Cybermen from Doctor Who.
If we want to worry about a race that does not really deserve genocide, we should worry about the Changeling and try to find a way to "rehabilitate/spare them", not the spirits of hate and malice that are summoned through pony sacrifices.
Bieddie is overkill and we need him against Copper. Velvet is Edge 4 with reroll and multiple guards who could act as meat shields for her. If our Bureau can't do anything even in such situation, then better to learn about it now, so we can invest more in weapon research.
what weapon research?
normal "elite" guards are likely to max out at +20 combat. SHINING ARMOR was an "Heroic" +25, and was basically stronger than any non-edge-adept could ever hope to be.
If we want to make the Bureau guards stronger, the only way forward is to introduce them to Edge. Which obviously requires introducing the Lores first, and then making new manuscripts for them.
I keep saying this, and yet somehow nobody seems to believe me.
I've said it multiple times too, to be fair.
Part 1 was nice. Part 2 was amazing.
in any case we definitely want to scry for part 3, because HERE picking the best Names for the Job will save us a lot of bits and time, and we can't really afford sending more than 2 (120 bits per follower sent... and we can't really afford to send Velvet, because it would cost her
3 actions)
I'm honestly somewhat inclined to leave this one be, or more specifically deliberately allocate whatever loot we may find to our Bureau as a way to get started on building up our capabilities with this organization of ours. I'd like to take the opportunity to make a big show of institutional success while also noting the complete uselessness of the Candle Dust in combating even a single random changeling. Basically I want to subordinate Eclipse under our umbrella and use this as a chance to get started on that. If we hit the hive with our own resources (and possibly Biedde rolled in as a Crown asset with Shining's endorsement) perhaps the Lunar Bureau can claim the lion's share of the assets.
We probably want Baldomare and Luna for the Old Grave, Baldomare to locate it and Luna for any difficulties along the way.
Grave I'd send Selene alone. give her our artifacts if necessary, worst case we pay some extra bits if she takes longer than expected.
Baldomare actions are pretty valuable in the short term, between SH Influence to work on SH Sacrament, Outsider search (she has +80), Scrying (she rolls the best), Lantern lessons and influence (we're close to Lantern Sacrament too).
Beneath the Royal Castle seems to be a better option for that since it is not found on an enemy base but in an ancient part of the capital, less bad feelings involved if everypony thinks the lores are old pony stuff that the monsters stole instead of regular monster stuff. I know that wouldn't last but first impressions are important, so ancient history making a comeback could be a safe way to start things here.
True, but we kinda need to finish part 3 before we introduce them to part 1, otherwise we risk losing out on that one.
Yes, please. Sending Selene alone to an Expedition named The Grave on the Hill when she has a Winter Realization on the same turn and her final Winter lesson was "The Lonely Realization" is perfect.
I seriously can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but it DOES sound pretty thematic
By the way, do we know of any way to potentially mitigate the effects of a Dangerous action? I really want to do the Personal SH Sacrament, but I notice that the Dangerous part is driving some people off from it. Maybe Biedde or Baldomare could help.
eh, not much we can do about it.
SH Influence for +40 to the SH Roll. Don't try a second action in the same turn IF we've already used our SH Reroll in that turn.
That's kinda it.
