“At least we got those freaking yordles.”
I’ve completed the rolls for part II of the Battle of Shurima. You can read the blow-by-blow here.
Here are the relevant links for background:
Here’s the tl;dr on what just happened:
- Malzahar went all “muahahahaha” as the Voidpocalypse began, just as Ceruleana’s prophecy foretold.
- Demacia, Piltover, and Bandle City charged back into the fray to fight alongside Zaun and Noxus, who suddenly became convinced that Demacia was onto something.
- With help from the fragments of the other nations’ forces that were still capable of fighting, Zaun and Noxus broke through the Void swarms and reached the opening portal.
- The Screaming Yipsnakes went down. Otherwise, no casualties on the non-Void side.
Zaun now has some options. Merricurry has roughly estimated the probabilities involved, though she can’t be certain. These mines are pretty important for Zaun’s research and production, and their loss would be meaningful. Then again, it’s easier to bargain with the League for more land than it is to convince Malzahar to change his mind and call off the apocalypse.
If you want to think about this from an in-universe perspective, this Voidpocalypse could be the end of Runeterra. If you insist on piercing the veil with out-of-universe information, you realize that we probably aren’t planning to actually end the world. (It’d make the next arc hard.) It would probably end up as “merely” another Void invasion, albeit of a much larger magnitude than in Discord, and of all the factions Zaun seems most likely to make it through in one piece.
It’s time to make your choice. But you’d better hurry up. These Voidlings are getting really excited, and we can only hold them back so long.
- Nuke it from orbit: it’s the only way to be sure. Let Demacia use Cosmic Purity to destroy the pyrikhos in the mines and shut the portal. Guaranteed to work, but will render the dark sand in the mines inert.
- Have cake, eat cake. Try to close it with Extradimensional Theory. Will keep the pyrikhos usable. 80% odds of success. Failure means Voidpocalypse.
- I’ve decided to become a Bond villain. Try to control the portal, deciding which factions get hit with Voidlings. 40% chance of success. Failure means Voidpocalypse.
—CupcakeTrap
Caitlyn, you monster.
FACTIONS 
[…] given three choices about what to do about the pending Voidpocalypse, as they stood before the portal within the […]
just throwing this out there: BC only had a 20% chance of failure for a pretty important thing and we got busted, not to mention failing a danger roll of 2 out of 20: a 10% chance.
something to consider, RNGesus is a bastard sometimes.
Good point. Nefara was the rarest, most awful possibility among other possibilities in a distinctly less-probable set of outcomes.
piltover rolled a void invasion with 2 danger that had less than 1% chance
If we somehow choose not to do ET I will be extremely disappointed.
I say we go with Extradimensional Theory. That way we keep our mines and have a pretty good chance of closing the rifts.
Yea, 80% is way too high. Low risk for high reward, there isn’t really an alternative to that choice.
Allow me to retort: 80% is pretty high, but think about how you’d value a lucrative offer that gives you an 80% chance of still being alive next week. I’d think twice for sure. A 20% chance of apocalypse is pretty serious. Then again, maybe it isn’t (literally) the end of the world; maybe Zaun would survive while others fall. But wouldn’t it be kind of rough having to explain to everyone after the fact that “well, yeah, we could have just nuked the stuff, but 20% odds seemed pretty fair. They were really awesome mines!”
tl;dr: the probability is so slanted because the stakes are so high.
Cupcake, Zaun just fought a miniature war to keep their mines. Quite frankly, using Extradimensional Theory seems to be the only way we can make sure that the effort and those lives weren’t wasted. So yeah, I will definitely be disappointed if we do not take the 80% chance. After all, we have 4 in 5 chances of successfully closing the mines and not causing an apocalypse.
We spent over half this arc researching to get Extradimensional, so I think it is perfectly fine that it is that high. Unfortunatly, it seems EUW will be making the choice for Demacia “Cleansing” the mine, even though NA wants to mostly ET it.
Blackrose: that’s a very reasonable perspective. I was just presenting the other side of the argument.
Generally, my goal in lore events is to not have obvious and universal “right answers”, but rather to present balancing questions. I do sometimes throw in psycho options, but I want to make it clear that I don’t consider either of the first two “psycho options”. (Psycho options are still real choices, too; they’re just aimed at people who have very, very different priorities, or are feeling emotional/reckless.)
Thing is, this is a game and summoners aren’t thinking about “if that happens irl, what would I do?”. Plus, everyone know that should a Voidcalypse happen, it doesn’t literally mean end of the world, nor they care about explaining it to anyone else. I know this is RP, but not all the players are thinking that way, they just see the awards and the probability to got it.
They’re just thinking in terms of math: big reward (the objectives of almost one arc), few risk (20%), and should we fail, who care? Don’t have to justify, wouldn’t be as severe as it is described, and no penalties on us as this is the end of the arc.
Anyone picking something else than this choice clearly didn’t read the options.
see the rewards*
I don’t think the choice is obvious even if they very strongly value keeping the pyrikhos. Let’s say the Voidpocalypse happens. What’s Shurima going to end up looking like?
Do you really believe Zaun care about that? Just see the players comments =/