In this game I was playing as Lady Irane of Tarth, on a small map with difficulty set to Challenging. My opponents: Emperor Karavox, Oracle Ceresa, and Queen Procipinee. Ceresa was killed on turn 1 (she must have gotten a terrible starting position, right next to a bear perhaps). So I figured that's OK, more room to expand and explore.

With the Master Scouts ability I was able to rapidly expand my empire since monsters were no concern, and before long I had 4 thriving cities. Then I met Emperor Karavox. He only had 1 city, but had concentrated on building up an army while I focused more on city development and adventuring. His champion-led army was quite capable of sacking any one of my cities, but I sneaked around it, attacked and conquered his lightly defended capital, and that put the mighty Emperor Karavox out of the game.

I hunted in vane for Queen Procipinee, leader of the last remaining faction, but couldn't find her. Instead I found a wildland, a massive crystal chasm blocking my path, stretching away as far as the eye could see on both sides. I knew immediately this must be the home of Abeix, Who Dwells Beneath. In all my travels, I had never before encountered this legendary Elemental Lord, so I was naturally quite excited. With the other factions providing no challenge whatsoever, I thought that finally I had met a worthy foe.

It took me a while to clear out the denizens of the wildlands, but soon enough I arrived at the very threshold of Abeix's lair, ready to take on the great worm who called itself boss of these parts. Along the way I met Queen Procipinee, who much to my dismay was wandering alone, without so much as a city to her name. It would be sinfully easy to kill her and claim a conquest victory, but I wanted to challenege myself against Abeix so I actually had to kill the monsters around Procipinee to keep her alive long enough so I could gear up for the ultimate battle.

At last, all was in readiness. Lady Irane stood fearless before the chasm, gazing out at the endless abyss:

Lady Irane had reached level 12 by this time. She had a large number of hit points thanks to her Path of the Defender role, and pretty decent defense due to the gladiator armor she had found hidden in the wildland. Her initiative was fantastic, and would come in handy against a slow ponderous beast like Abeix:

But Lady Irane didn't travel alone. She was accompanied by her champion Svedd, who at level 9 was no pushover himself:

Svedd had several injuries sustained in battle against some Empire champions, but thankfully they didn't slow him down much. Although his initiative was less than Lady Irane's, he made up for it with a high attack rating:

Svedd was a blunt damage kind of guy. His Doom Hammer served him well in that role, and he had some nice attack buffs to that effect, thanks to his Tarth blood and Path of the Warrior traits. He too was ready to kick some worm ass.

Irane's party was rounded out by a unit of Defenders, loyal soldiers who at level 7 had served their leader well, and were eager to prove themselves yet again. Alas, Irane suspected they would be little more than fodder for Abeix, but maybe their sacrifice would buy her needed time to prepare for the battle.

The brave party stepped to the edge of the precipice, and Abeix reared up before them:

An impressive beasty, with appallingly high attack and defense. Lady Irane's shadow broadsword, which had the awesome ability to ignore 66% of an opponent's defense, would prove to be the key in this fight, enabling her to do enough damage to hurt Abeix. Luckily, Abeix was not immune to magic either, and Irane knew just what to do.

Into battle the party charged:

At this point, I'd like to point out a couple bugs: during the first turn of every battle, Lady Irane's initiative seems all wonky. There's always a +50 coming from somewhere, don't know what that's all about:

Also, for the first turn of combat the box at the bottom of the screen that allows you to select spells, skills, etc. was missing. But after I passed the first turn, the spell selection box re-appeared and Irane's initiative went back to normal. A strange bug, but one I could live with for now.

And so the epic confrontation began. Abeix started by casting Fear on my whole army. I'm not sure exactly what Fear does, but it didn't seem to really hurt me as far as I could tell. Lady Irane opened the proceedings by casting Haste on herself and Svedd, which would be helpful since Abeix had low initiative and Irane had high initiative to begin with. The heroes of Tarth were now lightning fast compared to the slow, cumbersome worm. Lady Irane noticed right away that Abeix didn't seem to use ranged attacks at all. The worm was an up-close in-your-face kind of monster. That meant Irane could sit back and buff herself and Svedd without fear of taking damage. But they would have to eventually close and duke it out in hand-to-worm combat. Svedd did have the Flame Dart spell, but was not willing to deplete his mana reserves with it.

Lady Irane knew that she would stand the best chance of hurting the worm due to her armor piercing shadow broadsword. To increase her chances still further, she cast the Growth spell on herself:

Lady Irane kept her forces well out of Abeix's reach, and spent the next few turns trying to cast Shrink on the wildland boss. The worm circled around the chasm, frustrated at being unable to reach the tender morsels that were taunting it from just out of reach. Abeix was a tough old beasty, and he resisted Shrink a few times before Lady Irane was finally able to make it stick. And a good thing, too, because by this point all the spellcasting had left Irane with only a little mana left.

Ahhh, look how cute Abeix is now! Not such a big fearsome worm anymore, is he?

Lady Irane was as prepared as she could be. This time had come to start putting the hurt on the worm. And here I ran into another bug: I wanted to move one of my units into the top left empty tile right next to Abeix (shown in the above screen shot), but for some reason I couldn't. The game treated the tile as blocked and wouldn't allow me to move there. So I passed a few turns and moved my heroes back and forth, and suddenly the tile opened up and started behaving as it should. This was a very annoying bug. The battlefield around Abeix is already cramped and constrained, and movement bugs like this just make it worse.

Anyway, Lady Irane decided to test the beast's power by using her expendable Defenders unit first. The Defenders moved into range of Abeix and struck the beast. As expected, their weapons harmlessly chinked off the worm's tough, scaly hide. And then Abeix struck back, killing Irane's loyal guards with two mighty blows. Yes indeed, the worm's bite packed quite a punch.

Then it was Svedd's turn. Still Lady Irane held back, wanting to see if her champion fared any better than the dead Defenders. Svedd attempted to use his Crushing Blow special attack, but another bug prevented him from being able to target Abeix with it. So he used regular attacks instead, which worked just fine. Svedd gave as good as he got, landing some nice hits with his Doom Hammer and chipping away at Abeix's high hit points. He got lucky enough to do a critical hit for 36 damage, which was far better than Irane had hoped for. But in the end, the worm's attacks were too overpowering, and Svedd too fell before the fury of the Elemental Lord.

Lady Irane was on her own. Abeix was blooded, but still quite dangerous. It was at this point that Irane noticed something interesting: her initiative was so high compared to Abeix that she got to move 3 times (and sometimes even 4) to every 1 turn that Abeix got. It would be possible to land a couple hits, then dance away out of reach before the slow worm got to strike. After Abeix had its turn, Lady Irane could dart back in and do more damage, then dodge back out of range before the beast could retaliate. In so doing, she could whittle away the Elemental Lord's hit points without suffering any damage herself:

A cheesy tactic, I know, but the good Lady Irane felt like taking any advantage she could get. Svedd and her guards were dead, and she stood alone against the ultimate power of the wildland. She was not above gaming the system in order to save herself.

She repeatedly darted in and out, her shadow broadsword proving effective in cutting through the worm's thick carapace. Irane was like the wind, there and gone again before the frustrated Abeix could hit her. She took no damage at all for the rest of the fight. In the end, she landed the killing blow and Abeix fell with a roar, crashing back into the chasm to lay in darkness for all time. Victory belonged to Tarth!

As a reward for defeating the Elemental Lord, Lady Irane gained enough experience to reach level 13 and took Abeix's eye for a trophy. Even in death, magical power still infused the beast's evil eye, so Irane took it back to her capital where it would provide a welcome boost to the morale of her people. From far and wide, smallfolk flocked to join Tarth after hearing of Irane's brave deeds, eager to be a part of the greatest kingdom in the world: