One drawback of resolving to destroy the Yahtzees was that it triggered the end of their contract with Albinny, the England equivalent in this funhouse-mirror version of World War II. Or rather, what triggered the end was her considering the damage dealt being sufficient that she could fly away without guilt, theoretically. The payment of fifty thousand-ish shmuckers and five caster levels of lookamancy each turn would continue for three more turns as the evacuation carve-out, but otherwise that was it.
Still, there was plenty to do this turn. First, Sizemore was given enough juice to replenish the ammunition stores, drawing from all available sources, and with a fully replenished battery, linked up with Maggie and Elya to create Schnitzeland’s own supply of railcart golems, albeit with Transport instead of carrying a dedicated anti-air gun, as they didn’t have any of those.
What they did have, on the other hand, was a lot of extra rifles. They didn’t have enough troops leftover to use all of them, but that could be fixed. With the massive move of the 203-knight battalion plus Visha, they could hit another Empire city, their only coastal city on this side of the Continental Break by the name of Normal.
Under ordinary circumstances, it would be a very well-defended city, due to the city’s very rare defensive unit, Heavy units that were a combination of squirrel and tanuki called Deez. They had the ability to bury giant explosive acorns in the ground, creating trap fields that made attacking the place by land extremely difficult, allowing them to focus better on defending it by sea and air.
Battling Normal’s Deez is a hard requirement for any real invasion of the Empire from the sea, as they imported the slow heavy to other coastal cities of theirs. If you couldn’t handle Deez’ Nuts? You were screwed.
Fortunately, as confirmed by Lookamancy, the defenses had been stripped down a bit to supplement the attack on Schnitzeland’s capital, so while it still had significant air defenses… it wasn’t that much.
“This will be the d-day that we move from merely b-biting our thumbs at the Empire to attacking them in earnest.” Tanya said, shivering from the cold of the mountain hex’s sky. “Let’s go!”
One small Achilles Heel of their minefield-based defenses was that scout units had a chance to spot traps before triggering them, and if they happened to be led by scouting warlords, that leadership bonus applied to those spot checks, as did the stack bonus. Further, a flaw in using natural magic of a unit to make traps instead of a proper dirtamancer was that they were on the easy side to spot, as they couldn’t really learn to hide them better, systematically.
Now, this didn’t mean you could just invade with exclusively led scouts and expect that to work. No, they could still use their archery garrison units to attack those invaders, drastically decreasing the effectiveness of such attempts. So if you had led scouts that were also archers, that could croak those garrison units without needing to slowly advance in a minefield. If you did have that, then there was the fact that there was a force of heavies that usually had a rather substantial advantage in melee over even knight-class archers, and they did have enough fortifications to force a melee fight after you got past the minefield. Make those knight archers able to easily croak heavies at range? Well, that’s when the fact that Normal’s defensive bonuses from land-based invaders were slashed to the bone in order to provide additional sea and air-based defenses, relying on Deez’ Nuts to choke anyone who sought to gobble the city up.
They walked to the gate, destroyed the barely-there walls with two well-placed sonic-augmented melee attacks from her lightsaber, and didn’t leave the ground for the entire attack and thus became vulnerable to the tower. They didn’t take a single casualty.
“Do you think you can handle them all?” Tanya asked Elya when she arrived the next turn, astride one of the transport golems that traveled along the underground rail that Sizemore dug between the two cities.
Elya puffed out her chest with pride. “I'm always ready for seamen.” She boasted, referring to the literal hundreds of Seafaring troops that they automagically captured with the city, floating on the ships moored there. “Whether one at a time or all at once, I'll service each and every sailor in the harbor.”
“Well, remember to pace yourself.” Tanya said, wondering whether or not that double entendre was on purpose. “If you need more juice, I'm here.”
“Today's going to be hot and sweaty, so I'll be sure to hydrate, don't worry.” Elya said, charitably referring to Normal’s beach biome. Tanya idly took out a handkerchief to wick away some sweat. Fortunately her magical girl armor was reasonably breezy, mostly suitable for warm weather. Only the armored cuirass posed any problems, and honestly she suspected that nothing short of a bikini or something with similar levels of exposure could prevent that heat buildup.
It was not a problem she had anticipated having, ever, but a quick touch of her cleaning wand and the uncomfortably itchy sweat vanished. There. Much more dignified than asking the Magic Kingdom for a rush order swimsuit.
It took half of the turn and more juice than Elya normally possessed, but all of the non-garrison defenders were successfully turned.
Last of all was the level 8 Seafaring warlord. “I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite Queen in the Citadel.” Shepard announced, using an archaic word for fortress-city that was probably said for signamancy reasons.
It was a bit damning with faint praise, though. “Well met, Commander.” She greeted, “just do your duty and don't go Renegade, and we’ll get along just fine.” She wasn't sure why she felt the need to specify that, but it was good to have someone who knew the sailing mechanics on hand.
“I'll be a Paragon of loyalty.” Shepard replied confidently.
“Good.” Tanya said, not sure what else to say. “Shepard.” She said, nodding before walking away.
“Degurechaff.” He replied, moving on to, presumably, park his keister on the largest ship in the harbor and lend his bonus to the units aboard.
She had more diplomacy to do.
---------------------------
The diplomatic situation was fairly precarious. First, the Empire had declared a state of Total War between them, which didn’t really do much on its own, but it meant that they’d entertain diplomatic overtures from everyone else in the interests of being able to focus on Schnitzeland. If she was planning on keeping the place, she’d be worried.
Given the number of sides that are just limping along, only spared destruction due to the fact that the Empire hasn’t gone through all possible efforts to consume them, this meant that there would be at least a few willing to appease them so they can gather strength. Particularly as their target was, quote: “rampaging barbarian hordes” rather than any previously established polity.
Still, with so many guns and veteran riflemen out of the picture, she has a bit of breathing room herself. Well, predictamancy gives her at least another turn.
Second, their one nominal ally was still unwilling to declare a formal alliance, for the same reasons they were willing to spend a massive amount of shmuckers to send a deniable asset.
Third, they finally knew that Charlie was behind the Empire’s firearms. Not directly, but once they were developed, Commander Shepard explained that all of the high level warlords were put into a QEC, or Quality Educational Conference, over a thinkagram. The one giving the lessons introduced themselves as The Illusive Man, but after Maggie extracted the image from Shepard’s head, Tanya was fairly certain it was Charlie. The man just looked Charlie-adjacent, she couldn’t quite explain it. The lessons were about how to effectively use the guns, and it was only after the conference that the casters started developing the turret golems, and autocannons, and the rail system.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
The question was, did he do such a thing specifically to impede her, or did he have other motives? On further inquiry, Commander Shepard explained that the Empire’s treasury was, last turn, two million shmuckers and change. He didn’t really pay much attention to the treasury from turn to turn, so he couldn’t say for sure that there was a large payment made for Charlie’s expertise, but he was sure that if there was, it wasn’t all in one lump sum or was mostly mined gems that never touched the treasury, and the Empire did have over four million after the latest surge of income from razing multiple high level cities of the Lederhosen Entente.
Even having used subterfuge to hide money from the side’s ruler, Tanya had never really thought through the implications on how every single commander knew the treasury amount, and that was information that could be extracted by interrogation. In hindsight, it was kind of obvious.
Furthermore… “Maggie, boost the Commander’s memory.” She commanded.
Maggie placed her fingers on the commanders’ temples. “Embrace Eternity.” She said, eyes turning black before glowing with magic. She then repeated the procedure with Tanya, who then cast moneymancy in an attempt to get to the bottom of things.
Woah, that was unexpectedly blue… she identified a series of payments that could be directed towards Charlie, but it was unclear. If they all were, he had been paid about half a million. Which was probably enough for what Commander Shepard had described, a… ‘cipher’, as it were, to using firearms effectively. Charlie wasn’t necessarily being a giant creeper, trying to get her croaked in a deniable fashion.
That meant it was just a bonus. Lovely.
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They managed to, over the next five turns, take one more city each turn, although they only kept two, razing the other three. As they went, they took a few casualties, but kept popping more knights to replenish and expand their forces.
Apparently, there was a mercantile side across the sea by the name of Generica who hewed to the axiom that everything was for sale. They were a side that had complete dominion of a large landmass, thus requiring all of their enemies to contest them over the sea first. They were apparently good friends with Albinny, and were willing to ship hundreds of infantry units and turn them for money, allowing Tanya to keep popping more knights while still garrisonning her cities properly. Albinny sent infantry of their own along with the generic units, the rail system that Sizemore made plus the turnamancy-enhanced golems to speedily transport units along them allowing each city to get a portion of them. Much like the Empire, they needed to deploy stacks of diggers to maintain the tunnels, but the speed revealed by the enemy’s train-golems made it all worthwhile.
She did figure out how they’ve been powering their industry, however: Every single one of their towers were tuned to produce juice with a tiny capacity, instead of holding large quantities of juice like the ones she favored. They must have a method of extracting that juice and using it themselves, each city level providing a caster level’s worth of juice without any cost but opportunity and whatever inefficiency the transfer possesses.
Naturally, she took full advantage of this trick herself, given that she could do so losslessly with her artifact wand. The capital was still kept with the large quantity, and was adjusted to have more anti-air after the initial invasion as well, to maximize defense. More golems, more production, more ammunition. Nero was given Ansom’s old carpet so she could lead the fresh stacks of knights with rifles against her old side, with Elya and Maggie’s assurances that she wouldn’t betray them. It only took two cities razed in order for Overlord Gold to issue a challenge for a duel.
The duel was held at Challenger Peak, a specific mountain hex in the Alfs that is just high enough to be inconvenient to bring armies to while being low enough for weather effects to not damage the duelists. She wasn’t an idiot, of course, so she kept her knights within one turn’s move for the duel, and hired Janis to mediate any disagreements.
She arrived at the duel under her own power, of course, and Ansom’s carpet brought both Nero and Janis to the hex. The enemy side arrived with what was blatantly a Whirlybird emblazoned with the signamancy of Generica, somehow managing to maintain the advertisement despite being turned.
As she expected, Mark Gold looked exactly like the famous Roman emperor, Marcus Aerelius. Well, to be more precise his pale skin and white hair made him look a bit like a walking marble statue of Marcus Aerelius. His two witnesses, on the other hand, were the two units that Nero had explained was probably the ones he was going to send: Nero’s sister, Art Saber, and their Dollamancer, White M. Hiyah
Wait… She recognized Faye’s signamancy. That was the waifu’ed King Arthur from that anime! …Was Nero from that anime too? Cute girl named after Roman Emperor… would make sense. What did the male lead look like in that anime? She wanted to say red hair, but that may just be because White had red hair.
Huh, it’s not very often that she actually recognizes someone’s signamancy like this. Oh, Overlord Gold is finishing up his pompous speech. “-so, this shall be decided in a duel! As is proper, I present a proxy: Art Saber!”
Tanya frowned. “So you’re not even going to participate? Distasteful. I suppose I’ll offer a proxy of my own, to keep things fair: Nero? Go.” The curious marks on Tanya’s wrist that appeared when Nero turned pulsed, vanishing as she issued the order.
“Yes, Master!” Nero said eagerly, brandishing her impractically elaborate sword as she entered the circular arena. Hm, what was the matchup here?
[Nero Saber, Lady Boner, level 11 Warlady]
Attack: 30
Defense: 30
Hits: 19
Move: 11
Specials: Knight, Leadership
[Art Saber, Lady Face, level 10 Chief Warlady]
Attack: 31
Defense: 31
Hits: 18
Move: 11
Specials: Knight, Leadership
Hm, Nero was higher level, but her sister had an in-hex chief warlord bonus as well as a +5 bonus on her equipment instead of Nero’s +4. The dollamancer must have upgraded them recently. Easy fix. Tanya mentally promoted Nero to Chief Warlady.
[Nero]
Attack: 33
Defense: 33
Much better. She used a touch of foolamancy to send a message: “If you win, you’ll keep that promotion.”
Before the fight began, Janis cast a spell: “I want a clean fight, you two. No outside interference, no hair pulling.” With the very strange incantation finished, she continued: “The stakes are set: An enforced treaty that favors the winner, but not to the extent of leaving either side helpless against invasion.” She clapped her hands. “Begin!”
To most people, actually seeing the Numbers behind a combat action was difficult, but for a mathamancer, it was simplicity itself. The fight began with the two near-identical ladies clashing blades, which her magic senses saw as both of them rolling higher on defense than the other did on offense. The next exchange favored Art, as a tiny cut was scored on Nero’s face, inflicting a single hit of damage. Minimum damage roll.
Tanya thought it was a bit interesting how the duel, which should by a logical implementation of the combat system be over quite quickly, continually rolled just badly enough to make the exchanges dramatic, with near-misses aplenty along with terrible damage rolls. This high drama stank of Fate, to her.
As if rewarding Tanya for her joke, Nero critted on the next exchange, her tattered dress now showing off her… battle damage. Yes. That. Art fell to the ground, incapacitated. Oh? She didn’t croak? Well… Tanya brought out her healomancy wand and waved it in the direction of the fallen warlady. “Grouts.” She wasn’t quite clear why the Stabilization wand had that as a magic word, but just chalked it up to no longer having access to internet search engines and put it out of her mind.
“Fufufufu! I am victorious!” Nero announced, waving around her impractical sword in celebration.
Smirking, Tanya walked up to Mark Gold. “I’ve stabilized your chief warlady, she’ll recover on turn’s start. Now, about that treaty?” She held out her hand for the pale man to shake, and despite the furious look on his face, he gripped her hand with all of his strength as the pact was sealed. She’ll stop destroying his cities, and they’ll pay her tribute for that service.
“Hey, why didn’t you bring any of those special accessories?” White asked, disappointed.
“It would be improper for me to rely on a florist’s assurance of peace while bringing a gun.” Tanya explained, “That said, in full disclosure I did forget to remove the ones I kept in my dress,” She withdrew one of the Empire’s pistols from her cleavage before putting it back. “-but I didn’t promise not to do so, so I’ll just have to forgive myself for my mistake.”
“Can I see it?” He asked.
“No.” Tanya replied bluntly. “Stick to swords, it suits you more.” While she didn’t remember much of anything about that series, she did recall that the male lead had something about being a walking sword or some similar nonsense going on. She was aware of it, but had never watched or read it.
“Aww…” He whined, before trudging off and picking up the incapacitated Art.
Now that that’s settled, they need to return. She’s not staying exposed for a sneak attack.
---------------------------
The more cities they had, the harder it was to keep up predictamancy awareness on each of them. Particularly because they couldn’t just predict an attack on the whole side, because there were enough field units that it was impractical to do so. Presumably, if they had an actual predictamancer managing things, they could refine their predictions to be more useful, but Tanya was leery of them after Marie engineered Wanda’s betrayal. So they were stuck with her wand.
So she wasn’t surprised at all when, fifteen turns of buildup after the duel, the city of Bulge was attacked on the Empire’s turn without her knowing about it in advance; there wasn’t anything she valued in that city anyway. She was a bit surprised about the other two cities that fell, Luckyburg and Antwarp. There still wasn’t anything that Tanya intended to keep in those cities, but losing the high level warlord that they turned and kept in Antwarp was a bit of a loss, as were the rifles that were kept there.
Still, it just meant that the Empire was getting serious about their offensive, and she needed to put all available assets in her counterattack. Twenty-four reinforced stacks of her flying knights instead of twelve, with nobles promoted to Warlord from the original set leading them. On top of that, a full reinforced stack of Mickeys, eighteen strong, were loaded up with diggers that were promoted to knight as an alternative to a siege tower. Normally, such a feat was considered foolish, but as she led them personally along with Chief Warlady Nero, their numbers were so high that they could wail on a city wall with impunity, even in the face of bullets due to the protective qualities of the Mickey’s special. Granted, the equipment bonus that guns gave meant that they didn’t need a lot of extra bonuses to overcome her own doubled bonus, but the duplicated scroll special ordered from the Great Minds meant that they could not possibly see their “siege” coming.
“Choo choo!” Tanya announced, casting the weirdomancy/turnamancy monstrosity. One by one, the Mickey’s rubbery mouse paws turned into rail wheels as each one dutifully started anchoring themselves to the minecart rail. “All aboard!” She announced at the head of the line of mice-tank-trains.
Once the digger-knights all boarded their mount, the mice started making noises that reminded Tanya of old cartoon steamboat whistles as they chugged along.
Grinning, Tanya laughed as they gained more speed, accelerating to a pace that even her own flight, normally as fast a unit can get as possible, could not match. There was only one thing that could adequately portray how utterly Boned the Yahtzees were, which was convenient as it was also the signal for her other units to move in.
Tanya shouts: "TRAIN TO ZONE!”