Teemo’s on his way back home to get the medics and whoever else wants to come for the actual assault. Most of the adventurers are going with him, either just to get back home, or to get a few last minute things so they’ll be prepared for the attack. The scouting teams are already back out, setting up the basecamp to infiltrate from.

I’m still nervous about it, but they’re as prepared as they can be, and are all pretty experienced delvers. It’s easy to forget that I’m a bit of an anomaly with how I treat my delvers, but a hostile dungeon like the Maw is what the adventurers are used to dealing with. They’ve only just started setting up, so no excursions just yet. I imagine they’ll probably wait for the reinforcements to make any real effort of getting a closer look, but who knows with adventurers.

With my delvers, they’re all making their own preparations for the upcoming fight. It pains me to see it, but they’re probably right to ditch the metal armor and weapons. The compound bows are still going to be used, since they should be at the rear, and so out of range of anyone trying to take control of the weapons. If any hostiles get close enough to actually make use of a metal affinity, the archers are going to be in trouble anyway.

That doesn’t mean the melee fighters are going in empty handed, though. The nets for the tarantulakin aren’t metal, so they should still be able to ensnare foes like that. They’re also swapping out their tridents for oversized bolas, reminding me of… I forget the name, but that ninja weapon with a weight on one end and a hook on the other. Except they’re putting weights on both ends. They’re using rocks and ensnaring them in a big monkey fist knot, which looks cool and I don’t doubt could be used to devastating effect as a blunt weapon.

The jumping spiders are making do in their own way, too. The adjusting metal heads of the spears are gone, but the quick swap mechanism is still being used. They managed to convince Nova to stay behind and help make obsidian, and they’ve been making a ton of volcanic glass spear heads, attached to the quick swap. While there are apparently skills to help them penetrate metal armor, they’ll still break pretty often. But with the quick swap, they can just change out a broken head on the fly. Not how I expected the spears to work, but I’m proud of my dwellers for thinking on their feet and coming up with a solution like that.

Leo and Honey are having the dwellers drill with the denizens when they’re not adjusting their gear, my scions wanting to make sure as many kinks in the system are worked out here, instead of getting blindsided on the battlefield. They’re also working on changing formation in tight quarters, letting whoever needs to get to the front get there with minimal hassle, while also not just creating a huge hole for the enemy to take advantage of.

They first tried swapping out half at a time, but that left too much of a gap. Thirds work better, and I think the new drills are trying a quarter at a time. I think thirds will be the best option, since I don’t think the tunnels will allow for eight fighters to stand side to side. They might work with four, but I think six is going to be most common. Still, more narrow will probably be four, and wider could be eight. Learning to change positions in thirds and quarters will give them options for how to handle the actual fighting.

While my dwellers’ offensive needs are being handled, their defenses are suffering. They’re experimenting with wooden and silk armor, but it’s really clunky with what tools they have available in the field. Queen is hoping to fix that, at least partially. Her work with lacquer and silk composite armor is impressive, but I don’t think it’s as good as metal armor yet. Still, it’ll be better than nothing.

She’s working on standardizing the process and making it work with what she can get in the Southwood. I’m pretty sure tree sap is a major part of resin, and silk will be easy enough to source from the dwellers, too. She’s still refining it as quickly as she can, and preparing to take part of her lab on the road. She’s intending to come with the medics, and I’m not going to complain. Not only will she be able to try to outfit the dwellers in composite armor, but she could also help with any alchemical healing that might be required, too.

Thing may or may not come along as well. He’s been experimenting with how well the composite takes enchantments. So far, it doesn’t seem they enchant easily, but even a simple durability enchantment would be great. I’m pretty sure most metal armor uses a lot of enchanting to make them lighter, but the composite is already nicely light. A durability boost would be perfect.

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He still hasn’t perfected it yet, and if I understand the problem right, I don’t blame him. Most armors are engraved, etched, or inlaid with enchantments, because that works best on metal. I'd imagine it works decently with wood, too, but not a whole lot of people wander around in wooden armor. Robes and enchanted cloth have the enchantments woven into them. He’s been trying to use the metal methods, but they aren’t working.

I poke the bond with him with the notion to try weaving the enchantment before the resin/lacquer sets, to see if that would work better. He might even be able to try inlaying something into the lacquer as it dries, too. Maybe composite materials require composite solutions.

He freezes in his work as he listens to the bond, then scrambles off the enchanting table to go find Queen. I can feel inspiration practically boiling off the bond, so I have a good feeling in regards to what he’ll be able to accomplish with Queen’s help. I wonder if it’ll actually let him enchant it even more than a more traditional material. If so, we’re going to have to try figuring out how to make metallic honeycomb.

I eye Honey’s bees before mentally shaking my head. No, I think it’ll be on Jello to try to make something like that. In normal composites, a metal honeycomb is… well, a honeycomb of metal, with the walls usually only a little thicker than foil. I’m pretty sure it’s usually used in vehicle armor, often sandwiched between carbon fiber or other fibers. Maybe they run the fibers through the comb, too? I have no idea, but that’d be pretty cool, and probably a pain to manufacture by hand. Still, if it’d allow for enchanting the fiber, the metal, and even inlaying something into the resin, we could have some serious enchantment density.

That’s probably why Thing is signing at Queen like a madhand. Oh, maybe we should try using chain or ring mail instead of a honeycomb, at least for the first prototype. It’ll end up being a bit bulky, but probably not worse than some of the full plate I’ve seen people wear.

I just wish we had some good weapons that aren’t metal. It’s definitely too late to whip anything up right now, but it’s absolutely something to try to prepare, so we’ll be ready if anything else with metal affinity shows up. So… what are the options?

Classic weapons do one or a mix of three things: bash, cut, stab. Bash is pretty easy to do without metal. Practically any rock can be carved into a good smashing shape, though they tend to crumble if you hit them too hard. A durability enchantment will probably help with that… probably.

Cutting and stabbing are a bit more difficult. Stone and wood can be used for stabbing, but wood doesn’t hold a point very well without some magical shenanigan, and rock weakens a lot when carved to a point. Composites don’t offer much in the way of help, or at least normal ones don’t. No matter how refined, it’s still just tree sap and silk. Those can only be sharpened so much.

Is there anything weird that might work as a composite? It’ll be difficult, because metal really does have all the properties a good weapon wants: it’ll hold an edge, so it’s hard, but it’s also strong enough to not shatter when under a high force. Even when it breaks, it tends toward bending rather than breaking. A bent sword isn’t great, but probably a little better than just having an empty hilt, and a bent hammer doesn’t really care, while a bent spearhead can be bent back into shape for a couple more thrusts.

So we need flexibility and hardness, which are not quite mutually exclusive, but not far away. Magic might be able to help some… maybe a take on a macuahuitl? I’ve heard them called obsidian swords, which is pretty far off. They’re practically a cricket bat with shards of obsidian along the side. I’m pretty sure they were more for maiming than actually killing, but refining the idea might work: softer core, harder edge.

So… silk and lacquer for the main body of the weapon, and maybe some kind of ceramic edge? I think I’ve seen swords that were basically a razor thin bit of steel set into a carbon fiber ‘blade’. I don’t know how well that’d actually work, and it’d also still have some metal in it. I don’t really like the idea of trying a ceramic or glass edge, though. Maybe a thin bit of metal wouldn’t give someone with the affinity enough to actually get a grip on it?

I’ll have to ask Berdol once Teemo gets back. I want to have him ask Tarl about the known denizens of the Maw anyway. I should also touch bases with Rezlar, too. I don’t know if he’ll be able to contribute much to the fight, but there’s more going on than just dealing with the Maw.

With the lighthouse getting close to finishing, he’ll probably want to get started on the vault. Coda seems to be looking forward to that, too. The lighthouse gave him some unique challenges, and the vault will, too. I just need to make sure there’s no crazy social experiments going on in there. It’ll probably be fine, as long as Queen doesn’t run the place.