In ten turns, Jetstone had accumulated over one hundred caster levels of debt. In that time, Ace had finished the proposed set of equipment, and created one set with the help of Lloyd. The shock-action spear worked wonderfully, conveying the natural shockamancy that was simple kinetic energy into a stabbing beam of light. It didn't do any more damage than a regular stab (which, to be clear, was very dangerous from a knight-class unit), but it did so at range, allowing her knights to attack while closing in, or in the case of smaller engagements, dispatch at low risk to themselves.
With a little experimenting, which was a charitable word for 'shout things in Japanese while swinging her lightsaber', she discovered a usable spell that allowed her to replicate the effect with a flying slash for a minor juice expense. Unfortunately, she didn’t discover any other spells by chance this time.
Lady Victoria had the first suit, of course. She was given a customized appearance with hers, which will probably be done for each of her warlords but she liked the idea of uniforms too much to go so far for the rest. Ace had also said offhandedly that she had requested that magic underwear he had mentioned, but Tanya was too embarrassed to ask what they actually did. Or what they looked like. They weren't expensive, though.
In full, the equipment provided a +2 bonus to both combat and defense, the barrier special, the shock-action attack, the mile-high special, and the ability to be disguised as clouds or rocks with foolamancy. The warlords gain two additional pieces of equipment: hats that can pass messages and a set of goggles that provide a bonus to detecting foolamancy. It was expensive, nine caster-turns of juice for each set. Fortunately, Ace leveled after successfully making the first spear, and became an Adept to boot. Unfortunately, Tanya had to deploy to the warzone now that Jetstone’s cities were adequately protected against air attacks. So the additional sets had to wait.
Tanya floated in front of her nominal boss for the next few turns: Chief Warlord of Jetstone, Ossomer. He was even larger than Ace, muscular in a way that reminded Tanya of superheroes… although that may just be the hairstyle. Was it Superman that had the single black lock hanging down or his secret identity? Tanya couldn’t remember. He was level nine, not quite as strong as Ansom but the fact that Jetstone had two warlords of such a prodigious level was a credit to their military tactics. “Prince Ossomer, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” He wasn’t able to attend the ball that Tanya attended at Spacerock a couple tenturns ago.
“Tanya.” He said simply, looking over the map. “Your forces are doing good work. My compliments to your drilling of them. White spoke quite well of your leadership.”
She looked over the map as well. “It appears that Haggar is on the defensive.” Tanya observed. Recon didn’t do a great job of seeing within enemy cities, they still couldn’t see through walls. But it looked like they had few units out on the field.
“They are.” Ossomer confirmed, “But they haven’t surrendered. That means they’re planning something.”
Lord White approached and saluted. "Princess, the new scouting reports are in!" Tanya was suddenly flooded with a mental map of the battle space, the natural Thinkamancy of the scout special allowing Lord White to share that information with an allied commander just as easily as the deployed scouts relayed that information to him.
Tanya immediately stacked up with the infantry that were constructing the battlemap and started issuing orders as the stack leader to update things for the Prince. "Ah, tell me, Ossomer: does Haggar know of how you've been getting your intelligence?" She asked.
"Haggar possesses a changemancer, a turnamancer, and a findamancer." Ossomer said as a reply. "King Dickie's Tracy has a keen mind and will continually search for stray scouts, croaking them with a strike force of orlies. Your knights have very high move, and so have sojourned out only far enough to be able to retreat to base camps, so they have been unable to attack them."
That was logical. Orlies were weak, but inexpensive and fast. If you didn't have higher value fliers to screen with them, hunting down scouts was probably the best use case. Of course, whether it was a problem really depended on just how many orlies Haggar had.
"So the question remains." Tanya said, "Does Haggar think we can see this attack force?" It was fairly strong, forty stacks of infantry surrounding two siege towers, each pulled by a stack of Mondays, which were ferocious orange tiger-like beast units that no one likes facing due to their special, which lets them heal and replenish move, up to a limit, when they overeat. Like all carnivorous beast units, they could eat in the middle of combat. Pallets of meat and pasta meals were readied in self-propelled wagons (self-propelled is granted by turnamancy, as in turning wheels) for the extra mobility they provided, or for an emergency snack. Finally, there were two more stacks of Mondays led by warlords, mounted by Haggar's Sunday Knights. She wasn’t sure why they were named that, beyond some kind of natural pair that the manic Mondays had with them.
The overflight of four stacks of orlies that stayed low to the ground… seemed tailor-made to dissuade her knights from doing a raiding attack. Not that it would be productive without having brought dwagons to the battlefield.
Tanya quickly counted up the units that had enough move to attack that force, then attempted to calculate a battle between all of those and that hex. “We can’t attack.” She concluded. “Maybe one in five chance of victory with all of our current forces.”
“Careful Princess,” Chief Healomancer Pierce said, lifting his martini glass instead of a more normal gesture. “Watergate makes those siege towers quick. Changemancy’s like that. Turnamancer makes it worse.”
“How quick?” Tanya asked, counting hexes. They were camped here, eighteen hexes away from them, and the nearest city was Sansabelt, the third and final city that Ossomer captured before he ran out of units to effectively attack Haggar further. It was level 3, brought down to 2 to bolster Jetstone’s failing treasury. Two full siege towers, augmented with changemancy? Yeah that was probably enough to take that city, given how anemic the standing army there was. Distance was only twenty-nine hexes from their attack force. They’d be right up at the gate, too… “Will they move fifteen hexes per turn?”
“Yeah.” Pierce said, “We’re going to lose good units to them.”
Tanya asked a few questions about Sansabelt’s defenses, and ran another calculation. “...Without reinforcements nor interference, Sansabelt has one in twenty chance of survival.” She ran another calculation. “If we move this column’s forces into Sansabelt, our odds improve to seventy-five percent.” Ossomer’s column was really quite weakened, wasn’t it? After seeing the Royal Crown Coalition’s forces against Gobwin Knob, these armies just seemed tiny.
“Woah, I didn’t know we had a royal Mathamancer here.” Pierce joked. Tanya glared at him, he knew that he was supposed to be circumspect about Tanya’s casting. There wasn’t any Unaroyal units in this hex, so it didn’t matter right now, but… Ah.
“What’s Lady Sylvia’s current objective?” Tanya asked. She should be here…
Ossomer pointed towards a spot on the map, where a coin depicting Unaroyal’s livery was placed. “She insisted on splitting up our forces, distracting them by attacking Flyopen with her weinerrammers.”
Tanya hummed. “Perhaps my forces should support her attack? An airspace assault to split their attention, lending my leadership bonus…” it also probably gave her personally better odds than going to Sansabelt.
“HA!” Ossomer laughed at the bold plan. “I knew that you’d suggest that. Yes, we’ll fortify Sansabelt this turn, while you support her attack next turn. We’ll need to pop some additional natural allies, but we will hold the city.”
Tanya nodded along with his plan. “Yes, that sounds prudent.” She had plenty of juice, still… “How’s your juice, Chief Healomancer?” Tanya asked.
“We had some action this turn.” The man said grimly, his previous joking attitude immediately vanishing at the question. “Did you know the presence of a Healomancer in the battlespace increases the incapacitation rate? Fate.” Ossomer didn’t roll his eyes, but his subtle turning away from Pierce seemed to have the same energy of ‘here he goes again’. “I hate it. It means that I get to see scores of incapacitated units that we just didn’t have the juice to save. Even with the nurses.” He raised his empty martini glass to the stack of altruist elves. “You ladies are great.”
“Hm. How many?” She asked.
“Too many.” Pierce said, before actually answering her question. “If I could just have another two stacks of nurses, we could save them all.”
“What is that in caster levels?” Tanya asked.
“Four.” He immediately replied. “They get one quarter the juice of a full healomancer, and they’re not as efficient with it. I could do it in three.” Tanya was pretty sure, from her abbreviated education on non-commander casting units (Headmaster Isaac seemed to think that it was very important information for her, although he always used Archons as an example), he was leaving out some leadership/teamwork bonus of some kind, but he probably couldn’t do that unless he was also casting, which he can’t do without his own juice. She glanced at one of the altruist elves and spent a tiny amount of juice to assess their upkeep, out of curiosity. Ah, that was actually pretty cheap. Only twenty shmuckers each? Efficient. She can see why Jetstone used them despite having a Healomancer.
“Three it is.” Tanya said, smiling. She drew her wand and pointed it at the despondent Healomancer. “Friendship Unity Magic.” She said in Japanese. A bolt of electricity shot out, transferring half of Tanya’s wand’s juice into him.
There were shouts of surprise, of course, but Ossomer was stoic, clearly understanding that Tanya couldn’t have done something dangerous to Pierce without breaking alliance first. The chaos was silenced by Pierce shouting orders to clear his way to the tents that the injured were placed in. Now that she looked at him, he actually had modern military signamancy, like her knights did. His green jacket wouldn’t look out of place in modern military mobile hospital… wait. The Americans don’t use green like that anymore, they use desert camo primarily. Korean or Vietnam war era, then.
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Military history trivia aside, Tanya used one of her wand’s more mundane functions, taking a scrap of paper from the table and writing some orders for her knights. “White?” She asked, passing the note to him, the silvery-pink glitter-laden ink making it clear who their orders came from. He passed it into one of Jetstone’s hats, copying down two copies of them and sending them to other hexes in the column.
After some further written exchanges that were all handled by Lord White, he pointed to the south and they all left the hex to go there.
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“And… fall.” Tanya ordered. Half of her knights, Victoria included, all went limp, falling backwards. The other half, herself included, caught the falling ones.
Why was she making them do trust falls? Well, it comes down to date-a-mancy. Her senses of heartstrings were still rather rudimentary, and she wanted to bolster her knight’s stacks for next turn’s attack. But she couldn’t quite manage to find enough personal connections to entangle to pull it off.
She mostly wanted to see if it affected the heartstrings at all, even the tiniest bit. If it did, she could attempt something more elaborate. “Good, good.” Tanya said. “Now, switch.”
After the second trust fall, she examined the heartstrings again. Yes, that did appear to help a little… Not much, but non-zero. She had to spend some juice to increase her sensitivity to them, but she could maybe use this… She arranged them into four stacks, the full force, with the three warlords included in their number. Counting Lady Victoria, they had thirty non-commander knights. Could she turn any of these into a ten or twelve stack? She had the juice for it.., if she wanted to leave herself empty. Or she could use the pen function of her wand to create a shockamancy scroll. Honestly, leaving one for Pierce would probably help Sansabelt’s defense, but she could only make one scroll per turn.
After some thought, she arranged them into two sets of twelve stacks. The bonds weren’t good enough, but they were the best she could manage. “You six will go with Lord White to scout for Ossomer next turn.” She ordered the remainder. “The rest of us will attack Flyopen with Lady Sylvia next turn.” She turned to Lady Victoria specifically. “Inform Lord White of your new accessories’ capabilities so that he may account for them. If he needs a long-distance scout, your veil makes you best suited for it.”
“Yes Princess!” Lady Victoria said, her heartstring pulsing with pride and anticipation of action.
Turning back to the groups, she sighed. “You all just… talk to each other. Bond. I’ll return shortly before evening and assess your progress.”
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Noon the next day (Jetstone’s alliance took their turn after Haggar) met them flying towards Lady Sylvia’s camp in three eight-stacks led by a warlord each, as date-a-mancy could not be rushed. She did use her juice to pen a shockamancy scroll for Pierce to use in the defense, it was an inefficient use of her juice but it was better than it going to waste on a turn where she did not expect to be attacked off turn; it should allow him to take out most of those screening orlies right away. He didn’t seem to like the idea of it, but Ossomer ordered him to do it, so Pierce accepted the scroll with a joke about how they were going to serve up fried orlies, which is just like chicken. Really.
Although, she did need to spend ten minutes going over exactly how to pronounce the magic words, as she can only make shockamancy scrolls that are in Japanese, which do not automagically impart what they say to casters like normal scrolls. Good to know for the future. For some bizarre reason, he mangled Japanese with a thick Korean accent instead of an American one. She will never understand Signamancy. Then again, Janis seemed to think that trying to understand something was far inferior to trying to intuit something, so maybe that's not such a bad thing.
By the time they arrived to meet Lady Sylvia, her forces had all decamped and organized into marching stacks.
"About time!" The promoted noble shouted impatiently. Lady Sylvia Lazarus was a generically pretty red-haired woman whose scowl accentuated her nobility even as it ruined her beauty. It made Tanya wonder whether her own mannerisms were adjusted to make her fit in better among royalty. Given how she's seemed to have made a largely positive impression… probably.
"There was a small matter that needed to be addressed." Tanya said, dismissing Lady Sylvia's complaint. "I will send out a scout to assess the situation and determine our best plan of attack." Without a word, one of her knights, the last noble one of this group that she didn't promote, immediately started flying ahead of their path, a straight line towards Flyopen.
"We have a plan." Lady Sylvia retorted, "Attack." From her wry grin, Tanya understood that she was deliberately oversimplifying.
Tanya stared her down, conveying in a glance how unamused she was from Sylvia's joke. "The key question is whether or not it will be more efficient to attack the tower zone and attempt to seize the garrison from behind or to aid your attack on the walls by engaging the infantry on top of the walls."
Scout was an Eyemancy special. At its base state, it allowed the unit to project information with Thinkamancy. Advanced versions of the specials dipped into foolamancy (like Ranger) and lookamancy (like Recon), but the core competency was to transmit information to a commander, who could use that information to make better tactical decisions.
This information could be passed on in many ways, but the consistent part was the range: they could only transmit information a number of hexes equal to their move stat. Sending information to scout warlords expanded this range by their own move stat, so she could communicate with her knights at a range of approximately one hundred hexes. Thinkamancers could cast a spell to make the range infinite.
So Tanya's knights slowly flew above Lady Sylvia's weinerrammer strike force, occasionally goofing off by marching in mid-air, still keeping pace. As they did this, Tanya saw through the eyes of the knight named Soarin von Gratz.
The most obvious thing his eyes revealed was the fact that Haggar knew about Lady Sylvia's attack. Their walls were significantly reinforced and concentrated straight at the wall segment she was going to attack.
You couldn't move your units between defensive zones or non-garrison subzones off turn. There were exceptions: the biggest one was that if there was a battle going on you could move between subzones but not zones.
What this meant was that normally, you had to spread your units among the six sub zones of the walls zone, each correlating to an adjacent hex, but you could steadily reinforce whichever subzone is getting attacked with the units in the other subzones. If the enemy brought enough siege, they could break through the wall before you could run out of reinforcements, but this was why the coalition wanted to attack all of the walls subzones at once, to prevent that and take advantage of their overwhelming numbers.
Another key limit of city attacks was time. Time didn't pause when a battle was happening, if you didn't breach into the garrison zone before turn's end, your attack was repelled, and the city gets a chance to heal up and counterattack. Wall attackers are kicked back to their previous hex, airspace attackers are sitting ducks, and tunnels attackers are between rocks and the hard zone borders. Unless the attackers were something like 80% siege, it was usually best to count on the significant numerical advantage walls gave you.
So clearly they intended to wait out the weinerrammers. Gratz moved on to carefully observing the state of the garrison. Oddly, Flyopen seemed to have garrison fortifications that more suited a level 1 city. As a result, the weakness of the city's vulnerable interior was quite apparent. While there was the chance that the tower and dungeon subzones were hiding an ambush force of some kind, the twenty-ish unled stacks of visible infantry and two stacks of also unled knights in the courtyard subzone was easily handled by her knights. Although if those knights were Rockers… it was one of the things that made Haggar dangerous, Prince Sammy's Rock Out special. While not all of Haggar's knights were based on the Prince, most were.
Putting the less useful knights in an out of the way garrison made some sense, but knights don't need to be led in order to dancefight, they can just dance themselves, albeit with a small dancefight bonus.
They were almost there. Tanya calculated the odds: Sylvia verses the wall? 30.451% to penetrate, up to 46.873 with Tanya's extra in-hex bonus. Her forces verses the visible garrison? 96.743% without spell use but with her bonus. With her spells tuned to handle any surplus forces and whatever that tower has? Easy.
"Sylvia." Tanya said commandingly. "Scouting report is in."
"So are you going to be useful, Princess?" The redhead spat.
She wasn't cleared to know about her casting, so… "They've emptied the garrison to fortify the walls. I will take the city from the air. Hold back." Lady Sylvia scowled and started to object, but Tanya cut her off. "Or don't, those aren't my forces you'd waste trying."
Without further conversation (Lady Sylvia was exactly as odious as Trammenis said she was), Tanya ordered all of her units to stack up with her and accelerated.
Conventionally, even led stacks tried to optimize the stack bonus. This was because that bonus applied to the Warlord, too, so it helped that warlord survive the battle. But when Tanya's artifact bonus is taken into account, she's substantially tougher than her subordinates, and she gets to lend her full stack-wide bonus of twelve, instead of Newsman or Kurig's bonus of three.
Trade four bonus of her own for five to her troops? An easy decision if she wants to maximize her odds of victory.
But that wasn't why she stacked up for the airspace attack. It was because stacking up was the best way to cast foolamancy. "Chaff!" Tanya shouted, creating a dazzling glitter-fog that advanced ahead of them before silently ordering the stack to juke left while vague blobs of their colors approached the right side of the fog.
It worked perfectly. The tower unloaded its defense spells automagically, the rudimentary AI that operated it completely fooled by the basic illusion. An explosion of fire erupted, enough to likely croak a whole stack of her knights, destroyed the illusion. She wasn't entirely sure what that spell was called normally, but it was 'passionate love eruption' in her wand.
After two combat rounds of waiting, Tanya mentally corrected herself: apparently this tower held only one overpowered spell before it was done, spent in one pump of juice.
Once they crossed the airspace, free and clear as all of the archers were presumably redeployed to the walls, Tanya ordered them, with glances and a gesture or two, to restack and sweep the tower zone for defenders.
As their high move did indeed translate to moving quickly within a hex, the singular stack of stabbers was swiftly croaked, although they did manage to blow on an alarm horn, not like it mattered.
A subtle shift in the air indicated that the tower subzone was now under their control, and they could now invade the dungeon and courtyard subzones. Deciding to go for the unknown first, Tanya led the charge into the dungeon, only to realize that it was, once more, a single stack of infantry. Diggers, this time.
With all of the risk factor proving to be a complete bluff, Tanya decided to make this quick by topping the Tower of Exposure's (its name was on a plaque on the balcony) disappointing performance, right through the back door. "Passionate Love Eruption!" She shouted before both stacks of knights were utterly incinerated by her overloaded spell. Was that far too much juice to spend? Yes. Would it have been a better idea to let one of the other warlords gain experience? Yes. But she wanted her first city invasion to be a bit more… climactic. This one was over so quickly… a major disappointment.
The infantry was mopped up easily, the leadership bonuses making the enemy infantry units utterly irrelevant. With the Garrison zone fully seized, every single unit on the walls were automagically captured as the city was taken. Their weapons all vanished, replaced by shackles. This included the single warlord that was in the city, although Tanya didn't know his name.
Sylvia didn't have the move to enter through the gate, so Tanya evaluated the remaining move of her knights. It wasn't great. She checked her own move. Better. But not really enough to do much of anything with. She still has plenty of juice, though.
Neither of them can fortify this location long term, but… could it be useful to hold it for a turn? It would give them a chance to reclaim it, but it would provide some fortification bonus to them in the event of a counterattack…
She supposed it depended on the prisoners. Her troops had finished frog marching the enemy units on the walls to the courtyard, positioning them in a parade formation, kneeling before her. Her knights surrounded them with weapons drawn, the promise of violence keeping them quiet. Tanya floated upwards to look down upon them and started to give her speech: "Haggar has failed you." She declared, "You were all left vulnerable to a modest attacking force simply because of your orders, and now here you are, at my mercy, without having the chance to swing your weapons even once in the defense of your city. Many of you may not have even had the chance to raise your arms before this invasion, living your entire lives just sitting around and waiting for the chance to croak an enemy, only to have had that chance denied."
Tanya gauged her audience. Assuming these infantry were anything like the ones they popped in Jetstone, this rhetorical approach should be fruitful. By the looks of things… there weren't a lot of dry eyes. Perfect. She's painted them the tunnel, now for the light at the end. "But I am Princess Tanya von Degurechaff, Heir to the Kingdom of Yojo Mojo. King Ansom and I agree that it is a tragic waste to return so many units back to The Box without giving them a chance at the City of Heroes." The local religion has a few variations, but units that serve with distinction are said to go to a Valhalla-like place known as the City of Heroes. Units that don't instead get put into the cycle of reincarnation to try again, the wheel of reincarnation being referred to as 'The Box'. "You still represent a mighty force, one that can hold this city. Turn, and we will make a stand against the perfidy of Haggar, who has abandoned you."
For a moment, it looked like her words would have the desired effect. Unfortunately, the single warlord was also in the crowd, and his shouted words ruined them. "This witch once served Stanley the Worm! She will disband us all the instant she can run! Betraying our King will lead only to Hellabad!" The infantry's hopeful expressions formed into angry ones. The last of the three afterlife destinations, Hellabad, was destined for those… there wasn't really any clear criteria. It was for "bad" units.
Note to self: next time, separate the commanders before trying this. "Execute them." Tanya ordered, and instantly, her knights started cutting their way through the enemy units, who died sobbing at the injustice of the world. She felt for them, she did. But the alternative of death was quite clear, given that they were surrounded by her knights.
After gathering up the contents of the larder, Tanya clapped her hands. "Let's zip this up." Tanya commanded with a wry grin. She finally got the joke of the city name. "Flyopen is now… closed."
The city's walls collapsed as Yojo Mojo's treasury ticked up. On cue, Lady Sylvia's troops entered the hex, the woman scowling at the lack of action.
"Won't you join me for dinner?" Tanya asked as her knights started setting up camp.
Lady Sylvia's scowl deepened.