Could R'lyeh get costal fort blood access?

[FacePerson]

Human sacrifice is pretty common in the Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos upon which R'lyeh seems based. In particular, in Lovecraft's 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' an aquatic undersea nation extracts human sacrifices from a seaport to please Cthulhu. The story ends explaining that while the sea dwellers may lie beneath the waves for now, they will eventually rise out of the water to claim such tribute.

I also think having a strong motivation for obtaining coastal forts would be good for the nation too, as it would give a reason for R'lyeh to want to obtain and defend land forts, rather than just stay turtled / raid from the the water.

[Andkat]

I really have to echo and affirm and bump this post.

Thematically speaking, Blood and Death (and Glamour) are much more appropriate to the Starspawn than Water; it's never established in the original Lovecraft or here that the Starspawn actually derived from an aquatic environment despite their compatibility for our ocean, and themes of human sacrifice are present throughout lovecraft's work including direct allusions to practice by the Cthulhu cults in Call as well as descriptions of such Innsmouth and in various other spooky cult stories. Furthermore, crossbreeding is a prevalent theme (err as you might imagine given his racism, but let's elide that for now)- not only in the obvious Innsmouth case but also in e.g. the deliberate eldritch horror breeding in the Dunwich Horror or even the gradual mutation of the flora and fauna in the Color out of Space. Given the extensive hybrid angle already (and the similarity of the deep one hybrids to the blood magic mutants) it's honestly jarring that the nation has no blood access.

LA R'lyeh cultists having a chance to spawn with Blood instead of Astral would fit perfectly into the themes, and even in MA I feel that the priest-mages ought to have Blood as a secondary or tertiary path. While Blood does not work underwater native Blood access would give them a perfect reason as mentioned before to go on to land and create some value for establishing their otherwise terrible coastal forts; it would help a ton with the whole UW-turtling conundrum. Not to mention that parts of Blood are heavily tied into Horrors and it is also the only magic safe at high Horror rating- which given that Horrors are the most lovecraftian beings of all in this setting comports perfectly with the themes of R'lyeh.

A further argument can be made for favoring Death over Water as a secondary- reanimation and sorcerous/monstrous immortality are also recurring themes in lovecraft's work, being a prominent and central theme in stories such as Herbert West Reanimator, the Thing on the Doorstep, the Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Cool Air, and the Whisperer in Darkness (although arguably that metamorphosis also might fit with Blood). Dead and reborn things in the stygian depths of the sea are of course central to the very thematic concept of Cthulhu; as of course is the dream and sensory manipulation of Glamor.


I would actually propose that Starspawn mages should be Astral primary with Death or Blood as the secondaries on the priest-mages and glamor guaranteed secondary on the 'archmages', and with Earth (to represent their mastery of meteoric iron and their abyssal location) as a tertiary on the Archmages. Water would be left entirely to the slave-mages. This would also help distinguish them from the Aboleths, who are Astral-Water with some Glamor now, and also from other water nations writ broadly, given that Water nations pretty routinely have Astral-Water and never have native Blood; it would really make R'lyeh feel alien. Plus having all of the 'Sorcery' paths be central with very little Elemental emphasis (R'lyeh slave Mages could even be nerfed down to Water 1 if the path access is too good) would be fittingly alien and different.

Naturally as a corollary to this Void Cultists should have a chance of Blood 1 instead of Astral 1 (probably with a higher chance of Astral than Blood still).

I think it's also a thematic error for slave-priests to even exist in MA R'lyeh. With Void creatures being the Sacreds and the summoning and not the blessing incurring all the risk, I think it's really inappropriate that a merman slave would have religious authority or sanctity above that of any Illithid. It would make the most sense for Star children to be level 1 Priests, either replacing or complementing the Astral 1. Researcher Blessed Priest-Assassins might occasion some balance issues due to extreme efficiency but those could be ironed out with cost changes and perhaps loss of Research ability- in any case theme and interesting mechanics seem to be more of a priority in Dominions.

I would also say that the Archmages should probably be level 1 priests for purely flavor reasons, and also to make mage-focused Blesses a bit more centrally rewarding for R'lyeh. Lesser beings serving as priests or being sacred should be exclusive to LA R'lyeh and its insane freespawn priest-leaders. LA R'lyeh ought to be more about the 'equal opportunities' reign of total madness amid the descent into the dreams of dead gods; MA R'lyeh should be centered around the structured tyrannical dominion of the starspawn.


If I really had my way, I might propose to abandon the idea of Illithid basic troops to begin with and have them purely as rulers, with R'leyh gaining the ability to generate new Void Gates via Rituals in other deep sea forts (maybe also Coast too with Blood access), maybe a bit weaker than the capital one and maybe some late-game or Blood-derived direct summoning of some critters. The Elder Things and the jellyfish-looking aquatic Void Gate spawn can fulfill the same unique mind blaster-artillery role as Illithids but the greater diversity of options from a "Void Gate Economy" would allow for a lot more army build variation than what R'lyeh currently has (at the very least, I can't find a bread and butter short of late game that makes sense outside of naked illithids + slave guardian and lobo guard chaff with a shift to meteorite guard later) including some actual ability to plan around the Sacreds (because you'd have enough of them to matter). At the very least some mid to late game National Spells related to additional summonings (and maybe more fatigue or path level efficient Enslave?) would really nice; it's odd that the most alien nation of all has no national spells unique to it outside of LA R'lyeh's void spectre call, and if Blood was used for some of the spicier stuff it'd be a chance to give them unique incentives to get some coastal Blood going. Maybe MA R'lyeh being more stable would focus more on having specific summon spells to complement their Void Gate, whereas, LA R'lyeh would actually be able to establish new Void Gates.

As a peripherally relevant idea, an Astral-Blood pretender chassis themed off of Nyarlathotep for R'lyeh might be good fun; +misfortune scale, increases bad event probabilities or adds temporary misfortune scales in enemy (or any?) province he occupies, ethereal, probably immortal, Astral and Blood, horror marks enemies who hit him or via some native attack, has a chance to drive your non void sane commanders insane if they share a province. He is one of the most iconic and important of Lovecraft's creations, and given his nature as a nomadic faustian tempter and avatar of chaos might even fit as an option for some other more apocalypse or horror-tinged Oops Bad Decisions nations, like MA Ernor, EA Lemuria, LA Marignon, LA Ulm, LA Abysia, etc. (if you pick him as a Pretender the implication being that he was in part or whole responsible behind the scenes for those sordid outcomes) It'd be nice if the Ghost King option could be replaced with an Elder Void Spectre or something for MA/LA R'lyeh as well, maybe with concomitant cost increase (given Mind Blast/Life Drain).

[anaris]

While blood is a powerful path to have access to on land, R'lyeh struggles to make use of it since blood requires a reasonably large number of provinces to do well and no water provinces will work. They can't use it in aquatic conflicts, obviously, and their research goals aren't compatible easily.

More critically though, R'lyeh doesn't need an incentive to get on land; the game cannot easily be won by a R'lyeh player who does not get on land, and ideally relatively early. That's one of the major reasons why MA R'lyeh is a strong contender and EA R'lyeh is borderline unusable.

Probably the main issue with Death, and perhaps why it's been removed from the nation, is that Death R'lyeh is just Bane Lords with a vague suggestion of tentacles; you often end up replacing your main mage cadre and much of your military engine with death summons, which undercuts the themes they'e drawing from.

[Andkat]

I suppose one could replace the UW-available death summons with things like undead sea leviathans, overgrown Atlantians of old, and the husks of Aboleths for something more thematic (although obviously a bit of extra sprite work there), while restricting access to stuff like Bane Lords to Land-only, maybe keeping Shades and Wights as spirits of dead civilizations are a bit more in-theme (and more used in lovecraft) than e.g. death knights.

[SaurianDruid]

While blood sacrifice is thematic to Lovecraftian horror the way it is specifically represented in Dominions makes me worry it'd overshadow the Lovecraftian flavor of the nation by the late game. The Illithids would be making deals with devils and demons and summoning legions of fantasy Hell denizens rather than amassing armies of mind-controlled slaves, hybrid mutants, and mind-blasting aliens.

I do like Andkat's idea of a Void-Gate economy, though. If R'lyeh could use blood slaves as a part of their unique Void Gate mechanic to summon the various Void creatures into being that'd be much more thematic.

To solve the underwater issue, they may be given a ritual spell unique to R'lyeh. Make it an Astral spell that steals blood slaves from enemy coastal populations, maybe. Mass mind control to locate and draw blood slaves into the sea.

[anaris]

The nightmare for counterplay that is "remote blood slave collection powering an Astral Corruption on a strong underwater nation" will need adjustment to fit the current balance I suspect! One of the strengths and weaknesses of Blood is the way it ramps up by eating mage turns and province income, while opening you up to various countertactics - raiding, unrest generation, and population-killing spells can be very effective ways to limit a Blood nation, and R'lyeh has natural defences against these (and more so if they can do it to provinces they don't own of course).

Please don't take this as me attempting to shoot down the idea - I'm actually tweaking EA R'lyeh at the moment and Blood is one of the things I'm looking at and trying to make work well, but I keep bumping up against these balance problems - Astral Corruption and a turtling strategy means it's you vs like one other blood nation for the victory, assuming that blood nation can contend underwater (rain-priest heavy Mictlan for some reason maybe).

But then if you make it land province only, what happens to a Rlyeh player who goes in on Blood and loses their land access, is that gg? How does the nation transition from the underwater version to the on land version and integrate those well, or does a land-holding R'lyeh become TWICE the blood nation anyone else is?

[anaris]

I'm currently messing with blood gemgen on #landshape and #notdomshape lightly-stealthy units, representing cult masters who can hunt for blood slaves in opposing territory but cause the associated unrest and popkill so that players can find them, but it has that same transitional problem where if you've got this method AND regular bootstrap blood methods (empowered scouts, amazons) I just made R'lyeh one of the stronger blood nations of the era.

I think maybe I'd like to do crosspaths instead - astral and water spells that are fuelled by "blood slaves", or possibly an entire "mind controlled magic slave" economy separate to blood, but that's quite complex.

...and those balance problems are worse for the MA, I'm doing this on EA R'lyeh because the fish need the help.

If you're interested though, there is already an Aboleth husk available in game (#3451) and more underwatery death would be an amazing mod to do - longdead can already go underwater, we should have zombie kraken dragging themselves across the land right

[amuys]

Eh they blood access in CoE and not Dominions. Reason is simple, can't use blood magic UW

[boho]

No, lol.

[2spooky4me]

They have water because tentacles. Tentacle monsters are almost all Water or Astral in Dominions.

It can be argued that Astral could be split out into Void and then you could put all the tentacle monsters in Void and it'd make more sense, but as it is, Water + Astral makes the most sense.

Blood doesn't make any sense as cosmic horrors have almost no relationship to demons in the lore. Or the dead for that matter.

[Bumc]

Surely there is a way of allowing R'lyeh denizen to sacrifice fleshlings without giving them blood access and deals with demons.

Maybe you don't even want to bother with blood slaves, as that will definitely get abused somehow.

What if the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ coastal chaff you can hire could also be used to kill off in void gates and what not to summon better units?
Then there is another reason to go above water -- to hunt some non-mindless slaves to stick into the meat grinder, and no downsides of giving blood access to a nation that isn't supposed to have one.

[anaris]

AetherNomad does something with the slave chaff in the Hellenika version of R'lyeh, where recruiting a rare commander whose purpose is to permit certain devastating rituals consumes nearby slaves iirc. And the THEME is really strong - I've been messing with letting EA R'lyeh use rituals to trash and disrupt coastal provinces so that a player has to reaaaally want to keep R'lyeh off the land in order to find it worth defending ones the Aboleths focus their attention on. One of the themes I'm going with is mass drownings of civilians walking into the sea.

MA and LA R'lyeh fit this even better with the mass production of hybrids. But it's worth stressing again that there's already a reason to go on shore, which is that R'lyeh turtling tends to end in a domkill even in dom5, where dom spread was reduced. One can't easily win in the water for a lot of different reasons.

[joiss90]

Turtling in the water is also a lot scarier with "Remnants in the Depths" Thaumaturgy 9 Death 6 Water 4 90 Death gems

Spreads death to all sea provinces +1 per month and when it gets to 5 death population declines by 4% (+1% from 5 death) and spreads disease to units

Basically screws over any underwater nation unless they are able to quickly take the global down.

[JackPhoenix]

Arguably, you could make them bloodsac nation to push the dominion without giving them access to blood path, with the disadvantage the underwater nation faces when it comes to slave income, empowering to gain access to blood looks less enticing.
Maybe unique spell that allows convert slaves into astral pearls?