Kevin Curry
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Summon Perfect Warlady 21
🕑 Added 2024-01-01 15:00:11 +0000 UTCAs previously warned, now that this is a 'main' story, the advance chapters are locked behind the $5 tier. The poll and new story out of the mystery box is still at the $3 tier, as normal.
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The start of turn was handled like most: with a rapid exchange of missives between the relevant leadership units. Tanya informed them of the altercation with Charlescomm, the acquisition of the Jojos, and their intent to sack a city.
Ossomer’s reply was a dry acknowledgement of the information, refraining from ordering her around. She was given full autonomy in the battle space, as without Charlie interfering there was little need for aerial defense roles. In addition, he mentioned that Overlord Epic had blustered Bill-Bob sent the scouting report from their Lookamancer, noting the enemy positions.
Ansom… informed her that everyone now knew she was secretly a caster. Wow, Charlie worked fast. He dressed it up as a dressing down, but Tanya just sent back a question. “Does that mean I can travel the Magic Kingdom freely now?” He did not respond.
Still, there was some time to harass Rightshoring. Sure, she couldn’t attack their leadership hex, odds of success were a mere 37%, and that was with casualties, not could she handle the secondary hex, with a duplicated Chief Warlord. Both hexes had pretty much all of their Beagles, too. Dealing with an enemy Chief Warlord with lots of air cover was not something her strategy was particularly effective against.
But they still had enough forces that there were some hexes that didn’t have Chief Warlords protecting them. Much like the RCC during the battle of Gobwin Knob, they had adapted to just soak her harassment of their forces, in the hope of making up for it when the column battle occurs, or by tempting her to stay overlong within their counterattack range.
Foolish. Unlike in that other battle, she’s not working on a clock. Taking out a small chunk of their forces and retreating was a winning proposition this time, not a losing one. Hm…
“Maggie.” Tanya said out loud, spend a drop of juice to pluck their mutual heartstring. Faster than normal, Maggie opened up a thinkagram. “Get me an audience with Overlord Epic.”
Shortly, a man with short cropped hair, sizable musculature, and sunglasses appeared in her mind’s eye. He was eating what appeared to be some kind of woven bacon sandwich with donuts as buns, with a side of rainbow candy strips. “What is it? It is Epic Meal Time, and I doubt this is more important than my gay bacon strips.”
Gay bac- nevermind, it’s just signamancy. Still, Muscles, Glasses… Some kind of gymrat? Whatever. “I am Tanya von Degurechaff, Chief Warlord of Yojo Mojo. The one that just sent Charlescomm packing while taking…” Tanya spent a bit of juice peering through the enemy ruler at his treasury. Moneymancy was so useful… “Thirty percent of your treasury?” Actually, Rightshoring was pretty booping rich. Not ‘drained a mine in one go’ rich, but still… “Should have paid him for more archons.” She wouldn’t have been nearly as able to deal with four or five stacks of archons. She could only take out one stack from total surprise, the rest had a chance to fight back, and her ability to counter their shockamancy can be out-muscled with that many archons.
“The matchups were good.” Overlord Epic insisted. “Even with Jetstone’s Dittomancer doubling your leadership, your units were flying knights, very weak to shockamancy.” He wasn’t even wrong.
“Onto the topic of repercussions,” Tanya said, “How much are you willing to pay me to go away and let Jetstone beat you on their own?”
“Go eat salad,” Overlord Epic immediately retorted. “We’re going to serve some bacon-wrapped whupped meat right down your face-hole!”
Tanya blinked as she attempted to understand that nonsensical combination of words. Was he even speaking Language? Well, the essence of the message was definitely telling her to go pound sand, so… “Well, I offered.” Not that she had intended to accept whatever he did offer, but who knew? He might have offered enough to make her consider it. “Break.”
With a quick double-check of the map, Tanya started issuing orders to her knights. Just because the Jojos are too slow to do anything productive today doesn’t mean they can’t do a little raiding, after all.
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Without specials, attacking a city is not impossible, but it’s also rather improbable. You had a certain amount of combat time to penetrate the outer defenses, or else you fail. Methods of penetration those defenses were many: digger and siege units can attack walls more favorably than units without those benefits, cities with developed tunnel systems can be attacked by non-heavy units, diggers can try to make tunnels in non-coastal cities without them, fliers can attack the airspace zone instead.
Fliers don’t necessarily have to attack the airspace. The statistics for walls are dependent on the statistics of the units atop the wall, and they lose hits when the wall takes damage. Similarly, you can easily break walls that have no units atop them. Well, higher level cities have ‘hidden’ units that allow a minimum level of fortification even without any units on them, but they’re not difficult to overcome. Fliers can instead engage the units on top of the wall directly, weakening it to the minimum for any non-fliers to then break the wall easily. In the case of gate segments of the wall, once the last of the units are dealt with and you control the walls zone, you can just open it.
Or you could just use Climber/Jumper/Flier units exclusively and just go over the wall once it’s clear of enemy units. This wasn’t as big of a benefit as it seemed, as units atop the wall received a fortification bonus to their defense and a small amount of damage reduction, and you still had to fight through them, and overwhelming force didn’t let you go past without croaking every single unit in the walls zone, whereas if you break the wall with siege fast enough, the remaining units on the wall couldn’t interfere.
But it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be overwhelmed by Tanya’s leadership bonus. Rightways may have been the city that Mojo the Jojo had initially planned on invading with his forces to mark the start of their cooperation, but it wasn’t the closest one. That distinction belonged to Trilateral, a city that had, before the conflict between Rightshoring and Leftovers, been a frequently contested city between all three sides that bordered it. It was level 3, and was significantly more heavily defended than Rightways was.
As they approached, Tanya made sure to bolster the numbers of the Jojos as much as she could, as natural ally tribes could only grow their numbers so quickly. Jojos were among the slower ones, only able to grow by one fourth of their numbers per turn. They started with one hundred and eight units, so over the three turns they had to grow, which included a second purchase of units each turn due to Tanya’s moneymancy, they only had 406 units to attack, which given that a typical level 3 city can support about six hundred garrison units, was not exactly a good matchup.
Which was why Tanya called in the dwagons to help out, on top of promoting several stacks of heavy knights. While dwagons could only carry one combatant, you could double up one the saddles if the backup unit wasn’t going to fight, and carry two more if you wanted to overload them and prevent them from being able to attack.
With Elya bolstering the dwagon’s move, and an unexpectedly useful substitute for foolamancy from Harold, they were able to meet up with Tanya’s forces without getting attacked en route. They brought along all of the low level warlords and both sets of turned archery knights and Rightshoring Warlords.
“Okay, so Ace has sent over a few Jumpers, so some of you will be wearing those and leading Heavy Knight stacks.” Hat Magic was tremendously useful, and Ace was still good friends with Cubbins, Jetstone’s Hat Magician. Specifically, he sent four, which given that she had promoted five total stacks of heavy knights, was just enough if she led one too. As the accessories were a type of dress, the four level 1 warladies stepped up and put them on over their armor and hopped up and down to test the new special.
“Visha, you’re leading Tang and his stack of knights.” Really, Tanya thought that she’d rather have twice as many regular Jojos, but she needed to keep at least one stack of the knights so as to fulfill her obligation to the tribe. “Focus on attacking high durability targets, of course.”
“Elya, pick one of the turned knight stacks to ride the dwagons with you, the other will stack with Harold.” Tanya instructed, before double taking at Harold's appearance. “Harold, why do you have a tree on your head?” It was a bonsai that was also a wooden crown, artfully rooted to his scalp to give the appearance of it growing out of his bald head and covering his right eye.
“Oh, that’s Bob.” Harold replied slowly, patting his head. “He thought that if’n I’m gonna be part of one of them royal sides, I should have myself a crown, ‘cuz of my importance.”
Somehow that was even more offensive than how it made him even uglier. “...I no longer feel bad about asking this. Florists are capable of enchanting wood, correct?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Arrows are wood, correct?” Tanya continued.
“I reckon so.” Harold replied.
“So could you cast a spell that makes your stack’s arrows more effective?” Tanya continued.
“Sure thing!” Harold said, giving a thumbs up.
“Do that, then.” Tanya said, rubbing a temple as she turned towards the last four warlords. “You four…” She turned to the mass of Jojos. “Everyone who’s level 2 or higher, come forward!” She counted the takers. “Hm, can’t even get three stacks after all the promotions… and there’s no level 3s left…” She looked over her warlords. Which ones had the best signamancy?
There was Erik von Jerkin, his red shirt seemed rather officer-like… She decided that she liked this one. “You get level twos.” Who else… “Warlord von Curdle. You get the other level two stack.” She waved dismissively at the other two. “Warlords von Waldorf, von Grist, you two get level 1 stacks.”
Tanya checked over the stacks to see if she missed anything. Five led stacks of heavy knights, her knight stacks led by their usual commanders, the jojo knights by Visha, Four more led stacks that will hold back until the gate is secured, Elya with the dwagons and the turned stack of knight archers plus archer warlord, Harold with the other turned stack hanging back with the led Jojos, plus thirty-seven more stacks of unled Jojos to act as infantry. Yes, that was everything.
“Forward!”
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The first step in the plan was simple: shock and awe. There was a shockamancy spell that synergized amazingly with foolamancy, blinding a hex from the actions of an adjacent hex. This delayed any possible response. The second step was Elya’s swagon stack unleashing a red/green breath combo on top of the wall, to weaken it along with a volley of shockamancy shots from the knight stacks. After that was finished resolving, all five stacks of heavy knights Smashed their way onto the top of the wall, the three attacks crushing fifteen stacks of infantry that were fortifying the wall. Finally, the purple dwagons unleashed their Siege breaths onto the gate… which didn’t quite break it.
“Boop.” Tanya cursed as she looked at the tower top. There was a stack of archer knights on the balcony, led by a warlady that was… yep, here comes the shockamancy from the tower. Looks like about five or six caster levels worth of it. “Prism Crystal Shield.” Tanya intoned in Japanese, attracting the bolts of power that rained down on the wall and redirecting it downward… which actually damaged the wall. Neat. Wasn’t efficient, but it was a nice bonus given that she had to spend enough juice to equal the effect in order to defend against it.
As the heavy knights continued to pound on the units rushing to defend the gate or just stomping on the wall in an attempt to damage it, Tanya waited for a second round of shockamancy. None came. Tanya tried to use Analysis on the tower.
[Symmetrical Tower, level 3]
Charge: 0/1500
Defense platforms: 5/5
Hits: 150/150
Oh, neat. That worked. “Knights! Take the tower!” Tanya ordered. “Split their focus!” Orders given, all three stacks of her rapid response battalion went for the city’s throat.
A shuddering on the ground beneath them indicated a second volley of purple siege breath. “Still?” Tanya asked, annoyed. Analysis!
[Gate Tri-curious, level 4]
Defense: 20
Hits: 13 (2/160)
Ah, it just got lucky. “Sure Kill: Spear of Joy!” Tanya shouted as she brought her lightsaber straight down onto the keystone of the gate’s arch. With her damage doubled and converted into sonic damage, which meant it counted as Siege, it finished off the last of the gate’s hits, falling open and locking out the zone from the units now stuck on the other wall sections. At least Elya will have something to turn.
While they broke the gate, the enemy units formed up in a defensive posture behind it, ready to receive the invasion. At a glance, it was a pretty standard arrangement with heavies in front, archery in the rear, knights ready to flank, and infantry clogging up the battlefield to slow down anyone who wanted to pressure the important stacks. There were a large number of infantry going deeper into the city, presumably to engage her knights.
The Jojos charged, Visha spearheading the charge as they hooted and hollered, using their arms to increase their running pace as their Stand-ins burst out of their backs, each one giving a dramatic pose for the occasion. The enemy archery got some hits in, but it was inconsequential, for the Heavy Knights instead leapt over the armies and landed amongst the archery, Smashing the stacks apart before they could do much damage. The regular knights breathed onto their swords, coating them with fire, orange water, buzzing insects, acidic mist, and various other styles of breath. Each resulted in the same: heavies carved up in just three hits instead of six or seven.
There wasn’t any more room for tactical maneuvers or fancy spells, just a brutal melee where casualties were the rule, not the exception. Even her own stack was no exception, Tryhard’s enthusiasm was commendable, but whoever said that the Titans favored the bold was either an idiot or a liar.
“Ah, the city’s ours.” Tanya declared happily. “Good work everyone, gratz to all the levels.” By the looks of things… They lost three of the warlords, Freida von Fridge got croaked among the heavy leading ones, and both Waldorf and Grist lost their entire stacks as well as their own lives. The surviving level ones all leveled to three, though. The level 3 turned warlord leveled to four, but none of her flying warlords leveled. The dwagons didn’t level up a lot, but the lowest level ones did reach 3 and King Bomber hit six. This was on top of a large amount of levels among the ordinary troops, of course. There were still some level 3 holdouts among the rapid response battalion, unfortunately.
Among the prisoners were the expected two hundred or so that were on the walls, plus the forty more that the pinks gummed down, plus… about forty more that were tied down by wooden restraints. Huh. “Harold!” Tanya shouted. Hey, he was level 3 now.
“Yes’m?” Harold asked.
“That capture arrow spell, “ Tanya said, pointing to them, “-good thinking.”
“‘Twas Bob’s idea.” Harold insisted. “Old Harold’s a bit slow on the draw, hisself, but between the two of us we can get some things done.”
Tanya stared at the crazy florist, eventually just turning away without saying anything more. “Elya, get to work. Any Jojo that’s still level 1 is on prisoner duties.”
“Yes Princess.” Elya said, bowing.
What’s next on the post battle action list… ah. Healomancy candidates.
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Turning units, for a turnamancer, gave just as much experience as executing them did, so Tanya wasn’t terribly surprised when Elya leveled to four. The captured units were mostly infantry, but there was another warlord and a stack and a half of knights, too.
With all of the units she had in the battlespace with her in the city, Tanya didn’t have anything else to do beyond exchange missives with Ossomer and Ansom.
“Unless they have some units we don’t know about, which is admittedly probable, the forces that can reach Trilateral only have a 21% chance of taking the city back, and even that much assumes that they can manage some way of getting the Chief or a dupe of him leading the charge.” Tanya wrote to Ansom. She croaked most of the units within range the turn before they attacked. “I’ve already promoted enough knights and heavy knights to make up for the shortfall and so every warlord has a stack of heavies or knights to lead.” Which, used up most of the shmuckers that were gained by converting bodies, either directly with moneymancy or by having the dwagons eat them. More than that was used to pop more. Really, she wasn’t making much of a profit in this, but it’ll all be made up for in that final spoils payment, definitely. Plus she’ll have lots of new units to bring back, and higher level leadership. Plus Harold, she supposes, although it may be worth exploring alternative options. As long as she doesn’t take a large loss, it’s all good.
“Do you intend on holding it as a long-term base or do you plan on abandoning it?” Was Ansom’s reply.
“Haven’t decided yet.” Tanya wrote back. “If they divert the main column to retake the city, it would be smarter to melt into the wilderness, but I’d rather keep it so it can be sold to another side for greater than the raze price.” Whether that side is Jetstone, HobbitTM, Rightshoring, whatever side gets made from Rightshoring’s carcass, or even Haggar… unclear. “I’ve set Nozoo, that courtier unit I told you about, to city management, so we’ll get the full income, that’s about seventy-five hundred shmuckers a turn as long as I can hold it.” This counted the food income, which was about half of it. The Jojos ate it all, though, so it was counted fairly.
“Expected engagement next turn.” Ossomer sent. “Either they will attack our column or they will dig into Offshoring and fight us there.” Which was the main reason why Tanya expected them to let Trilateral go for a few turns, allowing them to produce a few extra units to dig in.
“Cannot commit to support for city attack.” Tanya wrote back. “Will need to assess tacsit.”
“Understood.” Ossomer wrote simply. “Mathamancy analysis will determine if support is needed.”
“Crunching the numbers is the least I can do. Send full unit count with scout report.” Tanya wrote swiftly, ending that conversation.
“I’m not concerned about money.” Ansom eventually sent back. “Preserve our forces, level up the leadership. Common wisdom is that you lose half of your level 1 warlords before leveling them, so you’re doing well. The Jojos are expensive, but replaceable.” Two hundred and fifty, well, two forty-five, shmuckers per ape is pretty pricey, yeah. “Just remember that you can’t keep that city, so don’t hesitate to raze it if you can’t hold it.”
Tanya rolled her eyes. Such a worrywort…
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The next turn, Tanya took the all three flying knights that they popped (thanks to Elya) and used them to scout the area around Trilateral. While there was a single hex full of units that were in a position to inconvenience Trilateral if they abandoned it to help Ossomer, they were close enough that the heavy knights could make a round trip, and the rapid response knights could just barely afford to reach them and still make it to Offshoring, with Elya bolstering the move of the slowest ones.
So they crushed that hex of units swiftly, keeping to ranged attacks in the case of the knights to minimize damage, letting the heavy knights take the bulk of the glory and damage. With a quick expense of juice to cash in the bodies, they were off to aid in the attack.
As Ossomer predicted, Chief Warlord Jerry Mander dug in to Offshoring, but less expectedly the Chief Showdowns and what is presumed to be the original Jerry all fled on some unipegataurs that they were hiding somewhere, falling back to one of the side’s level 5 cities, of which they had four. Onboarding was well-garrisoned, so going out and croaking them was out of the question. The plan, as it were, was clearly to kill the column’s momentum as it took the level 3 Offshoring, costing enough units that proceeding further to attack Onboarding became impractical.
It was a good plan. In fact, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do to stop them from doing that. Which is what made it a good plan. But what she could do is support Ossomer’s attack by leading his air forces, lending her superior hex-wide bonus… which is still inferior to the bonus enjoyed by their enemies, as they had the same doubled leadership as she did, and on a level 10 Chief, to boot. But the alternative was facing that massive bonus with only Ossomer’s bonus, which was not doubled by Lord Bertram. Also, one shouldn’t discount the value in not needing to worry about more than one battlefield at a time, one managed by, not to toot her own horn, a competent and reliable ally.
So Tanya took command, using her spare move (and the dwagons) to meet up with the column while leaving her knights on the other side of the city, three hexes away in some trees to avoid immediate notice. Five stacks of Unipegataurs, two of which were led by Jetstone warlords and one more by a HobbitTM warlord by the name of Boarfoot. Knowing that they needed some extra, Tanya was sure to bring von Jerkin and von Curdle, who mounted up, kicking off the knights that were there already. Some additional knights were provided and mounted on the dwagons, and the twenty stacks of orlies were also put at her disposal for screening and harassing duties.
Now, Analysis?
[Sweatshop Tower, level 3]
Charge: 1375/1500
Defense Platforms: 5/5
[Whiz Showdown, level 7 Master Dittomancer (duplicate)]
[Ulta Showdown, level 6 Warlord]
[Archer Knights x8, levels 2-4]
[Garrison Ballisticians x32, level 2]
[Warlords x4, levels 1-3]
Yikes… there was no way she’s going to be able to get him to miss all of those spells. Well, she did have a few ideas in mind on how to manage this sort of thing. “Allied fliers, I will at first be attacking the walls with Prince Ossomer with the dwagons. Once I break away from that, then and only then will you enter the airspace. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Princess!” Shouted the disciplined Jetstone units. The HobbitTM units were less enthusiastic, but still signaled acknowledgement.
It may be a bit predictable, but it was a good strategy: First, she opened with a flashbang spell to buy a few seconds of time before the ballistae and tower retaliate, then by bringing the dwagons in first and unleashing their breath weapons (well, the non-pink ones) where the column was attacking, it accelerated the penetration of the walls, particularly when paired with the standard hit-three-sides siege strategy that impeded the ability of the enemy to reinforce that wall segment from the forces in the adjacent segments.
Tanya had brought two stacks of orlies purely to screen herself, which was wise as Boomstick displayed enough caution to launch just one spell from the tower at first, which friend one of them before running out of power. Tanya pulled down an eyelid while sticking her tongue out at the tower, attempting to provoke him into using more juice.
The thing was, he probably knew what she was doing. Not every tower spell was capable of being launched to the tops of the walls, and fewer were able to do so without damaging the walls themselves while doing so. By engaging the top of the walls with a stack of dwagons, including using two purples to slam the wall segment with Siege breaths, she forced him to do so, as he apparently neglected to station knights on his wall for specifically this purpose.
That said, ballista emplacements from both the tower and garrison were tearing gouges off of her dwagon’s hits, so this was a bit of a gamble. If they break the wall? Great. She doesn’t even need to bring in her knights or the orlies, the unipegataurs can instead land and they can take this city without even entering the airspace.
Seeing that the Numbers were not in his favor, Boomstick unleashed several of the tower spells on her stack, which Tanya used her wand to absorb and deflect into the wall, as she did on the last city. Ouch, that was a lot of juice…
[Charge: 500/1500]
Perfect. Tanya disengaged her stack with a quick foolamancy baffle, a quick set of fake explosions causing the lot to flinch away from her departing dwagons instead of taking their free attacks. As the air force poured into the airspace, Tanya burst into laughter, letting the magic shape the words out of her throat. “Thunder over Offshoring, Trenches, Overture!”
Chaos erupted. Fake explosions mingled with real ones, dwagons of fire flew exposed, only to be revealed as real as they unleashed a combination breath. Olies looked like knights, while knights looked like dwagons, pairing up to maneuver so as to look like a normal sized stack. Shockamancy, real and fake, flew about, striking down units as they came, but they were nowhere near enough.
As expected, in short order the banners of Offshoring depicted the royal radishes of Jetstone.
