I was hoping to be able to bear some better news this week, but sadly it seems things aren’t progressing quite as smoothly as we all had hoped for with the Screaming God and Core reprints and their fulfillment.. at least when it comes to the EU.
Or at the very least it seems like it once again my own region that causes the delay.

For what it’s worth, this should be considered speculation, but:
Whilst we still do not have any official statement beyond the most recent end-of-month update; which mentioned the core reprints stuck in customs at the time; there have been some comments grazing the issue of what might be going on from a team member over on discord. And those hints, combined with a little sleuthing, give the distinct impression of the items in question still being stuck with customs.
I am also starting to think that my Forge Priest box might have also been on that boat.

It would be a common EU L.

If it’s not the warehouse, its customs.
But with all my whining, at this stage it is still fair to assume that fulfillment will start this month despite these delays, if possibly not in all regions simultaneously.

Come on universe – do your thing! Give us our screaming goat fulfillment!

In the meantime, as the wait continues, we are going to be looking at a Black Knight Lvl2 fight today. I have also been getting some more painting done – in fact, I have took stock of my model collection and my painting backlog for KD:M for the first time.
Once I hit 100 models painted I want to take the time to give a more detailed update on my collection – and what can I say – I’m not actually that far off from that milestone.
But let’s deal with the doggo first.

***

With the Pariah driven off into the darkness and Candy’s death we have not only just lost 2 innovations but a very good dagger as well.
And as for endeavors we were not looking particularly great either for the year: we were set up to gain 3 (Cooking (I), 12 pop and PTSD on our Tinker) and lost 1 as a result of the Pariah fight for a total of .. 2.

And then there was the random settlement event as well:
Murder.
Wow. Awesome.
If those were the urges the Pariah had held back within us, maybe it wasn’t the bad guy after all. Looking at our options, it would always end up with Emerald being the victim, and she could either get murdered by Lucky or Flare.
After only a little bit of time spent on deliberating, Flare was banished for her crime and we harvested a Broken Lantern from Emerald’s dead body.
More worryingly though: we were down to 10 population, which did not exactly fill me with confidence.

And then the Bell Tolled.
Frogdos was nominated for having the highest understanding, whilst Sapphire had the highest courage amongst the settlement. Frogdos suffered hamstrung as Sapphire was positively glowing confidence.
That’s Iron Will definitely gone.

With events out of the way, we had basically just lost our 3 best survivors in short succession (counting Candy last year).
Ouch!
We also had no means of replacing the lost Sharpened Heel immediately as we didn’t have nearly enough bones to even consider building the Weapon Crafter and a maybe a Scrap Dagger.., which would be a questionable option to begin with.

Focusing back onto things we could actually try and do something about this Lantern Year I turned to augury.
We needed to counteract our settlement slowly dying out, so we desperately needed some more babies. Needless to say, I spent both endeavors we had on augury with Lucky. He gained 1 survival before he did manage to trigger intimacy after all. And he rolled a 1 and a 10.
I mean, let’s be honest, this wasn’t much of a choice to make – we got a savior to play with!
Lucky as the father started the Claw family to pass on 1 point of katar spec to young Indigo – our blue savior.

The Chosen Warriors:
Indigo – purple (Dragon Armor, Beast Knuckles)
Sapphire – blue (Black&Red Armor, Hyperelastic Sword)
Lucky – red (Leather Armor, Piercing Claws)
Flatfish – yellow (Screaming Armor, Bone Club)

Taking the Black&Red Armor to the Black Knight didn’t feel great, but its not like we had an alternative ready to go. And I had some hope that the extra +2EVA and the ability to negate an additional hit via the -1ACC-token could prevent the worst of it.
You can’t get Smash‘d if you don’t get hit! Sounds easy enough, right?

The Mountain Ascent didn’t do much, as per usual, leaving Indigo and Sapphire suffering from Ptophobia (brain damage on knockback sounded pretty bad here, admittedly), whilst Lucky was freezing his butt off – nothing a hearty tune and Song of the Brave (I) couldn’t fix though.

Besides a couple of additional cards in its AI deck, the Black Knight Lvl2 only gets +1DMG in stats, but +6TGH and +1ACC in tokens.
There is also 1 new trait: Unsteady. This trait prevents survivors from spending survival whilst on Rubble terrain.
As far as my personal experience goes, this does sound a lot worse than it is most of the time.

16 cards in the AI deck, as with most nemesis fights, the survivors got to act first.
For our first activation, Sapphire quickly removed a +1TGH-token by activating the Bell Altar and moved over the resulting Rubble and out of the potential knockback zone.
Lucky activated next, he was right in front of the monster and ready for a fist fight – surprisingly he only managed to hit the monster once (on 4+) so no other token was removed as the first wound of the fight got dealt.
Indigo spent her turn revealing the 2 tiles behind us before Flatfish dashed into range to Slam into the monster, dealing 1 more wound against its Unarmored Paw.

14 cards and +5TGH remaining, the monster drew Fetch. The Black Knight picked Lucky as the target, taking a step forward, Flatfish got pushed out of the way – flung all the way to the edge of the citadel – before the actual attack hit Lucky hard, knocking him back through a pot. To make matters worse, the Black Knight’s canine instincts got the better of it as it rushed after him for a follow up strike.
Lucky’s armor had been torn up pretty badly already after this very first line of attack.

We started our 2nd turn with Sapphire removing another +1TGH token, before Lucky saw another chance to attack.
Hitting twice was still not enough to remove further tokens, and was honestly quite disappointing overall – not to mention that he only wounded once on top of that!
Noting her father’s failure to deal wounds, Indigo deemed it necessary to attack as well time, with a dash and a Leap, she added 1 more wound to the wound stack before getting parried.

12 cards and +4TGH left, Chase Down came off the top of the deck – the monster went after Flatfish!
The hits took out a large chunk of his armor, but none of this bookkeeping was meant to matter. He was carried to the closest statue and smashed into it, getting flung into another Elastomer obstacle diverting him straight over the edge of the map.
At -4 he fell to his death with a scream and a sudden drop.
Flatfish – a prophetic name, as it turned out.

After having just lost a compatriot, Lucky was presented with the Black Knight’s blindspot and whilst the fury he felt managed to finally remove the ACC-token on the attack, he got a glimpse into the monster’s helmet and couldn’t help but run away! He wasn’t brave enough to face the truth of our foe!
Indigo made use of Leap again, jumping at the monster, dealing not only 2 crits but also limiting the Black Knight’s SPD for a round.
Sapphire was also ready to take the chance and strike, hitting twice, dealing a wound before the monster turned towards her and ran her over.
We subsequently encouraged Sapphire and she surged, to exactly the same effect: a wound had the monster tun around and sent her sprawling again.

8 cards left in the deck and +4TGH. An Untrained Slice was aimed square at Indigo, which just flat out missed thanks to the massively lowered SPD of the monster this round!

As Sapphire got up again, she spent her turn to dash over to the newly revealed Bell Altar and used it to remove another token – a tried and true tactic at this point!
Lucky, once again failed to hit enough times to get rid of a token, did manage to find 2 wounds this time at least.
Finally, Indigo took a moment to consider her options, especially with how slim the Hit Location deck had already gotten, but I was not quite at the stage to truly consider other tactics than unga-bunga. She hit only once after a dash/leap for yet another wound.

5 cards left in the deck, +3TGH, the damage was piling on and the monster resorted to an Overhead Slash.
The Black Knight was set to target Indigo again, which somehow rolled another 1 and 10, missing the first hit, leaving her open to dodge to second!
But the doggo wasn’t quite done just yet – she did get flung into a corner of the board by the following basic attack’s Smash, with the monster stepping over to get the perfect angle.

Hoping to trigger the trap instead of Lucky, Sapphire moved back up to the monster and attacked for a change. Missing any and all hits at first, she spent her last survival to surge, and as I had intended to, she did indeed hit the trap.
There was a mistake on my part here in this line of play: I was thinking the trap would trigger an actual basic attack (ending up causing another Smash) and not just be an attack profile with an added 8 knockback.
The monster hit her twice, despite 7+ to hit and she shot off into the distance, her Black&Red Armor worsening the impact noticeably.
Hitting not only 1 but 2 statues on her way across the board, she was flung off the edge after her U-turn with a terrible -6 modifier – but she pulled through for us and rolled a perfect Lantern 10 to save herself from the same fate as Flatfish! Nimbly she caught a hold of the edge and pulled herself back up into the arena!

Lucky was quick to use the reshuffled hit locations as an opening to swing, but he just couldn’t find the hits – again only one connected and he got the claws caught in the monster’s Tattered Cape of all things!?
Finally Indigo could get just close enough to Leap in, hitting hard and knocking the monster over as it lost its footing by stumbling into Rubble!

3 cards left, +3TGH, another Untrained Slice was aimed at Indigo.
This time she was hit twice, and whilst dodging the hit to her chest did prevent her from suffering a severe injury, but the arm damage was still a heavy wound that knocked her over – followed by the knockback which caused a brain trauma (Danger Seizure – Battle Drunk, 5 insanity and 1 dmg to her legs).

The end was in sight at this point!
Sapphire made her way along the back of the board towards the Bell Altar right on the edge. It felt safer to keep her out of harms way at this point.
Lucky spent the survival to encourage Indigo before he went in to attack: 3 hits were enough to remove 1 additional +1TGH-token for a change! He did not draw the trap, so that was a good start for the team! And the first wound turned out to be a crit as well – giving him the opportunity to spend 1 survival to knock the Black Knight down, which he did without a second thought. The next wound failed, but without reactions it mattered little, before he got the third one in, paving the way for his daughter.
Indigo could end this fight right here!
She leapt in and hit twice! 9STR vs 12TGH! 2 5s rolled – that’s it!

The monster yelped in sudden pain and bounded off on all fours into the darkness of the surrounding ruined Citadel, its thirst for battle sated for the time being.

My 3 remaining survivors steadied themselves before they started exploring the Darkened Workshop in search for any scraps left behind that they could take back home.

Indigo aged (+1ACC), whilst her father, Lucky finally reached Katar specialist. Our Bell of Challenge (I) back home also got upgraded again, further improving the benefits of departing with Honorable (D)!
As we then moved into the Darkened Workshop we did high-roll our rewards as well! 10+2 did allow us to take not only the remaining Earl set patterns and 5 basic resources (Sapphire had 5 understanding) but thanks to the Bell Tolls event, Sapphire also got to take the Count Wrappings pattern (randomly drawn) back home for surviving the encounter!

3 organs was quite the bounty by our standards as well!

***

And here we are, with the Black Knight Lvl2 defeated we are at a bit of a stopping point for now.
I am starting to regret having changed my plans for Season 3 from DBK to Screaming God a little, but I also just want to play the new Node 4 quarry at this point. So, as mentioned before, I will putting Season 3 on a sort of hiatus at this point, until we at least get to know when the Screaming God and its stampede get introduced into campaigns.
Once we know that much I will be continuing this campaign up to that point.
In any case, no matter when the new monster actually arrives in a gameplay sense, we are looking at one more quarry hunt for Lantern Year 18 before the Red Witches return in the Lantern Year after.

As for the upcoming quarry hunt, there are a few things we could consider. Trying to push for a Frogdog Lvl3 and get an indom resource/weapon could be good for us, the Mammoth Leaf terrain should help us with wounding the monster quite a bit. Or we could go for a nuclear weapon of some variety and hunt either another Dragon King or attempt a Nukealope again.
And then there is of course also the chance that Screaming God could come in at Lantern Year 18.

But, until we actually hear about the screaming goat, I will likely still have some time to consider these options. For now I will leave you with 2 images of my work-in-progress Pariah Lvl3.

I tried to keep my regular and inverted Pariah versions similar color-wise whilst also pushing some of the Rebis-aspects of their design, like switching hair colors or mask materials.

But that is going to be all for today.
As always, thank you very much for your time, don’t mind me, just shouting into the Aether for a bit. Come on universe – do your thing! Release the Screaming God from EU customs!
Amathul