Kevin Curry
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Summon Perfect Warlady 2.07
🕑 Added 2024-08-01 10:55:33 +0000 UTCThere was particularly inconvenient drawback to the new defense organization: it made them absurdly vulnerable to flying attacks. While yes, her own presence and her knights mitigated that issue, that also meant that anyone with a big flying force and a lookamancer might get the wrong idea.
Someone like Bone. It was the most powerful side on the other side of the Alfs, old enough that they had something of a reputation in the Magic Kingdom. Half of this reputation was how handsome, suave, and promiscuous their Overlord, Mark Gold, was. ‘Going down to Bonetown’, which was their capital, was code among female casters for doing prostitution work precisely due to how often this service was bought by that ruler.
The other half was how successful the Bonans were at invading people with complete and total surprise. They had a foolamancer that was skilled at lookamancy (who notably didn’t get along with the Great Minds), plus a croakamancer and a level 11 Chief Warlady, Nero Boner.
Tanya didn’t initially think them a threat, due to how there were three sides between Schnitzeland and them, but the more she hears about how inconvenient Boner’s usual invasion strategy was, the more worried she got.
Nero, you see, earned the infamous emperor’s name, as she was considered quite mad. The usual slanders towards non-royals of course, debauchery and dishonorable cruelties, but what actually worried Tanya was her reputation of unpredictability. Boner had the distressing tendency to pop up with zero warning, at the most inconvenient times. The hexes in their areas had lots of roads between the cities, terrain with very little places to hide. Somehow, she manages to surprise people nonetheless, standing tall and proud after every unveiling, and promptly ruining the dignity of whatever battlefield she interrupted with her sudden appearance.
Once the battlefields went cold, of course Boner then shrinks away, going back into obscurity until the next bout of rising spirits rouses her to appear once more, spear ready to thrust. It’s like middle school tennis regionals all over again.
But enough about the potential danger with the objectively hilarious name. Like most problems, this was solvable by hiring the right caster. For a lot of issues, this option was too expensive to be the first resort. But the Hokey Pokeys worked cheaply, and that included Findamancers.
“Yes, I’m familiar with Nero Boner. She’s not small, but rather thin. Likes crawling into tight, damp spaces.” Andrew Phisher was the Findamancer that had linked up to create the Summon Perfect Warlord spell, as Findamancy was a necessary component for a spell that sifts through multiple universes to locate a suitable candidate. “You see, I have a quest from the Titans, to find the woman who I call the eleventh goddess,” Tanya was actually surprised that word was allowed to exist. “-and she was one of many notorious warladies I investigated. “
Should she ask? She’s curious… No. Focus. “So can you tell me when she crosses the Alfs?”
“Should be simple enough, Titans willing.” Andrew said simply. He looked exactly like the depiction of Saint Andrew, one of the twelve apostles, back at the extra large and fancy church that the orphanage took trips to at Christmas and Easter. “It’s good to see that you’re not taking Fate’s protections for granted.”
Tanya scoffed. “If I did, I’d have joined Ansom in the assault on Charlescomm, and then I’d be croaked like everyone else who tried it.”
“I’m sure the Titans would have found a way, no matter how much Carnymancy was used.” Andrew said humbly, “But all the same, you probably wouldn’t have liked their solution.”
“I’m offering you upkeep plus two hundred shmuckers a turn.” Tanya said, lowballing him a bit. It wasn’t an unreasonable sum for such a simple task, but she expected a bit of haggling. “Ending when I raze this capital site, which I promise to do only after you’re on the other side of the portal.”
“I accept.” He said peacefully instead.
What? Well, she wasn’t going to complain about getting services cheaply. She may have just underestimated just how low his standards were. Or he saw her esteem with the Great Minds, who referred him to her, as reason enough for a discount. No matter.
After a moment of casting, Andrew said: “She’s currently in the state of… Denial. Playing around, presumably. ” Tanya blinked. She’s never heard of that. It’s certainly not any of the… nine or so sides that are vaguely positioned between Bone and the Alfs. It’s a good sign.
That was one contingency accounted for…
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As she had noted previously, the difference between honorable warfare and dishonorable warfare didn’t have a whole lot to do with giving the weaker party a fighting chance, quite the opposite. Instead, ‘honorable’ tactics were ones that benefit the one using them, while ‘dishonorable’ ones are the kind that harms the user or has no benefit, only harming the other side’s strength. Thus, tactics that prevent the accumulation of experience points were considered unsporting, such as unled golem assaults, exclusively uncroaked assaults without the croakamancer accompanying them, mass troop movements without leadership in general wasn’t exactly looked kindly upon really.
However, the Empire had anti-air guns, so she gave zero boops about wasting their ammunition. She duplicated herself, and sent the duplicate out alone, using her own scout special to keep an eye on the enemy response.
She gave the duplicate two caster levels of juice to play around with, and immediately on entering the hex she went to work casting foolamancy to spoil their initial ammunition expense. Their trigger discipline was respectable, and only one of the anti-air guns fired a burst at the single flying threat. It missed, of course. With that handled, the first experiment begun: Tanya’s duplicate launched a fiery shockamancy attack at the cart with the intention of cooking off the ammunition. She knew it could work, because she tested it with one of their magazines that Sizemore had put a protective case around.
Unfortunately, it was a test that Dirtamancer von Spear had also conducted, apparently. He immediately extinguished the fire from his underground position and restored the hits of the anti-air golem, while a second one of them fired on the duplicate’s now revealed position. The duplicate’s Barrier was no obstacle, the rotary cannon the golems wielded firing enough shots that it got hit by two without much issue.
Okay, attempt two. A second duplicate split off, some small interference with her spell due to having previously split off this turn, but as the other duplicate no longer existed, it was small enough that she could power through it by spending some extra juice. This time, the duplicate didn’t get shot at all in the initial entrance, Dirtamancer von Spear correctly assuming that foolamancy would waste the ammo. He still remained non-visible, Tanya kept her own rifle trained on the fortifications, watching for him to show his face so she could pop it off.
Wait… how is he watching the sky? In the long downtimes they have had, she did at one point ask Sizemore about what it was like to look at the world like a Dirtamancer. He shouldn’t be able to… He must have a scout spotting for him. With a quick delay order to her duplicate, the both of them tried to figure out which unit was a scout.
[Brandon Burger, level 3 ranger]
Combat: 8
Defense: 8
Hits: 10
Move: 21
Special: Knight, Ranger
There! The unstacked, veiled one! He was good at hiding, hard to spot, but with some mathamancy and a crack of sound, von Spear’s eyes were blinded.
The duplicate had an opening, although she had to work quickly. Diving downward with her position concealed via foolamancy, the pair of anti-air golems both fired at her image, and then the duplicate closed into melee, using shockamancy melee bonuses to enhance her damage.
The duplicate’s lightsaber shined with light as she swung, a second shining light joining it as the duplicate duplicated the swing as well. Expensive, but the point would be to destroy the golem.
[Flak 88 Golem]
Combat: 38
Defense: 20
Hits: 48
Move: 12
Specials: Golem(Dirtamancy), Heavy, Engine, Railed, Hard
Magical Bonus: Ballistician (rotary cannon)
[Queen Tanya von Degurechaff, level 9 Chief Warlord]
Combat: 49
Defense: 49
Hits: (11) 11
Move: 80
Specials: Duplicate, Royal, Leadership, Flight, Recon, Caster
Magical Bonus: Barrier, Shockamancy, Leadership x2, Mile-High, Inventory
A 29 point lead on her combat meant that she should expect to do about eight-ish damage per strike normally, as a knight class unit versus a Hard heavy of that size (well, her and her knights inflicted slightly more damage than a normal knight, but still…). So by using her Siege attack spell to both ignore the damage reduction and double the damage, plus attacking twice in one attack, should absolutely destroy it… and it did, utterly failing to hit with its melee attack that heavily resembled a salute, swinging its flattened arm out into a parade-quality straightness. It made it look halfway respectable as the duplicate’s attack tore it apart.
The other golem promptly destroyed her duplicate with a burst of bullets, though. How much more ammo do they have? Two hits on a 11 point deficit… she spent a drop of juice on mathamancy. Ah. Twenty-five attacks that time. Plenty.
Her own juice reserves were running low… She should be able to manage to croak the other, and then she’d be able to bring in her troops and start cleaning house. Excellent.
Wait. The golem, in a burst of magic, started pulling itself together. Okay, how much juice did von Spear just spend on that? How much does he have left? Unclear. Mathamancy was rather iffy when it came to counting enemy juice, unfortunately. Her attempt pointed towards him burning a scroll at one point…
She cast the spell to duplicate herself again, but the duplicate immediately poofed away, bullet holes manifesting with the rest of her. Boop. Well, using herself as a disposable asset was a very useful endeavor… it just wasn’t something she could endlessly repeat.
Theoretically, she could risk herself, relying on her Fate protection to ensure her foolamancy and veiling spot checks succeeded in keeping her alive, take out both golems, as he was unlikely to be able to repeat the feat of resurrecting the golem, and then invade… or she could bring a stack and focus fire to destroy the anti-air, letting their high defense work for them… But the idea of trusting that much to her Fate protection made her skin crawl.
Ah, there was another scout keeping an eye out. She shot him right between the eyes from the next hex over.
…Yeah, she was done for this turn. She’ll harass him again next turn.
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“So, I try not to complain just because my enemies are competent.” Tanya said as she moved her bishop. Casually, she moved her eyes and focused on specific pieces, while simultaneously plotting to use completely different pieces.
“Understandable.” Isaac said as he quickly moved a pawn in response. “Nice try, by the way. I almost believed you were going for your knight next.”
As it turned out, the Magic Kingdom had chess. The odd part was that all of the public boards were moderated by the foolamancer guild, the Ones Who Differ Rarely, or Owdr (pronounced odor) for short. The name stinks (pun intended), but playing chess apparently helped refine foolamancy senses, increasing your ability to sense what your opponent was paying attention to.
“But I really didn’t expect to find a side using guns so effectively so quickly.” Tanya complained, pulling out the looted pistol as a prop. She didn’t notice the implications immediately, but they all looked like the iconic WWII German pistol, the Luger. “Dirtamancer von Spear’s tactics are incredibly refined. It’s almost the kind of tactic I’d expect from someone like myself.” She moved a pawn of her own.
“It’s a common pitfall among warlords. Casters too, to be completely honest. Thinkamancers most of all.” Isaac said as he immediately moved another piece. He wasn’t even looking at the board, instead idly counting the ruffles on her dress. She assumed he had a mental copy of the board that he was doing all of his planning on. “Sometimes your enemies are smarter than you make them out to be.”
“A thought occurs.” Tanya said as she moved her queen. “Do you think Ivan discussed things with von Spear?”
“It’s possible.” Isaac said, moving his own queen in response. “They’ve spoken with each other in public spaces. Not about guns, of course, but that’s not something one talks about openly. Checkmate in six.”
When speaking with the Headmaster, Tanya knew that he wouldn’t have even brought up his evidence if he wasn’t completely sure of his conclusion from supporting evidence that he was likely not supposed to have. “...Good game.” Tanya said after playing out the next six moves in her head.
“You’re very good, for a beginner.” Isaac complimented.
Tanya nodded in acknowledgement of the compliment. She had never really played much chess before. Plenty of go, a moderate amount of shogi, but chess? Less than one hundred total games in her first life, none in this one. She stood up from the board. “Well, shall we see if that golf course idea’s done?” It’s not like she was getting any training by playing with him.
Fortunately, it was a simple matter to get some clubs fabricated, as she could just make an illusion of what she needed and a dollamancer could handle the rest with some materials conjured by Sizemore.
Well, mostly. “It’s still too heavy.” Tanya commented, swinging the club. “If I hit someone with this, they’d probably croak.”
“It’s a club.” The dollamancer said, a handsome man named Ken who looked right at home in a country club golf course. One of the many useless benefits of the royal special: She knows that the neck-thing is called an ascot. “It’s a weapon.” Everyone else was also dressed appropriately for the golf course, as Ken refused to help with the clubs until everyone was properly garbed for the occasion. Tanya found that wearing pants again felt a little strange, even if it objectively wasn’t that long since she wore them back in Yojo Mojo, but
Tanya shook her head. “It’s a sporting implement, a tool. Yes, you can kill someone with it, but it’s not supposed to be durable enough to be undamaged in the attempt. I could use this to golf fine, but if you casters and your noodly arms tried, you’d be impeded by the weight.” She handed it back. “Make it about two-thirds as dense.”
With the dollamancer grumbling and starting once more to mold the golf club, Tanya picked up one of the test golf balls. “Okay, this one’s too light. I’d use something like this to play ping-pong, if you smooth it over a bit.” She went through the balls of various weights until finally finding one she liked. “This one feels right. A golf ball should be about this heavy.” She was sure to not rate it purely on her muscle strength, which was not only different now that she was a girl but it was enhanced by her levels and leadership. Instead, she used a thinkamancy-enhanced recollection of the implements and then used mathamancy to compare this to the memory, the magic translating the differences between her bodies with a juice-moderated equation. Once it was right, the dollamancy within the club would adjust it to the frame of the user.
“How’s the course?” Old MacDonald asked, rubbing his hands with glee as he looked over the terrain.
“It looks good.” Tanya said genuinely. Probably a two par, honestly. “It’s simple, but it would make a good introduction to the sport before we start adding difficulty.” It had a basic curve and a single sandtrap a few meters to the left of the green, only becoming a problem if you were already way off. There was also a small pond a little to the right halfway through the course without being in the way, but that was actually there before the hippiemancer went to work with Sizemore’s help. It had some koi fish inside it.
“Okay, how’s this?” Ken asked, sounding annoyed but still smiling that plastic smile of his.
Tanya gave the gold club a few experimental swings. “Yes, this feels like a driver. Hefty, but with it all in the head. Good for distance shots.” She cast some more foolamancy, showing him two more, a putter and a seven iron, as she didn’t want to go into the full set even with thinkamancy-augmented recollection. “These should be even lighter. The first one’s for when you’re on or near the green and need a light touch, and while a full golf set has eight to twelve different clubs, this one’s a good mid-range model that should be a good compromise between the two extremes.”
Ken’s smile did not waver one bit. “Ugh. This better be worth it, MacDonald.” It was actually a little unsettling how rigid his expression is. What kind of signamancy was that?
Placing the ball on the tee, Tanya decided to give it a test. “Everyone back up, give me space for this.” Once clear, she took a deep breath and, feeling the wind through her hair, brought up her golf club and gave it a swing, hitting the ball and sending it flying towards the green. She missed it, as while she thought she was a pretty good golf player, that was years ago. The ball rolled about ten meters short of the green, but she got it in the right direction, which she doubted any of these other novices could manage.
Well, except… Kurt hummed as Tanya passed him the club. “Casting is cheating.” Tanya said immediately.
“Spoilsport.” Kurt said, before huffing in amusement. “Okay, no juice. Let it never be said I don’t enjoy a challenge.” He lined up his own shot, and after about thirty seconds of adjusting his posture and practicing the motion, he swung his club, hit the ball, and sent it… halfway between her ball and the hole. “Tch. Wind shifted.” He groused.
Naturally, as they only had the one hole, there wasn’t a whole lot to the game, they had to run the same one nine times in order to have something resembling a full game, discussing potential layouts of new holes the whole time. An enjoyable morning, even after that Carnymancer tried to ruin things by pretending to get injured by a stray ball.
Best of all, they should be able to handle developing the rest without her input, now that they have a solid idea of how to play.
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Eventually, after extensive harassment, it finally came time for the Empire’s forces to attack. Tanya had thought about committing to an all-out preemptive defense, accepting losses from the anti-air guns in order to take them out… but decided it would be easier to instead force them to crash against her fortified position after lulling them into a false sense of security, forcing von Spear to continually spend juice dealing with her harassment rather than doing anything problematic.
Last minute preparations were simple: First, she duplicated herself and promoted it to Chief Warlord. Then, after checking with all of the Magic Kingdom contractors, she showed them all to the portal with her blessing, with the sole exception of Sizemore. His sole duty was to use his magic to reinforce and repair the walls or to organize the tunnel traps depending on the enemy approach, and to counter anything von Spear would be trying in the event that he joins the fight.
Tanya was on the tower with her knights, firing positions set up with some spare munitions ready for any air based threat, or as snipers if the enemy managed to penetrate the walls. Her duplicate was standing in the courtyard, surrounded by Tartans but stacked with the Betties beneath her feet.
Visha was the one in charge of the tank battalion, the six stacks of Mickeys ready to outflank their forces. Her best warlords were with her, each providing their large leadership bonuses to the critical heavy units.
Elya was linked up with Maggie at the back of the courtyard, with the orders to just use their own discretion. The assumption was that there will be a few squads of units with rifles, and the plan was to turn them and have them waste all their munitions croaking their former allies, but with their collective juice and the casting bonuses from the link, just turning a few stacks of enemy units which promptly get Tanya’s massive in-hex leadership bonus is bound to do some damage, a good backup plan.
As expected, von Spear left the instant the tunnel into their tunnel zone was completed, getting on a minecart and zooming off. Similarly, the anti-air golems went with him, which was an interesting decision. With an empty airspace, it was a logical one, as they had fulfilled their obligations to limit Tanya’s ability to attack them, but… it was a shame that they’ll be limiting one of their other plots. Even if the odds of that plot going as planned were a mere thirty percent.
Indeed, Isaac fed her a vision of the traps they left in their rail tunnel about twenty hexes back going off, collapsing the whole thing and croaking some of their reinforcements, only to be put right by the retreating von Spear. The casualties inflicted weren’t nothing, but it didn’t delay them much at all. She had hoped that he would have spent his juice before retreating, and thus be unable to fix it.
The enemy forces were, after they reinforced and started to attack, about eight hundred dorfs supported by three thousand regular infantry, all to bring their core to the fore, thirty stacks of led knights, each with rifles. They were clearly veterans of the Lederhosen invasion, as the lowest level of the over two hundred knights were level five, and the warlords were levels eight to ten. They were led by a level ten Chief Warlord, name unknown beyond the fact that it was not the man that Tanya had thought had been the Empire’s Chief Warlord.
In a straight fight… it was pretty even actually. They had about the same amount of force when it came to firearm usage, and while they vastly outnumbered Stallin Glade’s defenders, the fortifications balanced that out a bit.
At first, they started to dig into the tunnel system, using the dorfs as a vanguard force to bypass the walls. Once they got inside, Sizemore unleashed the cistern, drowning most of the dorfs and delaying any further intrusion as Sizemore set up additional water traps in case they decided to push through.
A few dorfs survived to regroup, with only one additional casualty from a random fish that got the luckiest crit that Tanya had ever seen. From the exclamations of his fellows, the poor sod was named Urist. The dorfs seemed adamant to not go further, showcasing a fear of water that Tanya didn’t know about before. Noted.
With the tunnel option ruled out, the Empire started to instead start screening for the diggers as they attempted to go through the walls, ready to use their rifles against any ranged attacker that attempted to assault the dorfs.
While Tanya allowed a few archers to get themselves croaked by those rifles, that wasn’t the primary defense. That would be the shockamancy channels built into the wall. Each time the picks of the dorfs hit the wall, there was a chance that they hit the live wires, which…
“That is truly horrifying.” one of her warladies said, easily keeping track of what was going on through the magic of Recon, which did allow for some amount of seeing through solid objects. There were spot checks involved, but seeing the other side of the walls was easy.
“It was inevitable.” Said another warlord.
“It’s fine.” Said the first, “I heard that dorfs like saying that losing is fun.”
“Really?” Tanya asked, confused.
“I don’t know myself.” She replied, “But that’s what I heard.”
“The dorfs are croaked and I am not bothered by this.” Announced the warlord.
Still, the Empire did not give up after losing all of their available diggers. Another minecart came loaded with some of those rocket launchers, and even with Sizemore reinforcing the wall in an attempt to let it outlast their armaments, they brought enough that they blew through anyway.
It was at about this time that Isaac’s voice penetrated the emergency message line they had set up: Warlady Nero had just crossed the Alfs. On the Empire’s turn. Which meant they were allied.
…Boop.
Comments
Leaf
I always love seeing the new puns and references whenever this updates
