Timeline Events: Monster Introductions II (Patreon)

 We've already looked at the Quarry Monsters, so now its time to look at the Nemesis ones.

For the most part Nemesis monsters are identified by their directly antagonistic nature towards the settlement (especially The Hand, who currently observes and toys with the survivors for reasons we still haven't found out, roll on Wave III). Their introduction events tend to reflect this.

As before, we'll be passing on talking about the Butcher, Watcher, Tyrant, the Sun or Gold Smoke Knight because they're either free of introductions, or they're tied into a campaign that tells their story.

Let's get to the heels!

The Hanged Man (Manhunter - Lantern Year 5)

The Undertaker starts out our list of bad guys with his rather sinister introduction, one that highlights how the Reverberating Lantern works while also having some very powerful bonuses.

So, The Hanged Man has the following impacts, it reduces all survivor's in the settlement to 0 survival, generally this shouldn't be too bad because good practice is to not name survivors until they are going to become hunters, you then gain Abyssal Sadist on one of your survivors and they "lead the settlement into battle" against this servant of the Golden Entity.  

Abyssal Sadist is one of the strongest fighting arts in the game bar none.

That survival gain gives you effectively a free surge every single turn and on top of that you gain insanity for protection plus immunity to Prey and the normally crippling Fear of the Dark. It's one of the top level candidates for attaching to Sculpture because of its power, synergies with things like the Rawhide Armor and the protection it provides against the Watcher's attempts to kill you via survival drains. You'll want to decide if you're putting this on a hunter to use now, or on a pleb so you can sculpt it later.

As an aside, if you ever want an interesting variant, play a campaign where the settlement is always under the effects of Lottery every two years until they slay a L4 Manhunter. It's very interesting.  

An Uninvited Guest (Lion Knight -  Lantern Year 6)

The Lion Knight is notorious for having fun settlement events and a showdown that is..  not fun. This event is no exception to that, you gain access to the Stoic Statue settlement innovation (fun aside, you can sacrifice this to Gorm Climate and keep it in the deck until after the Lion Knight's second fight before innovating it again, now the Lion Knight will never leave you!) and you get to roll on a table to Deliberate.

Each player nominates a survivor, it is probably best to pick Plebs for these rolls, because most of the time they are negative. (Note: The assumption on this table is the coloured text is instead of the normal results, that is the usual mechanic and the wording in the table indicates this). 

The 1-3 result is a pretty poor situation for the settlement, losing 2 endeavors in LY6 is a pretty bad beat, because at this stage you are still juggling population growth requirements along with settlement growth needs. However, Drums provides some protection for the settlement, with one of the random nominated plebs getting Coprolalia instead. This ruins their use as a hunter because they're always noisy and the Harvester is a thing, but it protects your endeavors.

On a 4-7 each survivor will be getting a random disorder, not a big deal when you're picking plebs for the job. You might even get useful things like Spiral Ganglia. the 5-7 turns this into +4 Insanity instead if you have Face Painting (another excellent innovation, but a bit difficult to have online by LY6).

8-10 is amazing, with +2 endeavors and +2 understanding for every survivor picked, this can push plebs into becoming potential hunters. The 9-10 result is often triggered because of how meta/popular/important Symposium is and it gives you Nightmare Training for free (amazing) and +3 endeavors. That's a fantastic situation.

Armored Strangers (King's Man - Lantern Year 6)

One of the only places where you are punished for a high population, the Armored Strangers seek to keep a settlement in a manageable size, not so small they'll get wiped out, but not so big that they'll grow out of control and cause problem for their masters. 

If you are at 7 or fewer survivors when approaching this event, it is one of the windows where you should stop breeding because of how large a chunk of your population 4 survivors is. So you will aim for gaining the Supportive Action and then pushing to shove your population up high so the next time they return you'll be able to absorb any potential losses. As always, remember Graves is >>>>>> than Cannibalize. 

Most of the time though you're looking to hit the Destructive Action, which will stop the strangers from coming back again and again. The effects of the table will, most of the time, be resisted. Because (potentially) losing 4 population in the showdown against the King's Man is less of a cost than the results on the table. I consider the 1-9 results all worth resisting (sometimes I might not resist if the 5-7 targets a retired or low value hunter), but you do not want to just throw those survivors away. Give the showdown your best shot with  bunch of plebs, you're not going to lose any gear trying, so it is worth the experience. This is especially the case where the event has caught you at the unfortunate population numbers of 8-11, losing four survivors in that situation is problematic. Fingers crossed Graves and the (up to) 8 endeavors you gain helps get your population back up.

Finally, there is a high risk strategy you can run where you keep yourself at 7 or fewer survivors the entire campaign in order to take advantage of the bonuses. However, because 1-3 hurts a survivor, it's not that beneficial.

Note: If you resist, the later King's Men will NOT be a higher level, their level is fixed by the timeline. This is a common error.

It's Already Here (Slenderman - Lantern Year 6)

Nemesis best boi's introductory event is very beneficial for the settlement. The returning survivors are hit with a loss of a fighting art and the gain of the Blotted Out Fighting Art. Because this fighting art is straight up a terrible negative for survivors (based on the printed text, there is debate/rumor that the text is a misprint) you want your returning survivors to be plebs. Yup, that's right, in LY5 you should send out plebs hunting and have them be the returning survivors here.

The reason for this is, later on Blotted Out turns into a benefit, the Blotted Out survivors are used during 'Forgotten Fear' to gain the Spiral Ganglia disorder and that leads to the most broken and overpowered fighting art in the game... Clarity of Darkness/Gloom Man. So despite carrying a negative, this fighting art is very valuable.

Regal Vist (The Hand - Lantern Year 11)

The Power Behind the Throne visits you! In this second inspection ahead of the (currently not happening) visits from The King, the Hand - Kingdom Death's most prolific and possibly one of the powerful individual Entities - comes along to see how you are all doing. Unlike the King's Man, the Hand doesn't care about how well your population is doing, he's going to assess your societies' choices. You need to be the right flavor for The King's when they come.  If you have followed the rules you will have Accept Darkness, the Guidepost and Survival of the Fittest - that makes for the most delicious meals.

Always remember you can resist bad results and as long as you are capable of stalling the fight, this is a good idea.

The table results in the following situations; On a 1-3 he trashes your lantern oven and kills 4 survivors. There is no reason to not resist here. However, if you have accepted dorkness then you will instead gain +2 population, nice.  On a 4-7 You will lose all stored resources and 1 population. You'll have to decide if you are going to resist this one or not, typically you will, but if you're not confident or lost almost nothing, you might just take this on the chin.  Finally on the 8-10 result the Hand kills the survivor with the most hunt experience. If you've build a murder bait savior this isn't too bad, but otherwise you're going to be challenging this one.  On a 9-10 with Survival of the Fittest you instead get to have The Hand chat with everyone before erasing all of their endeavors and giving every single survivor in the settlement +1 strength. 

Typically you are picking SotF, so this table tends to be positive for most settlements, but resisting The Hand is also not a big issue if you are good at turtling the showdown to Applause.

The Lonely Fruit (Lonely Tree - Variable)

Rest in peace whoever eats this, needless to say this one should be activated by either a Pleb or the Janitor. Outside of that, we'll talk about it in more detail when I look at the Lonely Tree. The main decision here is deciding when you are going to trigger the showdown fight. LY10 is one of the optimal times because of how the tree levels up and the rewards you get are at its best.  It used to be that you delayed until you could face it at its highest level because you would get the Drifting Dreaming Fruit and give that to an ageless survivor, but these days you can only combine that with a survivor who has Ageless Apprentice (at the moment, they technically do not have ageless - I've sent this loophole to Adam for him to close out).