5/28 morning
I woke up and looked Lillibeth over, marveling at how pretty she really is. She's a lot more girl next door than most of my ladies, especially when contrasted with someone like Lividia, who just flat out looks photoshopped, or Sally, who was fap fuel as a fictional character in my old life. Lividia had snuck out a bit more effectively this time, and was dutifully receiving intensive priestly training at the Scarlet Monastery. As was Talaada, incidentally.
Lillibeth
I looked over the huge list of new recruits, almost 70 from Undercity possession-confessions alone, and realized a few things: first, I was getting close to my cap on tempest jewels. Since I got jewels of discord, I have been collaring nothing but high value targets, sometimes even transferring them off of the other members of my retinue, and powerful targets tend to be resistant to capture. I'd gotten within 5 necklaces of my maximum of 20 for the first time in a long while. Today I was going to capture Lo'Gosh, Windsor, Moira, and someone named Nishera? Ah. The green dragon guarding Ysera. So at least it's an extremely profitable day.
Those four, Thargas, Broll, Kathra'Natir didn't count because he was being captured by Valeera's amulet, Putress, Varimathras, Natalie who was possessed so she didn't count, Fandral, Jaderoarer and Lethas the green dragons, Mr. Smite was wearing Vanessa's recruitment amulet, two Night Watchmen, Kalidosh, Bavira, and Gracina Spiritmight. I knew who most of them were at a glance; only the last three needed any digging.
Kalidosh and Bavira were both demons, tier 5 and 4 respectively. Nozara's handiwork, I was pretty sure, so hopefully they would have rebates or otherwise be useful additions to my retinue. New demon forms would be welcome, as I move into the phase of mass recruitment. Converting my ogres into a squad of respawning satyrs had already paid off.
Gracina didn't take a detective to figure out; she was a night elven priestess in Darnassus. I'd hazard a guess that when Elune doesn't directly accept an offering, there's some kind of process where they distribute the offerings to the priesthood, and Sister Spiritmight won the raffle. Congratulations, you get subjugation to my will. I couldn't even muster up any disappointment; one of her priestesses had put on an amulet that was sitting on an altar in her temple, and she still didn't object. I don't think I need to worry too much about Elune, guys.
In any event, I should probably take a day or two giving at least half of my necklaces to banshee and people already in the retinue. Just to make sure that I don't reach the danger zone where I might not actually get all of my amulets for a day. The banshee need necklaces anyway.
That meant two necklaces for ghosts, one for Ysera, and one other. My current plan, as I explained to Lillibeth over breakfast, was to track down a member of the Cult of the Damned that we could quietly capture and have them sponsor her entry. It would probably add a few days to the setup, but I had Matthias Shaw and Sylvanas put together reports on any known recruiters involved in the cult. There were options. Mostly ones that I dismissed immediately; Araj the Summoner would indeed be a great sponsor and I'd love to capture him for many reasons, but he's kinda standing in the center of 30k powerful undead. Same thing went for anyone deep in Scholomance; if I could get in to catch them easily, I'd just do that and use them instead of sending Lillibeth as an infiltrator.
As I frequently do, I decided to stew on it while I went about my day. Which, during breakfast, meant planning. I wanted to collar Ysera as soon as possible, and Varian would come not long after, so I set an alarm for the moment Nishera was captured. That gave me an hour and a half, which I figured I could use to go over Twilight Grove. Ooh: the mission in Theramore was finished last night, too.
Today's to-do list was Ysera, Lo'Gosh, Sylvannas, sending Moira home, getting psychic paper from that ogre quest, and trying to capture someone as a sponsor for Lillibeth. I also needed to send people out to complete more missions. Always more missions.
••••••••••
Gretchen was still dead, but she was a dead night elf now. She seemed to be in very good spirits when I found her, and I'm going to attribute that to her giant new pet kitty. Most undead have difficulty keeping pets that aren't carrion eaters or somehow corrupted by death magic, so I get the impression that a giant furball was very exciting for her to get to ride around on and cuddle with. She also had a whole new combat applicable skillset to go with her prior skillset of being a competent seamstress. Combine all that with freedom and the two people she practically worshipped, me and Sylvanas, being on the same page? She was on cloud nine.
https://imgur.com/a/liAqt8n
I had Caledra do testing last night, and had a general idea of what this "unit" was capable of. Huntresses were an extremely flexible, easy to use unit in the RTS. They were fast, harder to kill than an archer, and their Moon Glaives (giant shuriken with absolutely zero relationship to my world's definition of the word glaive that I'm aware of) could bounce between multiple enemies after being thrown. To top it all off, both the huntress and her panther mount could shadowmeld. I could probably do much worse than just having swarms of huntresses doing hit and run tactics.
Their one "weakness," if you could call it that, was that they needed to have weaknesses to exploit to be effective. A bunch of heavy melee fighters would be slowly worn down by volleys of moonglaives. A lightly armored force that relied on ranged attacks would be overrun by giant panthers and mauled, with the women riding them mostly just there to provide moral support and guard the flanks. A mixed force, with ranged combatants guarded by heavy melee units, would tear the huntresses apart.
In other words, they would be good doing light cavalry things, but probably shouldn't be my entire army. Unfortunately, that was a trend that was going to continue. Night elves are a very range heavy faction, and until I picked up a few expensive upgrades I wouldn't be able to make Druids of the Claw or Mountain Giants, their proper frontline troops.
Speaking of expensive upgrades, essence was indeed the bottleneck. There was very little left I could buy that was "cool" and would give me something concrete to look at at the end of the day. I needed 320 energy and 180 essence to upgrade my tree of life (or Emeriss) into a Tree of Ages. The energy wouldn't be a problem; thanks to my rapidly growing (and dragon becoming) population, I got more than 500 energy just today. Unfortunately, 5 wisps only supplied 100 essence, leaving me at 130. Not enough.
I bit the bullet and bought 5 more wisps for 300 energy. That would bring my daily essence income up to 200; enough to buy something nice every day and still have a little left over for training units. With the rest, I purchased Strength of the Moon from the Hunters Hall. I didn't really have enough troops to take advantage of it, but improving the weaponry of most of my trained units now and forever seemed like a good investment.
Enlist Today was finished, and I had a new Piccolo; I sent out a request on the amulet to look for a good Piccolo player, preferably someone already in the retinue. I figured that having a magical flashmob generator would be useful in its own right, and I was already trying to think of ways to bypass the dancing fever. Mechanical guards like the harvest golems, extremely long range snipers who can kill from beyond earshot, and training people to fight while dancing all seemed like they could work, depending on exactly how the piccolo actually operated. I'd find someone who could use it effectively, and start experimenting. Team Hamelin could be a really deadly force if I can figure out how to make them work. If you get that reference, have a cookie. You earned it.
Anyway, in addition to a new piccolo, that meant a new regional mission, and a new minor mission.
Now Kiss
Ensure that Lenny McCoy and Shailea, both in Stormwind, have sex. Failure if more than one has a compromised will.
Rewards: Manual labor skill chip, mission ticket, refresh 1 full restore for a living member of the retinue.
Way to keep it classy by demanding that I only brainwash ONE member of the soon to be happy couple. Though that would make it harder. At least a little bit. I can only hope that Lenny over there is your typical single straight man that would generally accept an invitation to sex with an attractive and willing woman. If so, a banshee should be able to pop into her head, capture her, and do a quick, straightforward seduction.
I put out a note to Melisara to look for any of her promising trainees that want to fuck some guy named Lenny. I remembered how desperate Lillibeth had been for any kind of human contact when she first started possessing people; if that's a typical reaction, I should hopefully get some volunteers pretty easily. Any volunteer would be allowed to keep the amulet and be promoted to the capture fleet, if they completed the assignment of course. I reward results, or at least try to.
So I've taken down Onyxia, and Jaina isn't really an antagonistic force unless she justifiably misunderstands my intentions. Who the hell else of note is even in Dustwallow Marsh?
Dustwallow Marsh: defeat Dr. Weavil
Rewards: Deluxe Mission Ticket, Grand Waters of Lethe
Grand Waters of Lethe: as Greater Waters of Lethe, but in addition to forgetting everything the target is, in turn, forgotten by everyone.
Okaaaaay. I have a few thoughts. First: That is a gnome with goggles, and I don't know anything about him. How tough can he possibly be? Second: that's two rewards, one of which is something I've only seen from major missions, and the other is a straight upgrade compared to something I've gotten from moderate missions. Two major mission rewards is quite a lot for fighting someone I have absolutely no prior knowledge of.
I might just… not. This makes me nervous, and though they are major mission rewards they aren't great. Maybe I'll send Lividia as a canary? You know. If I don't have anything better to spend a spare respawn on. Throwing Lividia at random antagonistic factions until she explodes is thebest training she's going to get for now.
While I had a minute I dragged the group of undead harpies that were created yesterday into the "corpse party" folder in my profiles page. Sister Riven was assigned to the B Team. She's not going to be a particularly powerful member of the squad, but she was a flying fire mage, which is generally something you want to have.
Ah. There's my alarm. Nishera is getting capturedin five minutes. Better turn human; Ysondre told them to expect a human priest, after all.