Timeline Events: People of the Sun (Patreon)

We looked at Lantern and Stars previously, so this time we're going to take an in depth look at the timeline events for People of the Fun!

This campaign is without a doubt the freest and most open of the three, you're left pretty much to your own devices for 20 years, without too many pressures. The only limitations are that no-one except Hellfire survivors can wear heavy armor (wording that has caused a LOT of problems, the hope is that these will be cleared up in Campaigns of Death, they have been brought to Adam and the design team's attention) and only Sun Eaters can surge.

This creates a very interesting experience, playing without Surge is something I've done voluntarily in Lantern (and Dash) as well as when playing Sun and it changes the way you play and the context of the monsters. A dedicated support becomes harder to function correctly because they are torn between either AI or HL control or general support things like Bandages - so you rely on more passive HL control (Wisdom Potion) and anti-reaction weapons (Katar, Grand, Dagger, Sword). Also certain tasks, such as cutting all the legs of Spidicules or fighting the DBK can become a complete slog. It's very interesting how it changes the context of things. But at least People of the Sun get access to alternative survival actions, very powerful ones at that. 

I am very, very hopeful that Adam's updates and revisions to Sun bring it to the place it needs to be, right now it's a bit like Spidicules, there are a few things which hold it back a bit - most notable of these is the final boss rush, section, which includes some rather lackluster experiences (King's Man is quite the buzzkill) and the final nemesis needs additional stats and tuning.

Still, all of that written, it is my #2 campaign of choice (behind Stars, ahead of Lantern) and it is a unique and worthy experience that allows players to really push themselves and see how powerful a quarry they can successfully hunt.

Lets get to the Timeline Events!

The Pool & The Sun - Year 1

The first event of the campaign sits in a somewhat similar point to Lantern/Stars and in truth it shouldn't feel that different until LY3-4, which is where normally a nemesis monster would turn up, technically a nemesis monster does turn up in LY4, but it is a non-confrontational encounter and will remain that way because the Sun is relatively unaware of the survivors and the survivors see the Sun only as a protective light/benevolent entity. 

The differences between this event and the Lantern one are very significant, not only is the entire Inner Lantern tree removed and replaced with the Hands of the Sun tree, but also you gain two starting locations - one that represents the heart of the settlement and the other, the source of innovation and protection is The Sun.  Also, you immediately get Survival of the Fittest, meaning there is no birth principle trigger in this campaign, but also this impacts on your population decisions from the beginning, decisions which are complicated by the inclusion of a fresh, new, different Intimacy table.

Intimacy

Before we start, it should be noted that in Sun, there is a once per year guaranteed Intimacy attempt via the Sacred Pool, this should be undertaken every single year, because growing population is very important and you have plenty of lifetime rerolls available to help fix poor situations. 

The table is pre-designed for rolling 2d10 and is a nice example of how you can play with the mechanics of a single element (in this case ensuring that it is always a 2d10 roll). But it also includes the addition of double 1s, natural double 10s and an 11+ result.  There are many ways to improve your odds of rolling on this table and because an 11+ is very significant you should be trying to skew things in your favor.

There are some, sadly, bizarre situations created by this, it's not clear what happens if you roll a natural 10,10 with a +1 bonus, following the steps you gain +3 population, but are all three of these babies children of the sun or is it just one of them? I've asked for clarification on this, so hopefully it will be answered in the future.

Ultimately, suck it up and Intimacy as much as possible. Do not use your Sun Eaters for this table until after Birth of Colour has triggered.

Sun Dipping - Lantern Years 4, 12 & 19 

Three times during this campaign you get the opportunity to partake in Sun Dipping, because of that you absolutely must try and create as many paired purified survivors as possible. You won't have that many by the time the first dip occurs, but there are no excuses for not having multiples by LY12 in particular. Make sure your purified survivors are Plebs unless you are willing to spend rerolls.

Typically you'll have just one pair in time for that first dip, so get them dipped and you want to hit either the 3-4 result (pick the female to survive)  or ideally the 7-10 result. 

The LY12 & 19 ones should involve dipping a lot of Child of the Suns and Warriors of the Sun, with the aim to hit the 7-10 result, but make sure you have that reroll and do not dip them without a Pleb to Sacrifice in the case of the 3-4 roll (Warriors with Hellfire are very powerful). But the 19 one is generally less important, it's sort of a last chance to get a few edge case survivors up to scratch so they can help in the end game if required.

• Purify as much as possible in equal quantities
• Always select 1x male and 1x female for each pairing if you can
• When purifying a Child of the Sun/Warrior of the Sun, make sure the other survivor is disposable. 

Also in LY 3-4 and 11-12, your objective is to stock up resources ready for the Great Sky Gift.

The Great Sky Gift - Lantern Years 5 & 13

It is VITAL that you upgrade the Sacred Pool each time, because you only get these two windows to do this and the Prism Mace & Apostle Crown require the Level 2 Sacred Pool.  

The table itself is relatively simple, either you lose -2 population (goodbye Janitor Lee & the Plebs), or you gain extra resources/xp via the Hagfish, or you get the Defender Fighting Art (which gives a survivor a form of encourage) +1 strength.

When you have Sculpture innovated (have we talked about how strong this innovation is recently? ;) the 4-5 result becomes unclear, we're in that situation where we have to decide if you do 4-5 and then the blue box and then a Grand Proclamation, or if you just do the blue box -> Grand.

Birth of Color - Lantern Year 10

While I have encouraged you to breed a fair bit, this is the point where you should start kicking it into a high gear, every single birth now is going to give you Life String, which are used to create Warriors of the Sun.  Next year you'll get to pick your settlement principle, I recommend Collective Toil in order to help gain more and more population, seriously, push population hard from now on.

The Vivisectionist should be carefully chosen, they could die or suffer a severe injury (blind). It is not clear what Sunspot is gained, the infant sunstalkers are hardly a 1000 or 3000 years old so it seems like there is a missing resource here. 

If the Vivisectionist hits the top result for this table they gain the Sun Eater SFA, except they also have gained the Emotionless disorder, so they are now unable to gain strength tokens in order to activate the surge portion of the SFA (they only have the birth benefits and the survival gains). It's like they've turned into Okuyasu  and keep forgetting they have this super powerful ability most of the time.  

Time to get rid of Emotionless on them eh?

Umbilical Symbiosis

This is the heart of what you've been aiming for, all those Purified survivors, those Sun Eaters, those Life Strings all that blood, sweat and other bodily fluids spent. 

It's time to make yourself some stand users that can bs monsters on a level no other survivor achieves. 

It's time for the Warriors of the Sun.

So, in order to succeed at this you want to make sure that the child is a Child of the Sun and you Purify the baby.  You then want to spend as many life string as possible, especially for the +1d10 to the synchronize roll. Here is the priority order for spending I follow with life string costs in brackets afterwards:

• +1d10 to Synchronize (3)
• +1 to two different attributes (8) - I prefer Luck + Movement
• +1 Permanent Luck (4) 
• + Fighting Arts (3)
• +1 Permanent Accuracy (1) 
• +1 Permanent Evasion (4)
• +1 Permanent Strength (1)

I choose in this order because I tend to use my Warriors as offensive powerhouses, as such Evasion is less important on them than it is elsewhere. But you can aim to stack Evasion onto a Warrior via the two different attributes and the permanent evasion if you like. Just have a vision about what you want this Warrior to do from the start.

When you roll on the table, remember you're aiming for the 25+ roll, get as many dice for it as possible and don't be afraid to reroll, anything else on that table is not acceptable.

As for which warrior is better? 

Reflection ones are all round superior because they get 'infinite dodges' (as long as they have survival and are not prevented from dodging via other methods) and they have a massive amount of strength when attacking in the blind spot. But you will want at least one Refraction Warrior because they make excellent support survivors. 

Edged Tonometry - 5 Innovations

Unlike Hooded Stranger, you do not mind triggering this event as soon as possible, it gives you access to a bunch of useful +strength Eye Patches and a Katana survivor. There's not much to say except you end up having to spin your wheels on that survivor until you kill the Phoenix or find a Muramasa (this is to be changed in Campaigns of Death).

It's a good event, I like it and try to trigger it even outside of Sun.

Final Gift - Lantern Year 20

It's almost a shame that this event happens so late in the run, because it gives out the God String. In essence there is little strategy or planning here except make sure that you've picked up Legendary Lungs SFA earlier on in this campaign via the Aquarobics Innovation. Otherwise, you can spend a lifetime reroll or two on this. 

You shouldn't fail, you don't want to, the God String is what makes bows in this campaign ludicrous. 

The Boss Rush - Lantern Years 21-25

If you have already played through most of lantern then you are probably prepared well for what is coming in the last few years. I'm not going to walk through the strategies here, the only real variation depends on how you choose to handle the Butcher and the King's Man. Or if you've subbed the King's Man out and replaced it with the Slenderman. 

Regardless, if you get through to the Final Nemesis, you should not have much trouble dispatching it. I look forward to it getting a buff (along with the Stars one) to a much more epic state. In fact I hope that the entire Boss Rush section gets buffs, because it's not challenging enough considering what Warriors of the Sun, Hellfire survivors and People of the Sun in general can do to nemesis monsters in the end game.

Footnote:

A lot of Sun's plotting holds a great deal of similarities to several of Junji Ito ( 伊藤 潤二)'s works, with a particularly strong set of thematic links to Uzamaki,  Hellstar Remina and to a lesser extent Gyo. While Berserk's influence on Adam's aesthetics and story telling is very overt, we still haven't had overt recognition of how influential the works from mangaka like Junji Ito and Hirohiko Araki (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) have been. Sun is very much Adam's 'Existential Horror' piece and has a lot of parallels with Hellstar Ramina. Except, and no offense to Adam, Junji Ito's ending is a far superior written horror ending.

There are also obvious Lovecraftian influences in Sun, but that is unavoidable, Ito himself is influences by the master of existential horror.

Hellfire Footnote:

This often forgotten SFA is a cornerstone of how Sun works, a Warrior of the Sun in a heavy affinity armor set with this SFA can dominate showdowns despite being 'on a clock'. 

It is also a reference to Shishio Makoto one of the antagonists from Rurouni Kenshin. This is evident in the art, but also mechanically.