Weirdomancy was, as Jack explained when she sought to learn the basics, incredibly complicated. To use a coding metaphor, appropriate for a world that ran much like a computer game, Erf axis magic dealt with the overarching processes of the environment, Fate magic dealt with the character/status facets, the things that interact and move with the world… while the Numbers axis dealt with the underlying processes, the metaphorical ones and zeroes in the code.
In weirdomancy’s case, each unit could be described as a series of properties, and each of those properties had a value, and the sum total of those values made up a person’s them-ness. This included not only specials such as flight or scout, but also less distinct specials such as stabber, etiquette, or even thinking, with ‘specials’ such as ‘empathy’ being something that could be turned off.
Jack specified that messing with people’s minds was mostly theoretical, with only Master-class weirdomancers being able to even contemplate the effects of such a thing, and the spells were sufficiently expensive and difficult that there wasn’t any real practical use for it, but unlike her other teachers, Jack didn’t see anything wrong with giving her a peek at the deepest insights he’s had into his discipline. Riley apparently was his research friend, and he demonstrated his work by ‘flipping some switches’ and completely changing her personality, turning a sweet, happy girl who nevertheless liked to push the envelope of her otherwise limited discipline into someone that would fit right in a horror movie, calling herself Bonesaw, eagerly outlining of the atrocities she wished to inflict on people to stretch the boundaries of Healomancy.
Naturally, Tanya had spoken to the girl afterwards to ensure she understood what was happening and confirmed that she was just as fascinated in the experiment as Jack was. It was a short exchange, however: Riley had been very disappointed that Tanya had grown actual breasts, and had disinvited her to the meetings, which she never got around to actually attending in the first place. She never did learn what L.O.L.I. stood for… Nevertheless, Riley was polite but kept chit-chat to a minimum. Which suited Tanya just fine.
The problem with going into so much detail is that it distracts from actually learning the basics of how the spells were cast. So she couldn’t really call herself a novice wierdomancer yet. However, it was startlingly helpful in one facet: when using high-end weirdomancy scrolls. Understanding the theory on how they worked made her a lot more comfortable tweaking them within the normal bounds of their function, which was normally rather hit-or-miss when you were using cross-class scrolls.
In this case, she extended the ‘add Engine/Railed’ effect from the linked up scroll (which required a link-up because inventing specials required one) so she could cast it on the Mickeys one at a time, as they stepped into line on the railtrack. This was good, because the Railed special limited them, making them unable to travel off of minecart tracks. So she would have needed more rails in order to cast it on them all at once. It was a small benefit, but she had to take what she could get.
More relevantly to her current situation, she could pull off the most basic of basic weirdomancy tricks, one that was supposedly ‘as easy as Hoboken’ which was literally as simple as drawing out juice in an unrefined state and throwing it at someone. There was just… something of a trick to it.
All language was signamancy. Without signamancy, there would only be direct idea-to-idea communication, which would be indistinguishable from the entire world being a giant brain, thinking thoughts but with no language to express it. The magic words of a spell are no exception to this: the act of casting the spell impelled the caster to use the words, and likewise saying the words impelled the caster to cast the spell. As Tanya has already learned, signamancy is a two-way street.
The basic weirdomancy spell was called ‘Halt Effort’. The spell did something very simple: It stopped an active spell that you cast. The trick, which weirdomancers liked keeping a secret, was that you needed to pronounce it in a very peculiar way. The first and last letters of the spell had to be ignored, with emphasis on the final syllable, so… “Okay, end of the line.” Tanya announced, “Now to get you boys back on solid ground. ‘Alt efFor’, ‘alt efFor’, ‘alt efFor’,‘alt efFor’...”
The giant rubbery mice proceeded to transform back, one at a time, from being tracked platforms back to using their normal paws, thick noodly arms with white gloves covering the forepaws and red shoes for the back. On their backs, the armored shovel knights waved their tools, eager to begin. “Time for the harvest, your Majesty?” Asked the biggest one, who was holding his yellow helmet under his arm.
[Jim Rowe, level 5 warlord]
Attack: 42
Defense: 42
Hits: 13
Move: 18
Specials: Knight, Leadership, Digger
She didn’t have a digging warlord before, of course. He was one of the diggers that were sent by Albinny, specifically from one of their colonies, Hortons. Governor Tim had apparently decided to send experienced diggers because… well, the thing about digger units is that the common wisdom is that the increased upkeep from leveling them is considered to be not worth the tiny increases of points they get. Well, levels beyond 3 anyway.
If you were planning on promoting a bunch of knights because you had a lot of money but not a lot of production, on the other hand? 8 stacks of exclusively level 4 and 5 diggers were perfect. The knight special meant that they could ride the reinforced 16-stack of Mickeys, four to a mouse, and benefit from the full +8 bonus, and it was a rare setup that allowed Tanya to provide her full bonus of +9 doubled on top of her in-hex bonus of +5 doubled, as she decided to duplicate herself and promote the duplicate to ruler so she could get experience from this engagement. Tanya had taken the highest level Mickey apart before stacking them up and bound herself to it with Date-a-mancy, allowing her to slot herself in the ‘caster’ slot without compromising bonuses, and Jim added another using the ‘warlord’ slot of the stack.
Why did she pick him? Well, it was mostly because he was the most visually distinct of the lot. His size, for one, matched the prodigious height of Ossomer. His freckles and inexplicably asiatic features only accentuated this, and she was vindicated when he gained his own heraldry, his symbol benign that of a proud chicken that somehow Signed menace rather than cowardice. It screamed ‘Beware’. All told, a good decision.
Tanya’s lips quirked. “The harvest, huh?” She asked, “Yes, I suppose we’ll be doing some reaping soon enough.” She took her own shovel, which was a wand for digging, and said: “First, we till the field, to boost our yield” She said, using the wand to open up a ramp of earth from the underground to the surface. A taiko drum started counting a beat. Wait… no, that wasn’t a taiko. Tanggu? Yes, Jim’s eyes looked more like Han Chinese than anything else in her mind. As a former Japanese, such subtleties were apparent to her. Tanya started feeding juice into the spontaneous rhyme-o-mancy, guiding it into the optimal configuration for their needs: accelerating their attacks.
The next hex was a light forest hex, but eighteen heavy units carrying sixty-four digger knights practically ignored them, trampling nature as they went. “Chop down the trees, to feel the breeze” She added, smirking to herself. A pipa’s strings created a rhythm, a repeating set of notes. Even without an actual rhyme, there was a sense of presentation to these words, some signamantic weight that she could use.
One of the reasons they decided to attack from this angle was that Bulge had marsh hexes on this side, which is a hazard for movement but the Mickeys had enough Move left to get through anyway. She used the digging wand paired with the furniture wand to create a straight path for them, so as to not risk any of the stack fumbling a check and getting stuck. “Divert the waters, to fill our coffers…” She said after she did so, grin threatening to take her head off. A xiao flute added a melody, completing the triumphant song.
Finally, they were at the wall. “AND BREAK THE ROCKS, TO MAX OUR STOCKS!” Both her and Jim shouted as one for a warcry. The rhyme-o-mancy’s energy discharged through her, allowing the entire stack’s attacks to be channeled through Jim’s singular strike, because Stagemancy was dramatic like that. It wasn’t just a visual benefit, however: Rhyme-o-mancy’s greatest benefit was to manipulate time, and in this case, it meant they got to fit multiple rounds of attacks into that singular strike. As she wasn’t exactly the greatest rhyme-o-mancer without a link augmenting her casting rolls, it was only two rounds, no better than if she had spent the same amount of juice on dittomancy, but it was safe to say that the Empire did not expect her to attack the walls so effectively. Also, she had about the same amount of skill with dittomancy.
Now, the difference between a digger knight and an ordinary digger is that they were approximately twice as good in every way: it took about twice as much effort to croak them, between the less-than-double hits and the extra points of defense making up the difference, and they went through a wall about twice as fast, between the less-than-double increased base damage and the extra combat rating making up the difference.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Well, they also had about half again as much move, which means in a more protracted siege encounter they were closer to being worth three diggers each, but the upkeep of an ordinary digger was eight shmuckers, while a knight has fifty. With this data point alone, one can see why conventional wisdom favors the infantry.
But her double-stack of heavy 4s (as weirdomancers prefer to call heavies of the Mickey’s size) could carry as many diggers on their backs as a max size siege tower with a much greater speed. So their sneak attack was not only like bringing two of those powerful siege towers out of nowhere, but with the rhyme-o-mancy doubling that again, and her massive leadership bonus applying to each and every one of those attacks?
Every unit on that section of the walls croaked instantly as Jim’s shovel shattered the wall they stood on. She didn’t even need to use shockamancy to throw in her own siege attack. Best of all? By destroying the wall so quickly, they didn’t have a chance to reinforce the section by drawing troops from the other sections of wall, the advantage of overkill.
Jim nodded to himself while grinning at his new level. “Well, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.” He said sagely. While they had the element of surprise, they couldn’t take advantage of it to any real extent, as Tanya didn’t bring rifles for the digger knights. It did allow them to bypass the first chokepoint, but that was of little benefit given her stack’s composition and total lack of infantry for the attack.
Quickly, the most dangerous part of the garrison made themselves known: The Empire’s own knight forces, with a distinctive livery of two parallel vertical lighting bolts: They were the Stormtroopers, knights patterned off of the ruler, sharing Emperor Helmet’s distinctive headgear, a samurai helmet. The Emperor had a black one, but the Stormtroopers had white.
There were eleven stacks of riflemen, eighty-eight total rifles pointed at them. Tanya found it a bit unusual for them to be unled, but chalked it up to their successful seizure of the initiative. She lightly tuned in to their heartstrings, and found that they were at least being directed by a warlord in the tower… there.
Unfortunately, even with their average level of seven, no doubt fed by hundreds of croaks from those rifles, they still only had a combat rating of 28. With her leadership bonus along with the enhanced stack bonus, the Mickeys were packing 46 defense on average. “Rear up!” Tanya ordered, and the heavy mice obeyed. The layered orders to the knights ensured that they stowed their weapons and focused on staying on the backs of their mounts instead of fighting.
The riflemen all fired their weapons on full auto, seeing only one stack of enemies, and immediately croaked from the ricochets caused by the gummi block special. A few of their shots hit, a trickle of mathamancy counted out twenty-nine hits, which was approximately half again as many as should have hit given they unloaded their whole magazine in one go, but they were spread out enough that no one Mickey took more than four, so the heavy units weren’t croaked (as Heavy fours had half again as many hits as the more standard heavy three category, once the pseudo-Hard was taken into account it took eight to ten hits from bullets to croak them) as with enough bonuses piled on, even guns weren’t enough to win.
Well, ordinary guns. Tanya suspected that the Empire will eventually start deploying more of the RPGs or develop AP rounds that would deal full damage to Hard targets, but for now her strategy of deploying the unit based off of the Mauser tank with heavy support bonuses will counter the rifle.
For now.
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With the bulk of the enemy rifles handled, the rest of her combat force followed, her knights moving in on foot to clear out the rest of the defenders with their own rifles. In short order, the Battle of the Bulge was concluded, and with it another large portion of the Empire’s valuable human resources depleted.
She couldn’t, of course, repeat this feat in the same turn, as while co-opting the rail network and expanding it on her own allowed her to move the Mickeys long distances, they still needed to travel a portion of the distance overground, and 1 move expended every 10 hexes, while a good ratio, was not zero.
She could, however, repeat the trick to retreat her forces to a much more fortified city, the Mickeys to Aachoo, the level 4 city they captured first besides the capital, and the Recon knights back to the capital, razing Bulge so as to not have to risk herself defending it. Prisoners were allocated to level one and two recon knights for execution, and the rifles were looted and distributed to the defenders of Stallin’ Glade.
“This war is turning against us.” Tanya groused as she slipped into the bath that Visha was thoughtful enough to prepare for her when she was busy communicating with Queen Virginia via hat.
As part of the ‘WWII cartoon’ theming that Janis and Sizemore imposed on the city to result in the peculiar units it pops (and boy was that a surprising capability, the ability to custom-build your unit list to counter your enemies), the upper portions of the tower were externally dark and foreboding, but once you were actually inside it was instead the kind of luxurious decadence one would expect from communist leadership.
Yes, she could just clean herself magically with the wand she possesses for that purpose… but as a Japanese person, she missed the feeling of a good soak. It was a good turn to celebrate with some idle luxury.
“What do you mean?” Visha asked as she ran her fingers through Tanya’s hair to spread out the soap. While Tanya initially had some reservations about her level ups making her hair grow out to such an impractical extent, between the magical methods of cleaning it and the ample supply of servants to tend to any idle whim of hers, she had discovered that her concerns were unfounded. It was just another part of being a woman, and she had already grown comfortable with that idea. Really, her chest floating in the water was by far the more novel concept in this bath.
“The Empire has many more cities than us, and more casters.” Tanya explained. Yes, she basically counted as three casters with all of her juice and her wand’s ability to act as a power channel, but they still had more. “Besides our capital and maybe two of our cities, they’re all lightly fortified. They were able to muster forces that could capture three of our cities this turn, but we could only take one of them back, and we had to raze it.” They couldn’t keep it, not without her personally defending it. That would be far too risky. “I’m going to have to take more risks, I think.” Could she have taken Bulge with just the diggers and Mickeys? She spent one of her few remaining drops of juice on the question. Yes, she could have. 65% without losses, too. They hadn’t fortified the city to any real extent beyond topping off the rifle’s ammunition, they expected that to be enough. Wait… ah, 24% chance of being able to secure the city with enough time to leave. No, she made the right decision bringing in some backup to hunt down the stragglers. But could she have done it with just one or two stacks of knights for that instead of all of them? …76% and 93% chance. “Yes, we’ll split our forces on retaking the other two cities.”
“We’re ready to fight the Empire on our own.” Visha said proudly. It was probably true, even.
“The simp is right.” Nero boasted, waltzing in the room stark naked and joining Tanya in the bath. There was plenty of room, true, but she had absolutely no shame… “While duplicating yourself is a worthy advantage, it would be a waste to not take advantage of your three high level warladies to each assault a different position each turn.”
Hm. She was right. “So you do not object to having the position of Chief Warlord passed to Visha temporarily?” Tanya asked.
“If my Master says that it is the best course, then it would be folly to disagree!” Nero declared, bombastically gesturing with no regard as to the anatomical effects of such a motion. “It’s genius, and I would be a fool to not see its utility.”
Hm. What the boop did Elya do to her to make her so loyal? Was this Maggie’s fault? Her understanding of the local culture was that despite the obvious advantages of swapping the chief warlord position about, the fact that such maneuvering would necessitate the ruler administering the war, which was not what a ruler was supposed to be doing. She expected more pushback.
…She should put more on Nero. “Next turn, you make the initial assault plans. You’ve seen me work, you should have an idea on how to best utilize our skills and bonuses.” Even if she needs to tweak the plans with mathamancy checks to optimize things, it would be a lot faster if Nero did the majority of the work while she conducted diplomacy.
“I will not diappoint you, Master!” Nero said eagerly.
Tanya exhaled deeply, settling into the scalp massage that Visha had turned the hair-washing into. “Just remember that we have a lot of magical resources. Don’t forget to consult with Maggie.” And the thinkamancer can also beam the plan to Tanya to ensure she can keep control over how much she’s risking herself.
This is going to be a long war.
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Surprisingly, the Empire did not take any more cities the following turn, instead fortifying the two ones they did keep. Nero’s plan was not terribly different from the one that Tanya would probably have made, deploying Sizemore to make a tunnel with rails go directly to the first city so that they could repeat the previous strategy without dismissing the Railed special, leaving Jim behind so Tanya could be the warlord in the stack instead. Once captured, looted, and razed, they switched back to Jim and her being the caster and undid the spell so they could run the rest of the distance.
Sure, they had properly led their riflemen this time and even had a presumably temporary Chief Warlord in both cities, but it just meant that Tanya had to actually use her backup plan, using foolamancy and mathamancy to increase the Mickey’s defense against the ranged attacks and capitalize on the ricochet. The second time she also had to trick them with foolamancy into shooting the Mickeys instead of her riflemen, as they had smartened up and tried to use melee troops against her heavies.
Unlike the other cities, they made sure to keep this one, a city by the name of Colon, fortifying it with Nero’s presence along with half of the riflemen and the Jim-led Mickey stack. For extra safety, she upgraded the city to level 4, an upgrade that the previous battles could let her afford without dipping into her gem hoard. Any flaw was plugged up the best they can, and even if they did attack it, there wasn’t anything irreplaceable there.
“We ‘heard rumors’ of the Empire’s next move.” Isaac said during the next meeting. That was code for ‘used their secret spying powers’. “They’re making rubber golems to replicate the defensive prowess of your heavy units. The Dirtamansion has been buzzing about the new counter to guns.” Well, that wasn’t good.
Tanya hummed. “Well, it’s not surprising, but if they’re making golems, that means they’re making fewer rifles and ammunition. That must be why they’ve paused their attacks.” Well, that or she was actually stressing their logistics, as the Empire wasn’t losslessly taking her cities. “We’ve taken an awful lot of their rifles.”
“It does appear that these next few engagements will essentially decide the war between you.” Kurt said, carefully examining the map of the Empire. “With your new supply of rifles and enough high level leadership to leave behind, you could split off and continue your original raiding with impunity.”
Tanya looked over the map herself, noting the troop dispositions. “Well… maybe. I like the look of this curving line of cities.” It would theoretically let her hit six cities in three turns, with some room to hide. It would also put her within engagement distance of two capital sites at the end, so she could strike either one once she’s in position. “But I’d want to at least counter the Empire’s next stratagem first before counterattacking.” As successful as they are, they’re still behind in comparison to two turns ago.
Well, McBeth? What’s your next play? Break a leg.