Divinity Week 8 Quest Draws

Now that we’ve finished the Quest polls, it’s time to go back and do the card draws for each week of Quest checks for each faction.

Quests are subplots that are related to but separate from the main dispute of the arc. Factions pursue them in parallel with the arc’s main objective. They are meant to give meaning to week-by-week Balance of Power standings, and to allow factions a chance to make progress on some story goals even if they don’t win the overall arc.

Rules and Mechanics

Quest draws rely primarily on Balance of Power:

• Balance of Power roll. Roll dice based on the faction’s BoP standing. The format is X minus Y, e.g., d6 minus d8. The better the faction’s BoP, the more favorable the X/Y balance.
• Tarot draw. Draw a tarot card. This determines the type of challenge the faction faces, and the difficulty of the challenge. (The challenge type may be Might, Vision, Influence, or BoP itself.)
• Stat base. Add the faction’s appropriate stat.
• Modifiers. Add in any modifiers from, e.g., the previous week’s lore events.

If the BoP roll plus the stat, plus any other modifiers, meets or exceeds the difficulty of the challenge, the faction progresses. Else, it suffers a setback. Either way, there’s some story development.

Balance of Power

Week 8 was the week of 11 July, 26 CLE. At the time, the Balance of Power standings were:

• Bilgewater: 32 (rolling d12 – d6)
• the Freljord: 6 (rolling d6 – d6)
• Bandle City: -16 (rolling d6 – d8)
• Icathia: -22 (rolling d6 – d10)

Stats

Faction	Might	Vision	Influence
Icathia	6	6	6
Bandle City	4	7	7
Bilgewater	6	4	8
the Freljord	9	6	3

Modifiers

From Week 7:

• Bandle City gets +2 on its next Quest check, representing the League’s gratitude for freeing the Fifth Survivor from Zaunite captivity and exposing the megacorporate cover-up.
• The Freljord gets +3 on its next Quest check. It assisted Bandle City, and while it did not perhaps contribute quite so much as the stealthier yordle spies, it seems to have gotten a bit more political mileage out of the deal.
• Bilgewater gets -1 on its next Quest check, because Icathia’s betrayal placed a traitorous pirate, Narso Finderson, in League custody, where he has proven inconveniently chatty about Bilgewater’s underhanded dealings.
• Icathia gets a +2 on its next Quest check, because it earned some points with Bilgewater’s enemies for turning Finderson in.

Faction by Faction Updates

This is how each faction fared in the tarot card draws.

Bandle City

Bandle City chose to pursue its Might Quest, developing armaments to make yordle traders a bit less of a ludicrously easy target. (Too late for poor Veigar! QQ)

It drew the Page of Pentacles, signifying the return of Timmy-O (Timi’u) the Argyrian yordle to assist with a Vision-based challenge. It succeeded on its Balance of Power check, and secured sacred schematics from Lanpoa to facilitate the design of automated yordle defense weaponry to protect their adorable cupcake trucks.

It’s a big, scary world out there, and many a hopeful yordle trader has fallen prey to pirates or bandits. There’s something about a bunch of cute little fluffballs transporting valuable goods and currency across long distances that attracts criminal attention.

Timi’u (Timmy-O) of Argyre has explained this problem to Lanpoa, which responded with specifications for hextech anti-personnel cannons. Heimerdinger has adapted the design for mass production, and the next wave of caravans and trading ships to set out from Bandle City will be considerably more dangerous to plunder.

At the last minute, Zaunite attorneys from the prestigious firm of Houndwether & Stagg filed a motion with the League alleging infringement of patents held by Kriegblok Arms, Ltd. and demanding royalty fees for each caravan so-armed. Bandle City’s yordlawyers fought back, and with the help of a policy statement drafted by the League’s Commissioner for Trade (payback for Bandle City’s help with the Fifth Survivor incident) the suit was dismissed.

Bandle City’s breakthrough has flipped its Might Quest from:

Step I: “Size Matters”
Yordles have never been known for their military strength, and often get pushed around by big folk.

to:

Step II: “Friendship Guns”
The Valoranian word ‘friendship’ is a translation of an old idiosyncratic yordle dialect-word with the sense of ‘greeting’, ‘catching’, ’embracing’, or ‘surrounding’. Those who charge yordle caravans and are met by these high-speed Friendship Guns may wish they’d studied their linguistics.

It will also gain a +2 on its next Vision-based Lore Event check thanks to Timmy-O.

Icathia

Icathia chose to pursue its Influence Quest, and gain greater control over the powers that be within the Institute.

Icathia drew the Page of Wands, signifying the arrival of a new NPC to assist with a BoP-based stat check. However, despite a +2 modifier from Week 7’s lore event, it narrowly failed the Balance of Power check.

Commissioner Weyoko Degani, an official charged with tuning the balance of the Fields of Justice, has been suspended from her position at the League after Vayne brought forth evidence of corruption. It seems that Commissioner Degani had accrued large debts through a failed Nyrothian venture, and had begun using her authority as a high-ranking League official to facilitate illegal trade in Icathian artifacts that would never have been allowed to cross Valoranian borders under League regulations.

It stays at:

Step I: “Enemy of All Life”
Nothing brings the nations of Valoran together like an otherworldly force hellbent on consuming the planet. Next to Icathia, the Shadow Isles seems downright friendly. The agents of Icathia skulk in darkened corridors, able to tempt only the truly desperate into deals with the likes of them.

Bilgewater

Bilgewater selected its Vision Quest, which focuses on developing anti-undead magic in preparation for the Harrowing.

Bilgewater drew the Hierophant, symbolizing the rebel orthodoxy of the Lunari Order and the militarism of Noxus, its ally. (A second draw set the challenge stat as Vison.)

The resurgence of divine energy from the Guardian’s Sea nexus has illuminated the Lunari rituals for the forging of Moonsilver. Diana has consecrated a coldforge on the reclaimed Grey Harbor, and called upon the Lunari to aid Bilgewater against the coming Black Mist. A band of hardened Noxian warriors, adherents of the Lunari cult established in Noxus during Diana’s wandering years, have arrived at the coldforge and sworn to smite any undead monstrosity that sets foot on Bilgewater’s shores.

This takes them from:

Step I: “Manablight”
The manablight which accompanies the Harrowing makes magic both more difficult and more dangerous. The necromantic power of the Shadow Isles corrupts not only life but also the magic that sustains it, contaminating the arcanosphere with dark mana that fizzles the spellcraft of living mages and worms its way into their minds.

To:

Step II: “Moonsilver”
With the moon’s blessing, the Lunari have consecrated a coldforge, where divine smiths imbue steel with moonlight and quench it in a tranquil pool that reflects the stars above. Steel so enchanted strikes with the bright purity of moonlight, though this “moonsilver” steel lasts only until the next full moon before dissolving into cool shadows.

The Lunari, and the cosmic forces they represent, will intervene on Bilgewater’s behalf in the epilogue and grant an additional +d3 to its roll to repel the Black Mist.

The Freljord

The Freljord was typically fractious in its voting, and there was a tie between Influence and Vision. We’re starting with Influence. The Freljord’s Influence Quest tracks its progress with the League, coming in from the cold and thawing historically icy relations with established powers.

It drew the Eight of Staves, a rather high difficulty level to beat, but thanks to its outstanding Week 7 performance (contributing +3), it rolled a 9 and succeeded. Nice work!

Believing that commerce is the key to the Freljord’s development, and that the frostgem mines are its most promising asset, Ashe has called in a long list of favors to recruit some of the finest geomancers in the corps of Summoners. They have made a breakthrough in their studies of the Guardian’s Sea nexus, and extracted echoes of ancient divine rituals that used gemstones to channel supernatural energy. Adapting these rituals to modern “mortal” magic, they have demonstrated that frostgems can function as arcane foci for spellcasting and hextech enchantment, markedly increasing their value.

This takes it from:

Step I: “Who Let Them Join?”
Some say the Freljord’s admission into the League during the Mirrorwater dispute was a big joke that Ashe just hasn’t caught onto yet.

To:

Step II: “Frostgems”
Ashe’s attempts to capitalize on the Freljord’s natural frostgem deposits had faltered, with the pale blue stones being treated as novelties at best, and more often as cutrate substitutes for real gemstones in jewelry. This rapidly changed when her Summoners used revelations from the Guardian’s Sea nexus to develop means of employing the frostgems as arcane foci.

Details

If you want the granular details on these draws, see this GDoc.

—CupcakeTrap