The real problem with facing the Empire was their many high level casters. With thorough investigation, they finally have a final tally, though.

Their Chief Caster, Pact Romano, is a level eleven Master-class signamancer. According to Janis, he was not capable of anything outside his specialty, but given that he was supposedly the one allowing multiple sides to act as one, this was not someone who could be dismissed. The most direct hazard to be aware of was him using pain-signs as a form of pseudo-shockamancy. Tanya fully expected him to start unloading literal F-bombs if she gave him the chance.

In addition to him, they have six additional casters, each high level and with disciplines that are irritatingly just the right ones to make her life difficult.

First and foremost, they have the “Baddie” thinkamancer of Sigmund von Fraud, who was exiled for publishing a book that contained thinkamancy trade secrets. Supposedly, the Great Minds managed to get rid of the tome, but she digresses. He’s quite capable of linking and unlinking safely entirely on his own, as a level eight Master. Well, “safely” is a relative term, but he’s still alive, so he’s either lucky, Lucky, or has a trick he’s not sharing. Understandable. One of her greatest advantages in her extended conflict with Charlie is the support of the Great Minds, allowing her to freely explore the power of linkups. It’s unpleasant for parity to be achieved there.

Second, they have the casters that let them make guns. Adolf Altright is a level eight Adept-class Carnymancer, and while it does make sense in hindsight, seeing the Hitler unit be the carnymancer threw Tanya for a loop when she first saw his picture. Brutal von Boss is a level nine master-class dollamancer, known for his fashion but he took to experimenting with firearms with aplomb, apparently. Then there’s Albert von Spear, the level ten Master-class dirtamancer that’s the one making all those bullets and also golems and minecart rails.

Third, they have the turnamancer Myne Camp, Adept-class, level 7. While it was easy to lower one’s guard for this one after hearing the others, it was important to remember that level 7 was quite a high level and adepts were still quite dangerous. Relevantly, her contributions towards the Empire’s links was responsible for the Engine special, the thing that let a Railed unit move ten hexes for a single move point. Plus, there was the obvious threat of being captured then turned against your former allies, which was a quite uncomfortable thought. Tanya really preferred to not think too hard about Elya’s contributions of that nature.

Finally, and the single most dangerous one, was the level ten master-class shockamancer Klein Stein. Worse, he was also a master-class croakamancer, giving him the informal title of ‘Frank’. The good news was that Frank Klein Stein preferred to make quality units rather than mass animation, and used a rarely-used technique to consolidate bodies into a greater unit which he then animates. So while he wasn’t the highly mobile threat Wanda was, he does still lead stacks of Heavy Knights while unleashing incredibly potent shockamancy. More importantly, he could funnel tower juice and his own sizable pool into the other casters, just like she can.

No matter how many knights and warlords she croaks, unless she manages to croak several Chief Warlord candidates or the ruler, no amount of casualties she inflicts will matter without at least one of these casters leaving play.

Unfortunately, with Schnitzeland’s proven threat, the Empire was keeping their casters safe. There were a few attempts to bait traps with duplicates of the casters… although at least some of them were definitely just them needing to use the caster without risking them.

Six turns passed as they each waited for the other to make a mistake. This wasn’t good, as a sitzkrieg benefitted the larger side with the greater amount of juice generation. During the course of the war, the levels of Elya, Maggie, and Sizemore had risen to seven, eight, and seven. With Tanya counting as two level nines, that meant they had forty caster-levels of juice while the Empire had sixty-three, plus however many extra they get from their high-generation towers. It was estimated that this could theoretically double their juice supply, but given that this would require extensive travel on the part of both Stein and the caster he’s supplementing, she suspects they didn’t fully exploit this. Tanya did, to close the gap, but they only had twenty extra caster levels from that.

But with that amount of time, Tanya was able to maneuver another slow attack, and an additional shipment of bulk units from Albinny’s machinations (according to Queen Virginia, several of the sides surrounding the Empire has been contributing financially to help keep their very large neighbor busy) helped fill out their garrisons as Sizemore continued to fortify and make his own golems.

It was quite nice that Sizemore seemed to agree with her that the Yahtzee’s ideology, even if it was a diluted copy of the actual Nazis, was worth discarding his pacifist ideals temporarily. It meant that she didn’t need to work around them, and could use his talents at her discretion. Well, he probably would have resisted instructions to engage in direct combat, but risking him in combat was not something she was eager to do anyway, so that worked out.

Maggie had racked up quite the pile of bodies from using the new machine gun during one of the major combat actions. She had learned a few eyemancy tricks to enhance her shooting, blasting through light cover as if it wasn’t even there. Given that her signamancy was for Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady who saw Britain through a large chunk of the Cold War, her ability with the modern-ish weapon made perfect sense. She even wanted to come to the fight in a fit of whimsy, and while normally Tanya would say no, it suddenly occurred to her that there was no way the Yahtzees would be expecting Tanya to bring a thinkamancer to an attack, so she allowed it.

This was probably her most telegraphed attack of the war. Two sixteen stacks of Mickeys, one led by Tanya, Jim Rowe, and his digger knights, the other led by Nero, Maggie, and some archer knights with Rifles. Their Combat ratings are a point or two higher, so with the Mickeys screening for them it should be more effective than using Recon knights.

Once again, Tanya had duplicated herself and promoted herself to Chief Warlord, with the Duplicate serving as the Ruler. The duplicate served to command the air battle, or rather act as a distraction by threatening an air battle. She had spent the last turn using a sizable amount of ammunition picking off units on the walls and in the airspace from outside the hex, weakening their defenses substantially without them able to do a whole lot about it. Yes, they could make fortifications, but that just reduced the damage, and Tanya could mitigate the effectiveness of them with both magic and with how incredibly powerful Leadership was.

The city in question that they were taking was Files. Another city that smacked of an industrialized nation in its signamancy, she was sure that the skyline was reminiscent of one city in particular, even if she can’t identify which one. While Tanya wasn’t an architect, she did recognize that the style was of early skyscrapers, tall and with a tube structure, with closely spaced columns deforming the flat surface. So… American?

[Whatchu Talkin Bout Tower, level 5]

Juice: 0/500

Defense Platforms: 20/20

Upscaled tower, but with zero shockamancy air defense. Do they know she can see that? What’s their plan here? Maggie had used Lookamancy, of course, conveying their full layout, but… she seemed to convey, deliberately, guilt and foreboding through their heartstring without actually saying anything or even hinting at it with body language. It made Tanya… suspicious. Which was probably Maggie’s intention. Using the channels normally outside the influence of thinkamancy… Was Fraud doing something strange? Was Charlie?

Whatever it is, it’s behind sufficient cover that the feed from her duplicate and her stacks didn’t pick out any caster units. It meant that any that are there are behind fortifications too thick for Recon’s limited lookamancy to see past. She sincerely doubted there was a foolamancer that could trick her duplicate’s spot checks… but there was a first time for everything. Orders for her duplicate to spend juice on furthering Recon’s resolution didn’t yield anything different. Any hidden surprise was hidden deep within the defenses.

Decision time: Was she to trust in her intuition and call it off?

…No. If they did have some potent trump card, they’re not going to stop having it, and they likely need to commit at least one of their valuable casters to make it work.

Under the assumption that whatever they had as a surprise, it was indeed deep in the defenses, Tanya went around the city to the weakest wall segment and repeated her earlier feat, breaking through the walls in a single combat action (albeit using a bit more resources to do so), and sent in the flying knights as well. If they had an airspace trap, best to force them to trigger it on her duplicate.

Immediately, a stack of casters and a warlord emerged onto the tower parapet. How they managed that trick, Tanya didn’t know. Okay, Analysis.

[Prince “Jack”, Level 9 Barbarian Puppetmaster]

Combat: 46

Defense: 33

Hits: 80+40 (80)

Move: 11

Specials: Caster (Turnamancy, Dollamancy, Weirdomancy), Royal, Archery (knife)

Magical Bonuses: Remote Link, Barrier, Bonus hits, Gummi Block, Heavy 6, Flight, Immunity (fire)

[Prince Wilson Helmet , Level 12 Chief Warlord]

Combat: 38

Defense: 38

Hits: 19

Move: 12

Specials: Knight, Leadership

Magical Bonuses: Barrier (shockamancy), immunity (fire)

[Turnamancer, Thinkamancer, Carnymancer, Level 23 linkup]

Combat: 22

Defense: 22

Hits: 8/8/8

Move: 10

Specials: Casting

Magical Bonuses: Linkup, Barrier (2/3), immunity (fire)

…uh oh.

Prince Jack, fully buffed (she did not miss that Healomancy bonus) for trouble (and supported by the Arkendish, of all things), waved his knife across the sky, shouting “Break your Crown!”, and in one massive expense of juice… every single one of her knights tumbled down from the sky. Sometimes her caster senses, including the enhanced visual acuity of Recon, was a curse: She could see Jack’s vicious grin as easily as she could feel his sadistic glee echoing through their mutual heartstring. He met her gaze and mouthed: “This is not an exit.” which probably meant something to somebody, but not to her.

While her knights did not immediately croak from the fall, that was only because of their Barriers. The accessories absorbed the natural shockamancy of the impact… on the ones that had the accessory. The good news was that she had committed her original barbarian forces to this fight, the original 203 unit formation plus Visha. The bad news was that there were four additional stacks that did instantly croak, and while her duplicate had the presence of mind to order those units to unload their magazines against whatever they could find beforehand, they all had at least one spare magazine that would presumably be looted and used against her.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Tanya really didn’t want to know what kind of absolute nonsense that other carnymancy/spookism link was cooking up, but she did not get her wish.

The turn ended.

Well, that figures. Carnymancy tricking the turn clock via turnamancy into ending prematurely? Yeah, that tracks.

Well, she was trapped here, and while they probably had more surprises in store, like setting everything on fire (she also did not miss that immunity (fire) spell Jack had cast on all of them), but she had some actual combat to handle.

Like this guy riding a T-Rex skeleton. No time to read them all, spend some juice on thought acceleration and-

[Klein Stein, level 10 shockamancer]

Conditions: Barrier, Knight, Immunity (fire)

[Sue, Level 6 Tree Wrecks]

[Tree Wrecks, levels 1-5] x17

Special: Forest-capable, Siege, Mount, Uncroaked, Golem(Dirtamancy), Heavy 5, Hard

Conditions: Immunity (fire)

[Harry, level 10 Warlord]

Specials: Heavy 3, Uncroaked, Leadership

Conditions: Shockamancy (attack), Barrier, Knight, Immunity (fire)

[Heavy knight, levels 3-7] x16

Specials: Heavy 3, Uncroaked

Conditions: Esprit de Corps, Knight, Immunity (fire)

No time to check stats, Mathamancy has a spell for this!

[Enemy Stack summary]

Riders: 52/52/615

Mounts: 50/42/864/13

Ah. A linkup effect creating fossilized heavies, a mid-point between an uncroaked and a traditional dirtamancy golem. Given that they have levels, she’s just going to assume they’re the best of both worlds.

So, in summary: It was a stack that had more leadership, more caster bonus, bigger heavies, bigger knights, and was just as big as her stack. Her advantage… was that Nero’s stack was here too. With a smaller bonus. Plus all of the infantry she brought along, but that’s just going to distract everyone else. She’ll just be happy that the spell took long enough that her entire invasion force managed to get into the city. While they might have allowed it on purpose, she cannot possibly imagine how her situation would be worse with more units. The uncroaked warlord was massive, of course, wearing a stylish trenchcoat and wielding a staff that was clearly a shockamancy weapon in the same vein of her knight’s pre-firearm weapons. But it probably had unlimited shots.

[Stack summary]

Riders: 45/45/792/736(1172)D

Mounts: 39/45/702/6(17)

[Allied Stack Summary]

Riders: 49/35/231

Mounts: 32/37/691/5(16)

Oh, right. Their heavies may be able to mount a Heavy Knight with some magical rejiggering, but her mounts can carry four knights each. That’s another edge she has. Nero’s stack has rifles, too. And digger means they ignore the fossils Hard special. So she isn’t completely bereft. Still, while spending juice on thinkamancy to accelerate her thoughts for mid-combat planning was inexpensive, she was not capable of accelerating her thoughts to a standstill: It was time to act.

She issued her orders. “Maggie, disrupt! Nero, weapons free! Jim, ready for melee!” Naturally, her commands were more complex than that, but that was the natural thinkamancy of orders. For example, she didn’t actually know what Maggie could do to disrupt her enemies. She had some vague ideas of offensive thinkamancy screwing up enemy coordination, as thinkamancy’s niche with communication did extend to interfering with the enemy’s communications, but it was not something most thinkamancers were willing to risk themselves in battle doing. So they didn’t discuss the matter too much in tactical discussions.

But Maggie was a level eight Master for a reason, so she had plenty of juice to toss into something big.

Before she could, though, Klein Stein used his juice against Nero’s stack. Presumably to take out the guns. “Energy Equality Means Citing Squares!” He shouted, sending a massive ball of clear damage. Uh oh. Despite her wand, Tanya was not a real master-class shockamancer. They knew clear damage. Her? She’s heard only rumors.

The one thing she did know about it was that when it came to unloading a bunch of juice onto a super stack? It couldn’t be beat. Exactly the kind of thing a shockamancer would use if he didn’t want another, weaker shockamancer from stopping him. However… “Prism Crystal Shield!” She shouted in Japanese, mentally waving goodbye to all of the juice she was planning on using to croak units this fight.

The orb of power was promptly consumed by the spell, the wand automagically countering the enemy shockamancy without Tanya needing to use a specific counterspell, as a normal shockamancer would. This may be new clear damage, but her artifact didn’t care.

The Frank’s jaw dropped, his tongue lolling out in exact copy of that infamous silly Einstein image, completing the silly joke that his face created. “I-impossible!” He shouted.

“It’s not my fault.” Harry the uncroaked said, waving his magical staff emphatically. It launched a bolt of shockamancy at Tanya, but she was able to bat it aside with her wand reflexively, her mathamancy senses passively registering the 17 she just rolled on that defense check. Good roll.

Maggie’s spell occurred next, a similarly large juice expense sounding out. “Peabody!” She shouted, smiling widely.

The uncroaked immediately dismounted and unstacked, instantly losing 28 points in both combat and defense. Ah, she sees Maggie’s plan: by issuing false orders magically, the mindless uncroaked immediately respond, with Stein’s shock delaying his ability to order them to restack.

Normally, this was not something that would be described as an ‘instant win’, as they could just stack back up. But uncroaked automatically fail the check to resist the spell, just like they do against foolamancy, and it was a soft counter to the date-a-mancy spells used to bind them into a larger than normal stack and to establish the Knight bond (soft only because those date-a-mancy spells provide a bonus to resist). So 8 of those points were gone for good, erasing their statistical advantage.

Well, also there were Tanya’s orders to Nero. A staccato of precise three-round bursts tore through Harry, Sue, and the heavy knights, but the fossil golems were only damaged by the barrage.

The instant the bullets stopped, Jim charged forward, unfortunately not fast enough to prevent the Frank Klein Stein from restacking the Tree Wrecks. Tanya was caught a little off-guard by the lunge but quickly changed her priorities, slipping her Mickey to Klein. She pulled out one of her more disposable accessories out of her dress, a folded up net that she threw over the vastly weakened Klein. As a melee attack, she was able to take a penalty and issue a dismounting maneuver, bypassing the Tree Wrex’s screen but doing no damage, instead triggering a fall. As a net attack didn’t do damage anyway, this was not an issue and she moved the captured caster to an empty passenger slot on her heavy mount. Elya will have her way with him later.

As previously noted, the digger knights tore through the rocky uncroaked as easily as they did a city wall, the lack of Harry’s leadership bonus and stack bonus allowing them to cleanly cut through the hits that remained. Hard was an excellent special to be sure… but against Digger or Siege, it was worse than if they didn’t have it at all.

With the stack fully dispatched, Tanya noted that Jim leveled to eight. He was getting up there in power, and would be a decent Chief Warlord when she leaves and Nero becomes the ruler. Granted, the difference between the two warlords was like the gap between heaven and earth, but Nero could use the balance.

Still, they had a backup plan apparently, because it was at about that point that the traps triggered. The city was now on fire, and it was not her fault.

“You are trapped!” Shouted von Fraud, the enemy thinkamancer. He had apparently unlinked with his fellows and was using basic foolamancy to project his voice. Prince Jack didn’t have Remote Link anymore, so Charlie’s bugged out too. “We know you know that we cannot be croaked by flames. This city has already become an inferno, so surrender and turn if you want yourself and your units to live, yeah?” As she had expected, the thinkamancer had a German accent.

“He’s attempting to convince you magically.” Maggie warned her. “I am protecting you.”

“Good effort.” Tanya said back in a slightly raised voice. She knew he could hear her. “Jim? I see a giant stone tree. You know what to do.”

Jim nodded seriously. “Chop down the trees, to feel the breeze.” He said, echoing the rhyme they used.

Tanya started issuing orders to everyone to avoid the flames, maneuvering everyone back to the place they entered the hex from.

As a city structure, the tower zone followed special rules. The courtyard zone could be downgraded by attacking the fortification structures, which would ripple to other parts of the zone and weaken the defenses as the levels lowered. It was not a common strategy, but if you had siege and digger units and a thoroughly entrenched enemy it was an option. This could also be used on the city as a whole, downgrading the city level and weakening the defenses everywhere at the cost of lowering your potential reward if you intended to raze the city for money or keep it as a free high level city.

The tower, on the other hand, had two states: full power, or collapsing. Unlike when you were attacking other city zones, it didn’t do anything until you fully destroyed it. It took less damage to do the job, but mathematically that was compensated for by the lack of degradation as you went.

Her remaining not-currently-flying knights had cleared the courtyard, and the tower was absolutely loaded with enemy units. Thus… “Timber!” Jim shouted as the heavily augmented diggers finished collapsing the tower. Compared to destroying a wall with units reinforcing it through natural changemancy, collapsing a tower was easy.

In short order, the city was captured and Tanya used up the dirtamancy scroll she had to extinguish the flame. Idly, she had Maggie issue the order to Sizemore to scribe a replacement, as he suddenly had a lot of spare juice due to the premature turn end.

---------------------------

Jack was still smiling, newly level ten, as Visha dragged him before her. “I must say, bringing a thinkamancer? That was quite a good cheat. Well played.”

Tanya scoffed. “Your side had two, if you count the Arkendish.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jack lied easily, before adding: “On an unrelated note, have you ever read the nondisclosure section of a Charlsecomm work contract? A marvel of robust Language.”

“So you were working for Charlie!” Visha declared.

“Of course not.” Jack lied immediately. “I was working for Bethlefuck.” Most of the people around winced at hearing the forbidden word. Wait… hearing the name said so easily, Tanya suddenly recalled a name from bible study, back at the orphanage. Bethlehem? That’s the name Pact Romano riffed on? “Air defense via mass removal of the flight special. My favorite type of contract, I got my last three levels that way.”

“Including the one you got today.” Tanya added sarcastically, to Jack’s pleased smile. “Now would be when you beg for your life.” She said, activating her wand’s lightsaber.

Jack frowned. “You’re not going to give me to Lady von Culper?” He asked, confused.

“You could turn now.” Tanya offered.

“It’s not any fun that way.” Jack whined, “Come on, let her at me. It’ll be great! She’ll level!”

Something about letting Elya try to turn a more skilled, higher level turnamancer sounded unwise. But he was right: the amount of experience she’d get for doing so would be plentiful, and then they’d have a level ten puppetmaster on their side. “...You’re trying to trick me.” Tanya said, more to herself than to him.

“The only one trying to trick you here is Fate.” Jack said, dropping his jovial facade. “Tell me, was bringing your thinkamancer along part of the plan all along? Or was it… a spur of the moment decision? Random chance that just so happened to turn out into an unexpectedly good idea?”

Tanya stilled at the question. “...I suppose as a Master dollamancer, you’d know a thing or two about Fate.” She said carefully.

“You’d be right.” Jack said easily. “Back on my old side, we fought a war against another side, who had a predictamancer. She foresaw my Fate, as she did for many others.” He chuckled evilly. “There are three things that must happen in my life that haven’t yet occurred; if someone was to croak me before they could occur, all of that destiny would become snarled, and that does not end well for the one who dares to cut at Fate.”

“What if that person was also protected by Fate?” Tanya asked, drawn in to his explanation.

“Oh, if you thought your Fate was irritating you before, it can get so, so much worse.” Jack said, somehow managing to seem empathetic while on the ground in shackles. “I’d tell you to ask that Croakamancer you used to work with, but… well, let’s just say that once you’ve fulfilled your part in Fate’s plan, most units don’t tend to live much longer. It’s because they’re too used to taking risks that always pay off.”

“Hm. Wanda overestimated her importance in Fate’s plan, then?” Tanya asked, raising an eyebrow.

“More or less.” Jack agreed, “Predictions are more flexible than most people give them credit; while some of the predictions involving Miss Firebaugh absolutely required her presence, some isn’t all.”

“Charlescomm’s incredibly powerful defenses doesn’t enter into it?” Tanya asked wryly.

“Oh, it certainly does.” Jack said agreeably. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Charlie got another load of bad luck from breaking at least a few predictions in that battle.” His eyes flashed dangerously. “But that’s nothing new to him.”

Hm. Tanya closed her eyes and contemplated her options. She could croak him, to spite Fate… but despite the comparison her mind wants to draw between the omnipresent force and Being X… she really didn’t have much to complain about. Particularly if it did just save her bacon. Plus, even with how comfortable she’s gotten with killing people, particularly in this world where most of the disgusting parts of dealing with death were absent… that didn’t mean she didn’t feel uncomfortable with executing someone she knows personally.

Yes, it was hypocrisy, but it was human nature to elevate one’s friends and acquaintances over an impersonal enemy.

But that didn’t mean she should let him have what he wants; even if he was just implementing reverse psychology, trying to get her to not want to turn him by seeming too eager… She wasn’t going to keep him long term anyway. It’d be better if she committed him to a contract for long-term work that would keep him working for her for far longer than she would be keeping this side… perfect.

“No, I don’t want you to turn.” Tanya decided out loud. Jack looked confused, but her instincts said he was faking it. “Instead, we’ll work out a barbarian work contract, which we’ll get Janis to settle the fine details of.” She smiled sweetly. “Until then, three turn contract and I’ll release you: Full service, follow any non-combat order me or my commanders give you. Upkeep covered, penalty is immediate imprisonment, imprisonment at end of contract if no other contract Signed. In return, you won’t be compelled to turn.” She brought out her signamancy wand, writing the simple contract on a piece of paper and handing him the slip. “Agreed?”

After a moment to process it, Jack frowned. “...Well that’s no fun at all. Fine.” His shackles dissolved as the contract shined and vanished.

“Right. First order: Tell me everything you know about Fate.”