Kevin Curry
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Summon Perfect Warlady 5
🕑 Added 2023-07-24 14:00:09 +0000 UTCSo, that cold I've been mentioning? Kicked my ass this weekend too. Chapter's only half done. It doesn't even have the decency to have me miss work, just writing time.
So, while scheduling this is going to be a pain, you guys get a Summon Perfect Warlady chapter instead,
Now, this is how this is gonna work (mostly writing this for my benefit)
Patrons get SPW this week and chapter 6 on the 1st. Buffer will temporarily be reduced.
Public gets Psychoprotective 11 this week, 12, 13, and 14 on the subsequent weeks, as normal. This chapter gets publically released on the 8th, and on the week after the 14th chapter is released, which is the 21st, that's when they get chapter 6 of this. Then, assuming I don't miss another chapter and need to disrupt the schedule further, The buffer will be back at 4 advance chapters for Psychoprotective and will proceed as normal.
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“There doesn’t appear to be any surprises here.” Headmaster Isaac said as he finished putting the finishing touches on the map he was projecting with foolamancy. The lackeys were dutifully arranging the physical map to match it. “They’ve re-arranged the column to counter your tactic, but otherwise have decided to keep going. The Arkenpliers are still there, untouched.”
“Excellent.” Tanya replied, “Wanda, deliver the prisoner, then return with the pliers.” They looked at their new weapon. “If she attunes, that makes two powerful weapons that have fallen into our laps.”
“Yes, about that.” Count Harbinger interrupted. “Now that we have our battlemap, what does that wand do?”
Much like the previous morning with her earrings, Tanya had received another magic item with their breakfast: Some kind of scepter that would find itself right at home as the weapon of a mahou shoujo protagonist. Tanya kind of liked it, although this was entirely because of the fact that it was a lightsaber. “First, it has its own juice pool that’s equal to my own.”
Headmaster Isaac hummed with interest. “That’s a very potent wand, then. What spells can it perform?”
“According to the instructions?” Which were written in Japanese, mind you. “Theoretically any shockamancy spell. In practice, only the dozen or so spells that it gave me the magic words to.” Which are also all in Japanese. Tanya wondered if the magic of Language meant that they would understand them when they shout ‘Lucky Clover Heart Attack’, or if they’ll think they’re speaking nonsense? “I tested the one that promised to optimize the tower’s anti-air spells, and it outright halved the space all of those spells took.” Strengthened them, too.
“That is a service that master-class shockamancers provide.” Count Harbinger acknowledged. “But it’s not a specific spell that does that, they just take the existing juice and re-cast the spell with their own skills. Can I see?” They were already in the Tower zone, so it was just a matter of permission. After a moment, he nodded to himself and cast a spell. “According to my calculations, these spells are literally as optimized as possible. I would assume Master-class shockamancy as a minimum for future considerations.”
“As a further benefit…” Tanya said before performing the trick they learned while experimenting before they showed up: They created a powerball, a ball of light that was used to illuminate surroundings, but also to act as a pseudo-fuel for the operation of certain magic items. “I’m capable of using my juice now. One of the functions was to draw juice from my own reserves instead of the internal battery, and that permitted me to understand how to access it.” They muttered the spell that allowed her to reclaim the juice, “Prism capture crystal.” within the ball, and the wand losslessly absorbed it despite being full, injecting the excess juice back into their system.
Headmaster Isaac frowned. “Those are interesting magic words… I couldn’t understand them.” That confirmed that, at least.
Tanya hummed. “Well, I understand them, so that just makes it less useful as a theft target.”
After a brief explanation of the spells they gained access to, Count Harbinger ran some battle calculations. “Okay, so with you using your juice to take out the air cover and a few of the battle bears, you can repeat your previous turn’s tactics and take out three additional hexes… although that last one may be risky: only a seventy percent chance of success.” He tapped the map three times. “Also, you would need to hit these hexes in specific. With them being closer, you can do this without exposing your dwagons to a counterattack.
Wanda returned to the situation room, cackling while holding up the Arkenpliers. Much like the Arkenhammer that Stanley possessed, it had an otherworldly aura around it, like it was… more. This was despite the fact that the hammer resembled a plastic toy for toddlers, the menace it exuded was unignorable.
The arkenpliers still looked rather unassuming if you ignored that otherworldly mein, it was merely a pair of needle-nose pliers… that were large enough that it didn’t look like Wanda would be able to hold them in one hand, but she did. “I assume you attuned, as planned?” Tanya asked.
“Yes…” Wanda said, stroking the titanic hand tool. “I do not yet know the magic it possesses, but it has filled me with power.” Hm?
[Chief Croakamancer Wanda, Level 8]
Attack: 24
Defense: 23
Hits: 19
Move: 19
Specials: Croakamancy, Attuned
Wow. For a caster, that was absolutely ridiculous. Before her attunement, she only had 11 Attack and 10 defense. Which was still pretty high for a caster, mind you, but she also experienced a massive increase in hits and move. Presumably, most of that increase is the artifact bonus, but still… “Headmaster.”
“Yes?”
“Can enemy scouts and warlords detect Wanda’s attunement?” Tanya asked.
“No.” He replied. “If she refrains from using it as anything but a melee weapon, she should be able to conceal her attunement.”
“In that case,” Tanya said, “We will preserve the element of surprise. If you figure out what conditions are required to activate the abilities, inform me before using them.” Tanya mentally mixed in reasonable exceptions to their orders, which was conveyed through the natural thinkamancy of issuing orders. “You did attempt to use them before coming in here, correct?”
“I did.” Wanda said, waving it around. It sparkled with red light but it didn’t actually do anything. “-and I agree with your caution. This is something that must begin momentously, as it is Fated.”
Tanya narrowed their eyes. Suspicious… “Well, without knowing what it does, it cannot be incorporated into the plan. If we figure it out, we can use it as a surprise next turn, after they’ve adjusted their formation to account for our new master-class shockamancer.” Turning to the battle map, Tanya grinned at the representations of the Coalition’s numbers. “Now, before we go, we should spend some time seeing if we can get that third battle’s numbers up…”
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The Royal Crown Coalition was not led by a dullard. Prince Ansom knew of the dwagon’s precision strike capability, but his lack of knowledge of croakamancy meant that he assumed that they wouldn’t bother wasting effort on the bulk of his forces instead of a targeted assassination towards their leadership.
As such, their previous formation made that leadership utterly unassailable, but left the bulk of their forces vulnerable. To fix this, they instead spread out their air power, making an all-out assault on their leadership hex not an impossible mission (24% chance of victory), but the issue remained that they could only utilize the dwagons and knights to attack, which while it was a large fraction of Gobwin Knob’s total combat strength, it still lacked the various combat benefits that defenders receive in city combat.
Each hex had at least one warlord now, one of the subordinate ones, so as to prevent Tanya from playing the enemy troops like a piano. Some of them picked their position among the air, presumably so as to attempt to croak Tanya or other Gobwin Knob leadership, while others stacked with the battle bears in an attempt to improve their survival and to increase the length of time they live to coordinate the rest of the hex. Clearly, the subordinate warlords were able to exercise their discretion on their order of battle.
Tanya preferred to fight the flying warlords, personally. The unipegataurs were an interesting unit, horned centaurs with wings, flying knight-class units that were also mounts. They were incredibly efficient at fighting dwagons, in fact. Each unipegataur had elven knights mounted atop them where they didn’t before, further emphasizing their anti-heavy role and allowing the flying knights to spread themselves out much thinner while still remaining powerful.
However, they were not heavy. Knights had excellent points in both attack, damage, and defense, but their hits were, in comparison, lacking. Short of commanders, knight-class units had the most upkeep per hit of all the standard unit types. Non-heavy fliers also traditionally had pretty low hits, as Tanya was told. These factors were why that mid-level shockamancers could successfully manage to be the sole anti-air capability a hex has and expect that to work, assuming the enemy did not have access to heavy fliers. With her wand, they were effectively a high level shockamancer. The perfect caster for front-line combat.
The goal of their new formation was not to repel Tanya’s attack, but instead to bleed out the dwagon supply. Even after they raised an uncroaked army, they still had to clear the airspace before attacking or else those fliers would be able to attack the troupe’s leadership with impunity. Even without Tanya’s new wand, they definitely were operating under the assumption that Tanya could win any one of those air battles.
Of course, the real issue was that they didn’t actually need any of those weak hexes. Theoretically, they could defeat the garrison of Gobwin knob purely with their original leadership hex and their reinforced front hexes, plus at most three of the more extraneous hexes. They could lose nine of them and still have enough to comfortably win.
Nevertheless, all they could do is winnow their forces, so that is what they must do. Tanya’s plans to remove Ansom’s leadership bonus from them, plus the increasing of their own bonus, will have to make up the rest.
Now, to fight. Tanya rode out on another stack of dwagons, stacked as the caster with the only level 6 uncroaked warlord they possessed, who had leveled last turn, Ensign Toast. On a related note, he was also the most disposable, as his decay was so advanced that he possessed only two hits and not a single scrap of flesh, being fully skeletal. Just as before, they detected their own move depleting along with the dwagons, with no other rider having that problem. So they counted them, and their move was impressively high, having reached the column before running out. Drat, they forgot to ask the Count about why they were losing move when riding.
The first hex they attack contains what most of them do: an eight-stack of knights with unipegataur mounts, although this one had a ninth carrying a level 3 warlord from Sofa King. In addition, they had the same problematic but still easily defeated complements of air units and massive quantities of archers down below as the first invasion, and between that, their speed, and their wide formation, it would be difficult to properly target them with breath attacks. “Stanley’s whores!” The warlord shouted.
“Introductions, then?” Tanya taunted, turning to the Ensign. “Well, he’s Sofa King, Toast.” Laughing at their own pun, Tanya pointed their new weapon at the enemy formation. “Friendship Rainbow Nova!” they shouted in Japanese, thankful that no one else could understand the activation. Despite the name being accurate in that it shot out a wave of rainbows, it was actually a wide-area projection of overwhelming awe, stunning and inflicting mental damage. With that pause in their evasive maneuvers, the blue dwagons were able to line up shots and skewer the knights through their orly screen. It’s the one advantage to the narrow aperture, it was much more difficult to screen than the other varieties.
While the breath attacks didn’t completely croak the stack, it was good enough that Tanya’s follow-up finished things off: “Binding Heart Chain Flash!” She shouted as the incredibly accurate but relatively low-powered and inefficient lightning attack hopped from target to target, completely frying the few remaining hits left in their stack without them inflicting a single hit of damage to the dwagons. Tanya grinned as the rush of a level up elevated their heart rate, a high that they could only attempt to compare to combat stimulants. Level 5 was a very important level for a Chief Warlord, as it increased their in-hex bonus to three and out of hex bonus to two. Sides without a Chief Warlord of at least that level were considered weak and easy to conquer, or at least that was how it was explained to them.
Wanting to save their juice, the rest of the air force was defeated more conventionally, with minimal damage to the dwagons, Tanya laughed as they repeated last turn’s tactics, only mildly adjusted for the minor changes in composition of the ground forces in comparison to then. A single flick of the wrist activated the wand’s base function, that did not draw from the battery: a blade of light; sharp, lethal, and worth plus ten combat. The familiar sound of a lightsaber activating came with it, and with a wave of their arm, the battle bear’s plush exteriors opened up like tissue paper instead of the thick canvas it actually was. With a short invocation “Sure kill: Sparkle Cut” the damage was doubled, as it inflicted both cutting and electrical damage in equal measure at the cost of a small amount of juice.
Despite their preparations, Tanya smiled when they saw that the battle concluded with their forces in even better shape than they were after the last turn’s first battle, despite being lesser in number. Tanya attributed this to their higher leadership rating as well as the increased efficiency of their dealing with the air force.
Wanda was ordered to use her discretion to animate the knight-class units while retaining enough juice to uncroak the rest of the hex, and she managed to get… seven of the unipegataurs and six of the eager elf knights, and with Ensign Toast leading the stack, that was another stack of dangerous fliers that they could use to fight. It did, however, mean that they had no more spare warlords. Toast with the uncroaked fliers, the Archduke with Wanda on the ground, Tanya with one stack of dwagons, and finally Jenkins and Lord Manpower with the other two stacks of dwagons. The Sofa King Warlord’s body was claimed and excluded from Wanda’s spell, but after the reorganization (and Tanya executing a few more prisoners for additional experience), Wanda did another mass uncroaking.
Now, Tanya was not going to take odds in the seventies to take a third hex. However, taking a second hex wasn’t risky enough. When dealing in asymmetric warfare, you couldn’t play things too safely, or you’ll be wasting your strengths. Which was why Tanya opened up another connection to Maggie: “The numbers?” they asked, wordlessly conveying the hits of the remaining dwagons, knights, and the new addition to the skirmish force, as well as their new level.
Time distortion made her response immediate: “To defeat the originally planned second hex, 99.921% chance.” Tanya nodded to themselves. “To defeat one of the front hexes, 91.206%. To do so without losing any dwagon or living commander, 97.205% and 82.903%” Perfect.
This was how wargaming is. Maximum gain for minimum risk. The rest is playing the player, not the game. Their enemy was an alliance, and this is something that can be exploited. The front hexes were a very different beast in comparison to the bulk of the army: before, they were unassailable. Unfortunately, the necessity of spreading out the knights and air defenses meant that those front hexes were weaker than they were before, assuming that those hexes were unattractive targets.
But if they can’t take three hexes, Tanya wanted to make that second hex count. The Royal Crown Coalition actually had three different forms of siege: The previously mentioned battle bears were siege units in their own right, and the siege towers they pushed were a second variety. Third were a mounted unit, weinerrammers. They resembled two meter long dachshunds with massive goat horns, optimized for smashing their heads into things that would break the skull of less specialized creatures. They were non-heavy mounts, not particularly valuable but that just meant there were plenty to go around, with each one mounted by a knight.
Well, they used to be each mounted by a knight. Most of those knights were now on unipegataurs, hexes away from the conflict. Further, the previously thick air cover has also been spread out to the other hexes, so it was now only about fifty percent stronger than those. In addition, instead of a morass of infantry, the front hexes also had slow lumbering heavy forest units known as Gumps. They were walking trees, which was simple enough to understand. They were as tough as dwagons and slightly stronger for less than half the upkeep, but they were incredibly slow on all terrain, except for forests, where they were about as quick as regular infantry, and on roads, where they have an odd special of being able to travel two hexes with a single move. They sure could run. On top of those threats, they had large numbers of digger units, mostly the short and squat little pink people known as marbits but also normal infantry diggers, the ones responsible for the tunnel feint that was definitely no longer happening.
“Friendship Rainbow Nova!” Tanya said, infusing even more juice into it this time to hit more targets. The stunned flier stacks were butchered by Ensign Toast’s stack as well as coordinated dwagon breath, allowing Tanya to use another spell to deal with the leadership: another warlady from Sofa King, the last one beyond the one that stayed back in the leadership hex. Coincidentally, the bulk of Sofa King’s forces were also in the two hexes they were attacking this turn.
“Titans!” The warlady shouted. “What is this witchery? Foolamancy!”
“Close!” Tanya shouted back. “But close only counts with horseshoes…” Tanya pointed their wand at the warlady. “-and shockamancy! Lucky Clover Heart Attack!” a massive bolt of magic shot towards the warlady, croaking her instantly. One of the reasons air cover was so critical was that flying enemies attacking downward bypassed the natural screening a mount gave its rider, making the warlady as vulnerable as any ordinary knight to the attack.
That wasn’t to say that it would have helped, she was riding a weinerammer and it also croaked just from the overkill of Tanya’s blast.
With both the warlord in the sky and the one on the ground dealt with, Wanda’s uncroaked started invading the hex, tearing the hundreds of marbits and few stacks of knights to pieces as the dwagons and knights dealt with the gumps. Without enemy leadership to direct things, Tanya was able to control the engagements to ensure that the enemy knights could not attack the dwagons, and the gumps could not tear too many uncroaked apart.
It was still a rough battle, with half of the new uncroaked knights and their mounts being rendered to dust, a single particularly unlucky dwagon fell, and three hobgobwin knights falling in the battle. The knight’s bodies were all claimed and put onto the dwagons, and the spidew forces (giant spider mounts) had enough move to reach the newly destroyed hex and retrieve a large fraction of the bodies, pretty much every non-marbit that was uncroakable, plus a few of the marbits filled in the rest of the capacity. Well, they actually had the remaining uncroaked carry bodies as close to Gobwin Knob as possible, and then the spidews retrieved it all with multiple trips. There really weren’t that many left, after Lord Manpower’s disastrous loss of two thirds of the unit type.
As for the rest… Tanya took out a scroll. Now that they could sense their own juice, Count Harbinger had enough juice last turn to create a scroll to gain some profit and also give Tanya a lesson in moneymancy. “Hillenbrand Stewart Matthews.” Tanya announced, paying close attention as the remaining bodies depopped, the value flowing into Tanya’s purse. According to Count Harbinger, a unit’s total value was approximately five turns of upkeep. Most methods of extracting value from bodies took only a portion of this value, and wasted the rest, that remainder of value outflowing to the same place it would have gone if it was just allowed to depop. He didn’t bother explaining what that place was, calling it ‘advanced knowledge’ that wasn’t useful in the immediate sense.
For example, bodies could be eaten by carnivorous beast units like dwagons. Depending on the unit type, this could yield rations to cover one to four turns of upkeep of the unit of question. Certain minor specials, like drain life or bone eater, could allow the extraction of more value than would otherwise be able to be drawn. Particularly edible units, like herbivorous mount units (Count Harbinger expressed particular fondness for the rations spawned from the harvesting of a unit called a Starbuck, a deer-like unit that was exceptionally fast), could even be harvested for rations that could be eaten by regular Men units, and those usually also had the larger yields.
This was a simple version of the moneymancy spell. It merely converted rations to shmuckers, which meant that the weinerammers yielded three turns of their upkeep, the marbits two turns, and the men units one turn, based on their edibility by a standard carnivorous beast unit. The scroll ended when her purse filled to the brim, which surprisingly did not actually use up the supply of bodies. Hundreds of marbits multiplied by ten upkeep, doubled… yeah they only used up 250 of the marbit bodies and nothing else. Not even half of them.
“Feast.” Tanya instructed, and the dwagons each started eating their fill on the bodies of the fallen. They really wish they knew about this last turn, but apparently Overlord Stanley had made it a policy to save all bodies for Wanda, even when uncroaking said bodies was impractical or even impossible. The weakest level 1 dwagons had three hundred shmuckers per turn of upkeep, and feral ones could subsist entirely on rations, no shmuckers required. Tamed ferals kept this trait and constituted the majority of the dwagon supply, so spending some time after the final battle letting the dwagons eat the bodies of the fallen was a substantial mitigation to the side’s expenses.
Even that much was not enough to use up all of the value left in the bodies of the fallen, so Tanya just shrugged and made an attempt to repeat the spell on one of the gump bodies. They yielded fruit rations instead of meat, as plant-type units, and after about five failed attempts she just finished harvesting the fruit rations and passed them out to the hobgobwin knights before finally returning to the city.
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“You’ve grown again.” Count Harbinger commented. “Two more inches, with additional growth on your hips, even some chest growth.” His words were clinical, uninterested. As if he was a butcher evaluating the readiness of an animal for slaughter.
“I’ve leveled again.” Tanya replied. So they were twelve now? While they weren’t exactly thrilled at maturing in a feminine manner, it was still a step up from being a literal child. Wait. Would they even have… It’s not like pregnancy is even a thing in this world… questions for later. “Now, the turn’s still on, so today I’d like to visit the Magic Kingdom.”
“Hold.” Wanda said, her voice cutting through all other noise. “I have discovered the power of the Arkenpliers.” She walked in with another caster, a rotund woman with dark skin wearing an elaborate robe.
“Who is that?” Tanya asked.
“Ah am Marie Lavraie.” The caster said in a thick accent, nodding her head in a tiny bow. “Predictamancer.” Ah, Wanda’s predictamancer friend.
“What do they do?” Tanya asked, their curiosity sated.
“They can be used to create a greater form of uncroaked.” Wanda replied, “But it is not yet time to make use of it.”
Tanya did not like the sound of that. “I suppose the element of surprise is still valuable. Is the plan to wait to create them until they’re attacking the walls, then?”
“That’s ah good plahn.” Marie said, nodding in approval. “Making use of them now will not help, only tip Wanda’s hand.”
Something seemed off, but Tanya shrugged. “Alright, place the bodies in an appropriate place until we need them then.” Tanya mentally delegated the spidew forces and a few stacks of infantry to Wanda’s command to get it done.
“Are we to continue your education?” Count Harbinger asked. “Practice moneymancy?”
“No.” Tanya replied, walking towards the central pillar of Gobin Knob’s tower. “My juice would be better spent spelling up this tower.” Theoretically, having something else to spend their juice on would be useful… but they didn’t expect anything better than just using it on Shockamancy within their limited timeframe. “Our contract will persist for two more turns, as agreed. I must remain here for the rest of the day, in case they decide that an aerial attack is appropriate.” They turned to Marie. “Are you here to offer your own services?”
“Ah could.” Marie said, “Perhaps you want to know if Prince Ansom will attack this turn? Fahve hundred shmuckers.” She put up all five of the fingers on one hand.
Tanya glanced at Headmaster Isaac. Immediately understanding their inquiry, he waved his hand in a ‘so-so’ gesture. “Three hundred.” Tanya counter-offered, brandishing three of their own fingers
“Four.” Marie said, rolling her eyes and retracting her thumb.
“Deal.” Tanya said.
Marie cast a spell silently, closing her eyes and nodding. “Not this turn.” She proclaimed.
“Logical.” Count Harbinger said, butting in. “They saw you unload a lot more shockamancy this turn than last turn, and while there are many possible explanations for why you appeared to be using it rather than, say, a mercenary shockamancer, they likely assumed that you had one spell up the tower last turn. Only their flying units can effectively reach, not enough siege to matter to walls as thick as yours. They anticipate a trap.”
“And her testimony is reliable?” Tanya asked. “As in, she is both correct and not deceiving?”
“Attempting to act as a carnymancer would in my presence would be most unwise.” Headmaster Isaac assured them, his expression darkening. “As for the reliability of the prediction itself, predictamancy fares poorly with specific time frames as a general rule, but questions about events within one turn are among the simplest forms of predictamancy. Ansom has already decided not to risk a counterattack, or close enough, she is merely informing you of this.”
Tanya hummed and ordered the treasury to pay Marie. “That’s all I need to know then. I’ll spend the rest of the day familiarizing myself with the Magic Kingdom.” Sizemore had made the offer to show them around at the start of the turn, and this was the perfect chance to follow through. “Maggie, keep things running and alert me if needed.”
“Yes, Warlady.”
Comments
Chris Larson
Well, this is going to cause huge ripples in the coalition. Especially with a side like Sofa King who were almost willing to leave in the original timeline without the targeted harassment just because the fight was getting hard.
