She Who Will Feast

The Elder God **She Who Will Feast** is a primordial serpent who seeks to consume the entire world. She has powers related to shadow, and once the final seal is open she emerges into the world as a commandable army unit. She starts out powerful enough to defeat any single human army, and continues growing stronger over time, but if slain the player will lose.

She starts with her Supplicant agent and 2 recruitment points. She initially has 2 agent slots (one taken up by Supplicant) and has 6 agent slots by the time she fully awakes.

She is held back by 9 seals. The 'minimum world panic from god awakening' starts at 0% and progresses to 75% by turn 375 when the last seal breaks and She Who Will Feast fully awakes. Her max Power starts at 1 and reaches 10 when she awakes. In addition to the listed effects, each seal that breaks gives 1 current and maximum power.

## She Who Will Feast's Powers

#### Cloud Senses

Cost: 1 Power

Make a hero (other than the Chosen One) lose 10 progress on their current quest. Especially effective when a hero is almost done completing training or is slowly performing some quest which they are extremely bad at- generally any quest with at least 10 complexity and where the hero is making 1-2 progress on it per turn.

#### Eyes in the Shadows

Cost: 2 Power

Infiltrate one point of interest in a location with no current infiltration. If there are multiple points of interest then the last in the list will always be the one targeted. This ignores POI's like Ancient Ruins which can't be infiltrated.

#### Fleeting Servant

Cost: 3 Power

Create a 30 profile 50 menace modifier that takes a short quest for the heroes to remove.

#### Dangers in the Dark

Cost: 2 Power

Increase the danger of all quests and neutral challenges in a location by 7. Can only be cast in locations with over 50% shadow. This can stack indefinitely.

#### Serpent's Coils

Cost: 4 Power

Influences any trade routes in a fully infiltrated city, causing it to add 1% shadow per turn for 25 turns along the entire route.

#### Split Shadow

Cost: 5 power

Create a shadow agent that is a copy of a hero. Cannot target the Chosen One. Copies stats but not abilities (and currently doesn't copy their level)

The shadow loses hp each turn its more than one location away from the agent it is a copy of, unless it is in a location with at least 50% shadow.

The shadow act like normal agent but doesn't use agent slot. There can be only one shadow at time.

During level up besides increasing stats you have access to traits "Infamous" and "Stealthy" as well.

## Awakening

When she awakens, the Elder Tomb and a huge area around it are devastated by a volcanic eruption. This destroys any settlements in the blast radius, human or otherwise, and inflicts 50% damage on any units in the blast radius.

She appears on the map as a controllable army unit, starting at 200 HP. Her maximum HP grows by 1 every turn, and she heals an additional 1 HP every turn if wounded.

She starts out with 0 menace, and increases it by razing human settlements (10 menace per location).
She can also increase her menace by 5 by driving a hero away from her current location.
Cities won't go out of their way to send armies to attack her until she increases her menace somewhat. A human army will attack her if she walks right into its location, though.

## Strategy

She Who Will Feast is a straightforward but flexible god focused mainly on infiltration and shadow spread. Of her Supplicant traits, Martyr for the Dark will massively speed up your early game by getting them killed attacking a hero in a city of your choice - the city can then be immediately enshadowed, and the Supplicant replaced with a different Intrigue agent. The Dying Light will slowly increase shadow in the Supplicant's location, notably reducing its security by 1 after the ruler's shadow reaches 20%, but this requires the Supplicant to stay in one place and the effect is rather slow for its benefit. Conduit can grant a significant power boost if you immediately start leveling the Supplicant's Lore, though you will likely still want to do Intrigue challenges at first until they reach 3 or 4 Lore.

Eyes in the Shadows is She Who Will Feast's main early power sink, and can substantially speed up your infiltration - targeting a minor settlement with one PoI will immediately reduce all its neighbours' security by 1, and using it on an uninfiltrated Town or City can make it easier to fully infiltrate off of a single bribe. Once a Town or City is infiltrated, you will typically follow up by immediately using Enshadow and Well of Shadows at that location with a Lore agent.

Serpent's Coils is expensive and time-consuming (16 power and 100 turns for full enshadowment), but if used well can fully enshadow huge regions of the map without your agents lifting a finger. If you plan to use Serpent's Coils, it's useful to find a capital with a lot of long trade routes at the start of the game and focus on infiltrating it right away (possibly with Martyr of the Dark). The shadow will spread on its own after the trade route is fully enshadowed, so the sooner you start the more time it has to do its work.

Split Shadow is an important power, and you should aim to have a shadow under your control for as much of the game as possible. One simple strategy is to target a high-Lore hero and use it to spam Well of Shadows and speed the Shadow's growth, and another strategy is to target a high Might and Command hero, give it some minions, have it kill weak heroes and acolytes and let it die once it becomes Infamous - if done once or twice, this can easily make sure you spend the entire game at minimum World Panic.

When She Who Will Feast awakens, she will be too weak to fight a healthy medium-sized nation (and almost certainly too weak to fight a healthy Alliance singlehandedly), but she can easily gobble up small nations or very damaged ones. Focus on unenshadowed societies, as a destroyed settlement isn't worth any more victory points than a fully enshadowed one, and don't be afraid to run away and lick your wounds or attack somewhere else if outnumbered.

## Victory Text

The art and text displayed upon winning a game depends on which source of victory points is biggest, in line with the various achievements for winning the game in certain ways.

### Shadow:

Lulled into a hypnotic apathy by the shadow, the inhabitants of this world will no longer pose a threat to the god-wyrm. Their souls rot inside them, like plants choked of the sun, leaving them weak and defenceless. She Who Will Feast will grow for some time, before she consumes the world in its entirety, and sets off into the inky blackness of the cosmos, seeking more worlds to consume or possibly to lay a clutch of eggs and propagate her terrifying kind across the stars.

### Madness:

The reality of this world is too much for the sane mind to bear. Humanity grew up too sheltered, too safe from the outer horrors to be able to withstand them. The fate of the world, to be devoured by a vast snake-god, is enough to shatter human rationality. The mind collapses, possibly simply as a defensive mechanism to give some solace in the last few days.

### Dark Empire:

In the darkness, the god's organised servants have prevailed. Their fight against the light, against humanity's last defenders, has concluded. Enraptured by their dark duty towarsd their god, they eagerly await the moment their world is destroyed. Whether the snake god herself is even consciously aware of them is uncertain. Her vast intellect is so superior to that of mortals, and her new body size so beyond them, they might fall beneath her consideration.

### Dead Population:

There is nothing left. A few scattered survivors, a few last few bastions perhaps, but the chance of a successful defence against the newborn god is lost. Unopposed, she will grow until her immense jaws can encompass the world itself, cracking it like an egg. She will then move on, taking her place in an ecosystem so far above that of humanity that mortals could never comprehend.

### Ice Age (dead population with a low enough world temperature):

The world freezes over. The age of humanity ends with a new ice age. The last few fires will go out in time, the last few living things will freeze. The serpent god will grow slowly in the cold lands, until she grows vast enough to consume the world in its entirety.

### Deep Ones:

Beneath the waves, humanity mutates and transforms into a new breed of life. These twisted aquatic forms serve the dark god, and will ensure her growth proceeds as foretold. She will devour the world, but they will persist, living inside the planet sized god-wyrm until she reaches another world. There, she will lay her egg, sowing the seed of destruction of another planet and its people. The Deep Ones too, will leave their foul essence, to corrupt a new race into turning into more of their blasphemous kind.