As I am writing this I just watched Deno beat up a Bullfrogdog and a Lvl 3 King in an alternate timeline (because Witches fight 3 is in LY26 and not 28 – interesting!) and am currently preparing this post for whenever you are seeing it.
Edit: Since this first write-up Deno has not only fought the Witches – an awesome encounter by the looks of it, and finished his campaign. Furthermore we also got word on the status of EU shipments from Adam himself: 2 of the 3 containers meant for the EU have had major port issues and thus fullfilment has suffered heavy delays. Clarity is nice and a bitch sometimes.

With that out of the way, we are going to get straight to the point and start this final regular hunt for Azure Pond without further delay.

Losing to a Phoenix Lvl3 after THAT hunt wasn’t exactly a shocking outcome, there were, however a few less then fortunate implications we would have to deal with this Lantern Year – just one more perk of Festival Season.
Ah, yeah – wooh!

First off: Celestine ceased to exist.
Or rather: who?
Which meant we didn’t get endeavors for her. Luckily the other 3 died by “normal” means. I will say, I have frequently played this wrong in the past I’m pretty sure, but I just now (as of playing this Lantern Year) checked the official FAQ on it. And the FAQ is pretty clear on the matter: no death principle for ceased to exist/exiled/left the settlement.
So we were going to get 7 endeavors in total this Lantern Year.

Then, we also lost our precious Bird Bread in that sudden Mudslide (basicHE55). MY delicious Bird Bread.. And we obviously did not defeat the monster, so we didn’t get any more Pustules either. So we wouldn’t be making the Sun Vestements or the Apostle Crown in this campaign unless I scrap my plans and go hunt another birb this year.
I was pretty committed to my initial plan at that point – committed to the bit if you will, and so I just stuck with it.
However – I was still able to remake the bread if I really wanted to.

But before we actually got to all that – it was random-settlement-event-time!
The Plant and the Stone.
Again.
Skrelle had payed us yet another visit. Again.
Joke’s on her though, we still couldn’t read!

But more importantly there was also our final story event marked on the timeline! The Final Gift!
Without the torrent of water gushing from the brightly shining mouth as we had come to expect over past Lantern Years, we knew things were about to change dramatically as The Sun had begun to glow red?!
3 coughs followed, the tiny Sunstalkers gathered below the maw in the sky. Hacking up chunks of phlegm and spittle, the last of the mucus was being expelled after an age of slumber and the survivors were stalked by a sinking feeling.
They all knew instinctively that The Sun would soon wake!
Muzashi was the one chosen to wade into the pool and collect the final gift bestowed unto us. He rolled a 3 and I went to check how many rerolls I still had in the settlement – I knew it should be something around 10-ish? (It was 11.) Getting an 8+ shouldn’t be that bad.
I rerolled the 3 into a 1, and back up to a 6. Maybe that was a sign. (It was a sign to not read the rules too hard. If you know you know.)
Heeding the superstitions of Muzashi I opted to take the God’s String and be happy.
This strange piece of viscera would give any bow below it in the gear grid Sharp and 1 additional range.

This event had left me feeling quite ominous and excited in a way. Still, I would be lying if I said that I was looking forward to the upcoming nemesis gauntlet. As we reached the develop step, I was already neck deep in putting the next team together.
And whilst a part of me wanted to remake the Bird Bread, I needed to check a few thing before that. There might be (definitely was) a better option. We had loads of bones and organs of monsters and very little hide in storage.
Considering my options, I chose to conduct a Harvest Ritual first and see if I couldn’t get a Perfect Bone.
So, I spent 3 Lion Claws, 4 Great Cat Bones and 1 Eye of Cat to draw 8 basic resources from the deck.
Whilst I did not get even a single extra hide, we were blessed with a Perfect Bone! And with that in hand, we made some Leather and built a Zanba.., I mean First Aid Kit which would replace the Bird Bread.

I also – FINALLY – chose to invest 3 Golden Whiskers from storage and an endeavor into Special Innovate: Pottery – something I really should have gotten a while ago.

Up next I spent one of the freshly drawn Monster Organs at the Sauna Shrine, and we rolled a 5 for the armor and STR-tokens bonus.

I also wanted to purify Phoenicia again this Lantern Year.
She had gained a second life-time by being reborn, so I figured I should make the best of it. A 9 would give her a stat of her choosing, which ended up being +1LCK, because who am I kidding?

I wanted to use the final endeavor left for innovating, but I wanted to be somewhat smart about it for a change so I would be using the 2 Love Juice before that (1 was still in storage, the other came from the Harvest Ritual).
Squobble and Phoenicia were chosen to drink both Love Juice, and from the first a healthy child was born with +1STR. Which also did draw us an additional card whilst innovating this year – I did it in the correct order for once!
Cecilia (a lot of names starting with the letter C in this settlement) was Tough (FA) as well.
The second Love Juice also led to a singular child, with yet 1 more extra card drawn during innovating.
Feather, as the younger sister, gained Ambidextrous (FA) and both their Life String were added to the storage.

We then used the final endeavor of the year to innovate. We were drawing 6 of the 7 cards still left in the deck.. and how unexpected – the 1 I wanted most was not a part of the choice.
Pictograph, Heart Flute, Storytelling, Bloodletting, Memento Mori or Face Painting.
From those options I took Storytelling for the simple reason that it increased our Survival Limit by 1. Together with Pottery (I) that put us up to a maximum of 10!

The Hunters:
Helios – green (Leather Armor, Lantern Sword)
Muzashi – green (Phoenix Armor, Wrought Tachi)
Vincent – red (Screaming Armor, Sonic Tomahawk)
Stardust – yellow (Rawhide Armor, Arc Bow)

Putting a team together for this year’s fight proved to be fairly difficult all in all, after the last Lantern Year, (my) morale hasn’t been the best ever since I lost Calys and it both felt equally bad to hunt a Lvl1 or 2.
Lvl1 felt too easy at this stage but coming from such a loss, Lvl2 felt too uncertain? At least for Lion God.
We are talking about one of the quarries most often considered to be “not worth” hunting at higher levels due to the askew set up of rewards for what you had to deal with. And I did want to at least successfully complete this hunt.
I could of course send out a full newbie squad to just have a look at the monster, but then they would get obliterated for sure, and I liked the sound of that plan even less.
*sighs*
You can call me lame but for the sake of the campaign, I ended up hunting a Lion God Lvl1. I was not going to lose Muzashi to a non-nemesis that I didn’t know very well.

Before we were allowed to leave, Helios and his 26 insanity had to pass the cuddle-inspection though: which he did on a 5.

The Huntphase:
“Not without my emotional support rock!”, Vincent yelled as he ran back home. He was very eager to trade in his Luck Charm for a Lovelorn Rock (basic HE80) as soon as we had left the settlement.
Cuddle-rocks for the children – the true Survival of the Fittest experience.
Not far along the path we followed suddenly a giant Sphinx started hurling insults at us. The survivors ignored the offensive.. creature (?) to the best of their abilities, which after a while had them laughing their asses off about the strange things it said.
Dry Lands (basic HE20) stretched out far and wide from this spot, and whilst we did suffer a little bit in the heat, we were bred for areas like this!
We did stumble upon an eerie valley soon after though. Something had seemingly punched gigantic holes into the earth, revealing massive Geodes hidden within. We gazed into the shifting patches of darkness of the tunnels below but I didn’t feel that comfortable descending into them – so we simply moved on.
Another chance at being Opportunists (basic HE44) presented itself shortly afterwards.
The last time I rolled this event I had openly wondered about when you would ever take this faustian bargain, well, I might just have found the time to do it. The survivors had quickly made up their minds to follow the smaller tracks into Overwhelming Darkness.

Between the oppressive sheets of pitch black, Helios saw the Nightmare Whale, Muzashi took the -1ACC from punching himself and both Vincent and Stardust turned into Leaders (FA).

And then we found the silly little critter.
Not too dissimilar to a regular White Lion.

Anyhow, 1/3 of its HP pools vanished in an instant.

With 10 of its initial 15 cards remaining, the smol Lion God attacked us with a Holy Utterance. (Greetings M’lady.) This had the survivors scatter wildly! The monster also revealed the next card of its deck: Crush – which did not have Relentless and thus was not played.
On Lvl2+ all Lion God cards gain Relentless via a trait, which pushed me further towards fighting a Lvl1 again.

If we wanted to safely attack the monster we needed to be in its blind spot. Muzashi, Overcharged and insane with 7MOV, positioned himself with dash and Charged in. He did get a Perfect Hit on his swing, lowering the monster’s ACC by 2.
Cool – a wound reaction that just bites your arm clean off.
Muzashi attacked and wounded the monster’s Petrified Shoulder Blade first, which had the Lion God run away in a straight line. The Large Stone Piller it trampled over crumbled and left a gaping Sinkhole behind.
For the rest of our turn the group merely moved around and into cover where they activated Block if able, whilst Stardust used her Rawhide Headband to look at the next 2 cards.

8 cards remaining, the monster played Ragdoll. The only survivor visible to the monster was Muzashi and he is thus chosen as the target of the card.
He quickly dashed out of harm’s way.

As initiative shifted back to the survivors again, Stardust dashed to get out of the Whiplash Zone, Overcharged and shot her bow.
It’s only then I realized she had no ACC bonuses, but luckily it still worked out. She hit the monster it with a 7 and just about got the wound in as well, but she had to take a bleed or the attack would have been canceled outright.

Oh my Feline Entity! What?!
Vincent slammed into the monster’s backside, but still caught a glimpse of its Expressionless Face shortly after impact, which scares him shitless.
And he ran.. straight into the Sinkhole?! He fell to his death!?
What is going on with Sinkholes and axes?!

Helios didn’t care.
He dashed into the blind spot, and Good Feline Entity, he had 5SPD with the sword. Jup. There’s a 1 ending his attack early.
Only Muzashi left, he Emboldened and Overcharged to Charge in with the Phoenix set. 3 hits, none perfect. The First Strike wound failed, giving the monster +2TGH. Unperturbed Muzashi crit the Petrified Ankle and wounded the Petrified Ribs as well. The latter had the monster spin around and knock him and Helios over.

3 cards remaining. Engorge. It wanted to feast on Helios!
Helios was a slippery one though, on 8+ he would only get hit once, which he dodged by rolling around on the floor.
The Relentless Lion God then said something else in its native tongue, another Holy Utterance. This did stand Helios and Muzashi up for us, and luckily the monster was done at that point.

With the usual 2 survival spent on Embolden and Overcharge, Muzashi Charged at the monster once more, keen to take out the last 3 cards in its deck. Only 2 hits were achieved, all far off from being perfect. Due to the Charge he would wound on 2+, so 3 wounds were easily inflicted. Unfortunately, the last hit sent the monster running away again, dragging Helios along for the ride.
This did functionally end our turn besides for Stardust and her Cat Eye Circlet. I was delighted to not see the trap within the next 3 hit location cards.

0 cards remaining- the Lion God was forced to use its basic action. Muzashi was just about in range, and used the flow to dash a few steps away as he had done before earlier.

Stardust shot the monster but missed before Muzashi Charged in for a 4th time. 2 hits, the first wound a critical.
The monster off balance, it was knocked backwards and died (?) next to the Sinkhole.

Sinkholes and axes.., they just don’t mix.
Another young member of the Axtolotl-clan dead, claimed by the limitless darkness below. This did remind me of the Bonk-clan in Bogstop a little, just that they all actually got to be masters of their art before they died very abruptly.

As for rewards:
Nobody aged, Stardust learned to be a bow specialist (I know I had left the card out next to the gear grids, but rest assured I did not use it) and we gained 4 basic resources and 1 Iron as a reward for this fight.
That’s a bunch of hide, wow.

With this fight behind us the normal hunting years for our People of the Sun settlement have officially ended, and the gauntlet would similarly begin the next Lantern Year.
All nemesis encounters all the time in the last few Lantern Years before the Sun finally awakens.

So far, so good. We’ve had a bit of a downward trajectory since that last Screaming Antelope, I do feel like. So we will have to see how far along the gauntlet we could make it in the upcoming Lantern Years.
At this point, as I was packing up the Lion God, I was feeling overly pessimistic about our chances to make it past the Lvl3’s coming up whilst writing this. Reflecting back on the hunts with this settlement, the showdowns never really were the issue to begin with as our damage was jist so solid all-a-round. Which would surely also carry over to the standard nemesis monsters. Not to forget we also still have a couple of decently strong survivors to work with – like Helios or Muzashi – even whilst we were fresh out of Warriors of the Sun after Gwynevere’s death to bird.
Our chances to get at least to the Hand should be pretty darn good!

But that will be all from my side of things.
As mentioned before I am currently out of town and only will be back by the end of the week. By then we might have had or are just about to get our monthly update – so unless it gets delayed into early September, expect that next.
In the meantime I will not have any fun at all while away as I am so caught up in waiting for the Witches.

As always, thank you very much for your time, go cuddle your nightmare worm!
Amathul