As Deno is already making big moves by fighting not only the Pariah but also Braal, and likely a Pariah Lvl2 soon as well, large parts of the rest of the world are still waiting for their shipping labels, not to mention the pre-oders later down the line.
This does give me a little more time to spend with the Feline Entity, drink paint water and finish off Azure Pond, true, but I’m sure most people understand that the positive anxiety Germans typically know as “Vorfreude” has been tough to handle.
Good ol’ pre-excitement.

As you may or may not have seen already, I have put up some pics from my recently painted Phoenix and I am quite proud of it. It’s one of the largest models I have painted thus far (second only to my Shadowsword, and slightly larger than the Heldrake I’d say) and I think I did a decent job of it.
It does, unfortunately, date a few of the upcoming Lantern Years, but hey – in the undying words of an expert on branching timelines: Don’t worry about it!

I even made a little stone-hermit-crab-friend-thingy to live in the hollow stump.

But let’s get on cracking them bones! There are exactly 4 more hunts before the gauntlet begins and I already knew what i wanted to do at the time!

This Lantern Year the returning survivors didn’t actually generate a lot of endeavors. With only Cassandra being a Tinker, it was only together with the White Lion Lvl3 Saga (I) bonus and Cooking (I) that we still got up to 8 endeavors in total. But, as always, before we could make use of any of them:
Settlement Event!
The Plant and the Stone.
Skrelle was trying yet again to teach me how to cultivate a tree. Joke’s on her though. We never learnt to read.

We only sang!

The Knowledge Worm (I) pooped out some scrap to welcome us back to the fold, but even with that, there wasn’t too much we could do with all these .. *quickly counts* 12 bones and not much else.

But I was always good to innovate, so I started the year that way.
Storytelling, Bed, Face Painting or Pictograph.
None of those were Nightmare Training. That was too bad, I really would have liked to build the sharp katar from the Overgrown Dewclaw (IR).
Left with an actual choice to make, I picked Bed for the extra Survival Limit, putting us up to a maximum of 8.
Why not Storytelling, you might wonder? Well, because I didn’t want the additional consequences in the deck.

It was at this point that I locked in this Lantern Year’s hunt for another White Lion Lvl3. I didn’t feel like there was really a point in going bird hunting again outside of hoping for a second batch of Pustules and the bragging rights. Also, the White Lion offered a guaranteed Perfect Bone via the indomitable resource, so as I shifted my attention a little, I realized that I should be able to finish the Tachyon Nodachi next Lantern Year.
Both a Screaming Antelope or Lion God fights had their own baggage for next year, so I came up with a plan: 4 years – 4 quarries. And I was just going to go up the list.

Happy with my make-shift plan I shifted my attention again to babies.
First I purified Moon (+1ACC) and had her and Gwyn partake from the Sacred Water.
At +7, this caused a Solar Eclipse.
Gwynevere would not take any of her parents weapon proficiency, and instead prepared to chose her own in a bit. She was born a Child of the Sun and a member of our Clan of Death. She was also a Tinker, who gained +1 endeavor for Insight and learned Tumble (FA).
The only logical thing to do was to purify her as well for +1ACC and attempt Umbilical Symbiosis. With 10 Lifestring in storage I wanted to spend 9 of them. +1STR, ACC, LCK and an extra dice was what I came up with. With a total of 35 (which without adding the extra dice would have been exactly 25) Gwynevere grew up a Warrior of the Sun!
Reflection or Refraction proved to be a hard choice. I had (and have) no idea which one is “better” for us. But after a while I saw a pathway for her to pick Refraction and be a Devastating 1 machine!
After I noticed the “infinite” survival it had to be Refraction.
In the end, whilst Gwynevere would have to stay home for this Lantern Year’s hunt, her statline was looking juicy though – 3/5/2/1/1

After that long diversion, I set up Calys and Squobble via Matchmaker for another child in the Axtolotl clan.
Young Vigo gained Timeless Eye (FA), an extra innovation draw, +1STR because of Bed, and Axe (4).

Furthermore, we spent 1 endeavor on Sauna Shrine – rolled an 8.
I will not openly admit to using a reroll on that.
And our final endeavor was spend to make Leather, so we could build the third Round Leather Shield for the eventual Kingsman fight.

There was also the option for the Cat Fang Knife, but I dismissed that notion rather quickly. This would be a lot more appealing if I had got daggers going in this settlement. So I stashed the rest of my resources.
Overall I felt really unsure of what to build a lot of the time, partially because I didn’t know my way around the campaign well enough.
I feel there might be a fun set up with Hellfire (SFA) to have a Lantern Armor tank, but that was something to try and get in a different campaign. Also, all of the few things that I REALLY wanted to build from the get go had either very specific requirements or needed a lot of stuff.

This year’s hunters:
Helios – green (Leather Armor, Tempered Axe)
Celestine – blue (Phoenix Armor, Wrought Tachi)
Calys – red (Screaming Armor, Sonic Tomahawk)
Cassandra – yellow (Rawhide Armor, Arc Bow)

I did make some last minute adjustments to the gear grids from last Lantern Year. I crafted a Monster Grease from both ??? I had still in storage and removed Helios’ Scrap Lantern for it, setting him up to have a solid 5EVA.
I also removed the Bone Pickaxe from Cassandra’s gear grid to give her the shield. This way she should able to take 1 grab and survive it, should fate conspire against us.
Against another White Lion Lvl3 I was just going to send the same 4 people out again.

We did get held up in Feline Entity customs as I set up for this year. It seems she wanted to mark that Scrap Lantern like she marked that one Founding Stone.

And to not forget about the Knowledge Worm (I): this time the worm wriggled up to Calys, and despite giving me a nervous scare (5) it, again, didn’t do anything. It seemed strangely content to just be a weird pet we brought back home.
It only wanted the cuddles!

The Huntphase:
Before we got to the hunt, the Feline Entity pushed the White Lion onto Starvation. And uhm.., I opted to not follow that timeline this time and nudged it back.
But it ultimately did not matter. That lion was a lot closer to the settlement than we thought.
Because there was a White Lion Cub right outside the settlement!
With no hesitation whatsoever, we clobbered the cub for resources and the dad-lion showed up.
That was about as good a line of events as we could have wished for.
Well.., I guess we could have gotten Ground Fighting again. But I typically won’t complain about a skipped hunt – especially at Lvl3!

For terrain we got some Debris and the Perfect Lantern. Nice! Not as helpful with the current gear grids, but nice nonetheless.

With 21 cards in the deck, the Dad-Lion began the fight with a Legendary card! Golden Eyes off the top of the deck!
That would change up the fight in a meaningful way! Blind spot attacks were suddenly going to be a premium as otherwise you would either have to take 3 brain damage or -4ACC to an attack.
..
Then again.., Calys was at 24 insanity and Helios at 21. Sadly, Cassandra of all people and her bow only had 6. That’s still 2 shots before trauma though..

As our turn started, Cassandra loaded up the Claw Head Arrow. She was ready to just take the Brain Damage. Her confidence was rewarded with not only a hit but the first wound as well. First blood!
Helios, up next, would be using his Cat Eye Circlet to set up some degree of safety for Calys. Using the circlet always felt a little lame, but here we are.
Her safety mostly assured, Calys dashed up to a spot in the monster’s side, used Overcharge and slammed right into it. Hitting on 3+, and despite 2 perfect hits triggering extra attack rolls, she ended up only getting 3 hits in total. Disappointing, yet also the perfect amount.
With Devastating 1 active and 15STR before rolling she managed 4 wounds before the Lion ran off due to a reflex.

Celestine, taking a page from Calys’ book, also made use of Dash and Overcharge to maneuver into the perfect position to activate Charge on the Phoenix set. She got 2 hits, non of which were perfect.
She was the only one able to crit (aside from axe mastery), not that she appeared to be trying all that hard so far. Yikes. The red dice was the one I used for Sharp.
Okay.
Apparently I slandered her for no reason. She crit the 2nd hit and cleanly cut off the Lion’s jaw! A brutal first turn. Unga-bunga!

12 (13) cards left in the deck. Fu..
It would appear we have dealt an unfortunate amount of damage: the White Lion used Vanish.
Another legendary card that would change up our round a bit.
With 4 chances at a 9+ Cassandra would be the first to search the Tall Grass on our turn.
She rolled a 9, instantly. That did have me laughing for a bit.

Helios was still on circlet-duty, and the trap was right on top of the Hit Location deck. Okay. Not too great. But, this turn had been all over the place already, so I decided I would just try and just have Celestine activate it with her 6 armor all around and not try and bury it for ages.
With ease she got the hit and got pummeled for it – 4 hits from the monster. The first to the head hits got turned into a brain damage, but as expected, overall Celestine was fine.
Hopefully Calys could use the stillness of the moment to shine. She used Embolden and Overcharge and attacked from the monster’s side without slam. 2 hits on 4+ turned to 3 wounds from Devastating 1.

Before the round ended, Helios dashed into the monster’s facing to provide an easy target as the team’s tank.

9 (10) cards left. Ground Fighting? What a strange fight – both legendaries into unlimited time.
Calys and Helios dashed away before Cunning could activate.

Well, with all the time in the world suddenly, I decided we should check EVERYTHING! Well, mostly everything. I did not try too hard on the Perfect Lantern (T). But you better believe we got to Rawhide Headband-ing and Cat Eye Circle-ing immediately.
I did shoot the Hollowpoint Arrow into a revealed Glorious Mane to apply the -1MOV amongst all of this as well.
Whilst we used the time to position around a newly revealed reflex, Calys and Celestine used Embolden. With a new round started, the time for Cassandra to shoot her bow once again had come. She hit the monster, but failed to wound.. the lion ran off on a reflex. *deep sigh*
We re-checked the upcoming Hit Location cards and fired again. And this time she managed to wound!
Edit: Whilst I was pretty good about keeping track for Golden Eyes – I don’t mention it as it just drained insanity, Cassandra missed a Brain Trauma here.

This was the sign for Calys to GO!
Overcharge active she slammed into the monster, getting 4 hits, non perfect, 2 of them onto persistent injuries! The first wound against the Beast’s Heel turned into a crit and activated both Savage and Devastating 1!
3 more wounds followed for a total of 6 in one string of hits!
Celestine also used Overcharge and charged in – she had a chance to end this right then and there!
But she only hit once! Too bad. She did not hit the trap and neither did she crit. But a wound was still a wound!
Had Helios been closer he could have tried his luck as well.

0 (1) cards remaining the dying monster got up (it got up after Celestine’s attack already, not that noting this changed anything) and it rolled for the wound to its belly – it survived.
The basic attack targeted Cassandra as the closest survivor not in the lion’s blind spot. Calys and Celestine scattered to not be knocked down before the monster turned around. Unable to reach Cassandra, the White Lion stopped in the middle of the board with nobody in range of Cunning‘s effect.

Cassandra saw the monster limping towards her, she shot her bow, aiming for the kill, but she missed! The Golden Eyes were too much for her!
Edit: She missed a 2nd Brain Trauma here.
Celestine dashed into position and charged in to the blind spot as well but she failed both hits as well! What’s with the insecurity all of a sudden?!
Helios was still able to end the fight without too much fear of drawing the trap, so he got ready to try!
He hit twice – finally – but failed the wound?!
But the axe master Calys’ teaching were guiding him! He used the settlement-wide axe specialty and rerolled the wound, with Sharp from his weapon’s ability.
And the monster went down, unable to get up again. And instead of taking a picture of our victory I got a pic of the monster tokens! Wooh!

Wow. What a fight! Not dangerous, but rather comical overall.
And as I said last time, I really need to remember to use Overcharge. Damn! These abilities unga-bunga hard!

Preparing to collect our rewards, I figured I probably should have at least tried to bring the Pyrolitic Light along – it is an Iron after all. Too late now.

First off: Cassandra and Celestine were chosen to eat the monster’s eyes (+1ACC). Cassandra (Crazed FA) and Helios hit age 2, and I had to check on Helios because I was a little surprised he never got this milestone before, but it sure looked like it (+1STR).
Cassandra and Celestine both progressed their proficiencies. Whilst Katana was at 3 points, this specialization needed 4 to unlock an effect.
Finally we collected the resources we earned from the fight. Not only did we get more Elder Cat Teeth (which aren’t actually a perfect bone) and another Overgrown Dewclaw again, we also drew the basic Perfect Bone!
We were all set to make the Tachyon Nodachi!

Is this just was mid/late-game PotSun feels like?
At least most of the time?
This feels like a campaign made for me! I can almost hear the Storm’s call!
That poor lope next year. It won’t know what hit it once were done with it.

But I will keep my insanity in check for now and instead focus again on my Vorfreude and Deno’s LP.

Just to mention it before I slink back into the shadows next to the Knowledge Worm waiting for my turn to get some nightmare-cuddles:
I do want to make dedicated posts for the Witches and Wanderers – and the GenCon stuff, but only after I got the things myself. And realistically that will be a while still!
Even if I get a surprise shipping label update – which I will let you know about – I will be out of town in a week for about a week. But I should be back right on time for the sale (depending on when it happens) – so that is something at least!

As always thank you very much for your time, beware the worm seeking cuddles!
Amathul