Kevin Curry
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Summon Perfect Warlady 16
🕑 Added 2023-11-06 15:00:07 +0000 UTCTheoretically, I should be posted the 2nd chapter of book 3 right now. In practice, I am instead posting the last bit of buffer I have because I spent way too much time this week writing a commission which may or may not replace this month's fae chronicles. Depends on how the commissioner's finances go and how much writing I manage on fae chronicles.
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Tanya had expected herself to be reasonably capable of Rhyme-o-mancy, given the fact that she was reasonably skilled at singing. She could keep a beat, and could pretty easily pitch her voice accurately. This was partially because of extensive karaoke in her first life, but it had more to do with the fact that Being X had blessed her with a rather angelic voice, pun intended.
It was so good, that the choir practice that she participated in solely for the promised chocolate for those who did their best swiftly became mandatory lessons, four hours every day but Sunday, on top of demands to perform during any actual service the church held, which made up for the lack of Sunday lessons. If it wasn’t for the conscription, she could easily have taken up singing as a profession, and had planned to attempt to join up with an opera troupe once she got a little older, age 10 at least. But then the notice of conscription came.
She tried to avoid it, but the nuns were always quick to resort to spankings for any child that did anything but slavishly obey their every instruction. She had experience with spanking, as rare as it was in her first life, but that really didn’t help against the nuns, who could beat professional dominatrixes in spanking experience.
But crossing the threshold of singing knowledge to magic was a little more difficult than expected. Dance-fighting came easily enough, but… “Okay, so when I tried to learn rhyme-o-mancy, “ Sizemore explained, “-they put it like this: fundamentally, music is counting time.” At first, he had difficulty recalling the lessons, but a spell from Maggie refreshed his memory. “When you make a song, you’re counting reasons why you’ll succeed, or that you need to succeed. You can make songs faster or slower, and rhyme-o-mancy can stack on an action and take it with them.” He paused. “...It doesn’t make a lot of sense, to be honest.”
Really? It made perfect sense to her. Time was very strange in a turn based wargame world, and magic existed, so the idea that there was time manipulating magic didn’t surprise her. It was a little surprising that it was the music discipline that did it, but she pictured it as musical training montages like you’d see in anime and it made sense again. Now there was an idea…
“James tried to get me to understand it, but I just couldn’t.” Sizemore admitted, “I could make some music, but it never actually did anything, no matter what I tried.”
The main reason she wanted to learn rhyme-o-mancy was the excellent bonus provided by dance-fighting, which would allow her to more ably take advantage of her leadership bonus by leading larger stacks, albeit at the cost of being unable to utilize optimal formations or terrain advantages. Unlike conventional warlord dance-fighters, a caster could more easily dance with units that were not trained to dance with that warlord in advance. But secondary to that was the numerous support spells that rhyme-o-mancy could provide.
Even without juice, you could attempt to come up with a few rhyming couplets and increase your odds of success at whatever you’re doing. It depended on how clever it was, which didn’t really make much sense to Tanya at first, but given that the class of magic that it was was called Stagemancy, she supposed that there was either some invisible audience that the magic worked off of, the Titans perhaps, or perhaps Maggie was right in that it was a self-reinforcing confidence loop. By creating a clever rhyme, your opinion of yourself increases. It was not news to Tanya that confidence was important when dealing with risky and dangerous tasks. In other words, it was just a morale bonus. Many games have such things, and music was a common means of dispensing such bonuses. So from that perspective, it was not strange at all.
“I think I have an idea I’d like to try.” Tanya said, “While dance fighting is all well and good, testing my understanding with something new should be more fruitful.”
Maggie slightly inclined her head. “Do you have an idea?” She asked.
“I will use music to enhance my drilling of the troops this turn.” Tanya explained.
“Instead of foolamancy or in addition?” Maggie asked, “If you plan on using multiple disciplines of magic at once, I could assist you. Two person links do not impose significant penalties on retaining the magical insight you receive, unlike greater links.”
Tanya hummed at the suggestion. She knew that Maggie was just following her duty, to suggest ways she could use her discipline to assist Tanya in her goals. Supposedly, two person links could more accurately be described as the thinkamancer acting as a “cognitive co-pilot”, optimizing their thought processes towards the appropriate task and allowing a level of focus and multitasking that would be otherwise difficult, if not impossible. This subordination meant that there was little to no personality risk like there was for “improperly managed” three person links. Just small, manageable amounts of risk of damage that can be fixed by hiring Isaac, in the event that Maggie couldn’t just fix it herself.
She’d like to say that she could handle things alone… but she was really unsure. If it would be more efficient to take on that small, manageable risk to improve the outcome for the side… she was obligated to take it. She’s taken on worse risks, although the stakes were higher then. “Very well. To the courtyard.”
Training was an interesting mechanic. She started on it when Count Harbinger suggested using it to practice her mathamancy, analyzing the results and determining the expected outcome. This kind of analysis required that Tanya use juice to bridge her understanding of the activities and their underlying numbers.
It took four successful turns of training to go from level 1 to level 2, no matter what kind of unit it was. However, normally Warlords could only drill Men units, that is, infantry and knights. It took twelve additional successful trainings to become level 3, twenty four to become level 4, and so on and so forth. The odds of a particular turn of training being successful were low, by default it was a mere twenty percent. In addition, there was a growing malus for every level attained via training, of ten percent.
So while you could just let your popped garrison infantry drill on their own for an average of one hundred sixty turns to get to level 3 and then stop, you usually wanted a warlord speeding things up. Every level the warlord has above the units they’re drilling adds a bonus of five percent, and certain spells enhance the process.
Foolamancy didn’t have… a proper spell to assist in training, but instead by incorporating illusory realism, the odds of success grow, both directly and by removing the malus for a warlord drilling units that are dissimilar to their own fighting style.
She liked training her units. The date-a-mancy bonds between her and her units grew through drills, and by adding the simulated danger of foolamancy explosions, fake enemies for them to dispatch, and other bits of excitement for them made their bonds to each other grow just as much.
There was definitely something she was missing on why her training was so effective, though. According to her mathamancy, the results were a full standard deviation higher than they should be, even accounting for the bonuses. The drilling results from the other cities in the side were lower than expected, though, so it… sort of balanced out? Tanya was beginning to suspect something magical that she didn’t understand was responsible.
Still, Tanya waited for the garrison to ready themselves. This turn, only the absolute minimum of her knights were used to scout, leaving her five whole stacks to train. Well, four stacks, but two of them were those twelve stacks that she bound together during the Haggar battle. It was a little annoying keeping them together enough to stay bonded, but that additional +2 was well worth it.
Once she finished organizing the training groups, Maggie took Tanya’s hand in her own, and her presence, which settled in her senses like fine tea, expanded Tanya’s thoughts. Tanya started sinking juice into her voice. “Don’t go away…” She began softly as an intense guitar song started, “There’s nowhere else to run! I know that’s what we want, I know it’s a war we want.”
Tanya started casting foolamancy, barely thinking as she conjured fake armies for her infantry, noting position and numbers but rating the details of their movements below needing her direct attention, and started to point her wand at her knights, a smile emerging as the energy of the music buoyed her spirits. “So raise your guns, Come on let’s have some fun!” She sang as she started firing foolamancy imitations of tower spells at her knights. “I know that’s what we want, I know it’s a war we want.”
“Coming up, Coming up, the eyes that only see prey!” She continued as she added foolamancy dwagons and ordered the ballista crews on the tower to start firing their training rounds. “An instinct to act on, the hunger and it’s just not enough! Not enough!” Tanya created a foolamancy version of herself and had it attack, dancing among her units. “But that’s the chain of command, and now we know we must not hide!”
“We honor the warlords,” With perfect timing, her knights all added a rhythmic ‘oh oh oh’ to complement the music, “and the beasts we unleash to to indulge in our desires!” Tanya continued as she ducked and weaved through her subordinate’s weapons. Tanya clicked her tongue in disappointment. They should have scored at least one hit! “We are in the airspace! With our talons, a croaking spree! With our blades, can you keep up with me?”
The illusion broke away from her units, landing among the fake infantry and increasing their performance in accordance with units that have benefitted from her leadership. “I will lock on love, I will lock on love,” She sang, although she wasn’t sure why that was in the song.
Still, her juice was being consumed at a rather prodigious rate, even if she wasn’t entirely clear how long she had been singing. “Go on your way!” She sang, “Create those cries of pain!”
Every soldier sang the next lines, as they were intended to: “I know that’s what we want, I know it’s war we want…”
“No one is left, so take it all for yourself!” Tanya continued, only for her soldiers to repeat the next two lines. She grinned.
While linked with Maggie, Tanya could sense a thinkamancer’s impression on their unit’s status. How many of them had leveled? With the accelerated thoughts that Maggie was providing, she didn’t even need mathamancy: of the eight hundred garrison infantry and forty knights, three hundred forty-one and twenty-one had leveled up. An instant review of the session revealed the why: the foolamancy increased the effectiveness of each training roll, but the rhyme-o-mancy allowed them to cram many turns of training into just one. With the consumption of ten out of the fourteen available caster levels of juice and the miscellaneous efficiencies of a thinkamancy link… it looks like it was six turns this time.
“Sizemore.” Tanya said, Maggie’s voice echoing her words. “What is the usual result of a rhyme-o-mancer accelerating training?”
“I don’t know.” Sizemore admitted, “But I’ll go ask.” he glanced over the exhausted soldiers. “Uh… How does it feel? Was it like I described?”
Tanya took a moment to reassess. After a heartbeat, she replied: “It is difficult to describe. I am still me, but it’s like I finish thinking before I finish deciding what to think.”
“Exactly.” Sizemore said, nodding along. “That’s exactly it.”
“My next move is date-a-mancy.” Tanya announced, before silently ordering her knights to assemble in front of her. Fifty assembled in front of her, the ones that were sent out to scout this turn having assembled as well, along with Lord White and Victoria. Lord Kurig was managing the scouts based in Cuteytoe right now, and Lord Newsman was coordinating in Fukuokay.
Tanya could easily bind twelve of the ones that trained today into a larger stack, but… she had enough juice to bind all the non-warlords into twelve-stacks, so… Ah. She took each of their devotions to her, their strongest heartstrings, and started weaving them together into a rope of trust. She laughed as she realized the simplicity of it. Her very first usage of this spell came from created units, who have only one heartstring at all. Of course she can shortcut the normal requirements as long as they all loved her as their beloved princess and respected her as their teacher in battle. “Fan club!” She shouted to finalize her knots.
The stacks settled. Reviewing her work, Tanya smiled as she saw the three sixteen stacks that she had created, indistinguishable from one another in their knotted strings. That used up the rest of their collective juice, so Maggie’s presence slowly disentangled from Tanya, nearly snagging their mutual heartstring on… something, but Tanya pulled it free of whatever Maggie was doing.
She expected some kind of mental damage from the decoupling, but none seemed to have occurred. “Status?” She asked Maggie.
“Something unexpected happened at the end there, but the damage is manageable.” Maggie said, sounding slightly pained. “I am only an adept thinkamancer, after all.”
“Take the remainder of the turn off.” Tanya ordered, “Rest.”
“Yes, Princess.” Maggie replied, walking away somewhat woozily towards the tower. No, that won’t do.
“Lord White, escort her to her quarters.” Tanya ordered, “Be sure to report to the evening debrief.” Lord White looked surprised, but saluted and picked up Maggie in a bridal carry, flying towards her room’s window. Tanya promptly stopped paying attention to them before they got there. She knew what they got up to.
The new caster, Lady von Culper the turnamancer, flew back into Gobwin Knob on a dwagon. Given their situation, Ansom had her focus on increasing production of garrison units in their weakest cities. It was simple work, which would not do much to level her up quickly, but it was useful. It would be difficult to level her up without prisoners to turn, but if Ace is anything to go by, extra juice and linking can level up a caster extraordinarily quickly. They'll need to get around to that soon.
Victoria smiled at the approach of the caster. They seemed to have hit it off, which Tanya didn't really expect. "Elya! How was your trip?"
"It was as usual, Visha." Elya said tiredly, using a nickname that she had invented for Victoria. "Cuteytoe's almost full up on garrison units, should be only five more turns of boosting production until it starts popping field units."
"I hope the dwagons haven't been getting grumpy with you." Victoria said, glancing at the blue dwagon that Elya rode in on as it settled into one of the berths in the tower.
"I told you, they're fine." Elya said, waving off the concern. "They'll follow orders without complaint." Elya had reported, as part of her duties, that the tamed dwagons have very low loyalty due to Stanley croaking, with the sole exception of King Bomber. Maggie had confirmed this, but didnt think the matter was any more urgent than Elya did. The only ones who cared about the loyalty of beast units were date-a-mancers, apparently. "How was the training?" Elya asked, changing the subject.
"I leveled!" Visha said, proudly bearing her level five status. She had been croaking feral dwagons that the scouts had found over the last few turns, but she seemed to be leveling unusually rapidly even taking that into account, in comparison to the other knights and warlords. Grand Abbie Janis did mention that warlords could level more easily by comprehending the Date-a-mancy connections of Leadership, learning how to connect with their subordinates, so it could be that Victoria was just talented in that way.
It made Tanya wonder how long it’s going to take for her to level again. She supposes it would probably require another war.
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“They’re curb-stomping them.” Caesar said over the thinkagram. Apparently, Transylvito had a thinkamancer among their ranks, which Maggie was surprised to not know. This allowed them a greater efficiency and latitude to communicate, as the two casters can collaborate and share the magical burden, which permitted this strategy meeting among allies.
Faq had finally started invading their neighbors. Thing was, they started with the single least objectionable one: Jitterati, the non-royal side that’s been feuding (or, in the local parlance, ‘beefing’) with Transylvito for hundreds of turns, low-intensity conflict where the larger Transylvito bullied the less powerful Jitterati, who presumably made up for the shortfall with their more successful ventures on the sea. Kind of like Haggar and Jetstone’s relationship.
In reality, Transylvito had a deserved reputation for being the biggest beasts on the block, with a unit profile that heavily favored fliers, which was aided by their high frequency of flying warlords. None of the nine or so popped warlords since Yojo Mojo was formed were fliers, so they’ll need to use either promoted knights or dwagon mounts to achieve parity.
But the terrain that separated Yojo Mojo and Translyvito was treacherous and contained Faq, so that natural border kept hostilities low even when Stanley was in charge. With Ansom? Translyvito was an unquestionable ally. It helped that Tanya seemed to have earned Ceasar’s respect from her actions in the battle of Gobwin Knob, so the man had been fairly free with information.
“How long do you think Jitterati can hold?” Tanya asked as she examined the map. According to Caesar, they had deployed their only warlord with the scout special to keep an eye on the Jitterati situation, a wiseguy named Greg Sharper. He was a Ranger, so he was able to conceal himself in the wilderness and collect information with his bats, sending back the details via Transylvito’s thinkamancer, a mute woman by the name of Bunny Velvetino.
“Sharper guesses five more turns.” Caesar replied, “I say it won’t take that long for them to get pinched. Stanley’s a tough goombah, forget about it.”
Tanya nodded along to his thick mafioso slang. “The question is, is she going to consolidate with her new territory, or do a lot of razing and move on?”
“Eh, she’s razing half the cities.” Caesar explained. “Look, she kept Valdez and Kona, the ones closest to Faq, but sacked Cuppa and Java. Java’s a port, so good odds that’s gonna get taken by some sea-based side, so she can just keep taking it whenever some barone sets up shop. All Stanley needs to do now is go straight to the Capital by crossing the Bay au Tea...”
“Always a bad move.” Tanya joked.
“You know it.” Caesar said, his visible fang growing as his lips curled upwards. “Anyway, once he’s got that locked up, Faq can take all four remaining non-coastal cities, sack Beafjuice,” Tanya frowned. The last time he said that city's name, it was Leanjuice… Strange. “And with the three cities we know those guys have, that’ll leave ‘em with nine.”
Tanya hummed. “I don’t think they’ll take all four of those.” She said, “If we assume that your theory of their bait plan is correct, that they want to leave blank city sites to condense their defense while baiting in targets of opportunity, they would likely keep this city unmanned.” She gestured to the map, which was a little strange in this mental meeting room, but it was understandable enough.
“Grindr? Yeah, that looks like a good spot to catch fools with their pants down.” Caesar said in agreement.
“What’s northeast of Jitterati?” Tanya asked. East was Charlescomm's formally claimed territory, which was the polite way of saying 'he'll croak you for free if you go here'. North was the ocean. West was also ocean. South was Transylvito. Southwest was Faq. Faq had gone north in their invasion.
“Eh? Oh, that’s where Overlord Mandrill rules.” Isn’t a Mandrill a type of ape? “Side’s a mouthful: Aussimandayis.” Tanya spent a moment trying to decrypt that mess of signamancy. Ozymandias? That’s an… interesting name. “They’re good friends with Jitterati, but Sharper hasn’t seen ‘em. They’re lying low, I guess.”
"Then the question remains: does Faq plan on going straight to conquering the Aussies, " Tanya was not saying that full name. "Or are they going to fight Transylvito?"
"Don's been talkin' to her." Caesar admitted, "Calls her the most… whatchacallit… antisocial Queen he's ever heard of."
Oh? "She hasn't been open to our overtures." Tanya said, "How did you open contact?"
"We sent enough bats that she couldn't veil all her cities." Caesar said, his grin sharpening. "Left a hat with a letter, and a threat. Her Majesty finally got off of her keister and picked up a pen after that."
Hm. That was interesting. “So you think Faq will avoid antagonizing Transylvito?” Tanya asked.
“I think she’ll go for us next.” Caesar corrected, “She’s got Stanley calling shots, and she’s disrespectful to the Don. She’s spoiling for a fight.”
Tanya hummed. “Would you be requesting aid, then? I wouldn’t dare send dwagons against the Arkenhammer.”
“We can handle that mook.” Caesar insisted, and a pulse on his heartstrings drew Tanya’s attention. Oh? Apparently he and Bunny the Thinkamancer care for each other very much… Oddly, unlike Tanya’s own heartstring with Maggie, as professional that relationship was, that heartstring was smoothly connected between the two, while Tanya’s had a small hitch in it, the string tugged in a random direction by something Tanya couldn’t quite detect. It looked… like another string, actually. An invisible one.
Still, her status as a caster was still secret, so she can’t ask Bunny about the difference. Perhaps it would be useful information to help Maggie become a Master-class thinkamancer? “While the strategic update is appreciated, there must be something you wish to ask of us.” Tanya reasoned.
“Yeah, I wanna know if Ansom’ll keep his word if the Queen Whacko does attack us. We’re taking our turn a lot later than we usually do, so this alliance ain’t easy for us.” Caesar said, scowling. “Or is the most we’re getting out of this a one-two dance on his little square head once the Worm starts sniffing around?”
Tanya hummed. The issue was that she wasn't entirely sure. "If you were facing literally anyone else, it wouldn't even be a question that he would. Ansom takes the Royal Crown Coalition as seriously as his father does." She said, "But Queen Jillian… I'll start positioning forces in Faq's direction. If you have a line of communication, Ansom can send a letter of his own to inform the Queen of the consequences of fighting the Royal Crown Coalition. He'll do that, and then he can't complain when I follow through and attack Faq directly while their forces are in the field." She'll have to phrase it as a rescue mission for Jillian. Ansom would like that.
Caesar stared at Tanya as she thought out loud. "Yeah, I get it." He said quietly as he slowly nodded. "Arkentools or not, they're not gonna want to scrap with both of us."
"And if Faq starts to surround Charlescomm…" Tanya added… "The problem may solve itself."
Caesar wasn't as optimistic about that proposal. As he should be, really. "Maybe…" he said begrudgingly. "Not sure I like either of them winning that."
Tanya nodded in agreement. "The real risk is them joining forces. If there's anything that would convince Charlie to change his modus operandi, being a three Arkentool side might do it." Or Wanda winning and doing what she did to Stanley to Charlie. But at least that way means that Charlie will do some damage before going down.
Caesar shuddered. "I'm gonna need something strong tonight." He muttered, and his heartstring to Bunny was tugged and teased by the woman's finger, who concealed the act with an offhandedly bored motion, her intense amusement and slight concern completely concealed from her face, and only a twitch of Caesars lips betrayed the emotions her subtle show of support provoked. It almost made Tanya feel like a voyeur, spotting something that should have been concealed by a metaphorical table.
Maggie nonverbally sent a signal that indicated that they were approaching the juice budget for this conversation. “I believe that’s all the business we have this turn.” Tanya said, clapping her hands. Caesar jolted in surprise as his attention was brought back to the thinkagram instead of the thinkamancer. “Unless there’s another matter?” Tanya asked, trailing off.
“Nah, nah.” Caesar said quickly. “Bunny? Break.”
Comments
Kevin Curry
It only ever happens when Maggie is linking, so Tanya assumes it's something related to that. She's right. About the spanking: no, that's just me invoking stereotypes about nuns. About the training: foolamancy boosts the chance per roll of getting XP from higher quality, more realistic training, while the rhyme-o-mancy gives extra rolls. Signamancy gives Victoria the ability to steal good rolls from the other 203rd when getting trained by Tanya, so she's getting some luckamancy from Fate, yeah. It also lets the 203rd steal rolls from the other units, for the same reason.
Gremlin Jack
An invisible string tugging at the link between Maggie and Tanya? I'm surprised she's not more paranoid about this. Also, is the Perfect Warlord spell boosting Tanya's training with Luckamancy? Would explain the skewed training results. Is the bit about the nuns being quick with the corporal punishment canon? I always got the impression Tanya had a generally positive feeling towards the orphanage she was raised in.
