Kevin Curry
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Summon Perfect Warlady 2.08
🕑 Added 2024-08-12 14:00:13 +0000 UTCWell, the first thing that needed to be done was to either recharge Sizemore’s juice, or dismiss him through the portal. After an instant of thought, Tanya figured that the better move was to let him retreat. As he didn’t turn, she couldn’t order him directly… but she could order units next to him just fine.
Wait… right, she had a duplicate in the courtyard. She appeared to be ordering him to do something, as she was close enough for him to hear her speak. Presumably this would conclude with his retreat, so Tanya trusted herself to handle that.
“Conserve munitions!” Tanya ordered her knights, who were in protected firing positions around the tower. “An air assault is still possible, aim carefully and pick off enemy rifleman with one magazine, then reload and wait for further orders.”
Tanya had already cast foolamancy on the tower, re-arranging the protected firing positions to make it difficult for the enemy rifleman to fire back. She now started with mathamancy-enhanced orders, assigning targets and compensating for the range penalties normally incurred by shooting across zones like this.
Enemies poured into the breach in the wall, and the infantry and Tartans that were positioned in the courtyard readied to receive them. Now, it takes a pretty unbalanced level 5 city to not have extensive fortifications even in the courtyard zone, and in this case it manifested as fortified hardpoints at intersections with roads forming a triangular network that allowed for long firing lanes with little to no cover, each positioned with a stack of turned archers led by a warlord as well as a single stack of Tartans to delay attempts to stop the archers from firing. The buildings near the roads all had sturdy doors, not something that their lack of remaining dorfs and total lack of siege could fix, with whatever remained of their rockets being woefully insufficient to gain a significant advantage. At least, they didn’t even try.
Ideally, they’d have stationed gun emplacements in those areas, but Jack was far too busy fulfilling other orders all over the world to make them new guns, so they couldn’t, nor could they spare the time popping additional ballisticians, so stacks of normal led archers with stores of extra arrows in case the enemy tried to exhaust them are what they had to work with. With the duplicate’s massive in-hex leadership bonus, that should be enough to do some significant damage to the screening infantry, if not necessarily the riflemen themselves. Tanya had considered promoting those archers to knight, but ran some mathamancy calculations and with the enemy riflemen and other defenses taken into account, roughly doubling the archer’s damage output by doing so didn’t improve the defense’s success chance by enough to be worth the expense.
Now, theoretically the invaders could slowly advance with their riflemen taking out all resistance as they traveled in one group… but that would take too much time. While low level cities basically just had one open-ish area you fought the enemy defenders in, higher level ones forced invaders to split up in order to cover enough ground to actually finish their invasion before turn’s end. After all, they only claimed a zone once all enemy units had been croaked or captured.
With the rather substantial delays forced by the wall defenses, their Chief Warlord decided to maximize their speed, splitting up all thirty rifleman stacks and distributing the infantry between them to act as screens. This allowed, theoretically, for them to flank the fortified points, taking them much more effectively.
Unfortunately, the hardpoints were also trapped. Once the Tartan defenders fell to the bullets, the fortified positions maximizing the ammunition expended to that end, and the infantry engaged the archery in melee, the warlord, knowing he was doomed, triggered the trap built into each fortified position and detonated the explosives, taking out what was left of the defenders as well as most of the units attacking them.
Or Tanya detonated them remotely using ruler orders once that Warlord fell without performing his final duty. Either/or. Sizemore can make surprisingly tiny (about infant-sized) golems made out of talc that can be used as remote detonators, to those who are not wise to the strategy. She just thought it would go down better, morale-wise, to allow the warlords to croak themselves to spite the enemy instead of doing it herself.
Eventually, they penetrated the network of hardpoints, the traps whittling away at their numbers and well-placed defenders using up their munitions, all the while suffering sniper shots from the tower. One last bastion was present at the entrance to the tower and dungeon zones, as it was actually possible to bypass the zone borders if they had more Siege to break through the barriers blocking them from entering the tower, even if they didn’t actually control the courtyard zone yet and could just open them. Tanya didn’t see any more rockets they could use to do that, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have some, or could get them sent via Hat Magic or something.
Right in front of that last fortification was where Tanya’s duplicate had concealed herself. The enemy Chief Warlord stopped his advance right before coming into view of this last position, and stood up to give an inspiring speech to his units. “We are the Empire!” He began, “We fight to retake one of the crucial cities that has been stolen by the jealous barbarian queen! Our superiority will win the day! Both in technology, and in our innate moral fiber! The Yahtzee tribe popped to rule over all others! Of the Seven thousand, Seven hundred and seventy-six lesser tribes, we are the one above all others! The Seven-thousandth, seven hundred seventy SEVENTH tribe!” He proudly displayed a flag that, now that Tanya understood the context, was clearly supposed to be four sevens arranged artfully in a spoke pattern. She initially thought it was just a manji, or a reversed swatsika. The cultivated mathamancer part of her brain also uselessly pointed out that 7,776 was also six to the fifth power, which probably had some numerological significance.
Still, the instant they started to advance, resolve stiffening their posture… that’s when her duplicate struck, the stack of Betties bouncing out and scything through the rifle-wielding knights like a Dacian charge suddenly faced with landmines. Seeing the effectiveness of the unit’s ambush special made Tanya vaguely regret stationing the other stack in the tunnels, but it was inevitable that any robust defense in depth plan would include unused contingencies.
That said, the force only managed to croak three stacks, including the enemy Chief Warlord, before getting filled with enough bullets that they too were defeated. The depopping of her duplicate was unfortunate, as it made their forces lose their Chief Warlord bonus, but Tanya quickly created a second one, taking two tries to get past the casting penalty of re-making a destroyed duplicate, and promoted it in place before moving on to phase three of the defense plans.
Phase one was dealing with the enemy diggers, that is the dorfs. Phase two was letting the enemy wear themselves down on the defenses that were, in the end, disposable.
Phase three was going for the throat. Her heavy cavalry stacks, her knights mounted on the Mickeys, stopped their endless maneuvering to stay out of enemy lines of fire, and instead started charging at them from all directions, using their own rifles to tear up the invading forces while using their now vastly superior bonuses, personal Barriers, and the Mickey’s defensive special to not only mostly avoid croaking to the enemy rifles, but get effectively additional shots of their own as the failed bullets bounced off the rubbery skin of the giant black mice back at the shooters. Yes, the rifles gave a +10 combat bonus, but while the base stats and leadership bonuses between the stacks were not very far off from each other, her stacks had an additional +4 stack bonus and a +10 chief warlord bonus verses their +3 out-of-hex bonus, assuming the Empire promoted a level eight or higher replacement quickly.
In the original plan, this was also when Elya and Maggie would cast turnamancy to turn one or two stacks of the riflemen at a distance, who would then suicidally discharge their weapons into whatever units near them were still unturned. However, between the smashing success of the rest of the plan and the probable attack, keeping the two ladies ready for Boner’s popping up in the area seemed appropriately cautious.
“What’s so funny?” Elya and Maggie asked at the same time, eyes watching the skies.
“Nothing relevant.” Tanya said, deflecting. “Are you ready for Lady Boner?” She asked, amused.
“We’re eager to receive.” Elya confirmed, which sorely threatened Tanya’s composure. “Our G-Strings are secure, ready to move only when we see Boner.” A pause. “Again, why are you laughing?”
Tanya very much wasn’t quite laughing. There was, however, a very laugh-like whistling sound coming from her lips at the constant double entendres. This world… one day, people spoke frankly and eagerly about filthy topics, while the next… they suddenly became utterly incapable of perceiving the double meanings they spout automatically.
That was about when the expected guest actually arrived. Startlingly, Tanya immediately understood how she had managed to catch them off-guard: Those units had nowhere near enough Move to make it form the Alfs to Stallin Glade in one turn. Therefore, she must have spent several turns sneaking them close, and only personally relayed herself closer once they were in position. How long were they planning this collaboration?
Nero’s forces, as she had researched them extensively, were a strike force of highly mobile Jumping mounts, cricket-like knight-class mounts (similar to unipegataurs, in that they had a very human-like face and arms that could theoretically wield weapons) that were known as Jimmies. Supposedly, they rustled the Jimmies up as a feral unit that popped commonly near the city of Tusk Ant, by their date-a-mancer Pinot Chia. Tanya had actually met the man at the Glade of the Hippiemancers, his long nose and leaf-like piercing giving him a certain boyish charm that was promptly ruined by his wooden, puppet-like movements.
The units riding those Jimmies, on the other hand, were very odd knights. They weren’t normal knights, but instead an advanced knight-class unit known as Dribblers, taken from the old nomadic Hurlem side, known for their slinger units and for trotting all over the globe.
In appearance, they were lanky dark-skinned units, tall even for her old life but not inhumanly so, although in this world the height difference made them look like giants among Men. They weren’t heavy, though. They fought with a Throw special, pulling basketballs from their afros and then tossing them at their enemies.
They jumped onto the near empty wall, ignoring the few units that remained on the wall by virtue of foolamancy, and went from there straight on top of the tower. Their musical special, not quite dance-fighting but still a force multiplier, sounded out as the Jimmies rustled their legs, creating the sound of strings. “Nero’s fiddlers on the roof!” Tanya shouted. Glancing down, her eyes widened. “While the zone burns!”
Apparently, the warlords had some kind of incendiary explosive, as when it appeared that the enemy riflemen were to be routed, they started setting fires to provide some crowd control, which only worked because Tanya had instructed her knights to preserve their own lives. A few of the Mickeys had fallen from the bullets, but the knights just used flight to keep up with the living ones, slipping in and out of cover, including the still-living Mickeys, just as Tanya drilled them. As it turned out, when your commandos could both fly and see around corners with Recon without exposing themselves, they gained a decisive advantage in urban gunfights. Scouts innately understood the value of sightlines and ambushes with their popped knowledge, which an ‘average’ knight would need additional training to master.
So with that in mind, even with her duplicate poofing, she felt comfortable ignoring the courtyard issue and focusing on the tower battle instead. The fire can be handled later. She directed her new duplicate to stack up in the caster slot of one of the stacks on the tower and then to fly up to engage. Simultaneously, she ordered her own stack to fly up the other side of the tower half an action behind them.
The introductory fiddling music by the Jimmies ended, and was replaced by the Dribblers whistling a jaunty, upbeat tune, snapping their fingers to provide a percussive accompaniment. They were in five-stacks plus a mounted warlord, which according to Analysis gave them a special stack bonus of +5, which made sense to her given their obvious basketball theming.
“Ufufu, you may have managed to beat the barbarous Empire, but I, a genius, can see the difference between you and I.” Nero said boastfully. She was wearing a daring red dress that covered her shoulders and neck completely, while also leaving a bountifully large window to her breasts. Her skirt was long, but the front of it was sheer, showing off her fashionable riding greaves (as in, high-heeled) and otherwise providing oodles of fanservice by just barely not flashing her underthings with every motion. “Just as it would be impossible for me to cast a spell, victory over me would be impossible for you. A genius can see these things without bias.”
As was her new normal, Tanya immediately pictured herself wearing any elegant dress she sees and flushed as red as the dress in question at the idea. How indecent! Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the front was an opaque white, though…
Still, Boner had jumped her tower with forty of those five-stacks with her, and that meant she outnumbered her rifle-wielding knights, split into two forces as they were, two to one. Fortunately… They didn’t discharge the entire tower’s battery on those dorfs. So she didn’t need to conserve juice. “Friendship Rainbow Nova!” Tanya shouted in Japanese, using as much juice as the spell would allow.
“Eh?” Nero exclaimed as the power of shockamancy overloaded her senses, which was not something you usually saw from a tower. In fact, by going straight from the walls zone to the tower, she probably expected to bypass tower defensive spells altogether.
“Now!” Tanya shouted at Elya and Maggie, who immediately cast a high-powered link-augmented turning spell on the enemy Chief Warlady.
Nero’s eyes widened, and then dulled as a series of three runes appeared on Tanya’s arm. The spell was successful, she had turned. The rest of her force, now both bereft of any Chief Warlord bonus and stunned, were gunned down relatively easily, with only a few barriers breaking as they fought back once the stun had worn off.
They tried to avoid shooting the enemy foolamancer so he could be captured, but a stray bullet managed to croak him anyway. Quite the shame.
With the usage of (a duplicate of) her emergency fire extinguisher scroll, the battle was fully won. With incredible casualties, mind you, and with so much damage to the city it had downgraded to a level four, but she didn’t croak, nor did Visha, nor did, after Healomancy, any of her two hundred and three flying subordinates. On top of that, it would be easier to list the number of units that didn’t level up than the ones who did, which was very happy news.
Still, now there was a decision to make…
---------------------------
“Okay, so… Signamancy.” Tanya said to the gathered casters once the turn started. There was a discount to ‘fixing’ a city up a level over normal upgrades, if it was done within one turn. This meant that she wouldn’t be losing any money to razing it later, so it was an easy decision to make. Combined with her using moneymancy and pretty much all available juice to cash in all of the non-gun equipment and bodies of the invaders, they had turned a bit of a profit even before the fact that they now had enough rifles to double their forces. “Normally, I’d call the job done by now, after taking so much war material from the Empire, and move on.”
“But…” Janis said, encouraging her to elaborate.
Tanya sighed. “But the signamancy of the Yahtzee tribe really bothers me, on top of the whole ‘proliferation of firearms’ issue.” She projected the reverse swastika onto the table, thick black sevens in a white circle on a red background. Then she flipped it. “This symbol… It's bad news.” There was a sharp intake of breath as the table saw the non-distorted flag.
She had initially assumed that Being X had deliberately put her in the crosshairs of the Nazis. She had admittedly started to doubt that once it was clear that World War I had yet to occur, but just because the war was delayed fifteen to twenty years, doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t end the same way, with a fractured Empire, ripe for a fascist takeover.
With this… well, she’s already fulfilled every military history otaku’s fantasy and croaked some nazis, but it didn’t feel right to leave them be. She felt somewhat responsible for the proliferation of guns, and while for most sides she only felt bad about it when it personally inconvenienced her… with nazis… it hit different.
“It’s curious.” Janis commented idly, staring intently at the symbol. “How much hate a simple symbol can represent. For some reason, it was multiplied sevenfold when you flipped it.”
“It’s obscene.” Sizemore said, genuinely disturbed at the swastika. “I can’t even look at it.”
“It’s no coincidence.” Tanya asserted, “Believing their tribe is above all others, that’s baked into the symbol.” Granted, it’s not like her own country was innocent of essentially the same crimes, despite Japan’s attempts to suppress that part of history. But anyone who values human life should rightly condemn slavery and genocide, and the Nazis were the most famous villains in history for exactly those two things. There were bigger slavery operations, of course, but liquidating valuable human resources for such petty reasons as ethnicity, religious affiliation, or even sexual identity was so atrociously evil that Tanya couldn’t help but put them on the same platform of hate she gives the communists. Mostly because the communists were guilty of the same crimes, but for slightly more rational reasons (controlling the populace via fear), but brought back down by their stupid nonsense of an ethos that necessitated those brutal control mechanisms.
“They are fools.” Nero Saber insisted. As it turned out, ‘Lady Boner’ was her title, not her name. It was interesting how such a mistake could be perpetuated like that. “They have reached beyond their intellect, and will be crushed by my Master and I’s genius!” She then laughed like an ojou-sama.
“The question is, “ Isaac said, bringing everyone back on topic, “-can you afford to stay long enough to wipe them out?” The ‘plan’ as it were, was to fly outside of Charlie’s sphere of influence and spend a few hundred turns getting more levels, more guns, and more stacks of high level knights. Once accomplished, the Great Minds will concoct a super-spell that will allow an entire army to traverse a great enough distance that Charlie could be caught off-guard.
It wasn’t a particularly good plan, and it was actually plan B, but Tanya thought it was more functional than plan A, for ‘Arkenshoes’. The idea was that the Arkenshoes infinite move will somehow serve to be overpowered enough to, when combined with the relevant Predictions, allow for victory over the other three Arkentools.
“Charlie’s already made his move.” Tanya pointed out. “The Empire and Bone’s collaboration was orchestrated by him.”
“Indeed!” Nero said bombastically, “My old master talked with Charlie extensively, making sure we could strike at the best time, after you had exhausted your defenses!” She laughed again. “But my Master knew better! She’s outwitted his foolish attempts to defeat her, and come out stronger in the bargain!”
“Now is the crisis point.” Kurt observed, “The trigger event is over, and now he has a decision: Double down and sink more resources into this attempt, increase the breadth of his aid?” Kurt chuckled, his inoffensive office worker laugh once more compelling Tanya to check that his hands were empty of weapons. “Or does he move on to a second generation, reach out to a different side and set up a trigger there for when you pass them?”
Tanya hummed. “I think he’ll step back.” She judged, “Because him doing a lend-lease program with the Empire instead of sending a strike force of archons is what I would want him to do, so I don’t think he’ll do it.”
“Yeah, he’s not sending archons.” Andrew asserted, “I’ve been casting, and there’s no large grouping of archons that I can Find, the largest group is only thirty strong, and they’re pretty far from here.” Findmancy was quite useful.
“It’s agreed, then.” Tanya announced, “I’ll spend the next tenturn or three trying to gain more levels for me and my knights and warlords from fighting the Empire, until they are eliminated from Erf.”
Well, and she’s very interested in learning what method they used to be several sides in one. That sounded like it has potential as an actual win condition.
