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General Information
Maintaining a superior defense is the pride of the Moon Division, defending even at the expense of attacking. However, this can be hard, especially for trainees who just got new magic weapons full of glowing and powers. Thus the Princess Island. At the center of the island sits a princess who will do absolutely nothing to protect herself, and it's up to you to build defenses that will withstand shadowling attacks so she she doesn't die in a horribly realistic manner.

There's four main paths for shadowling's to travel through, and you have 3 types of building materials to create your defenses from: straw bales, wood, and bricks. The sturdier the material, the sturdier the barrier, but the fewer you can build in the allotted time. After a set amount of time, the princess will crush a pumpkin pill, attracting varying amounts of lurking shadowlings. You get to watch helplessly from the observation station, without getting to attack yourself.

These creature are extremely weak and ill formed, coming up against a solid defense they will disperse, but in turn they also weaken said defense. When a defense goes down, they go right to the princess and attack her. Should she survive the wave, you get to go back down, rebuild, and do it again.

If you fail: the princess has died, horribly, and you've wasted a lot of time on this only to look fairly incapable. All things considered? Most pleasant course to fail.

If you win: peen points and bragging rights go to those with the healthiest princess and lasted through the most attack waves.
If you choose to go beyond 5 rounds, switch the enemy dice roll to 4 d20s.

Mechanics

• Your princess has 20 hp
  
• First, roll the strength of you defense, using the dice for whichever building type you choose.
  
  Brick: 4 d12
  Wood: 8 d6
  Hay bales: 12 d4
  
  The order of the die determine the HP for each barrier location. For example, with bricks, rolling 5/6/8/1, would mean that path 1 has 5 HP, path 2 has 6 HP and so on. With a wood roll of 3/3/3/1/2/5/5/2, the first 2 dice would equal the amount of the first path. Brick would be the least math-y of the building materials (you lazy asses.)
  
• Roll 4 d12 for the attacking forces. Once again the order of the dice correspond with the path being affected. Then do the math to determine the status of your defenses and princess.
  Example:
  My defenses are 5/6/8/10
  The attackers are 3/7/3/8
  
  The result defenses are 2/-1/5/2
  Negative numbers are taken off the princesses HP, leaving her at 19 HP.
  
• Go back and rebuild your defenses in the same manner as before, you'll be building on top of old defenses so you add the new defense HP to the remaining defense HP. Negative numbers = 0 HP for the defense, not negative HP.
  
• Minimum rounds to complete the course is 3
  
  Bonus Mechanics
  
• Their defense expertise allows them to build slightly sturdier barriers. This applies to all paths that start at 0 hp. They do not stack. So if you are re-building on a barrier that lasted from an existing round, this bonus does not apply, as it is already still in effect.
  
  
• Trainees: 0 hp bonus
  
• Moon Trainees: +1 hp bonus to each path
  
• Hunters: +1 hp to each path
  
• Moon Hunters: + 2 hp to each path
  

The shadows crashed through her pathetic blocking and attacked Ami horribly. Syd sighed, waiting for them to leave. Well... that hadn't gone how she'd planned, she thought as she looked at her fingernails instead of the poor golem. But she'd try again! This was a learning experience!

Although now that she thought of it, she probably should have warned the princess--then again, she'd been the one to break the pumpkin pill.


6 4 1 1 - 11, 4, 2, 10

She had done a better job this time, Syd noted, frowning slightly regardless, just because a few of the shadows made it in through the back door, almost finishing Ami clone off. Well then, she thought. She needed to make sure all of the doors were protected... Good lesson!

She really wasn't taking this very seriously, at all. The fact that Izy was rolling with laughter didn't help.



5, 10, 5, 6

And then the princess was killed. Brutally. She was literally ripped limb from limb, left scattered in a poof of something that drifted in the wind. "Well then," Syd said as she got to her feet. "It seems I need to work on my defenses," she told Izy and the dead princess. "Thank you for the lesson, princess!"

And she left the training course with the urge to whistle.



FAIL

The shadows came, breaking through the weak points and swarming for the crossdressing princess. Syd frowned, not liking this one bit, honestly. But it wasn't as bad as the attack on Ami had been. She wondered if perhaps hay wasn't the way to go--with practice. She would have to try wood next time to make sure, she thought.

This time... nothing happened. She heard a few thumps from outside, but nothing got in. She didn't even hide the sigh of relief. One more time, she thought as she waited for this round to finish up. One more time and she would have passed the course. Of course, she wanted to do it better than she had this time, but--she at least had hope this time.

Syd turned and watched as the princess crushed the pumpkin pill, crossing her arms over her chest and waiting. This part of the job was almost as bad as going in with crossbow blazing. It was more unnerving, that was a fact. Knowing that the person you were protecting was the same person that was bringing the trouble to you--knowingly.

Point was, she was REALLY starting to dislike these princesses. But there was nothing getting in. She heard the thuds, heard the creepy scratching sounds, but not a single shadow entered to attack her princess.



PASS

Syd built up the walls again, now seeing where she'd gone wrong with the bricks. It was interesting, and easy to understand once she'd done it a few times, but that didn't mean she was an expert or anything. In fact, she knew better than anyone that she needed to work harder. It was dangerous to not know how to guard.

Still, no shadows got through this time, either.