(PART 8) APRIL 2001 The mighty Zoltan, C132, was captured by our forces and this probably spelled the end of faction 3. Shortly thereafter, Eron Sturmbringer, c173, one of the Faction 7 heros, was also captured. However he was quickly rescued. Our faction had a prompt response: a few days later Eron was captured again along with his rescuer. Both of them were promptly executed to prevent further difficulties. From this time on, the Palantir News reported less and less. It failed to Mention that a major location was influenced, so we were not certain about how the rest of the game was progressing. Our faction did not remain idle. I got control of Gartinel. Max for his part boosted his prestige to a high level so that he influenced Ivanfolk, the King of the Dwarfs. This gave us Hammathond. At the end of the month, we launched our first attack against the Black Hole (AKA faction 7). Our army captured Shigtown and a Black Hole army outside the city was destroyed. Over the past few months, the Black Hole had taken a few of our secondary characters prisoner. Some of those prisoners were rescued in the battle of Shigtown. MAY The Black Hole counterattacked: Castle Danemarch was taken from us. Over time we had been slowly evacuating the castle, so that by the time of the battle if was an almost empty location. We noticed that the Black Hole had overextended itself into our lands. Their army was not quite big enough to devastate our positions. Since they were so far from their resupply bases, their expedition proved to be fairly easy targets for our military operations. And it was quite costly for our enemy. Their army was destroyed and their excellent general, Swift, was killed and laid to rest. JUNE During this month, the game began to heat up for us. Sara Pezzini, c72, was ego attacked to the death. But for some strange reason, our covert had only one chance in seven hells of kidnapping a DEAD character! We appealed to the GM Klaus, but he was on vacation and we had to find another way to take care of Sara Pezzini. So we buried her, no problem at all, in hopes of robbing her grave next turn. Our army moved on toward Jarlshaven. In the meantime, Northloch was taken by the Black Hole. Its general, Lt.Gilette, arrived leading a large fleet. (Yes, Edi ... sometimes fleets are used!). The Black Hole still had several excellent generals. Swift had been eliminated from the game but Lt. Gilette was at least as good as Swift. Even better was Sir Zork, c75, so we made plans to to exterminate them both. JULY I tried a Special Action to recover the dead body of Sara Pezzini. The result was bad news: TO : ID# 23 Mushu From : Gamemaster Hello Marco! C#2323 search for the grave of C#72, but he cant find it. Only a hole in the earth, maybe an empty graveyard.... Klaus Someone dug up the grave before I could! But there was good news about Sir Zork. CJ removed his undead status greatly reducing his defense factors. And : Mulan attempts to curse Sir Zork ID# 75 with a song. Mulan succeeds in the attempt! Snowhite casts the spell Ego Attack ID# 46 on Sir Zork ID# 75 . The incantation is brief and a surge of magical energies streak to their target and assault his mind, doing 37 CF worth of damage to him! Snowhite casts the spell Ego Attack ID# 46 on Sir Zork ID# 75 . The incantation is brief and a surge of magical energies streak to their target and assault his mind, doing 37 CF worth of damage to him! Snowhite casts the spell Ego Attack ID# 46 on Sir Zork ID# 75 . The incantation is brief and a surge of magical energies streak to their target and assault his mind, doing 50 CF worth of damage to him! Cinderella casts the spell Ego Attack ID# 46 on Sir Zork ID# 75 . The incantation is brief and a surge of magical energies streak to their target and assault his mind, doing 70 CF worth of damage to him! The Power of the spell was enough to kill!! Then: -> Legion ID#: 3230 Using force military orders, we successfully raided Force ID# 300 . If available, items were stolen and population captured. This force had no soldiers and/or characters assigned to battle slots, thus no actual battle took place. *>>Legion ID#: 3230 At 49/23 Grassland Magic Shell: 0 ---------------------------------- Slot 1 ------------------------------------- -- 33 Orc Werewolf Berserkers T 6 M 46 MV 35.0 [-----------------------------------------------------------------------------] Prisoners: =>Sir Zork ID# 75 Dak Male with Spotted Owl familiar. So Sir Zork had been murdered and captured! His fate as a prisoner was fairly certain. In the meantime, Philmon Phix attempted to Kidnap Woltan, c172. Philmon Phix managed to get close to Woltan while he was sleeping. Within minutes the deed was done, and Woltan was successfully kidnapped! In addition, the military side was active: Nils was worried because he didn't see a battle report. He thought was a bad sign, until he saw this: Sighting Report : -> Legion ID#: 3575 Sighted in province 30/23. There were 2552 soldiers, 2342 foot, 209 with bow, and 1 were mounted. They sighted us as we approached... [-----------------------------------------------------------------------------] As the opposition was pathetic, we swept over force ID# 3575 with no losses. It wasn't really a battle - just a skirmish! Nils' army had overwhelmed 2552 soldiers as a skirmish battle. Nils was able to do this so easily because he had influenced the soldier's commander prior to the battle. Another force of 1500+ soldiers in the same province was also eliminated in a second skirmish. So over 4000 enemy soldiers had been slaughtered without loss to our forces! So July was a very eventful month: lots of enemies soldiers were destroyed and several major characters eliminated. Just as we felt fairly pleased with the events of the past few months, there came unwelcome news: an enemy dragonslayer, c171, charmed away our best general!