Interesting update.
I now very much regret not attempting to use Atalaya's witchery to assassinate Baron Rogatica while she was still alive; given her displayed prowess when caught largely off guard and facing multiple magical powerhouses with powers extremely well suited to bringing her and her minions down, I suspect she could have brought him down even with all his well-armed and trained guards. Alas for opportunities lost, but at least we didn't actually lose anything but an opportunity.
Katiana appears to have even more actions than previously accounted for. Next month I move to assign her four action slots worth of activities, just to be sure. The way that she's all vitriol and curses and then abruptly transitions to a professional mask when we show up is likely representative of her demeanor in general; the Katiana we see is not the same as the one that everyone else sees. We need to keep an eye on that; between the initially hidden action slots, the skills she didn't originally mention, the fact that she still hasn't given us a proper list of her magical capabilities, and suspicion of manipulating our cousin and lovers, it's clear that our resident wizardess believes firmly in keeping aces sleeved, and as she has not extended her full trust to us she shouldn't receive ours either.
The battle was an interesting display of magic and magical creatures in combat. The imps and zombies were both reasonably effective, enough that I wonder if we could get magical forces to augment our own. Katiana could probably make us some golems/elementals with some of those action slots she's been hiding.
Dita is super-enthusiastic. I wonder if she's realized yet that going to India alone when she's a demon magnet is suicidally stupid, and she'll have to make her expedition there with a posse of Chosen to back her up or not at all. Based on the effectiveness of the Chosen in this battle, though- very glad we didn't have to fight that demon- if she brings any significant number of them she might well manage to succeed.
The money:
[ ] Take it
[ ] Distribute it to the village, since she probably stole it from them
We should be keeping the money. Distributing it to the village, even partially, isn't appropriate; who it should go to is far from clear and as the village's lord, we're responsible for its welfare anyway. By doing our job as the village's overlord properly, keeping the money is effectively identical to funding public services for them, which is a reasonable and just use of the funds in this sort of situation. The fact that our personal funds are identical to the public treasury makes keeping all the money appear greedy or corrupt, but it's really not unless we personally are greedy or corrupt.
[X] Take it
-[X] But give a bonus to those that help kill the witch's minions/etc.
This subvote isn't the right move, at least as I think it was intended.
Giving cash rewards for good service is a great idea... in a capitalist society. We are not running on a capitalist economy here. We are not a CEO, and the people fighting for us are not our employees. This is not a corporation and we do not give cash bonuses for good work. We are a noble. Money comes to us, not to other people. When we give rewards, they should be practical things and preferably ones which bind others closer to us, not raw cash.
Take the Inovians- we gave them armor. We gave them weapons. We gave them shelter and food and respect. Dita, we are sheltering and giving political protection and training and basically showering her with gifts already. Katiana, ditto. The girl is filthy rich already, apparently, and we're sheltering her and giving her a respected position and letting her do all kinds of stuff.
Besides that, I don't think anyone performed vastly above and beyond expectations in that battle. Sure, the Chosen killed a demon; that's what they do professionally. Dita countered dark magic; her powers are built for countering dark magic. Katiana worked a little magic and then got naked and kissed us; as expected from Katiana. None of our nameless mooks distinguished themselves enough to be even mentioned as in combat in the update, so obviously they didn't do much of significance either. Heck, we beheaded the witch personally and even that is about what one might have expected from one of our abilities.
This is not to say that it's a bad idea to reward people for good work- positive reinforcement is a great thing, after all! But our people fight for us because of relative social position, personal loyalties, or in the Inovians' case, convenience to their divine mission. Any reward that we give should be framed in light of that- not just right now, but as a matter of general policy. Give them praise both in private and public, give them respect, talk up their abilities to others, or hand out rewards which bind them to work for us more closely in the future.
Most of your party is a bit banged up, but a few days of rest and healing will restore most of their effectiveness. Do you:
[ ] Press on to the first haunt immediately
[ ] Take a few days to rest first
Emma got a finger bitten off but she says it's no big deal, it'll grow back in a few days.
As a flesh sorcerer, the opportunity to see functioning limb regeneration powers in action is
utterly priceless. We absolutely should take a few days off so that we can observe that happening and if at all possible learn how to copy the effect. Even if we can't manage to fully copy it- it's likely quite advanced compared to what we can do- I'd be willing to bet that we could still get a lot of information and inspiration for our healing abilities there.
We can also accomplish some of our other actions for the month during our "rest" period, so it's not like there's a serious loss of time. But studying this is top priority.
