Kevin Curry
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Summon Perfect Warlady 25
🕑 Added 2024-02-26 15:00:09 +0000 UTCI know it's a bit short, but the next scene was too long, and more importantly the end of this chapter is a good breakpoint.
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With the majority of the column decrypted, it wasn’t quite at full strength, but it was about two-thirds the strength it started with. Transylvito’s golems and Jetstone’s battle bears were a loss, as were the siege towers that didn’t belong to Yojo Mojo, which were about 90% of them.
The decrypted Archons, although none of them were particularly high ranking, reported that while they didn’t know details, Charlie had put the entire city on high alert. They confirmed the seven hundred golem figure, although as he was activating contingencies, that number of golems may have increased substantially.
How big were the golems? For the majority of the defense golems, not as big as the mecha, surprisingly, and made to be efficient with their stats rather than going for the strongest possible units. Stats were 8/8/60 with an upkeep of 160 reduced to 40, although some number of them were probably properly Garrison, which halved it again and needed carnymancy to accomplish, which meant they were a bit worse at attacking with 75% the hits in return for a third of the upkeep. Yep, if she was making a bunch of defense golems, this would be preferable in comparison to the Mecha. She also approved of making the dollamancy and dirtamancy mainline golems match on the basic stats, so they can be more easily made interchangeable.
About five hundred of the seven hundred golems were like that. About eighty were bigger, matches for Battle Bears but with much less move and thus slightly less upkeep. The rest were more eclectic, experiments by Charlie’s best casters as they developed the institutional knowledge required to make Charlescomm so defensible. Either they count as additional troops or additional traps, either way it confounded the accuracy of mathamancy predictions, which was definitely something Charlie did on purpose. As if the inherent variability of an Archon didn’t already do that.
Claude Gauntlet was level 6, lower than Tanya expected but he apparently had been a barbarian for most if not all of his life and if he had ever croaked a unit, it was a long, long time ago. Ivan Poe was stronger, however, at level 9. In the event that Charlecomm gets attacked, Ivan Poe had a special customized stack of golems with guns to lead, although Tanya questioned the benefits of having eight units all with different points, abilities, and equipment instead of having a standard squad that would be easier to lead… Why couldn’t they all be as Heavy as the big one, with the minigun?
In other words, expect a +3 bonus on the dollamancy golems as Claude was in the city and a +5 on the dirt golems, which are thankfully rarer, because Ivan is supposed to be there even if they don’t know for sure whether he is or not. Assume Ivan’s special stack is led by him.
What else was there to confound the mathamancy… Well, they still didn’t know exactly how much stronger the emplaced guns are in comparison to the rifles, and Charlie still has all the bullets he needs for those. Each firearm accessory had a customized caliber, they didn’t use shared ammunition like certain logistics-savvy militaries may have.
Well, also the fact that the Great Minds weren’t entirely certain if their Lookamancy was accurate, the Arkendish was certainly capable of confounding Lookamancy, but they used teamwork in an attempt to overpower the interference. They thought they succeeded, but Charlie was very aware of their actions, at a minimum. The fidelity was also significantly lower than she was accustomed to from Isaac’s Lookamancy efforts. She was rather curious as to that gigantic electrical something wired beneath his portal room, but she couldn’t see it clearly. Was it a bomb?
“I believe I’ve deciphered the nature of this accessory.” Announced Prince Jack, who had been hired for his expertise on Count Harbinger’s suggestion. “It’s very special. The ammunition isn’t even dollamancy! No, it’s dirtamancy. This is a knight-portable explosive cannon trap and I love it!”
Charlie wasn’t so sloppy as to leave behind any rifles for them to examine, but a small number of the RPGs were able to be salvaged from the failed attempt to destroy their siege, which was a lot closer of a call than she liked, in hindsight. Thankfully, they had the Great Mind’s support, and with it came a host of allied and subordinate casters that are willing to risk themselves on this venture, and Tanya was just as willing to pay them for that risk.
“That makes sense.” Tanya said, thinking about it. “Fundamentally, a gun uses an explosive charge to propel a projectile, no different than the tension on a bowstring. Explosions are dirtamancy. I suppose you could substitute shockamancy to make a railgun or coilgun… but shockamancy accessories already exist, so it might not be as effective as the dirtamancy…”
“That is truly fascinating.” Prince Jack said sincerely. “But I must point out that this weapon has an additional requirement to use. It’s a common thing for certain sides, in order to make accessories more difficult for other sides to emulate. In this case, it requires an exotic proficiency special, one that does not exist: Sapper (RPG). I assume the rifles require a similar one, perhaps Archery (Rifle), the emplaced guns Ballistician (Gatling), or whatever.”
Tanya tilted her head. “So… Charlie gives his archons items that give them that special?” She asked.
“No!” Prince Jack said, “But I like your thinking. No, it doesn’t work that way. Proficiency specials like Stabber, Axeman, Archery, or even Miner, which I won’t go into right now, are not something you can merely put on a belt and suddenly have.” He shows off his fashionable belt, which Analysis said gave him a Barrier like hers. “They define a unit, accessories can’t change the nature of a unit. The trick, and it is a trick, is that this accessory has incorporated carnymancy to ignore the proficiency requirement, effectively granting the special to whoever holds it.”
Tanya frowned. “Wait, but everyone else suddenly knew how to operate it when holding it.” It didn’t work for her, sadly, but she assumed that’s a side effect of her origins.
“Who’s the weirdomancer here?” Prince Jack said rhetorically. “It makes perfect sense, trust me. It doesn’t work for you because you don’t have any proficiency specials.” She doesn’t? “Well, any weapon proficiency specials. You do have the etiquette special as a subset of your Royal special, and that’s a proficiency one. You didn’t have that one the first time we met.”
“By that do you mean etiquette, or Royal in general?” Tanya asked, curious. Did the spell make her a princess, or did the crown?
“The former. You had the most anemic and incomplete Royal special I’ve ever seen when I first saw you, but it was there.” Prince Jack replied, smiling sharply. “I’ve been told that crown completed it? Interesting trick, I’d like to study it.”
“Moving on,” Tanya said, ignoring his request. “Could you replicate the carnymancy effect?” Tanya asked.
“Without a carnymancer to link with?” Prince Jack asked. Tanya nodded. “Having a sample definitely helps…” After a moment, he shrugged. “...I didn’t live as long as I have by experimenting with explosives. I’ll try if you get me one of the rifles.” He tapped the RPG. “My gut says this will explode if I try, and these are single use. I trust my gut feelings. With a few turns to experiment, I might be able to make a weirdomancy spell that grants the relevant special, but that solution obviously has problems.” Namely, they’d need a supply of non-carnied rifles first, and could then only use them when hiring him, unless… She’d need to get good enough at dittomancy to duplicate scrolls.
Okay, that was fair. “Okay, are there any other variables we need to account for?” Tanya asked, looking at Count Harbinger.
“I believe we’ve covered it.” He said, “We have unit counts, a basic understanding of their unit strength, and approximations of their traps and other defenses.”
Tanya turned to Sizemore. “How many traps do we have in our own portal room, anyway?” She asked, “I distinctly recall ordering some made.”
“Eight.” Sizemore immediately replied.
“Charlie has eighty…” Tanya mused. It was one of the pieces of intelligence the Decrypted Archons provided. “I’m authorizing an additional thirty caster levels of juice from the Shock Exchange. Reinforce it.” Focusing, Tanya prepared to cast a spell. “Flipside.” The juice went straight down her middle, and her world started to fold… but then the spell collapsed. “Flipside!” She said as she tried again. A duplicate of herself stepped outside of her body. Success.
“Let’s brainstorm.” The other Tanya said, immediately going straight to work. “We have to assume the worst case, which is Archons with guns. We’ll get plenty of warning from the Great Minds if he tries anything less sneaky.”
“But what about the RPGs?” Sizemore asked, standing up and following the other Tanya down into the dungeons. She’ll manage the juice transfers from the Shock Exchange.
Turning away from them and refocusing on the tactical map, Tanya hummed. “Are there any other variables we can suss out?” She asked.
“None that I can think of.” Count Harbinger said, to the general agreement of the various casters. Hm… perhaps she should retain an experienced warlord for these meetings… but they all joined the column.
“Cast your spell, then.” Tanya requested.
“Hodge, Reimann, Navier-Stokes.” Wait, she recognized that middle one. Wasn’t that an unsolvable math equation? “...Odds are hazy.” He admitted. “Too many unknown variables, the Arkendish is spoofing me, I think. But with our assumptions and projections, we have a 92.481% chance of success, under the definitely-wrong assumption that he only uses what we know he can do with the Arkendish and doesn’t pull out anything new.” Mathamancy can draw certain kinds of unknown information from nothing, but that was usually things like unit counts that were a bit more precise than your intel, the exact level distributions, current ammunition supplies, things like that.
“I consulted with Predictamancer Lavere, and she confirms that this turn is a momentous turning point. She will be unable to provide any useful information beyond the previous intelligence on relevant predictions.” Maggie volunteered.
“That’s predictamancer lingo for ‘shut up and let me manipulate events in my favor’, by the way.” Prince Jack offered. “You won’t believe the kinds of things predictmancers can get up to on turns like these. They call it a momentous turning point because it’s like a corner, they can’t see past it. But they can see the point itself just fine, and that makes them some of the most annoyingly powerful casters when it happens.”
Well… that was good? She thinks. “I’m not sure I understand how that works.” She says, asking for clarification.
“I don’t really understand how it works.” Prince Jack admitted. “If I did, I’d be a predictamancer. Something about their short-term predictions, their combat magic, getting a boost? Not sure. They basically become Luckamancers on turns like these, but better.”
“I’ve never been able to understand Predictamancy either, sadly.” Count Harbinger added, “Can’t wrap my head around it. Mathamancy has some predictive ability, and I did do some Looking Up last night, but I didn’t find anything I thought was useful. Three Rands for the write-up.”
“Done.” Tanya said, taking the paper and reading it. It was a spreadsheet, with units in the column as the columns, and actions as the rows. The intersections were presumably simplified, as he put a simple ‘good’, ‘okay’, ‘bad’ rating for each one. “What am I looking at?” She asked.
“Luckamancy manipulates the numbers generated for each unit.” Count Harbinger summarized, “But those numbers aren’t made on the spot. They’re made every night, new Look Up tables generated while Erfworld sleeps. Actions I’ve labeled good are going to go well without needing Luckamancy this turn, at least for the first hundred or so rolls. If they’re ‘okay’, it’s either average or it’s all over the place without any trends.” That explained why it was the most common indicator. “Of course, ‘bad’ is the opposite of ‘good’. As I said, nothing really stood out to me as useful.”
Tanya wanted to disagree, but she doubted knowing that Ansom should avoid falling this turn in particular was going to be useful, nor that Ace’s spot checks for veils would be particularly high this turn. Well, knowing such in advance didn’t seem that useful. Also, her own casting rolls being ‘poor’ is information that came too late. She’ll have to avoid using her more difficult spells today.
Still, she doesn’t begrudge the Count an honest paycheck. “Anything further or should we order the attack?” Tanya asked.
After a moment of negative responses, Tanya sent the signal to Ansom that their pre-battle divinations and preparations were complete. When Ansom and Wanda receive such notices from everyone, they are to begin the attack.
Fortunately, inter-hex time shenanigans meant that all of these notices arrived at the same time, mere minutes after Wanda sent the intelligence back to the various sides lending support. The distance between Gowin Knob and Charlescomm was only 119 hexes, so Tanya could just barely get reception from the scout special of her few remaining knights.
Now, to link back up to provide support.
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Every facet of a city invasion included trade-offs. The primary question one had to answer, before anything else, was ‘how many angles of attack were you going to use?’
An airspace assault meant that not only were all of the units on the walls useless, but they were now loot, as they automagically become imprisoned when the city is captured. Units deployed in the tunnels, if they exist, were the same way. On the other hand, attacking the airspace exposed you to the tower. A fully spelled up tower was, generally speaking, something that meant you were going to lose a lot of your attacking force before you even close in. If your enemy had airspace defenders and a warlord or worse, a caster directing the tower shots intelligently? Losing a stack of dwagons per city level was not out of the question when facing sides that had a master-class shockamancer.
A ground assault had to go through walls, which were tough nuts to crack. Nigh impossible without siege except for low level cities or ones that decided that they didn’t need walls, which was not unreasonable for cities that were sufficiently isolated, as city zones operated on a point buy system so forgoing walls significantly improved one’s ability to, for example, protect against air attacks.
You know, assuming those enemy fliers didn’t decide to just land and walk into your city, bypassing the nastiest of your anti-air defenses. But she’s gone on a tangent.
Charlescomm was heavily fortified with traps no matter what you were dealing with, and it was assumed to have a lot of shockamancy on hand for anti-air operations. Particularly because he had a lot of shockamancy traps that drew from the city’s shockamancy stores, which meant that attack at all angles was still viable. He’ll run out eventually, after all.
In the end, though, she’s not actually in charge of those kinds of strategic decisions; it goes down to a vote between the Chief Warlords, in this case Stanley, Ansom, and Cruz. If there was an even number alive, Stanley would be the tiebreaker on the basis of his level. This was a compromise between Faq and the rest of the alliance, because no one wanted Stanley in charge, as under normal royal alliance etiquette he would be on the basis of his level alone.
Tanya would ordinarily think the measure detestably hypocritical… but she’s heard stories of Stanley’s bone-headed decisions from Maggie and Sizemore, even if Sizemore insisted that Stanley was a far better Chief Warlord than ruler. Also, Ansom seemed to be following her orders to always judge Stanley’s ideas on their own merits, and not poorly simply because they were his idea. So Tanya was not terribly surprised that it ended up with Stanley attacking the airspace with all of the air units while Ansom attacked the front gate with everything else.
What was surprising was that Charlie had his own Shock Exchange, only his was better, somehow. Archons flitted around the air, dazzling and distracting the Royal Crown Coalition’s fliers, while a three-stack of archons took Charlie’s personal attention, standing directly on the Arkendish, and directed the tower’s shockamancy at a pace that was, frankly, absurd.
More importantly, they Just. Kept. Shooting. The anti-air guns were bad enough, but the amount of shockamancy that those archons were able to output would have cost nearly half a million shmuckers through the Shock Exchange, and while they didn’t have the potency of Tanya’s wand-enhanced shockamancy, it also didn’t require an intermediate step, the linked Archons taking the juice directly and translating it into anti-air spells.
Attacking the walls didn’t do much better. The walls were breached easily enough, but even they were lined with traps that the archons didn’t even know about, as they were mostly stray wires that unloaded an inefficient shockamancy unload on any digger that tried to breach, and that croaked half of the diggers before they finally breached. Explosive traps and siege doors were everywhere in the garrison, and Wanda’ waves of decryption could only do so much to keep the fight going, after having had to use that to blunt Charlie’s preemptive attack.
They intervened, nudging attacks away from the high-value targets so they could live longer, improving the offensive capabilities of the archer knights so they could take out archons who tried to use foolamancy defenses, and helping them avoid some of the traps…
But in the end, the defenses of Charlescomm were just too much. The gatling guns were even more effective than they predicted, equivalent to a full stack of rifles using automatic fire. The shockamancy traps just… didn’t run out of juice. They just kept being active, no matter how many units they croaked. Stanley was turned to dust first of the Chiefs, only after every single dwagon was defeated, some of them twice-over. Wanda croaked from falling, as she was being supported by the Arkenhammer’s flight. She stood back up immediately, having decrypted herself, but she was in the firing arc of one of the gatling guns and didn’t last long.
“Well… the good news is, we’ve probably seen all of his tricks.” Tanya said after they unlinked, the last of their units croaked.
“The bad news, of course, being that they were very good tricks.” Prince Jack offered from the work table that he was examining a rifle they had managed to send back with hat magic.
“What’s your read on the rifles?” Tanya asked the puppetmaster.
“Well, beyond them being, in my opinion, deliciously OP…” Prince Jack began, which caused several of the casters to gasp in shock. The reaction made his grin widen. “I’m going to need carnymancy scrolls in order to reproduce them, although they don’t need to be exactly the right spell, I think. Could someone go buy up as many as you can for me?”
“Done.” Isaac said, “Will dittomancy duplicates of the scroll suffice?”
“Make sure it’s the right spell if you do.” Prince Jack replied, “I know there’s a carnymancy scroll flitting around that’s usually used to let a warlord use a ballista, get copies of those.”
Now it was time for Charlie’s counterattack.
