“Now that everyone is up to date, we’ll be going over our foes’ capabilities before moving on to planning. Sera, you have the floor,” Cadenza announced, stepping away from the head of the table. A pair of warriors entered the room hauling corpses- the remains of two of the three nachzehrer which had been slain weeks ago, retrieved prior to the meeting. They placed the bodies atop the meeting room table carefully, wary of having their weight collapse it, although Sera thought it probably wasn’t necessary given that the thing was essentially a slab of solid stone, shaped and perched upon four thick pillars of rock.
“Uh, right. Hi. So, before I start, I want to get one thing out of the way: power armor was fictional in my world. I know what it’s meant to do and a bit about how it could work, but I’m mostly going to be guessing here, so don’t be surprised if they have abilities I didn’t see coming. Okay? Good. So, first, let’s take a look at these,” Sera began, tapping a finger on the camera lenses both nachzehrer had in place of eyes.
“Those are cameras. These suits are completely sealed, which means they can’t be drowned or gassed, but it also means they’re blind if their cameras are damaged. Next…” Sera indicated the servos and hydraulics hidden by armor plating. One suit had fully intact joints, while the other, which had been struck by Tiriana’s lightning, had many of its smaller components slagged and welded together. “These are why we call it ‘power armor.’ There’s a combination of motors and hydraulics here that enhance the wearer’s strength and speed.”
“How is that any different from enchanted armor?” asked one of the party members in the crowd. Sera looked up, flushing a bit. She had no real choice but to admit she had no idea, since she knew nothing about enchanted armor whatsoever.
“I…don’t know. I think you’ll just have to listen to my description and…make your conclusions based on that?” she replied, tapping a finger against the suit nervously.
“Sera is a mistwalker and hasn’t been here long enough to learn things like that,” Cadenza explaining, stepping in. “Please restrict your questions to the suit itself- we can make comparisons once she’s finished.”
“Thanks. So, I don’t know much about how these work, just what they’re called, but they’re hidden under armor for a reason: if you damage them, it directly weakens the wearer. You don’t need to get through their armor to make them less of a threat, just nail them in one of these spots that aren’t fully covered,” Sera went on, showing the watching crowd where the most vulnerable spots were. The elbows and knees wouldn’t be easy targets and were shielded from the front, but damage to them would be crippling. “Oh, can someone flip one of these over for me?”
“Ah, sure. Just a moment,” replied an atlantean warrior, who stepped up to the table and rolled the nachzehrer gunner suit over.
“Perfect. So, this is their other weakness right here. I’m pretty sure it’s a battery pack,” Sera continued, tapping a conspicuous backpack-like protrusion on the suit’s upper back. “I could be wrong but that’s pretty much the best place to put one. If this is damage or just runs out of power, the whole suit will shut down. It looks pretty heavily armored though, and I don’t know how long they can go for.”
“…but that means that any fight they engage in has a built-in time limit,” concluded the elf Sera recognized as Dalian. “That’s the same reason we don’t use most of our more potent tools so close to the rim; ignoring the expense, they’re just too unreliable.”
“Which begs the question of how their guns work. Even back home those are expensive to use. Enchanted bullets or magic crystal rounds aren’t cheap or easy to make, so how are they supplying their weapons?” someone asked. Here, Tiriana stepped up.
“It would help if we had some to look at, so…” she said, using a spell to cut open the gunner’s arm-mounted submachinegun. She retrieved a bullet and held it up. “That’s…strange. It seems to be ordinary metal.”
“You said the bullets that struck you drained your shields, correct?” Cadenza asked, furrowing her brow.
“Right…but that shouldn’t be possible unless they contain an empty crystal,” Tiriana answered as she turned the bullet over in her hand, examining it.
“We should be on the lookout for other types of firearms, then. Sera, did you have anything else?” Cadenza said, turning back to Sera. She shook her head.
“No, that’s all I’ve got,” she replied, stepping back.
“In that case, hearing that, Dr. Kahnton, what’s your verdict? Do we stay and fight or surrender the fortress?” Cadenza asked, turning towards the civilian leader, who appeared to be deep in thought.
“…I believe we should stay. If these nachzehrer are unable to make their own decisions and merely act upon their master’s final order, they are essentially golems, which have no claim over territory. Assuming you believe you can defeat them,” the doctor decided after heavy thought.
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“What a convenient loophole,” Sera muttered. The warriors in the room likely heard her, as a few gave her amused looks, but her words were quiet enough that the mages didn’t pick up on them.
“In the first engagement? Our victory is pretty much a certainty. After that they’ll realize they can’t fight us with the same tactics they used against the alchemists,” Cadenza told Kahnton confidently. “If we can get the secondary core working, though, then the fortress’s barrier should give us an advantage.”
“What’s the plan, boss?” Dalian asked.
“We don’t have enough people to man the walls, so we won’t. We’ll have the civilians board the airship and hide out in the sky, then meet the nachzehrer on the ground. With a handful of mages high up on the walls to bombard them we should be able to soften them up before we engage them in combat,” Cadenza explained.
“Shouldn’t we take advantage of the close quarters inside the tunnels? That would minimize any numbers advantage they have and allow us to engage by party,” Dalian countered.
“That would be unwise. Walls are merely launch pads for their leapers. It would enhance they mobility, not restrict it,” Layla told the party leader, who nodded in understanding.
“Exactly. And we know we haven’t seen all their models yet. The golems several of our parties fought in the tunnels would be difficult opponents for the leapers or gunners, so I suspect they likely have a frontline model meant to engage golems and distract them while the leapers deal with any mages. Which is why I plan to flip the script on them: we’ll put our mages in the vanguard, while our warriors wait in the rear. When they close in, we annihilate their warrior models with magic while our own warriors deal with the leapers.” As she spoke, Cadenza wove an image in midair as if writing on a whiteboard, illustrating the battle plan.
“Surely the alchemists attempted that at some point,” one of the party leaders asserted nervously.
“The alchemists likely relied on their mobile fortresses. Fighting from the walls or streets and tunnels, they wouldn’t have had the mobility for a strategy like this,” Cadenza responded.
“That’s an awful risky assumption. And what if they see our mages in the front and change strategies?” asked the same person. Sera realized then what Cadenza had in mind.
“They won’t, because you’re planning on using illusions to make them think our mages are warriors,” she said, the words coming unbidden from her lips. Cadenza smiled and waved in her direction.
“As our budding illusionist said, we’ll be disguising ourselves. We’ll hold off on attacking until they’re about to engage, absorb their first attack with barriers, and counter attack only after their leapers have assaulted our back line,” the party captain replied. “Mind you, that’s why this will only work once. They’ll be more wary of us next time.”
“That plan falls apart if we’re outnumbered too greatly to wipe them out in the first attack, though,” another party leader in the crowd pointed out. “And what if they bring vehicles or air forces?”
“If it’s a small number, I destroy them personally from atop the walls. If not, we retreat. Remember, folks: the stakes are not high, here. This isn’t a battle we have to win at all costs. Your priority is to survive. If there’s too many of them or they outgun us, we’ll know long before they get close thanks to our height advantage,” Cadenza advised the gathered party leaders. Dr Kahnton cleared his throat.
“You said the first victory was a certainty. Then, what of the next battle? Surely they will not simply leave us alone,” said the scaly scholar.
“During our first trip through the tunnels, we encountered magic circles that project a barrier around the fortress when fully powered,” Tiriana answered in place of Cadenza. “That barrier was formidable enough that the nachzehrer had to bypass it. If we buy enough time for the engineering team investigating the secondary core to reactivate it, then we can hold this place against anything they throw at it.”
“If they got through it once, they could do it again,” Kahnton said in response. “Do we even know how they entered in the first place?”
No one responded for a moment and Sera realized that however it was done, it must have been a method no one from this world would consider. If it were magic, someone would at least have had a guess. Sheer brute force wouldn’t have done it; the defenders would have known they were under attack in that case. If they couldn’t go through, they must have gone over…or under.
“Sappers,” Sera said with surety. “Tiriana, does the barrier extend underground?”
“Ah, no,” Tiriana replied, looking confused. “Barriers can’t intersect with physical matter. But that shouldn’t matter because any attempt to dig a tunnel would have resulted in the defenders collapsing them on the diggers’ heads.”
“Right. But only if they thought to look in the first place. We have every indication that the alchemists were amazing engineers but not much else. If they’d never fought a war before, then it might not have occurred to them that their enemy might dig under their defenses at all,” Sera elaborated.
“Dr. Kahnton, have your earth mages check for signs of tunneling below the fortress and in the surrounding area. If they find any, we have our answer,” Cadenza ordered. Amusingly, Dr. Kahnton nodded rapidly without stopping to question why he was the one being bossed around.
“Even if that doesn’t pan out, our barrier magic is far more advanced than that of the alchemists. We should be able to upgrade the barriers to be closer fitting, sturdier, and less power-hungry. That should block off any secret entrances,” Tiriana assured the doctor, who seemed a bit mollified.
“Alright, you all know the plan. Fill your parties in, make sure your gear is all in order, and decide which of your mages are going to be on offense, who’s handling barriers, and who’s joining me as artillery. Dalian, you’re our field commander. I’ll relay orders through you if needed, but I think you’re ready to handle it yourself. I’ll be asking some of the nocturnal members of the research team to keep watch on the walls and sending what nocturnal adventurers we have further out, but maintain the watch schedule as usual otherwise.”
Cadenza took a moment to look each of the party leaders in the room in the eyes, then nodded in satisfaction at whatever she saw.
“Dismissed!”