Azure Pond was a vibrant place with a basic-ass name filled with the spoils we gained from exploding lions and lopes and the odd Phoenix from time to time.
We had a weird worm-pet, strong oral traditions and a host of powerful survivors yet whilst never truly breaching the heavens.

I had a great time with Azure Pond for my first experience with the PotSun campaign, and right now, this might be recency-bias talking, I think I might actually like this campaign the most of the OG 3.
I will say, I probably wouldn’t stick to strictly Core quarries when playing this again, but I am for sure trying to get the Sun White Boxes this year for Black Friday. After that I will be mixing and matching I presume with the help of both the alternate crafting recipes for the Sun-specific items and the alternate armor sets from the White Boxes.
Over the 25 Lantern Years in Azure Pond’s recorded history we hunted 7 White Lions, 6 Screaming Antelope, 5 Phoenixes and 2 Lion Gods. We also faced off against our allotted 2 King’s Men, the Butcher and the Hand before the Sunstalker finally descended and had us question all our convictions.
We saw several weapon masters throughout the settlement, making all survivors proficient in the usage of axes (my beloved), swords and bows. Once again, non of the masters themselves made it to the final fight, but Azure Pond profited greatly from these weapon specs all the way to the very end!

As for Settlement Events:
Rivalry: 1
Skull Eater: 1
Heat Wave: 2
Plague: 2
Haunted: 2
Nickname: 1
Acid Storm: 2
Clinging Mist: 1
Murder: 2
Stranger in the Dark: 4
Open Maw: 1
Triathlon of Death: 1
The Plant and the Stone: 3
Lights in the Sky: 1

A lot of Strangers came to visit Azure Pond, I’m sure Skrelle also kinda counts for those. The 2 Murders left definite marks on this settlement killing off two very prolific individuals – our first settlement leader as well as my axe master, whilst we always knew when festival season was about to begin – because typically a Plague hit.
Of course, I shouldn’t be complaining about these events too much as I managed to get Lantern Sword from Open Maw – that was incredible (and will likely never happen again)!
All in all, another decent timeline, in my opinion.

So, how many elephants do we have to talk about this time?
I don’t think there is anything quite as noticeable to go over like Wrath or the missing DBKs in Bogstop, but I figured I’d address a few things anyhow.

First elephant: conservative play (or playing overly scared).
In somewhat stark contrast to “unga-bunga-protects” I do tend to chose the easier fights and usually I am (overly) panic-y beforehand. Especially in a new campaign or with new quarries, that is just bound to happen with me. I do get that this can be quite annoying and in that sense I feel the need to apologize. What can I say? I do like to win my fights. I know I’m not a Deno from my playstyle, though I’ve sure had some Deno-worthy moments here and there in regards to my luck pulling through.
Taking Azure Pond as an example: I could have definitely gone up in quarry levels earlier, especially for the lions and lopes, or have hunted a Lion God Lvl2 at the very least, considering how high our damage output generally was. Essentially: we could have definitely been pushing for CC rewards with these survivors.

Is this an elephant: babies?
I should have had more babies in the settlement. I got a bit of book-keeping-fatigue after a while, especially as each child was born with 4 or 5 different buffs or rolls, only to never be used ever, but I guess I should have just powered through. In the end that is the way to getting Warriors of the Sun – the most powerful assets of the settlement, which I had fairly little interaction with in this first campaign.

Half an elephant: mistakes and misplays.
I don’t think there were any overly game-breaking mistakes during this campaign, except for maybe one. I have alluded to this in a lot of my write-ups over the last few weeks but to spell it out for real this time: a die roll that has had a reroll spent on (i.e. a lifetime reroll) cannot be rerolled again.
I don’t quite know how to handle this ruling as of right now, though I understand where this is coming from. Typically though, I believe the rerolls spent on the same roll will be missing elsewhere at some point down the line. But the rational is of course, that forcing a much more important roll right now to go your way is a lot more powerful for the settlement in many cases. Of course in a set-up with a lot of children around (like your typical PotSun campaign wants to be) this turns into being even more of a factor to consider.
As for misplays, losing the Phoenix Armor to Respect was the big one, but I am still happy with it because of the cinematic moment it gave us – and that is what matters most to me by far.
I still have no clue if it was good or bad that the Knowledge Worm just wanted cuddles. And I also don’t know how I got it into my head that the Tachyon Nodachi had frail – it doesn’t.

Next elephant: readability and length.
Overall I think the gear grids and their matching colored rings mostly worked well for what I wanted to achieve. It has added more glare to the set-up, mainly due to the overhead lamp in that part of the room. I have also been starting to sleeve certain cards in my collections (For some reason my Hovel card got beat up? Due to being shuffled more often?), which introduces further glare going forward. Together with overexposure on a lot of the white cards, I have to say that I am still figuring this part out. And I will have to put together a work around of sorts for Season 3 in any case. This feels like I need a third table.
Reducing the amount of pictures by having all wound rolls in a single one did help with general bloat, I’d say.
As for the text/writing it is still a bit too much and too often too uninspired to keep attentions hooked during the fight. That is something to work on as well. Overall I’d like to stay at a mix of storytelling and play-by-play.

Again, I had a great time with this campaign and the more free-form nature of the 20 hunts leading up to the nemesis gauntlet was a nice change of pace from the typical progression checks of the other campaigns.
My favorite moment was easily the ending to the Hand fight, though the final fight was also great from a story perspective.

And with that I think the time has come to close the book on Azure Pond and move on to other endeavors as we shelve it next to Bogstop.
As a member of the pre-order group I am still waiting on being able to send my Witches and Wanderers in the Dark Treasury. To be honest, at this stage, considering I will be away for almost 2 weeks at the start of October, I will probably have it shipped after I get back. (Unless it changes in like the next 2 days? Do your thing universe!)

As you may know I have also been spending a good amount of time painting. I finished my Phoenix, Flower Knight and a bunch of survivor minis. Currently I am working on my DBK trying out a colorshift paint. We will see how well the camera picks that up, but it looks great in person!

I have mentioned Season 3 a couple of times at this point and I am set on doing a PotLantern campaign with all we currently have available for Inverted Mountain – Halfway up the Mountain!
Rounding out the quarries I am looking at sensible alternatives, like Spidicules (spiders like high areas), Dragon King (the citadel hunted them) and Dung Beetle Knight (rolling stuff up that hill). None of those are final yet. I will also be adding a Wanderer, but I’m not sure which one yet – depending on which ones I have available (it’s complicated) maybe Candy.
I am itching to get that campaign going, with nothing to be done but wait for the pre-order.

After having written all of that, I know I will have to bridge a bit of a gap before the next settlement can kick off.
I do have some rough cliff notes on my attempt at the Squire campaign, and what can I say, when I started on that fateful day, I did not expect to get anywhere close to where I ended up at. It was great! Not illuminating, but great!
Look for that as the next post on the site.

Things took a bit of a rough turn this week as I got hit with what I have determined to be something akin to turbo-migraine. That put a bit of a damper in the last couple of days. But its better now.

And there you have it, the end of Azure Pond and a quick look ahead.
As always, thank you very much for your time, I do hope you are having a good day and your Witches and Wanderers are already with you. Will we ever find out what it is about lightless pits that attracts students of the way of the axe?
Amathul