Gurgelor, the Smoking Mirror in my first game as Mictlan, started out before I had even looked at the national mages:
Fire 4, Death 3, Nature 2, Blood 6, Heat 2, Luck 3, Dark Citadel, Desert Sun, and whatever dominion strength that allows (4, I think).
It's been an excellently fun game. Full of Impossible and/or Hard AI's jammed onto the Aran map, I started with only two land provinces adjoining my capitol, and both the Pangaean and Miasmatic Ctis capitols three provinces away. Both of them attacked me by about turn 7, and I ended up in a long see-saw war with Ctis and its deadly dominion for a long time.
My Luck 3 paid off nicely, giving me gold and magic items, the best of which was a Soul Contract, which I nearly lost when Ctis ambushed the carrying priest in a surprise attack and killed him. It was found and saved by Popocatepetl the Mictlan priest, but he caught the Ctis fever and had to be recalled and kept alive with regeration magic, slowly disolving anyway from the disease into the most afflicted character I've ever had (see
the Affliction Record thread!). Eventually we cast Gift of Health and he recovered fully. His demons provided a flying army that turned the tide and proved a nearly-unstoppable force (as long as it doesn't try to stop anything too huge).
I had a great prophet sun priest Tonacatecuhtli who got diseased but fought on, surviving through heroic toughness and so on, leading the diseased corps and capturing the Ctis capitol, but he eventually died, with 73 kills to his name (mostly via Smite). He died with disease, lost an eye, weakenned, chest wound, limp and battle fright (but morale 30 anyway since he was prophet). I think I will try reviving him, when I can.
This is also the game where I set fire to my own unique heroic unholy mummy priest, by trying to guard it with devils, who caused a fatal spontaneous combustion with their heat auras!
Just as I defeated Ctis, Caelum defeated Pangaea, and then rushed me from the north with its Manticore god leading a huge army, which we barely managed to defeat, at the expense of a lot of good crossbreeds. Using a succubus on them won me a flying Air-2 mage.
My god Gurgelor himself has very rarely participated in the fighting, mostly staying at home and casting powerful spells and forging powerful magic items. He could be potent but he hasn't really needed to risk his neck. His current sheet on turn 89 looks like this:
We have a nice arsenal of magic items, so he could be a tough fighter, or have different magic levels, if he wanted to, but there's little need for him to bother. He may show up for some battles to set off some serious fireworks later on. There are still more powerful empires to deal with out there.
PvK
[ June 26, 2004, 22:29: Message edited by: PvK ]