Here we are.. the big year.
I can’t quite put into words how I was feeling about going into this nemesis encounter, whether I was excited in a good or bad way, if you catch my meaning.
Overall the Pariah is a strong and durable opponent, who has a bag filled with mean tricks, all of which more sadistic and dare I say, thought-out, than what the Butcher typically brings to the table.

Buuut.. whilst there is no real telling of how this first fight against a new nemesis monster might play out, or what repercussions it might bring for me and/or the people of Bloody Shallows, I was prepared to fight tooth and nail.
Between a potential Sword Scab and a collection of 4 Founding Stones we could definitely deal some hefty amounts of damage regardless.
With all this firepower, this fight might actually turn out to be “forceable” even, as we could be looking at 7 of the Fiend’s 12 (13) wounds being basically guaranteed.

But I will have more than enough time to wallow in my pre-fight insecurities in a bit, first we needed to actually get home and not draw Clinging Mist.

***

After collecting 5 endeavors, we drew our single settlement event for the year: The Plant and the Stone.
This event was always a welcome one to draw, whether or not we could actually read at any given time we got it. This time I was readily accepting the departing bonus .. which I say as if I even had a choice..

But there is a little more to do! Just as we reached the develop step, Candy gained her Philosophy: Effervescence. Due to her neurosis, from this point onwards, Candy would always gain a random disorder on arrival. Whilst her Knowledge Reframe I, which did nothing on its own, was set to advance after she had gained 2 disorders.
We also continued her story, but the tale she told to the settlement was too much for us to fully comprehend – we just did not quite understand her. She lost a disposition at our puzzled apprehension and gained her first disorder for Reframe I: Secretive.. so.., good news/bad news I guess?
I do have to say, her disposition overall seems quit variable. She could have had anything between -2 and +4 already!

With that the time had come to do some proper developing!

At some point, I figured, I would be going to regret using all these Perfect Hides to innovate, but that day was yet to come.
Inner Lantern, Lantern Oven, Pictograph or Storytelling were my draws for this Lantern Year’s innovation.
I instantly knew which one definitely not to take, and also still no Hovel to pick.
Having Surge available was surely going to help the most with the fight to come, so I did what I had to and picked Inner Lantern.

I then used the Love Juice and Ellaine had yet another baby, the girl Flare.

Putting together the items that I wanted to craft, I really wanted to build a set of Bandages, but we just did not seem to have the spare hide.
In the end I built the Screaming Coat, Screaming Horns, Dried Acanthus, Brain Mint and Sword Scab (from the bits of the last unnamed male survivor from the First Day extra 8).

For the remaining endeavors we didn’t have that much to do with, so I spent 2 on Migi (Clutch Fighter FA) to age him up and give him the opportunity to get some club training going.
Afterwards I tried to augur with Hidari, which triggered intimacy once (1 & 6, picked the 6 – a boy called Scab – surely nothing bad could ever happen to him) and gave him 1 more survival for the upcoming fight.

And that was all we were able to do except preparing for the showdown.

The Chosen Defenders:
Frogdos – green (Rawhide Armor, Bone Blade, Sword Scab)
Migi – blue (Screaming bits, Bone Club)
Calys – red (Bone Axe)
Hidari – yellow (Frogdog bits, Maul Scab)

Hidari (+1STR) did trigger insight on departure, and he clutched up the roll!
This time I also remembered the seed pattern draw for a change: Tempered Spear.

For this fight we were not going to be risking Candy or Frogmagog, but Calys was ready to lead the charge against this cry-bully of a monster.
We were indeed bringing not only the 4 Founding Stones we had in storage but also the freshly made Sword Scab – and I was ready and willing to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the monster to see just how easy this might actually feel under these conditions.
This settlement had started off really well so far, and should we still somehow lose this, after trying to leverage all we had, we would have 12 people left anyhow, so I figured we were going to be fine either way.

At the time I felt like I was testing the waters against a new recurring foe – with the power of hindsight, I am not feeling so sure anymore.

And despite me writing all of this, both in my notes and reading it right now again.. I felt so VERY nervous setting up the monster.

As for traits the Pariah Lvl1 only has 2: Somatic Empathy and Somatic Static.
Somatic Empathy is the real meat of this fight: every time a monster AI card is revealed (i.e. via Rawhide Headband activation or other similar means of Foresight) the Somatic Empathy effects on them (the black “box”) afflict the revealer. The trait also forces the attacker to reveal all cards they have just wounded off after successful attack rolls. It should be mentioned that a card revealed by foresight will be revealed again upon wounding it off, doubling up on the effect.
Somatic Static on the other hand, collects tokens of the same name which can be spent to prevent the effects of Somatic Empathy.
Other than that the monster has 7MOV and a chunky 10TGH.

For our random terrain we drew Tall Grass and a Perfect Lantern.

Unga-bunga protects!

With 12 cards in the monster’s deck, the survivors got to go first.
Both Migi and Hidari gained a +1LCK-token for not having fought the Pariah Lvl1 yet via Beginner’s Luck (FA) and they were set up to start the fight for us.
Migi dashed in a little closer and Slam‘ed right into the side of the monster, applying a -1TGH-token to it for the rest of the turn.
Hidari followed quickly, hitting once, dealing a wound at the cost of a -1EVA-token being applied. Not done just yet, Hidari further followed that up with a surge, hitting twice, one of them perfect (1 of 3). He wounded once turning the -1EVA into a permanent stat! Yikes! And is then got knocked down by the Parry.

Frogdos felt like a hero for a moment as he rushed up to the monster, swinging the Bone Blade in wide arcs. He missed once but was determined to leave a mark on the fight. He surged only to have his weapon break against the Invincible Great Toe to no other effect!
A devastating turn for him and the group as a whole!
Finally Calys moved to the Perfect Lantern, and after some drawn out deliberation, she threw the first Founding Stone. The critical wound got her a token for Somatic Static and Somatic Empathy dealt a damage to her head, which she decided to take as there could be much worse effects in the deck she might eventually want to avoid.

9 cards remaining, Upon the Pyre was going to target the survivor with the most disorders in range, which was Frogdos.
At 3DMG per hit, Frogdos dodged the body blow and took the damage to his hands.
A lucky draw, considering the Pariah went after our only fully armored survivor!

Hidari started our new line of attack, wounding once after another Perfect Hit (2/3), before the monster moved away towards Calys. Migi had to dash to not get run over, but from his new position he was able to attack again as soon as the Pariah came to a stop.
He failed his first wound attempt, gained Joyless (can no longer surge) and +1 understanding from a Glimpse, but at least the second hit wounded, turning his +1LCK-token negativ. Outch!

Calys then dashed around the monster, truly going that extra mile, hitting it twice. She did also wound it once but with a sly grin she couldn’t help but to start laughing maniacally as she crashed to the floor.
The hit location deck was still quite full (a little over half was left at the time), and Frogdos was so callous to throw his founding stone as well.
He hit the Bloodstained Blindfold, and as the burned-out eye sockets were revealed to him (a bit of lore!), in addition to the wound he dealt, he lost an eye but gained an Iron Will (cannot be knocked down, all knock back is 1) unlike any other!
And, oh no, the card we wounded off put itself into play!?
With Cyclopean Singularity in play, the Pariah was going to gain positive copies of all negative attribute tokens any survivor gained from this point onwards! What a rough card to have to deal with!
If it weren’t for Iron Will that would have been a truly terrible stone! Had the monster played it by itself, it would have not only eaten a turn, but we would also have been able to save a Founding Stone.

5 (6) cards left in the deck, the Pariah was getting frustrated at our continued will to fight back against its devious antics – it Lash[ed] Out against Calys.
The attack was going to trigger an additional basic if it dealt no damage so she felt compelled to try and just tank the damage.
But it hit her only once, and in the head of all places? I’d rather avoid the severe with her, so she dodged the hit and was in for another activation. The basic hit her body hard but she only suffered a heavy wound.
Unga-bunga protects!

Hidari stepped up to the monster and under the gaze of the Feline Entity wounded it yet again (he had to surge though).

Calys dashed and ran to the best of her ability, attacking from the Pariah’s blind spot to actually wound the monster! She did spend her Somatic Static token to not have it gain +1EVA.
Foolhardy, she surged as well, but her will failed her which got her brutally punted, breaking a rib (chest severe).

3 (4) cards left, Upon the Pyre was drawn again, this time it would target Calys. With her being frenzied now as well because of the severe injury and Rageholic (D), things weren’t exactly looking great!
With another questionable – but very optimistic – play, Hidari surged to throw his Founding Stone during the flow. The resulting wound inflicted arm damage back at Hidari but he didn’t care too much about that. The crit spread Somatic Static throughout the survivors as the monster approached Calys, shoving Migi out of the way. On 6+ it hit her only once, for 5 damage though!
That was another severe – this time to her legs. But she rolled a lucky 10!
Of course, this still frenzied her.

The end was in sight, Frogdos moved (dashed) to the Pariah’s side and swung the cumbersome Sword Scab straight at its face!
He found the hit against the Bloodstained Tresses with an 8 from the Monster’s blind spot – that just about worked out.
Anything but a 1 would be the “kill” – the first time the dice jumped right off the table – the second roll came up to be a 4!
And he could even prevent Joyless with Somatic Static!

As for rewards we got 1 hunt xp and 1 weapon proficiency point each, beyond that we fought hard for the privilege of having prevented the Twisted Games settlement event for this campaign.

***

So yeah .. I did kinda blitz him, didn’t I?
I do feel confident in saying that this is likely not going to reflect the average Pariah experience, but I am not going to lie – I did feel tremendous relief upon defeating it.. even if we brought out the shotgun to do so.

Wound-wise this was a fairly breezy encounter with the set-up we had going for us. But I did bring some of the best possible weapons along to begin with.
All in all, we added 5 extra wounds to the monster from semi-guaranteed sources.
Speaking of which: Somatic Empathy does give the wounding quite the foul aftertaste. It is inflicting mental damage on the player in a sense. Or at least it has been doing so to me.

As far as damage taken goes, I’d say we also didn’t suffer too badly, despite us missing the SotF extra EVA. Of course, with KD:M being a risk-management game a lot of the time, mainly because of the central roll the dice hold during gameplay, cutting down so severely on the amount of turns/AI-draws for the monster will do that.

***

All in all I would say my Luck-vampire abilities have carried me through yet another tough encounter! I am sorry to all the people I played games with recently who will once again suffer from dice-based misfortunes for the foreseeable future.

I’m trying really hard to find something else that is insightful to add, but I am drawing a blank. I’m just glad I won, I guess.

For now, this will be all. It will be a while before the Pariah challenges us again, but between thinking about hunting Lvl2 Frogdogs and the awaited arrival of Braal there are a few things we have to deal with in the upcoming Lantern Years.

***

In totally different news, last weekend I finished another PotSun settlement, which was another beautiful collection of highs and lows – featuring some great DBK hunts.., until a Lvl2 beetle absolutely rinsed the group of your best survivors – including 2 Warriors of the Sun, which led us to actually lose the King’s Man Lvl2 fight in the year afterwards!
Luckily we had an Hour’s Ring and could reset to try again. (*Somewhere, in the distance, Gnostin is raging away*)
Somehow we managed to make it all the way to the Great Devourer afterwards. One of my survivors had to tank the 10 damage from the Hand’s Respect to their waist to get there – but it didn’t even break their armor – ridiculous! .. And for some reason Sunstalkers keep disemboweling my survivors!
We did fell the Sun though and thus another reproduction cycle had been successfully (?) completed.

I just really like the different feel of the PotSun campaigns and it is currently my overall favorite one. But I also get why it’s not for everyone and that I am in the vast minority here. I do also have to say that it is a little sad how you just can’t really add any of the newer nemesis expansions to it.
Of course, it’s not so much that you “can’t”, but you would be missing out on most of what these expansions actually bring to the table. And from the older ones? Well, Lion Knight and Slenderman seem like such liabilities. I can’t really speak on Manhunter.

I am also still waiting on my orders from Black Friday to ship – I’m just shouting this out into the aether again, as that does tend to work; and I am considering what else to write about besides Bloody Shallows.
Whilst I do want to push this campaign a bit, there are a few things I still would like to go into a little more deeply – like the Wanderers Goth, Candy and/or the Drifter, the Abyssal Woods, the Red Witches or what I would call “copper vs resin”. Once my BF stuff gets here, I would also like to spotlight the PotSun-line of White Boxes.
But those ideas are still being workshopped.

As always, thank you very much for your time, just keep in mind that a shotgun beats Pariah.
Amathul