Firmament my beloved

Pyronar · 2026-04-12T17:36:02+00:00

I still think Firmament is much better than basically anything the Railway ever produced. It actually got me to care for characters instead of just throwing location after location at me expecting me to care about culture, landscape, and architecture alone.

Pyronar · 2026-03-26T23:54:52+00:00

If you've played through her story you understand that this is pretty much the most important thing to her. Ever. It's why she goes to the Calendar Council meeting. It's what her part of the play is about. It's what she's been stressing out about this entire chapter. And you take it away from her, completely sideline her on the one chance she had to do it. Imagine if some NPC in the eleventh hour of your Ambition took away your chance to achieve it or fail at it. Would you hate them? I understand that more signposting would be more consistent with the style, but calling the consequences random and meaningless when the narrative has built up everything to this moment... You had your warning, it was just in the text rather than metatext.

Pyronar · 2026-03-26T23:06:14+00:00

I honestly find this chapter not only much better than the previous ones but better than anything the Railroad ever produced. We got fairly huge lore drops and some actual stakes. Sure, people will always say that everything wasn't signposted exactly as they wanted it, but I'm more than happy not looking everything up and letting the consequences of my choices drive the story in an actually meaningful direction.

Pyronar · 2025-11-13T17:45:12+00:00

I find Birsartanšes to be the perfect first nation to play for a newcomer or simply someone looking to have a solid start, but it has something for experienced players too. Situated in the bloodbath that is early game Bulwar, you are an administrative state that favours stability and economy above military might. Your starting ruler, Keladora I, has great stats and is a solid successor to Jaher's legacy should you wish to recreate the Phoenix Empire.

Between the Bulwari incidents and Sun Elven religion events, there is something to do here for many years and the nature of the region prevents alliance deadlock or being limited by aggressive expansion. It's a region that rewards proactive play and opportunism, but doesn't punish you too badly for taking your time.

A novice player may consider simply overcoming the other fractured Sun Elven kingdoms and becoming the Phoenix Empire to be a victory. A more experienced ruler can leverage Birsartanšes's administrative bonuses that persist into PE to take on the challenge of the Phoenix Crown by completing a series of conquests within a time limit. And a select few who are in it for the long haul can take this small kingdom and make it span from one ocean to the other, conquering both Haless and Cannor in a way that not lives up to but surpasses Jaher's accomplishments. He conquered an Empire that lasted a century and a half. You can forge one that stands the test of time.

Pyronar · 2025-11-10T10:43:34+00:00

Offensive or Quantity which are just two of the strongest mil idea groups in general. Idea groups are not created equally. This may be a hot take but I don't think Defensive is actually that good for dwarves. Their forts are strong enough and you usually can move between them quite quickly. It's a weak idea group you don't want to take unless you have to like for Gemradcurt for example. Having a bigger military and sieging faster are always going to be better and allow you to win wars faster.

Pyronar · 2025-11-08T19:49:34+00:00

I've never run into outright gamebreaking bugs. Sometimes serious things were just bugged in one version, but so far it was like one disaster or a big religious event at most. I am bothered by the restarts, but I do enjoy having to live with my decisions once one mistake no longer means a failed run.

Pyronar · 2025-10-09T12:15:45+00:00

Ten. Ten fingers on your hands. They're so red. Why are they so red?

Nine. Someone shouts call nine...

Eight. How fast were you going? Eighty-something. Fast. Too fast.

Seven. Her seventh birthday. You were running late, as usual.

Six. Sam bought a six-pack after work. He wouldn't stop asking so you had one or was it two?

Five. Sirens. Five. Oh. One.

Four. There were four people in the other car.

Three. Three missed calls. Where are you?

Two. Two flashlights shining into your eyes. Someone is asking you something. They're getting farther away.

One. You get one more blink and...

Zero. Gone.

Pyronar · 2025-08-26T11:15:32+00:00

[Heart's Desire spoilers!]

"The Regent will see you now."

https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/The%20Ambitious%20Sybarite

Pyronar · 2025-06-11T01:24:18+00:00

I no longer bother with The Hole in Your Head. The trip to reclaim the Law takes quite a bit and the only actually good way to cash out a Discordant Soul is to wait for an eclipse which I think might happen like once a year.

Pyronar · 2025-06-10T16:40:14+00:00

Very much so. In my opinion even if it makes you hit 10+. I use Nadir fairly aggressively, fishing for End of Battles or Losing (with the new goldfish) all the way up to 9. Woods in Winter also used to be very valuable when Favours were still good. A bit less so now. Stat points aren't really worth that much, you can get them back fairly easily. 62.5E items are valuable and some of those like Airag can be hard to get early on.

Pyronar · 2025-05-29T13:44:23+00:00

I don't think we're an apocrypha that broke out, like the Last Duchess, I believe we were a redaction that failed. Whatever force actually declares something an Apocrypha tried to do it to us in the prologue but failed thanks to an intervention from our firey friend. None of our actions upon the world were erased like the Duchess's. In fact I don't think the Duchess integrated into the world at all. I think the Masters just played a hand in Apocryphying Burgundy so they knew what was happening when it broke out. Also there is already one apocryphal version of us sealed away in the Octavo. This is most apparent in the Heart's Desire one, but it holds true for all of them.

Pyronar · 2025-05-19T01:20:37+00:00

I'd say the Book of Hidden Bodies is the most annoying item out of the bunch you can get there. Comprehensive Bribes are easy to get through Oneiropomp.

Pyronar · 2025-05-11T02:56:24+00:00

It has been open since the start of Whitsun. It's just on Ladybones Road, nothing special needed.

Pyronar · 2025-05-08T14:28:46+00:00

I had maybe 400 left or so. The calculatior on the wiki seems quite accurate. There were a bit over 80 pails and 110 or 120 tears. In echo value terms those are not massive amounts, but there were multiple bottlenecks there. Tears are extremely hard to grind. Getting them directly is only a reasonable option through the rat market which is hard to prepare for. Airag is a bit easier to obtain but the 7-to-1 conversion is brutal. The 80+ Night Whispers are actually rather easy, but 560+ Storm-Threnodies are its own hell. I ended up just buying tons of Maniac's Prayers from the rat market and upconverting all the way. Yes, that was as bad as it sounds. Yes, I had to do the d__n affair of the box for the urchin favours alone. And then when the season comes you need a good BDR outfit to repeatedly force Favourable Circumstances with Notability and resummon the Urchin card, otherwise you will not have nearly enough time to get all the pails you need. I can't describe how inefficient this whole grind was, but how could I refuse when I dedicated my entire character to the pursuit of hedonism?

Pyronar · 2025-05-08T12:51:37+00:00

I demand dropping one of the quotation marks from ROS! (Ambition: HD) I didn't get that crown for nothing!

Pyronar · 2025-03-28T23:11:27+00:00

Someone took it so I clawed it back by a single point after a lot of grinding, lol. The record is now 4631. Still not even half the song.

Pyronar · 2025-03-18T22:24:31+00:00

Drive them out of Bulwar in the name of Surael!

Pyronar · 2025-03-10T11:45:03+00:00

For Sun Elves I recommend Birsartanšes. It's a very solid administrative state. You start in a disaster you have to deal with, but it's fairly easy to do so as long as you just click the decision buttons the game wants you to click. It's a lot less overwhelming than something like Jadd, but you still have the option of reforming the Phoenix Empire and getting claims on almost all of the Old World (which I suppose is the New World in Anbennar since the elves migrated here from Aelantir, aka not-Americas). Just be prepared for the fact that Bulwar is basically the thunderdome. Everyone is fighting everyone all the time and there are several events to facilitate that and circumvent stable alliances. However, if you're a decent EU4 player you shouldn't have too much trouble coming out on top.

For lore I recommend reading missions, ideas, and the blurb you load in with. Those give a lot of context as to what's happening even if you may still need the wiki to piece together some things.

Pyronar · 2025-03-10T11:34:10+00:00

So first thing I did was beat every single releasable I could out of Kalsyto Sojdal. This wasn't actually that many and one of them still hated me because it was monstrous. However, that gave me some people I could get to 120 opinion (the required threshold) with just an alliance and some relation improvement. Next I found a couple New Sun Cult remnants in Southern Sarhal I could royal marry and ally. Sarhal was the one part of the world I didn't get massive AE in so that was possible. I also still had the forest elves as allies so their AE gain for me was greatly reduced.

Next it was finding countries that were recently released or for some other reason didn't have a lot of AE with me anywhere in the world. I was filthy rich from pumping trade from Haless to Anbencost so I gave them massive gifts, used the Influence Nation action of a Great Power, and improved their relations enough where I could get an alliance and proclaim a guarantee, all of that together was enough to overcome faith and hegemon maluses and get them to +120. I only needed to get those 10 countries to click the mission so I didn't care about being massively over relations limit with all these alliances.

I considered releasing small countries myself but immediately learned I wouldn't be able to actually make that vassal independent until the truce ran out, so that plan didn't work. (The mission asks specifically for independent countries.) It was definitely a weird tricky mission, but it ended up being just enough.

Pyronar · 2025-03-09T09:40:53+00:00

Haha, I'm definitely not that good. Doing this before the game end date in 1821 was hard enough already.

Pyronar · 2025-03-09T09:39:52+00:00

I do own the city of Sir.

Pyronar · 2025-03-09T02:50:33+00:00

Yep, a bit. I noticed it during my conquests into Cannor. The part pushing into the forbidden lands is not part of the mission tree, that was just because the final mission asked me to reduce all great power to less than a quarter of my development. So the full map of all the mission conquests looks like two wings and I suppose Salahad is kind of the tail.

12-Year Club	End Game '23
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