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Brutus sells as much of the random crap he's found to stock up on bombs. Everyone needs bombs sometimes.



Then he goes to the bad part of Teron. Well, "worse" part of Teron.









Here you can see that negative synergy between walking up to people and critting their heads off and ranged combat at play. You can attack from far away to make this fight easier.



Not that it isn't easy anyway. If the locals have any thoughts about the bloody diapermen in their midst, they don't share them.



I had to go and get the jelly fish artifact to scrap together enough points to raise streetwise to not get scammed here.









There's no way this is a bad idea.





I've made a huge mistake.





Brutus steps to the side and tosses a bomb to start the fight, knocking the Ordu guy down. He then follows up with near 100% crossbow bolts to the throat thanks to the bonus accuracy for attacking a defenseless opponent. I really need to slow down the combat so I can capture explosions.

Who are the Ordu? Keep reading this thread to learn more!



Next turn Livia whips out her hand crossbow and axe guy runs up and smacks Brutus badly. Can't believe I didn't knock down either one here, almost might as well not have bombed at all.



Whatever napalm to the rescue, Livia goes down and axe guy physically can't approach.



Merc dies to poison as the fire wears off. EZ



The rewards for doing this rough fight are... 2 combat SP, some diapermen, and pretty minor loot. Basically not worth using 2 bombs and 1 napalm, unless you're doing a LP.



You're going to spend a lot of time running to healers as a combat character, might as well show one of their screens.



Yada we know where this is going



I got fucked pretty bad here because the axe guy somehow went first. Had to unload my last bomb on the sword guy alone to blitz him down since he's the more dangerous of the two.



I really did.









I love that murder doubles as a social skill.

See you in Maadoran, Milty!



It's nice of the factions not to care that you go wandering about aimlessly for long periods in between jobs.



Brutus finally meets Carinas, the local commander. Considering the other story line revealed the merchants conspired with Antidas to assassinate Carinas thanks to Carinas' false flag shenanigans, it's a little difficult to believe that the Merchants really requested aid here.







Turns out the Daratans don't appreciate the help.







tfw charisma This option lets you pick a much better fight set up.





The Guards storyline has a lot of sort of set piece fights with more complicated set ups than just "you're on one side enemies are on the other side have at it." Thanks to armored hammer bro at the bottom of the tower, Brutus and the rest of his Guards friends were able to infiltrate the top of the tower without incident. The fight takes place concurrently at the bottom of the tower outside and inside the top of the tower, and you can travel between both.

If you don't have superior smarts to come up with a plan and superior charisma to convince the boys to go with it, you have to run through ranged attacks in a story segment and then pick where to fight, with the enemy in much more advantageous positions. There's your reward for thinking outside the box and investing in social stats in a combat-focused storyline.









Anyway this is just a basic team fight, try to help your buddies stay alive so they keep the heat off you and try to help them kill the important targets, like the Daratan officer that got brutally finished by an axeman (Rome had axemen, right?). At one point Brutus had to flee to the lower level because he has 0 defenses and was getting punished bad by one of the archers, the enemies on the bottom are content to try to kill the indomitable hammer bro while getting plinked away at by Brutus. Eventually the guards massacre the archers up top and run down to finish the job at the base of the tower.





The Guards are a lot less impressed if you do this fight the "normal" way.





So unimpressed that you don't get this one on one meeting with Carinas.









tfw charisma









So there's your backstory for why not just Carinas, but basically all the Imperial Guards are assholes. They bust their humps fighting raiders in the wastes and come home to find every is too busy fucking and killing each other to thank them for it. It's all very Rambo.

Another fun fact: you don't have this convo with Carrinas at all if you don't distinguish yourself in the last fight by having brains. Some faceless NPC just tells you to go make demands of Antidas. No helpful chems to help you survive, no one making the plot explicit. In other words... you're sent to die, so Carrinas has an excuse to kill Antidas himself. The Guards are all a bunch of assholes.



Who's the boss now, Dellar?

Okay! The following is a NON-CANON presentation of this NON-CANON combat-focused run-through to show what happens if things go south. This is just to show what happens!





I forgot to mention this above, but it's so weird the few times your character actually "talks."







Here you see the anti-synergy between crit strike and being ranged focus as usual.





Brutus gets nailed bad by an attack of opportunity as he flees, but makes it to relatives safety behind his buddies otherwise fine.





Then it's just normal team fight stuff. Brutus smirks as he watches Dellar succumb to his poisoned bolts while the Guardsmen clean up the rest of the Daratans.

























And there you have it. I did the above just to show that yes, Brutus is capable of doing these fights.

Back to your CANON PRESENTATION of this NON CANON combat-focused run through of the LP.



This time Brutus thinks twice about killing Antidas. He might be a useless idiot, but maybe someone else can get use out of him.

















You can ditch the Guards here and take the secret agreement to Gaelius, but Brutus likes being pushed around by assholes so he stays loyal.











You get an INSANE amount of free training here. Jesus.



Oh. He's at the palace now huh.









The above is the only optional quest ending screen that was different from what I already showed.

Stats:



Keep in mind those stats are post-free training. You require laughably low social skills to pull off the above. Laughably low social skills you can mostly get from free trading from Feng. I guess the devs didn't think anyone would invest much in social stats/skills in the IG story route.

So can things play out differently if Antidas is dead or alive? Maybe!