Kevin Curry
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Summon Perfect Warlady 2.01
🕑 Added 2024-03-25 14:00:10 +0000 UTCLast weekly update before the one-month break. I'll be pausing the patreon's payment system for one month starting sometime this week.
Yes, I'll still be posting the Devil's Consultancy update on the 1st.
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With a total upkeep that could be rounded up to twenty-five thousand shmuckers per turn, that meant every million shmuckers that she carted off was equivalent to forty turns of upkeep. She had to spend some juice to tabulate all of the shmuckers held in the frankly absurd number of gems in her dress, but it was every so slightly less than ten million in total. They had harvested about fifteen million total from the three mines they depleted with a link, they spent about four million on getting juice to accessorize stuff, including the firearms, one million on various diplomatic bribes, and was able to reclaim the four million or so that was spent on upgrading their cities.
So despite a quantity of money that was rightly seen as absurd, all it amounted to was setting the doom clock to four hundred turns. About thirteen months.
Which, you know, for her, Visha, and their two hundred and three subordinates, actually sounded about right.
She had about thirty wands stashed in her dress loaded with various simple and cheap utility spells, although they also functioned as an additional juice supply, as they had half a caster level of battery each. Small for wands, but perfect for her needs given her ability to hook them up to her artifact wand’s power supply. A wand was considered good if it had twice that much, and the ‘best’ wands had double that. Anything more was seen as a vanity project more than anything actually useful, due to the increasingly large juice requirements to create such a large battery.
They traveled about fifty hexes per turn, using the spare move to forage, hunt, and scout out the area around their last hex. They usually stuck to mountain and heavy forest hexes, but in a pinch lake hexes were also pretty useful. She made sure to keep Ansom’s old flying carpet, specifically to use as a mid-air bed. It didn’t fit in her dress, so she just rode on it while it was rolled up like a motorcycle like Ansom did. It boosted her move by a little bit in doing so, but as a flier already it didn’t do much more than that.
On the way, they did a little fund-razing, to extend the doom clock, but their top priority was increasing the distance between them and Charlescomm.
“Give us one hundred thousand shmuckers and we will refrain from razing your cities.” Tanya demanded from the prince that had answered her demand for parley. “Alternatively, give us double that and we will instead spend the next four turns razing the cities of your enemies.”
“No!” Shouted the prince. “This is Dancia, and we will not be intimidated by your raiders!” He struck a pose, boasting his dance-fighting special.
Tanya stared at him. “This is a level 3 city. Our odds of taking the city are ninety-seven percent.” That figure was without guns. “The 203 Aerial Knights Battalion have you rather substantially outgunned. This is your last chance to comply.”
“Never!”
“Then, out of respect for your bravery, if not your intelligence, I will allow you to fortify your position before beginning our attack.” Tanya said. While she, as a barbarian, would be largely disrespected anyway, as royalty she was still expected to fight honorably, particularly if she wanted to claim the social benefits of that.
After the Prince went to stack up on his tower, Tanya silently issued combat orders to her knights, spending juice to communicate using their heartstrings instead of the old ruler channels, which no longer exist. Prioritize leveling up warlords and the level 1 knights. While she could use the wand she got from Elya to balance out moves, the more total move points her forces had, the further they could travel per turn. “Croak them all.” She said out loud to finish her instructions.
The big drawback of being a Barbarian instead of a sided unit, combat-wise, was the total lack of a Chief Warlord bonus. She had been exchanging letters with Janis, trying to learn a date-a-mancy spell to emulate it, but it was slow going.
Fortunately, they had guns, and it was pretty hard to miss the extra Leadership bonus when you were mostly facing enemies that had zero such bonus. Two or three units directing a three-round burst took out pretty much any amount of screens and the warlord behind them, as there were only so many units you could put between you and an enemy, and that number was a lot lower against a flier.
Anyone who mustered effective resistance, Tanya dealt with. Either with an overwhelming shockamancy blast, or a little foolamancy to put them out of position for the rifles to capitalize on.
Guns were so overpowered. Even more than she was. Still, Charlie had them too, so it was south for her. Over the sea, to a completely different continent. All she needs to do is find a new capital site, out of Charlie’s reach.
…They’ll be flying for a while.
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It was about forty turns, when they got over two thousand hexes away from Charlescomm, that Tanya decided that they were far enough to be able to take a little break from the road.
This was because of them locating an empty city site on a deserted volcanic Island. It wasn't a capital site, so they couldn't do what they did in Gobwin Knob by calling in the casters to loot it to the bedrock, but Barbarian cities can still pop units. Hm. Wait a minute, links can make scrolls of their super-spells. She made a note to have a few ‘empty the mine’ scrolls made next time she gets the chance to meet with Sizemore and Maggie. It’ll just take her securing a capital site…
She was actually curious what her ‘natural’ unit table was. Not curious enough to bother spending the money to upgrade it beyond the level 2 she needs to pop some more knights to replace the attrition; they lost a total of thirty units: twenty-six when attacking a level 4 city, and one each for four other skirmishes.
It was a lot harder to preserve her forces when there were so many, she noticed. She could only do so much with foolamancy and her shockamancy defense. Also, while each of them had both a rifle and a shielding defense, as those do work against bullets so they were prioritized, only her original elite stacks and all the warlords have the full kit.
Well, Victoria had that one secret accessory as well, but the only impact that's had is essentially forcing her to wear skirts so it can be taken advantage of if needed.
“That’s an interesting unit…” Visha said as she poked it.
The little fairy giggled, waving off the contact. “It’s interesting, to be sure.” Tanya said in agreement.
[Pick, Level 1 Tricksy]
Combat: -2
Defense: -2
Hits: 2
Move: 36
Specials: Flying, Foolamancy
From experience, she knew that a weirdomancer like Jack would wax poetic about the hidden specials that it had, like ‘tiny’. A ‘normal’ unit with stats like this would have an upkeep of around eight. They used magic, so it was doubled to sixteen. A level 1 city in her signamancy could pop four in one turn. The other ones were named Fay, Nick, and Navi.
This was, to say the least, incredibly cheap for casting units. They had a quarter of the juice a full caster of equal level did, and their skill level was low, but if stacked with a real example, they could supplement the juice of that caster, up to half of the cost. “I sent a letter to Janis about it, and she said that fairy-type units, of which Tricksies were merely a foolamancy-attuned variety, were considered to be quite strong.
“Hey!” Said one of the Tricksies. She didn’t catch which one. When Tanya looked at them, they giggled, not otherwise doing anything to justify her attention. Ugh, so annoying. “Listen!” The same one said the instant she looked away. Tanya, foolishly trusting that her units had her best interests in mind, paid attention, trying to figure out what was being warned against. The Tricksies skipped giggling and went into full-on laughter.
“Okay, so they like pranks.” Tanya said ruefully, understanding the situation now. “Even if their wit would be comparable to a toddler.”
Visha hummed. “Princess, you used a new word again.” Ah crap, toddlers aren’t a thing here. “It’s interesting.”
“Yes, in my old world, even Men units grew over time, just like farm animals do here.” Tanya elaborated, “It took quite a bit longer, though.” By now, Visha was probably the most informed as to the nature of her old existence. Even though she rarely understood the depth of her complaints, she still took her role as Tanya’s attendant quite seriously, and listened intently when she had to vent over some of the oddities of Erf. “My point is that they’re not very bright.” On cue, the Tricksies started glowing. Tanya sighed.
“They’re pretty quick, but they’ll slow us down a lot if we use them.” Visha observed. By now, she was a level 7 warlord, and in Barbarian terms that meant she was theoretically equal to Tanya. Most deposed rulers, even royal ones, would struggle to keep twelve other barbarian warlords in line, but she had several advantages: first, she had most of the shmuckers. Second, she was the only one available who could reload their rifle’s ammunition. Finally, she used a lot of Date-a-mancy to note friction and smoothed any issues out before it became a problem.
It would be a large problem if her forces started to fracture, but for now, it wasn’t a serious concern. Barbarians didn’t really have Duty, only the echoes of it from their experience as sided units, which meant that she had to manually ensure their Loyalty instead of trusting in the world’s game mechanics to do it for her.
Fortunately, she knew how to manage her human resources. A fine example of this was the current city setup. It had no walls, nor much of a tower. She had practiced enough Dirtamancy through a link that she had some rough ideas on how the whole process worked, although she struggled to keep it all in her head at the time of the upgrade. Instead, the entirety of the city’s benefits was focused on the coastal batteries, where there were some defensive turrets designed to protect riflemen instead of ballisticians, as well as the garrison. Instead of a traditional barracks setup, each individual soldier had their own dormitory. She didn’t go so far as to pop garrison infantry or courtiers to act as menial servants, but the accommodations were otherwise far more luxurious than they enjoyed in Yojo Mojo’s original cities.
“So what’s the other option?” Visha asked.
“Eh, something called a Whirlybird.” Tanya said, waving dismissively. “According to Janis, it’s a heavy flier with a transport special.” Which was somewhere between Mount and Capture, capable of carrying multiple units and prisoners without penalty but without the stack benefits of Mount nor the combat benefits of Capture. “Takes two turns to pop, can’t tell more without popping one. Not sure if it’s worth it.” Every idle turn that they’re popping units is a turn where twenty-thousand shmuckers goes down the drain. She has a basic ‘boost production’ wand from Elya so that she can pop three garrison knights per turn that she’ll promote before they leave, so she only needs ten turns to replenish their numbers, but the city only produced about five thousand shmuckers per turn, and while hunting sea creatures for their meat with their rifles helped both their upkeep and their levels, they were still losing money every turn. Not even using her spare juice to generate food through a flower power wand Janis made for her (it only made potatoes) and then either cooking it through the natural changemancy of the city’s larder or turning it directly into shmuckers with moneymancy fully mitigated the issues. “Literally anything we get will slow us down in comparison to just keeping us as only knights, after all.” Near as she could tell, Tanya had the theoretically highest possible move. So did her Noble knights, with the non-noble ones only being slightly slower, with 54 at level 1. Unless there was some other obscure special that boosted move further, getting any other unit type would be a drag on their ability to move.
“Yes, that’s right.” Visha said, thinking on the matter. “We don’t have a capital site yet. We have to stay mobile.”
“Also, due to the rifles, each additional unit would have much less utility, as they would lack said rifles. Any additional units would need to support the usage of the rifles to be efficient usage of upkeep.” Which, incidentally, the Tricksies qualify as, because protecting the rifle units with foolamancy is a good use case. But the fey units would slow them down by 18 move. Theoretically, she could use what Transylvito uses for their bats and have a dress that stores a stack or two of tricksies that would allow her to carry them… but that would require that she give up the massive storage space for items and gems that she currently has.
Still, with that one-turn diversion handled, they all settled in for their brief ten-turn vacation as forces got replenished. Every turn, her strongest stacks went on a scouting spree, their high move that, with three subordinate stacks lending move for the return trip, allowed them to survey a forty-hex radius. The remaining six stacks then dispatched all feral sea beasties and birds found, automagically turning the meat into rations in their packs. Due to the natural changemancy of the process, even immense beasts turned into easily carried portions of relevant foodstuffs, as long as the value was able to be carried by them. Without things like chuck wagons or other storage, a unit could carry twice their upkeep in rations without penalty, and up to triple that by accepting move penalties. This meant that traditional wisdom was that a single unit can eat to half upkeep for five turns off of one feral, if it’s a large one.
From experience, Tanya was learning of the typical yields of sea-based ferals. There were a few that were of comparable size to land-based ferals, schools of freshmer (which Tanya had initially mistaken for natural allies, but after experiencing their mindless Rush over the Week, figured out that they were not, in fact, people) dramasharks, which were just sharks that had dramatic music, and Pie-C’s, which reminded Tanya of lemon-filled takiyaki, as examples, more often than not the sea creatures were of an immense size far beyond anything found elsewhere. Gunwhales (narwhals that used shockamancy), quakkens (giant rubber ducks), and even leviafats, which are like leviathins, but with one obvious difference.
The yields from the more ordinary units ranged from two hundred shmuckers of meat to eight hundred, as usual, but the larger ones yielded ten times that much. It made some sense, they would have to be pretty powerful to be a threat to even the smallest ships, which were stacks of led units piled onto one changemancy stat block. The smallet units traveled in stacks, of course. Not that the larger ones didn’t, but they were small groups, not full stacks.
But they still died in droves when faced with rifles. They were heavy, of course, so they didn’t die in one shot, but given the scales they were designed to operate at, dying to a single reinforced stack of units in a single three-round burst, fifty-one bullets, at most sounded like it would be frustrating. Several couldn’t even survive a single shot volley.
Further, firearms and ammo were insultingly cheap to make on top of being overpowered. Each rifle, which cost a single caster-level of juice, came with four magazines, each of which held thirty bullets. This cost only slightly more in dirtamancy than the rifle did in dollamancy. That was a lot of death for that amount of juice.
Granted, the carnymancy quadrupled the cost when you consider the novice-class dittomancy surcharge to duplicate the scroll and the master-class weirdomancy to adjust the parameters of the carnymancy plus the master-class dollamancy binding it to the accessory on top of the juice spent on the adept-class carnymancy itself, but that just put it in the realm of ‘hey, let’s slap a +3 Combat bonus on your Warlord’ rather than ‘let’s make your knights able to instantly croak anything that isn’t a heavy at range’ like the rifles represented. So overpowered.
So Tanya didn’t bother telling them to hold back on the bullet consumption beyond ‘don’t shoot them unless you’re croaking something’. None of them ran through enough ammo for it to significantly drain her admittedly massive juice pool.
Such sea monsters also provided a wealth of experience points. Not a single one of her riflemen were level 1 except for the newly popped ones, and after taking the newbies out on a few hunts where they leveled to two or sometimes three, their bonds with their new comrades were strong enough to tie them together in a reinforced stack, on top of them leveling up from the experience.
Each level added an extra ten shmuckers onto a knight’s upkeep, though. Well, one of them leveled to six, and their upkeep went to 132 instead of the expected 130, but then again warlord upkeeps also went up faster at that breakpoint, so that made sense. From level 1 to 5, upkeep goes up to fifty percent more than it was at level 1, going one quarter of the distance between those figures each level, except for warlords and casters, including casting units like the Tricksies, where it doubled in the same span. Then, from level 5 to 10, it went up by half again or doubled again, going one fifth of the distance each level instead. At least, that’s where the math went. Her own upkeep broke this rule, but long-term spells that permanently augmented a unit tended to add a unit-dependent but not level-dependent amount to a unit’s upkeep, so that made sense that the Perfect Warlord spell would as well.
Still, it was turn eight of the planned eleven turns of vacation when the peace finally broke: A fleet of ships sailed up to the harbor… although she wasn’t quite clear on how many ships constituted a fleet in this world. There were seven ships, but only one seemed to be on the large side.
They did not immediately fire their beam weapons, that is, shockamancy bolts that get fired from the beams of the sails (this world…), so Tanya figured there was an opportunity for diplomacy. Ordering the Tricksies to stack up and contribute their meager juice, Tanya cast foolamancy to appear floating in front of their ship. “Ahoy there! My tricksies only have so much juice to maintain a two-way call,” she lied, her Recon special made her able to eavesdrop on conversations within the same hex so she could hear them fine, but she wanted to be able to imply that she wasn’t a caster. “So I’ll skip the pleasantries. Who are you and why are you here, at Pismo Beach?” She had decided to name the city ‘Pismo’, because she was reminded of a very old cartoon when she looked upon the idyllic beach the city site was on, particularly the rabbit-like Whatup that popped out of the ground that she had to croak before she could claim the site. As she thought, the rations the city popped included plenty of clams. She missed seafood, and enjoyed them immensely.
The Captain was a man wearing an officious red coat and a rather large hat. “I am Vice-Admiral Sir Pottingham, of the Albinny Kingdom. My ship is the HMS Mapbacks.” The man announced with an incredibly pompous voice, thick with a British accent.
[Vice-Admiral Sir Pottingham, Level 8 Warlord]
Combat: 26
Defense: 26
Hits: 17
Move: 16
Specials: Noble, Leadership, Seafarer
Magical Bonus: Mapping
Hm. +2 equipment, +3 side-wide chief warlord bonus, but otherwise a standard stat block for a seafaring warlord, with a slight bonus for being a Noble. Analysis said Mapping was a natural Findamancy special, giving him awareness of terrain within four hexes, twenty on the sea. Seeing as how Recon allowed clear visibility from five hexes away among sea hexes, this made sense. She wondered how much a normal unit could see when on a boat?
[Princess Tanya von Degurechaff, level 8 Barbarian]
Combat: 36
Defense: 36
Hits: 10 (10)
Move: 77
Specials: Tanya, Royal, Leadership, Caster, Flight, Recon
Magical bonuses: Leadership x2, Barrier, Analysis, Shockamancy, Inventory
She wasn’t worried, even with the loss of her Chief Warlord bonus. Still, the pompous man continued. “Our purpose here was to re-found this little city site, and claim it for Her Majesty Queen Virginia.”
Ah, crap. “Well, I am Princess Tanya von Degurechaff, formerly Queen of Yojo Mojo.” Tanya said, curtseying. The image she was projecting to the ship with foolamancy mimicked her motions. One of the first principles of foolamancy that was explained to her, when she spoke to Isaac, was that one should seek to keep your illusions as simple as possible when using them for practical purposes like this. He meant ‘when one is combining a thinkagram with foolamancy’ but it was just as relevant here. “I’ve founded this city, and would be willing to part with it without violence in return for certain… considerations.” Tanya said, waving her hand vaguely.
“Princess?” Sir Pottingham asked incredulously. “Well, I suppose you do look the part…” Tanya looked down at her dress. While the underlying garment was a comfortable, breezy summer dress that fit best in a garden party, when transformed it looked very classically magical girl, to be honest. It was a metal cuirass that was so form-fitted that it resembled more of a sailor fuku. It had a pink ribbon at the front of the cleavage, set with a sparkling golden gem that could actually be used to directly access the gems inside her inventory without needing to physically remove them. The original dress was short in front but long in the back, but now the pink skirt was short all the way around, which paradoxically made Tanya think of it as less sexualized, as it was just cute. It also came with thigh-high white socks, pink high heels, and long elegant gloves.
…She wouldn’t look at this and say ‘regal’, but it did in this world. It was weird. The comfortable weight of her now-long hair intruded on her awareness as she looked back up. Ah, well, this was a pretty ‘princess’ hairstyle, at least. There was no way she could have maintained this if it wasn’t for the morning cleansing. “Yes. Princess.” Tanya repeated. “Now, shall we commence with unpleasantness or shall we begin negotiating?”
Hm, could she swing a mercenary contract with them? That sounded fruitful.
Comments
Chris Larson
Why do I feel like she's not going to get a mercenary offer but an adoption offer?
