Overlords Scenario/Endgame?

[orgonebox]

Having seen the overwhelming awesomeness that is the Illian's endgame approach, I wondered about the exploitable potential of an Overlord's endgame.

From what I've read in the lore forum, the Overlords worship the dreaming Danalin (sp), who lost his personal worshippers the Aifon in some tragic accident. At present, Hastur, an angel of Arawn(?), whispers bad things in Danalin's ear to make him have crazy dreams.

Thus, I wondered what an Overlord's endgame scenario might look like. Would it depend on the spread of a dreamer cult, or a ritual to re-awaken Danalin? Maybe the awakening would be achieved through the placement of high-leveled cultists into dream-states.

Then there's the question of what an awakened water-god would do to the world. Flood it? Wander as a random, nigh-invincible sleepwalking barbarian unit that caused random effects like the wonder spell, including changing terrain into water?

In any regard, there's at least tons of room for fun speculation.

 

[the343danny]

Danalin is a god right? It would be nice to add more avatar races to the game; it sounds awfully powerful, maybe too powerful. Since it is a barbarian, would it attack OO states?

Anyways, putting more things like that seems nice, and would fit into the story well with the compact being broken by the evil, thus the good has to come in to counter them.

 

[Darksaber1]

Well, I think Danalin awaking would be bad for the Overlords, since the Overlords were created from the dreams of Hemah who got his power from the dreams of Danalin, who is being manipulated in his sleep by Hastur, archangel of Mammon (the god of madness). Of course, lorewise, some people think that the Overlords created Hemah, but if this also true, then this is paradox, and Hemah and the Overlords created each other. And the final plans of the Overlords are probably incomprehensible any way, since the Overlods them selves are incomprehesible, in a Lovecraftian/Cthulhu way.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Hastur, The Lord of Nightmares, is the archangel of Mammon, The King of Avarice. Arawn, the god of death, isn't evil, he is the most neutral of all the gods, completely unwilling to get involved in Creation at all (Danalin was the second least involved of the gods), much to the chagrin of many of his angels. Many have sided with the evil slain archmage Laroth to over through Arawn and give this mortal godhood, and others have followed Basium, archangel of Arawn's old sphere of life which was given to Sucellus, to fight demons.


I'd personally rather see Laroth Ascended (or maybe Laroth the Risen, Laroth the Usurper, or something like that) as a second Avatar unit. Another human who attained godhood would be more interesting. Maybe the Sidar should have a ritual to help him usurp Arawn and enter creation, as they have unwillingly been serving him since their creation.


The Overlords have some very specific plans, but they never agree with each other. Most of this myriad of powerful dreams hate each other more than their common foes, so there is no plan they could agree upon as a group.

 

[Psycho_Ivan]

The overlords are in fact the bad dreams that Danalin is having due to Hastur's whispers. These dreams can then be tapped into, and are in fact the Octopus Overlords. Hemah though, seems to be... special. To me Hemah seems like a magical conduit and magnifier. Now assuming that he's receiving these dreams too, and with little ill effect to himself, then it would make a lot of sense as to why Hemah's own dreams can affect the world around him, enough so to actually change things permanently... Maybe he even changed himself, as suggested in his Pedia entry. Whether he was an actual mage or dreamed that he was and became one is hard to tell, but Hemah is, to put it simply, disturbing.

Just my take on the situation with the OO..

 

[Shadius]

I've thought a possible endgame eventchain for the Overlords would be a great idea ever since Fire came out, personally. Ideally, I think you'd have two different paths; one where the Overlords overtake Danalin's mind completely, and another where he somehow awakens, with all the chaos that would entail.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The overlords are in fact the bad dreams that Danalin is having due to Hastur's whispers. These dreams can then be tapped into, and are in fact the Octopus Overlords. Hemah though, seems to be... special. To me Hemah seems like a magical conduit and magnifier. Now assuming that he's receiving these dreams too, and with little ill effect to himself, then it would make a lot of sense as to why Hemah's own dreams can affect the world around him, enough so to actually change things permanently... Maybe he even changed himself, as suggested in his Pedia entry. Whether he was an actual mage or dreamed that he was and became one is hard to tell, but Hemah is, to put it simply, disturbing.

Just my take on the situation with the OO..

In the trivia thread, Kael said that the answer that Danalin was dreaming of the Overlords is wrong. He said that my guess that he is dreaming of Hemah was right. This implies that speculation that Hemah dreamed the Overlords is correct.

Others wonder if the Overlords found Hemah and caused his dreams, or if Hemah dreamt of the Overlords and created them.

Sometimes I think that Hemah in fact is Danalin--or rather, the character that the god takes on in his dream. Hastur is whispering in Danalin's ear to make his mortal dreamlife a nightmare, and Danalin/Hemah's mind trying to understand the cause of these tragedies thought up The Overlords his subconscious fears and confusion gave all the power that should be his to these imaginary beings. Hastur of course cannot control them, and every different possible conspiracy theory Hemah subconsciously thinks up comes to be even though most of them conflict with each other. The Overlords don't really cause any of the problems in Hemah's life, that's Hastur's job, but they do cause problems for others.

I'm thinking Devon is the sort of problem that Hastur himself creates. Maybe I'm just thinking this because it is so much easier to empathize with Hemah than Devon, but I wonder if Devon's father wasn't really a demon instead of an angel. He seems the jealous type, from both his actions and his green eyes. The green could symbolize nature and means he is a descendant of Cernunnos or his angels, but it also symbolizes jealousy you'd expect from a servant of the King of Avarice. The thought has crossed my mind that Devon could even be a half-brother of Mardero, another half-mortal son of Hastur with a more subtle purpose or tormenting a sleeping god and driving the him to pour more of his being into The Overlords.


When he saw a flash of a sleeping god stirring when Devon injured him I tend to think that the pain was starting to awaken him.

It would probably be too much to give him the Avatar race though. Besides, in the dream his is definitely a mere human.

In is generally thought hat it is impossible to die in one's own dream. What would people think if Hemah were weakened but made to retreat like Loki, and maybe given Crazed so one civ can't keep control of him?

 

[das]

maybe given Crazed so one civ can't keep control of him?

That would make it a bit pointless to build him in the first place, no?

That said, maybe destroying him (i.e. Danalin's kinda-sorta avatar in Creation) could trigger some neat Overlords Endgame-related events? Alternatively, he could simply be treated as Immortal - that makes sense even otherwise (i.e. without the Danalin thing), since he could always just wake up for a little while when on the brink of dying, or instinctively dream of somehow escaping back to the capital.

 

[Keeper_GFA]

given Crazed so one civ can't keep control of him?

Good thing there's that Loyalty spell.

 

[nadszyszkownik]

Maybe Danalin Hemah could be given a unique ability- he would, every turn, cast a wonder-like spell, only with exclusively negative effects. Units with OO would be the only ones unaffected. This would make him as wildly unpredictable as the dreams that come to him in his sleep, dangerous to have around, even more dangerous when he's been send to your lands by your enemy.

Edit: Crap! I just realized i typed Danalin instead of Hemah. Total eclipse of the mind

 

[Ajidica]

It would be sort of cool to have Hemah go barbarian casting wonder-esqe spells. If it was made so he wont cast any spells in the builders empire even after he went barbarian that would be nice. Hemah would be a unit that you build, send him in the direction of the enemy, and watch while the enemy gets screwed over.

 

[MaxAstro]

That would make it a bit pointless to build him in the first place, no?

That said, maybe destroying him (i.e. Danalin's kinda-sorta avatar in Creation) could trigger some neat Overlords Endgame-related events? Alternatively, he could simply be treated as Immortal - that makes sense even otherwise (i.e. without the Danalin thing), since he could always just wake up for a little while when on the brink of dying, or instinctively dream of somehow escaping back to the capital.

I think it would be cool if he used a kind of mechanic like Alcinus from the Scions of Patria. That is, every time he dies, he reappears in the capital of a random OO-worshipping civ. Maybe yours, maybe not. This would make him a lot more unpredictable, and also help simulate the infighting that is natural to the Overlords - you could end up going to war with another OO civ just to try and get Hemah back,

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

if any of you gentlemen has some ideas about how Danalin and the Aifons could/should be in the game, check this out http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295302 any help is very welcome

 

[Psycho_Ivan]

In the trivia thread, Kael said that the answer that Danalin was dreaming of the Overlords is wrong. He said that my guess that he is dreaming of Hemah was right. This implies that speculation that Hemah dreamed the Overlords is correct.

That's insane.

 

[EmptyWolf]

That's insane.

It may be insane but it is true.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

When dealing with the Overlords, insanity is a virtue. A sane source of the Overlords wouldn't make much sense.

 

[orgonebox]

After letting the Overlord's theme sift through my brain for the past couple of days, I came up with this idea:

A high-level (level 6?) cultist or lunatic may be settled in a city as a type of specialist called a dreamer. Each dreamer gives +2 points towards a great dreamer. Great dreamers can be used to build an altar-type building that will enable the construction (aka summoning) of an avatar. I figured that there should be three buildings that can be made, although I'm not sure what they would be called. However, in keeping with the Lovecraftian theme of the Overlords, the avatars would be (e.g.) the Cthulu, Yog-Shothoth, and Nyarlathotep (or whatever variant spelling). The first two entities would be under the summoning player's control, but would have a good chance of going barbarian. Nyarlathotep would be god-slayer material, start out somewhere on the map as a barbarian unit, and seriously frack somebody's shibboleth.

The special buildings would have to provide some other advantage, such as culture and science. The building civilization would have a strong unit that would demand blood sacrifice in the way of war to keep the crazy away, and you certainly wouldn't want to keep a strong unit that could go barb sitting around the homestead. Once Nyarlathotep is summoned, a smart civ could warily follow it around and clean up afterwards.

Sound like fun?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

summoning Cthulu would be LOTS of fun

 

[GeeJo]

A potential neat but subtle mechanic would be to have the frequency of Events increase with the percentage of Octopus Overlords worship (not 1:1, but some fraction), with another boost occurring on the creation of Hemah. Not sure how easy that would be to code, though.