When last we left our heroes, we had just discovered that Creeping Derangea had gotten far more dangerous.
A chapter title like that does not inspire confidence the news went over well.
Oh gods and here I thought the bioweapon was the worst news of the day.
Will did something far worse than defeat Greyfield in battle- he didn't worship the ground he walked on!
Tasha, who is only a few days out from having wanted to destroy every last Rubinelle, is probably the last person in this room who gets to throw stones, but we let her do it anyway.
So, remember the map preview and how it had a lot of black squares, the same kind as used for the Talon Gun last map? Don't worry, that's not a big IDS structure, that's just the sheer cliff our backs are to.
...I prefaced that sentence with "don't worry." In hindsight, I'm not sure why.
So how do we get out of this particular dilemma?
What we did last time, and literally hope that it works out this time.
We beat Greyfield last time with a sucker punch. I'm not sure that's going to happen this time.
But unless you have any better ideas?
Apparently Tasha has one.
To be fair, Gage wouldn't tell us he smelled smoke if we were on fire.
...Tasha, I said good ideas.
Will, for his part, considers turning over the Lazurians to be a defeat condition and about as acceptable as dying himself.
Uh, Gage, did we forget the part where Will made Greyfield feel like less than the biggest bully in the playground?
Tasha asks the one who actually puts thought into her decisions whether or not it would actually be of strategic benefit.
I kinda like how offended Will is at the mere idea that Lin has actually contemplated the likely outcomes of the "surrender the Lazurians" strategy.
Tasha forestalls Lin going over whether or not she even thinks of such a strategy to try and butter Will up.
...Genuine question, has Will taught Tasha that Lazuria has flaws? Is that what the Talon Gun being a Lazurian project was for? Because, aside from leaving that where it was, Lazuria didn't even do that much wrong there. There's nothing really bad that Lazuria did in the story other than maybe Tasha's own misplaced sense of vengeance, and it's pretty clear that's a personal issue, not a national one.
That, at least, is a lesson Tasha learned from Will. Greyfield is a Rubinellian pig who deserves everything that's coming to him, but Will and the Wolves are just people like her and would be happy to bury the hatchet if Greyfield wouldn't shoot them dead over it.
You two are really going to go through with this? What about the hundreds of other Lazurians we canonically have?
Will starts getting a bit desperate to inject some sanity into the conversation.
Will's argument on the matter is that Brenner would never have chosen to turn over the Lazurians, and he is planning on taking Brenner's side.
Will would rather die doing the right thing than live knowing he sentenced hundreds of lives to death in return.
And he's got a nice helping of "well, nobody's going to die anyway, so why are we quibbling over who it'll be in the first place?"
Any discussion on the matter of "Brenner died so your lives would be spared" and "you know, Greyfield hates us too" is never broached. The only argument offered is Will's idealism. I dunno, I'd like to know if Lin came to those conclusions too.
Lin, his jokes aren't that bad.
His actual in-universe disposition was apparently more suitably ominous, because Dr. Morris does, in fact, have bad news.
Thus far, Creeping Derangea has only touched our party once, on a named character, and it was fairly clear said character was probably going to wind up surviving. Now? Now it's decimating our forces five times over, and since it's impacting the nameless characters, there's probably going to be some casualties. And said nameless forces are going to be worried about those lives.
That's probably the worst part of the news. If we just stepped in an infection, that's one thing. The paranoia of never knowing how it got introduced, though...
Please stop trying. The good ones creep up on you when you're not expecting them.
When Isabella had her Creeping Derangea, she was actually incapacitated and was only able to babble the combination to the shelter. If you were pressed to identify who we've got lugging around on those metrics, you'd find very few matches.
As a biological weapon, this thing has only gotten scarier. There is no doubt that there is intelligent design backing this.
He's decided to throw out the bad joke thing and just go full Dr. Hibbert.
Will's first day on the job and he's dealing with a pandemic.
Oh yeah, those guys. I almost forgot about them.
Yeah, I think the Lazurians are the least of his concerns.
He's entirely here to kill Will.
Three infantry, three tanks, two anti-tanks and an AA. Yeah, that's a war tank piloted by Will, but what do they expect us to do with these?
We are going to make it out of this and laugh. Because the alternative is worse.
...You know, he does have a point. Greyfield doesn't seem to be in the business of drawing out his kills. I guess that's one thing to put as a positive... maybe.
Although if you'd kindly stop taking defeat as given, that would be lovely.
Will will be our CO for the red units.
As for the identity of the blue units, well... they are considered "No CO". They have a lot of hardware for an unorganised rabble, though.
Training is the issue? I think this is just general low morale. The Rubinelle and Lazuria forces are no doubt going against their training in panic here.
Here's our map for today. Narrow enough the whole things fits on one screen this time! That's... actually going to be a problem, given all these scary yellow units.
Here's the new terrain type of this map. Comm Towers were introduced in Dual Strike, where they granted a 10% bonus to Attack, and one CO got an extra 10% bonus to Defence and was obscenely broken if he was ever allowed more than one. The rejiggering to how Defence is calculated for DoR means that making Defence a global feature isn't as scary as it sounds, but the fact remains Greyfield starts with two, the neutrals start with one and we start with zero. This is going to be an uphill battle.
Going to the War Room shows what Tasha and Gage are doing while their men are running around like headless chickens, and... well, nothing great was going on in here.
At least Tasha now has more bullet points to add to her characterisation cards.
Gage is going to spend this conversation not talking. Come hell or high water, he's not going to be making jokes.
He's quite content to leave that to Tasha. And watch from the sidelines.
I... no offence, but if his model for how to be a people person is you, I can see why he's not bothering.
The fun is what separates this from Lin's version. Lin had the other two covered.
OK, something I felt a bit confused about in the execution of this map is how exactly the game wants this objective satisfied. "Get your CO to the com tower" implies we need exactly Will's War Tank on that tile, but I'm not certain if any unit will suffice. I'm sure not risking it, though.
As strategies go... sure, I'm down with that. Although what ground units are doing the protecting here?
Gage pitches in, but only to the bare minimum. At that point, yeah, why bother saying anything?
Turns out Tasha wasn't finished. Not much in it, just explaining that all of the blue units are here explicitly to handle units our force isn't equipped for. Notice the use of the term "let".
You know, having a CO in charge of the blue faction would be of great use.
Ah well, let's give this our best shot.
Capturing property is instinctive. Sometimes I couldn't tell you why I do it.
Will gets started on building up a CO Zone. Feels like it might come in handy.
Everyone else bundles up, and I hope for the best.
From the sounds of things, apparently the blue guys are just... supposed to be ours from the start. Which would explain why Tasha and Gage think they have better things to be doing than lending a hand.
I mean, I think some of these people would rather not be in a battle right now.
Blame? Caulder doing his best to not be on screen is doing a lot for chaos right about now.
I like to imagine we are yelling through the radio, it's coming through loud and clear, but no one in the room on the other end cares because they're yelling at each other too loud to notice.
Well, that's not what you want to hear when their turn is rolling around.
Well, that's one way of looking at it.
Oh, I know that feeling. Placebo effect can work on the negatives just as well as the positives.
They've gotten to the "make up delusions" phase of hopelessness.
And the blaming each other. Can't forget the blaming each other.
Although that was probably already happening way before this.
Have you seen how much Creeping Derangea has destabilised the army thus far? The last thing we're doing is deliberately introducing it.
...Who's spreading that rumour, anyway? Is it the mayor? I bet it's the mayor.
Fortunately, they're content to express this by not moving rather than moving erratically.
Now then... the madman's turn. He won't have to worry about lack of resources.
Although the AI has the same obsession with capturing properties I do.
Not sure I was doing much to stop that happening.
This... this is going to suck.
This, I probably could've stopped, but that's going to sting.
At the start of our next turn, Will will start brainstorming ways to mitigate this pretty terrible situation.
His choice in phrasing also implies that you want the CO Unit on the tile.
I'm taking his word on the subject.
Oh gods, the placebo effect is actively causing bad decisions.
Honestly, I'm surprised it took this long for racism to happen.
...You know he's ostensibly going for us because of you, right? I do wonder which one of us he'd go for if we split up, though.
This is a more reasonable opinion to have, even if still a shitty one.
This opinion is both valid and relatively non-shitty, although it's too late to complain about it. The person who made that decision is no longer around to take your suggestion on board.
Something's telling me Creeping Derangea would come for you either way, though, in which case your best odds are being wherever Dr. Morris happened to be.
I'm assuming calling from the Comm Tower is louder, so this moment is to react to hearing a yell at all.
Will hasn't had the time to be responsible for anything yet.
Are we sure this has helped us?
"Screw this, I'm going home. Where is home? Who knows, but it's better than here."
Will points out that leaving now would basically mean walking into Greyfield.
It's a person that can be reasoned with, rather than a force of nature that doesn't care, but at the same time, it's also Greyfield.
Will stakes his claim. He's not going to care one way or another, but if you don't want to travel with one particular group, you're the one leaving.
Yes, it's what Brenner would do. But it's better than actually spending time on choosing who to look out for.
We don't have the time to make any decisions like this. We just have to solve problems now.
That's the only route to victory. And it may be a rough one, but the alternatives are worse.
Will finding his own position between Brenner's pure idealism and Lin's pragmatism- he's still aiming for the idealistic cause, but he's not as worried about motive. It all shakes out in the end.
You'd think it'd be something that takes hold, but even that much is fairly radical.
Greyfield is shooting at you. Right now, he's the only person who should be shot back at.
This lot is at least self-aware enough to realise they just got chewed out by a kid, and deserved it.
The blue units are now engaged.
...You didn't have to actually yell at them, you know. I think that's a vocal intonation thing, anyway.
Well, he learned the hard way why most people don't do that.
...No, I don't think his force of personality stretched that far...?
Lin, surprising us all with an "actually, emotion can be a good thing in small doses". To be fair, this is exactly the situation emotion makes for a great tool- you're talking to them on their level, and their level right now is fear and anger.
Well, at least I have that property now! Yay?
That guy is so dead.
Well, somebody's gotta keep these guys safe.
I considered it, but that bike isn't actually that scary. It's just infantry being good at dealing with anti-tanks. You'd think I'd think about the implications of bikes more, wouldn't you?
This bomber is just a gigantic pain in the rear.
The plan here is to make that blue Fighter nearly invincible.
No, these guys are still AI-controlled. Their AI will be significantly more helpful, but we'll be at the mercy of it.
Including capturing. At least one of them is a Com Tower.
The blue units mostly just mill around me. I think these are some fine positions for them.
Now Greyfield's going for another Com Tower. That'll be a problem later.
That's the city that got the capture interrupt.
Yeah, that infantry isn't lasting long.
These losses are a bit harder to recover from.
Especially when that's the AA basically gone entirely. The blue units are going to have to pull their weight as anti-aircraft.
Will just oneshotting a Middie with his War Tank.
I stop to have a few units shoot while they're still inside Will's CO Zone, for the boost.
Now we can move the CO Zone south.
And the zone is even large enough that this shot is part of it!
Everyone else just gathers again, trying to mitigate losses. I forget to move that AA, not that it has a life ahead of it.
Comm Tower acquired for Blue. I'm not sure if we get those bonuses, but just blue getting it is fine.
That is a cleanup of the aircraft by blue. You've gotta be proud.
Less proud of that one. What is that bike doing to anyone?
Especially with those guys beginning their advances.
And the Copter finishes off the AA so the Bomber can go blow up my tank for free.
At least the other Missile and the Fighter are in range.
That was a misclick. I think I wanted to shoot at the bike but forgot the anti-tank only shoots three tiles away.
Either that or I wanted to move it closer to this. That's probably the wiser move.
With that said, this guy's out of range.
I need this guy dead, and Will's the only unit around.
This anti-tank will have to do.
Bomber doesn't quite go down to those dented missiles.
The B. Copter is cleaned up, though.
And there goes the Bomber to the Fighter anyway. Now that thing is useless, though.
OK, those are some unfortunate movements.
Still, the anti-tank that moved is able to get a little payback.
I don't like where this War Tank is positioned, though.
I do a bit of moving around to try and figure out my counterplay.
Right now, it's hope it charges right into the anti-tank. Going Chapter 6 on this.
The blue units take another crack at the Comm Tower.
...Well, OK, it's probably better the Bomber deals with that guy, because I have no plans for him.
But still, the war tank bearing on me was kind of annoying.
...In retrospect, probably should've killed this guy with Will for Power score. I'm still not really used to those intricacies.
This is certainly a way to recover, though.
Just slowly but surely readying ourselves for getting the finish.
Because the blue units are taking their own time on the matter.
I tried using Rally Cry to get a better shot of the top screen, but it turns out it's just really inconvenient to time the way I change which screen I'm capturing. Not looking forward to when I get to use other CO Powers.
Couldn't even finish the job with Will. At least the backup managed the job.
Given that military movement operations ostensibly take days? That's alarming.
This would be a heck of a lot easier to do if we had a factory on this map.
Lin takes a second look, and notices that the enemy appears to be advancing in the reverse direction.
Surprisingly, they actually cut away to a different scene before the map is over.
This feels like a message that could have been delivered over radio. With that said, the dialogue that occurs after this map implies we don't exactly know what's going on behind enemy lines, so perhaps that is their reasoning.
Notice the blue colour of our Win. That's because the No CO units landed the final hit.
I'm not sure what surprises me more: I got over 100 points in Technique, or I lost Speed by that much. What speed score were they expecting me to get?
Well, obviously, something's amiss. The obvious explanation here is that, since the blue faction won this map, the blue faction is the one that's supposed to spit up a victory quote, but since there isn't a blue CO, there is no quote. The weird part about this assumption is that Chapter 15 mandates winning as the blue team, but the win quote is delivered by Brenner (who played red) and not Gage. If there was a way to make someone other than the winning team deliver a win quote, why doesn't that apply to this map?
I don't know how we survived...
This is Will's win quote, incidentally.
Stats. Oh gods those numbers feel bad.
So what exactly is the deal with those reinforcements, and why did they go in the wrong direction?
Fortunately, Lin has been doing her job of recon while we've been fighting, and can tell us the gist. Although given what the real explanation turns out to be, I'm not sure how close this hits the mark.
We get better than what Lin got by getting the chance to do a prisoner interrogation. Lin jokes about how both herself and Gage can get people to talk by being their very intimidating RBF selves. Gage is probably better.
...Given that Greyfield contradicted that order? Something's very amiss here...
The NRA Guard doesn't understand enough of why the order was given to be entirely sympathetic to it. Why exactly he was frustrated with the decision to call off the victory isn't elaborated on, but there are a plethora of choices- genuine hatred, frustration with a foolish commander, or fear of what said commander will do if he doesn't get his way.
That's... quite the guess. He must have some basis to come to that conclusion, but...
Yeah. The army bearing down on us did not look like the kind of army that would spontaneously produce a mutiny.
...Oh.
There's something kind of neat about the fact that both factions came up with a different term to describe Creeping Derangea. Nobody introduced it to anyone, it just turned up, and we were left with our initial reactions to choose an appropriate name. Fortunately, it seems that the NRA Guard has figured out, through context clues or the "flores" in the first name, that we're talking about the Disease That Makes You Grow Flowers.
Or he doesn't want to imagine the alternative.
The bioweapon was not introduced by Greyfield. And it doesn't seem to discriminate between Wolf and NRA. Clearly not a bioweapon used by either of our allies.
Greyfield has taken a very predictable approach to controlling the outbreak- kill the weeds to enrich the rest of the crops. He either doesn't know or doesn't care that this doesn't work so well on humans.
It's also worth noting that Greyfield has not employed any equivalent to Dr. Morris. One assumes that Caulder is willing to fill in on Morris's technospeak duties, but given we saw him working for Lazuria, that's probably not as direct a loyalty as Morris has to us.
Will finds the silver lining in this news- Greyfield's army isn't quite so invincible and overpowering.
Now, Creeping Derangea isn't what one would call a better opponent.
Lin notices that we almost found ourselves in Greyfield's shoes at the start of this mission. The fact that we held together while he collapses is a very promising sign as to why we made it out in one piece.
Anyway, without the threat of Greyfield looming over us, Dr. Morris has been tasked with identifying just how bad this spread has gotten.
The infected have the best hopes in Dr. Morris, as the only known doctor for miles. The uninfected have the hope of putting distance between themselves and the infection.
Given the NRA also caught it, Dr. Morris is still probably the safest place to be, but it's good to let them think that.
...Morris, we talked about this.
Will smiles at him in the hopes he moves on from the joke and to the nitty-gritty.
Will's duty to the right thing leads him down the path that gives the people the most agency in their actions, even if there is a right decision here. The people that choose to leave know what they're getting into.
Right off the bat, Will is still plot-armoured.
For now.
Will puts all his faith in Dr. Morris, and tells him he'll make sure that he's kept as safe as possible to find his cure.
Dr. Morris, for his part, is actually of the opinion that the healthy people should be leaving, as part of his Duty of Care. Presumably, it doesn't cover pandemic situations perfectly when combined with post-apocalyptic ones.
Will trusts his instincts on this one.
Will reminds Dr. Morris of his stakes.
Lin leans in to have a word with him on the subject, from someone who's taking it a bit more seriously.
...Or less. Despite Morris's jokes, Lin always had more of the attitude.
She definitely straddles the line of "genuinely questioning Will" and "making light of the situation".
Or that may just be the inherent "comedy", for want of a better word, in the fact that the disease we're talking about makes you grow flowers instead of normal disease symptoms.
Will knows there's a difference between bravery and foolishness. This is the right place to be, even if you don't want to be there.
The plot armour sheds. "Roughly half the army is infected", and it turns out they're not going to use Isabella for this a second time around.
I'll be honest, I had a memory of Lin revealing she's got Creeping Derangea later on, letting us question who's infected and who's not for a little while in. In retrospect, however, of course Lin would disclose the risks she's facing at the first opportunity. Sure, this is probably going to make Will treat her suboptimally, but it's better he know she could burst into flowers at any time than have it happen and take him by surprise at the worst time.
Lin asks this question again, now that all the cards are on the table. Will talked a big game when it was just the faceless part of our army infected.
But Will already picked this option because it was the right thing. If helping Morris is what it takes to keep Lin alive? That's only making his resolve harden.
Next time: So I heard you liked gardening metaphors?
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