With the Watcher defeated and the settlement plunged into a sudden relentless darkness, the game wasn’t quite ready to let us off the hook just yet.
The Red Witches were coming.
And unlike other Node 2 Nemesis monsters, Seer was not willing to give us a Lantern Year or 2 to breathe after we had stalled fighting against our Watcher all the way into Lantern Year 25 to get more Screaming God hunts in.
They were almost here!

But, first things first: we returned into our darkened home and gained 6 endeavors (4 returning survivors, Cooking (I) and 12 population).
For our random event the settlement turned to another Hunt Reenactment.
I groaned a little and chose for Goldenglow and Frogdos to take the stage. Reenacting yet another Screaming God fight the settlement was roused and whoever we chose to depart, they would all have maximum survival upon departure.
Against Nico I’m sure we were going to need it!

But just as we were feeling the safest, the Red Cannon arrived.
The arrow shot from nowhere killed 2 before it pinned them (Frogdos and Star) neatly to a standing stone pillar in the middle of our settlement.
Seer had made her presence known.

With this event over we now knew that we were looking at a potential loss of 8 population over the course of the Red Witches Lvl3 encounter and that just meant one thing for us: that we needed more babies!
After getting rudimentary gear grids set up including a lantern in each, I spent my first endeavor to activate Shrine – a Lantern 10 for +1 armor.

And then the augury marathon began.
People had all kinds of questions for the Feline Entity and the answer usually was: silence.
1st roll – a 2 – +1 understanding for Goldenglow.. at the cost of a Monster Hide (which had come from Frogdos).
2nd roll – a 3 – +1 understanding for Goldenglow.. at the cost of another Monster Hide.
3rd roll – a 3 – +1 understanding for Goldenglow.. at the cost of a Monster Hide.
4th roll – a 2 – +1 understanding for Goldenglow.. at the cost of a Monster Bone. That triggered White Secret for her.
She got Traumatized (D) and 1 insanity from the event as well as the coveted Ageless.

Okay.., what in the name of the Feline Entity’s going on?
That was the 5th 1 or 2 in a row?!

An incredible line of rolls honestly, it’s just unfortunate that it wasn’t at all what we wanted or needed!? After that, Seer was set up to just explode her on first contact! Or, even if I opted to not bring her along for the fight, she’s just going to get indoctrinated into the cult if we lose!

The final roll for augury was a 4 – +1 survival.

Wow.

Just wow.

The Chosen Defenders:
Frogfish – blue (Piercing Claws, Dragon Armor)
Purple – purple (Black Armor, Hyperelastic Sword)
Hope – red (Alpha bits, Vandal Broadaxe)
Goldenglow – yellow (Leather Armor, Vandal Sledge)

So, yeah, this was a risky set up.
I was hoping that Goldenglow and Hope could take out Nico in one turn and then move on to do something similar to Braal as well the turn after. These 2 represented most of our damage and especially Goldenglow was our strongest survivor by a decent margin.
It all really came down to Seer and how her AI cards would play out. If we were able to keep Goldenglow away from Seer, I saw a chance that this might just work out fine, but I was (and am) well aware of the fact that Goldenglow was rigged to explode as soon as Seer gave her any amount of attention.., which, to be fair, would happen eventually!
Overall: if we managed to “Deno” this fight, we had a decent chance of being fine! And if we ended up losing the fight, Goldenglow would have at least had had a chance to fight back and not just disappear into the Aether at the side of Sapphire.

Now.., I do have to acknowledge that there was a significant oversight with this plan. Nothing that had an influence on the fight per se, but yeah.. I just felt it needed to be mentioned.
You’ll see by the end.

As you might have guessed at this point, for the third Red Witches fight Seer joins the fray.
In her presence any understanding gained beyond the final box on the survivor’s sheet will result in the Head Explosion severe injury, which can not be prevented for any reason – this is the Red Secret trait.
She does also have her own Life trait – set to 6 – with slightly different rules to it: she cannot be reduced to 0 Life whilst any of her two blood bags, Braal or Nico remain on the showdown board.

Due to Seer’s presence both Braal and Nico will also fight a little harder, each gaining the typical +2/+2 buffs you would come to expect from a Lvl3 encounter. Otherwise their stats remain unchanged with 10 Life/11TGH and 8 Life/13TGH respectively. Seer has 17TGH.
Seer is also unique in that she does not have a blind spot!

As we began our turn, Hope was the most insane survivor (at 20) and all members of the group got +1MOV whilst she remained the boss! But much more importantly: her Frogdoggles were activated.

Unfortunately, this was going to spread the Vault Key Secret Fighting Art to all survivors coming after her, as the Frogdoggles had revealed Sanguine Awakening as Seer’s AI card. This likely meant that we needed to try and wound Seer to discard this card before it could resolve.

Hope immediately rushed towards Nico and her revealed Parry hit location. She hit the Red Witch twice from the side, deadly 3 already active. A 7 secured both the crit and 2 wounds, with the 2nd hit also turning into a wound afterwards. Unfortunately she took a severe injury to the legs on Nico’s reflex, which was hard coded to deal 2 bleed instead of being random.
Frogfish activated next and he was burdened with Vault Key (SFA) for doing so. Having 3 extra slots reserved for Secret Fighting Arts was overall an amazing ability, admittedly, but taking 1DMG to each hit location for each understanding you gained was plainly horrifying.., especially in this fight. Frogfish encouraged Hope (Braal’s trait Discouraging Presence still limits encourage timings to “during their own act” only), who surged despite no longer having deadly 3.., but she missed all her swings so it didn’t matter.
To get rid of the duration card, Frogfish dashed and leapt at Seer, hoping to disrupt her chanting. He swung only 1 of his Piercing Claws, and managed to get 2 hits this way. Sadly he was not proficient enough to cancel reflexes, so whilst he managed to discard the duration card, Seer vanished into her cloak, whispering a secret towards him.

Frogfish had a moment of insight (+3 insanity/survival) and Seer was replaced by Nico. Frogfish was then also targeted by a 6SPD basic attack, which luckily only hit 3 times on the 4+. Each hit dealt 5DMG though, which meant he had had just suffered a severe head injury – oh no!
A clean roll of 10 (stopped by Braal on the board) got Nico that tooth back that she had lost the last time she had visited the Bloody Shallows.

Finally it was time for the main event: Goldenglow moved up to Nico’s blind spot and she hit her hard for 2 more wounds in a single strike. But the impish Red Witch disappeared into her cloak as well. She switched with Seer, knowing full-well what she was doing and the worst was about to happen.
Seer strode away from the fight and shot her mystic bow. She hit (with a 5) and Goldenglow was pierced by the infinitely wound arrow. Goldenglow gained Vault Key (SFA) but it mattered little – the 2 understanding that followed were too much for her to bear. Her head exploded and the former outcast died.

But there was no point in giving up just yet!
Purple moved (and dashed) over to Nico to swing at her for 2 more hits. She saw a chance in cancelling the upcoming swap by knocking Nico down .. but the swap .. it wasn’t a reflex! Nico vanished into the fabric anyhow. With a mocking smile she switched with her bestest buddy Braal who was already slathering for a fight.., but Purple who would only get hit on 10s by her, was too much for muscle laden witch. Braal missed each and every swing.

Braal (10), Nico (2) & Seer (5) – all three Red Witches remained in the board and we were in for their first round of actions.
Braal started us off with a Meteoric Bellow. The random threat chosen was Purple, which gave Hope a chance to dash out of the deafening Synchronic Attack zone. 8+ to hit was low enough for 1 hit to sneak through Purples defenses and she took 10DMG to her legs! Just like that she had to suffer a severe injury.. and the leg came clean off! Dismembered leg (4) – she was down to a single point of MOV!

Inspired by the happenings, Nico began telling a story – of the Man with the Golden Back. The closest survivor to Nico was also Purple. And whilst she did survive the additional bleeding token, she did not understand the story, which in turn had Nico draw another AI card. Horrifying Shot was played as well, hitting Purple twice more (9+) taking out all the armor of her body and arms. Flee was triggered and I forgot about the +4 knockback from the shoes in the picture.

And finally Seer’s card: Coordinated Assault targeted Purple yet again! Seer shot at her arm.., which came off clean as well .. and she had a moment of forlorn insight (+3 insanity/survival), before Braal came stomping over and Nico shot her once more for good measure.

2 body severes were dealt this way, rupturing Purple’s spleen, killing her from excessive bleed.

As Frogfish got up, Hope activated first again, revealing all AI and HL cards, including Meteoric Warrior. So, at least part of the plan for this round had become obvious: we needed to stay away from Braal.
Hope moved over to Nico and struck her in the back with the active Vandal Broadaxe. She could chose between 2 parries and opted for the one granting 3 survival upon successfully landing a crit. After spending 1 survival for the extra +1LCK, the savage weapon quickly sent Nico running home with 2 wounds dealt at the same time.
Looking at Seer’s revealed hit location I doubted that Frogfish should attack into that, so with his 8MOV, he was able to just get into position to leap at the Red Initiate Nico had switched with as she had fled and he made short work of them by rolling a 9 to wound (for a total of 21 vs 13TGH).

Braal (10) & Seer (5) remained on the board and we knew Braal was headed straight for a spout of depression.
Meteoric Warrior was played, did not find a target and applied -1TGH to the melee witch.
Seer’s Transposing Shot would make things more tricky though. She swapped with Braal, and shot at Hope, who still had 0 understanding. Hitting only twice, she dealt 2DMG per hit.

Whilst dealing damage to Seer too early doesn’t really matter as long as you could not k.o. her, Braal was just too far away from us. So Frogfish dashed to the supposedly blind witch (I know she isn’t) and leapt at her, finding 4 hits. Going all out here was probably a mistake, but we might as well try to do something. He did deal 1 wound, before the prospect of 3 severe injuries on 2 of the cards (via 2 understanding gained by each of them) had him cancel the lot of them with the final hit location’s reflex.
The Frogdoggles then revealed the next card in her line-up to be the trap, so Braal was the next witch that had to go. Which was easier said than done.

Braal (10) & Seer (4) remained.
Braal approached the 2 survivors for a Spinning Lariat but was too far away from either of them.

Seer’s card, Sanguine Disruption had her switch with Braal again before she shot Hope square in the chest. This added Vault Key and 2 understanding, thus triggering a severe injury .. of which she died of instantaneously.

Trapped in a 2v1, Frogfish dash/leapt at Braal straight into her arms and her trap. And that was basically it. Unless Seer did something weird, or swapped with Braal again, Frogfish was on a 5 turn timer.

As Braal slowly drew the blood from the only male survivor present in this fight, Seer started meditating again: another Sanguine Awakening.

One turn later, as the Sanguine Awakening occurred, Frogfish gained 3 understanding and with that he had to take 3DMG to every hit location, causing 3 severe wounds. Whilst he rolled a 10 for the legs, his bleeding arms (3) and the concussion (8) had him die of internal bleeding.

Thus the Red Witches stood victorious.
Seer had judged us wanting and took the remaining 2 women – Sapphire & Hollow as initiates for the White Speaker Cult.

***

Well, that’s that.
I’m most sad about Goldenglow dying so very early in the fight. I would have liked for her to at least get 2 swings in. In general, I think we would have had a chance if she didn’t get picked off by Seer immediately. But, that’s what I get for doubting the leader of the Red Witches, I guess.
Seer knows.

The Feline Entity did also show up right at the end, ready to lounge amongst the corpses.

In any case, we are now down to 4 survivors in the settlement so not all hope is lost just yet, though there is 1 issue to acknowledge here – the thing I mentioned earlier, a decently troublesome oversight:
There’s only 4 guys left.

Without any women in the settlement, the non-PotDreamkeeper campaigns don’t allow for intimacy to trigger. Soo..
We are in a bit of a bind now. To be fair, I could have circumvented this outcome by leaving at least 3 women at home during the fight – but I wanted to have the highest chance at winning the encounter and this group of survivors seemed like the best to that end.
It is, what it is, at this point.
Aside from any freak accidents occurring, we should honestly be fine if we hunt a lope next year – I do expect it to – quite frankly – explode within our presence (and not in the Nukealope way) but I fear we might need to take any chance we get at random population. We need to pray for at least 1 roll of 1 on Overwhelming Darkness for instance, or a better-than-average roll on Gibbet (basic HE50).

Oh, yeah, and not pull Murder as the settlement event. That would help as well.

In any case, this will be all for today – I await my order of Venus and summer dice!
As always, thank you very much for your time, Seer knows what Braal’s favorite ice cream flavor is!
Amathul