Heracles, Official Pantheon Moderator

Greetings, dear Traveller

This thread is for the discussion of the latest vision-shard that managed to cross the world from Mundus into our world, showing a battle between orcs, centaurs and their respective allies. Who knows what paths have been taken before both sides found themselves at this point?

Find out, as you travel your own Road to Purgatory.

Shandra, confirmed Beta-Account

Cool video, makes me curious about the circumstances.

My gut-reaction was that a savage band of orcs was murdering poor centaurs in a night-raid but given the question you posed, it makes me wonder.

-Snydervine, confirmed Beta-Account

Friggin’ Orc-cowards, too afraid to stand and fight the centaurs in the open, they scurry around like the rats they are and attack in the night.

-Do’rodra, confirmed Beta-Account

Why do I have a feeling that I’ve seen that mist before?

Ghostfire, confirmed Beta-Account

Can we please nerf mages? I mean, that mage just rolled a small army, without breaking a sweat. How the hell is that balanced?

Jeanyra, confirmed Beta-Account

Rock: Nerf Paper, please!!!!!!11111 Scissors are fine, though.

That’s you, at the moment Ghostfire. Incidentally, what happened to Ghostblade? Oh, wait, he got banned, lol.

Ever since Sage Gygax set out to change the world during the last millenium, Fire and Fireballs have been the way to decimate lower levelled enemies, it just is a fact of fantasy-life. If you want to send a large group of mooks to an early grave, you Cast Fireball!

With that out of the way and regarding the video: Cool spellwork by the orc, pretty sure she’s not a mage though. Makes me curious just what class she is, what level and what types of magic she actually is using. The bonfire-thingies look like spirit-golems, so I’d guess some sort of summoner. But then, she also looks rather martial with weapons and armour but those might just be for show.

On the other side, I’m really curious if the mist comes from the person I think it comes from. Pantheon has become a little predictable with the people they like to showcase, almost as if they have chosen a few archetypes from the active, high-level players and are using them to showcase their game. Would be smart marketing, especially if they just happen to pick people that already had some name-recognition, such as Tobiuno (who didn’t even bother to change his name) or Morgana (formerly known as Titania, according to rumour).

And it has been a while since we’ve seen something official featuring Morgana, so it was time to get something, even if they tried to be sneaky and not actually show her. Kinda cool, I’ve got to admit, but we can see right through you, marketing-department!

Goliry, confirmed Beta-Account

To follow up on Jeanyra, there even is an equivalent to real-world military.

In simple terms, heavy-armoured martial fighters are tanks. The treaded kind, not the one that stands in front of a boss and pisses them off hard enough that the only thing they can think about is beating that one, heavy-armoured idiot up. even if there is some overlap.

Anyway, those are the guys that you don’t want to get too close to, or there will be a massive clash of steel and death, most likely ending with a lot of scrap-metal.

Then there are the mages, and various comparable spellcasters. They are artillery. If you give them time to set-up and range in, they will not only ruin your day but also the day of your thousand best friends. On the other hand, once the armour rolls over the hill, artillery has one last hail-mary shot, before they start running, in order to die tired.

Lastly, to finish out the comparison, we have our dear, sneaky rogues who are the equivalent to special forces. You don’t see them coming, you don’t see them going but things start to explode. On the other hand, if either armour or artillery manage to catch them, they need body bags.

Simplified but it works out rather well.

And no, Healers don’t get to be in the comparison. If we were to put them in, they’d be the medics, hiding far behind the frontlines, waiting for the real fighters to do their job before patching them back up so they can do it again.

What were we talking about again?

Harms, confirmed Beta-Account

As someone who is in the video, I might as well give some context.

What, you didn’t notice me? There are a few frames where you can see an orc, getting his throat ripped out by a wolf in the background. Yeah, that’s me…

No, I didn’t survive, shit sadly happens.

Anyway, on to context.

The Centaurs have been mounting raids into central Aretia for some time, think a decade or three, but now, it seems as if their raids have changed recently. At least that’s what Dura Firebringer, the orc in the video, local heroine and Warleader, described. Before, the centaurs were interested in getting some loot before moving back to the foothills and steppes just north of the mountains, their home-range.

But on their last raid, they didn’t just grab loot, they took people, too. For what? Nobody knew, maybe as slaves, maybe as sacrifices, maybe for some other purpose, we didn’t care to ask. No, we only cared to get our people back, so a small battle-group was assembled, following after the orcs, led by Warleader Firebringer. I was one of the grunts that joined the force, brimming with excitement to get our people back. (and, to be honest, to fulfill the quests we had received, in addition to large chunks of EXP for participation in large-scale battles)

Driven by righteous fervour, to save our people, we set out hunting the centaurs, our elite scouts easily picking up the tracks of them. They had a lead on us, but a few days of forced marches would be enough to catch up, as they were slowed down by their captives. Centaurs can move quite fast but orcish captives and livestock can’t keep up with them. It should have been a hint for us that something was up, they had to have known that there would be pursuit, fast enough to catch them.

Before we ever caught up to the centaurs, some of our scouts stumbled upon something else, hunters going after game in the nearby forest. Nothing terribly exciting, just travellers on their way through the region, replenishing their stores, or so you would think. They were asked to exchange information, not like the locals can use the internet to find out what is happening in distant places and cable news is really unreliable on Mundus, even more than it already is.

Anyway, when those travellers met with Warleader Firebringer, things started to heat up, with an intense staring contest between one of the Travellers and the Warbringer, the air alight with static. Not really sure what was going on, but the Traveller was Morgana and apparently, there was something with opposite magical talents or some such, don’t ask me, not sure about the details.

Whatever those details might be, the four were asked to join us, at first for the day, later for our hunt. Again, no idea about the details but a couple of the more experienced locals seemed to think that those four, the party around Morgana, was a force to be reckoned with. Granted, the four of them raised the average level of our raid by a bit but it’s kinda hard to estimate strength purely based on level. Whatever, the Warleader decided they would go with us and that was what happened from our side.

Two days later, we had the centaurs in reach and the Warleader made their plans, plans that included Morgana and her party. Plans for a nightly assault on a fortified camp. Normally insane but it turned out, the plan was even more insane than I had thought. In hindsight, with the video, I can guess at a few things, mainly that the wolves that attacked us had been meant to be a trap for us, a trap that the Warleader sprung to get the better of them. Not like they told me what was going on, I only had orders to hold the mouth of the valley.

From here on, I can only make educated assumptions about events in the video, but I know that Morgana and her party left us behind in the evening before the attack, moving to a different position. Looking at the video, and remembering past videos of Morgana and her mist, I’d guess that she essentially gassed the centaur-camp, forcing them to abandon it and rush into our lines. Pretty brutal, especially knowing that the centaurs had captives, but I guess that there is no convention regarding warfare on Mundus.

Well, those are some of the circumstances of what you saw in the video and with this, I’m out, enjoying my forced day off from Road to Purgatory.

Leonidas, confirmed Beta-Account-

You mean they essentially discard the prisoners, in order to recover the loot? That’s cold, seriously cold.

Goliry, confirmed Beta-Account

Agreed with the one above.

But on the other hand, if you find yourself in a bad tactical position, a certain ruthlessness is necessary. That’s where the “heroic last stand” comes in, those insane ideas that go down in history, at least if they work.

Jeanyra, confirmed Beta-Account

Might have been more that the only way to win was to use large-scale magic. If you go with large-scale fire-magic, there is no precision targeting, just as the earlier comparison alluded to. Large-scale fire-magic is akin to calling in the artillery to shell a position, nothing will be left but burning rubble.

She went with a solution that allowed them to recover the loot. Cold, calculating but apparently they thought it was worthwhile.