Ansom set off bringing two of the three Mecha stacks, which he led (Tanya used Date-a-mancy to augment their stack size), along with a set of eight siege towers that were impelled to have a small amount of their own move (6) by Elya. As the Mecha had 12 move, they could move 9 hexes per turn by using the mecha to push them the rest of the way.
Hopefully, Tanya’s drilling of those diggers for defensive fortifications won’t be a waste; the levels they got were nice, but Archons were dangerous enemies. The date-a-mancy she cast to bolster their stats further will probably be more influential.
Ansom had also brought along a nice column of infantry, and literally all of the spidew calvary, loaded up with knights and warlords. It was a proper invasion force, enough to take down an ordinary capital strike.
Charlescomm is not an ordinary capital city, of course, but that’s why he wasn’t going alone: there were four more forces of roughly equivalent strength going with him from the Royal Crown Coalition… and one more of thrice the strength from Faq.
Of the sides, naturally Stanley and Ansom were spearheading things, but they were also accompanied by Chief Warlords from Sofa King, Unaroyal, and HobbitTM. Caster-wise, they sent Harold, Ace (who set up in the other Heroic Mecha, raising their bonuses to absurd levels), Jack, Wanda, Marie, six additional casters from Faq stolen from their conquered sides, Vanna and Prince Jeftichew, an Unaroyal turnamancer and Carnymancer, Grandelf the Gay and Shawn Bawn, the Chief Weirdomancer and a rhyme-o-mancer from HobbitTM, Rockem Sockem and Lostem Sockem, a dirtmanacer and findamancer from Sofa King, Lloyd Bernhard and Cubbins from Jetstone, and Transylvito was able to spare their dollamancer, Bill, at the head of a rather large contingent of knight-class golems mounted on Thunderbirds.
Tanya kept the air forces at home, both because they had to hold back something and because they didn’t want to bring the dwagons anywhere near the Arkenhammer. Faq’s air force will be plenty.
That said, Tanya spent several turns as they left setting up more and more super-stacks with date-a-mancy, going back and forth using her much greater move. It was horrifically wasteful to spend the juice on something so easily disrupted, but given who they were facing, what amounted to extra Leadership was valuable enough to dedicate her juice to the endeavor, and Maggie used a link to increase her date-a-mancy skill and to lend her own juice to the endeavor. Fortunately, Maggie could fly just as well as Tanya could when they were linked, using the greater of their move while connected.
But eventually they were too far away and Tanya had nothing to do except establish contingencies.
“Okay, so we’re prepared for a decapitation strike from Charlescomm, we’re prepared for him to attack every single city-site at once, we’re ready for him to completely destroy the column with a secret doomsday weapon… Is there anything else we need to prepare for?” Tanya asked her council.
“Perhaps… we should prepare for victory?” Sizemore suggested.
“That’s Ansom’s department.” Tanya said confidently.
“We should be prepared for Charlie seizing control of the Jojos.” Maggie suggested.
“He’s been known to do that.” Isaac added.
“Impossible. It will not happen. Nothing could cause that.” Insisted Mojo the Jojo.
“Just keep wearing your improved headgear, and stay here.” Tanya instructed. Ace had enlisted Cubbins to link up and create a few hats that completely insulated the wearer from thinkamancy, which Tanya couldn’t make use of as a Ruler, she needed those thinkamancy channels too much to go without, but everyone else made use of them when possible. “We don’t know if he uses mind control or just bribery, but either way, he can’t do it to you as long as you wear the hat.”
“My tribe, my minions, the soldiers under my command will defend this side until their dying breath.” Mojo the Jojo insisted.
“According to my calculations, if Charlie sends any less than two hundred archons, it would be a slaughter.” Tanya said, “85% chance of them doing no appreciable damage with exactly that many level 3 archons.”
“With a seventy-three percent chance of a Charlescomm victory if they send four hundred.” Count Harbinger offered. He was invited by Isaac to offer his opinion, and while Tanya didn’t hire him, per se, she did cover his upkeep for the turn as a courtesy to Isaac.
Archons were fragile, and bad at stack fighting, but they were resistant to shockamancy, which meant that they took more juice to croak than their stats would otherwise indicate. A spell that could croak a whole stack of her own knights would only croak three archons at best.
The Tower of Efdup was tuned to maximize the amount of juice it could hold. It was effectively level seven, and it had been adjusted to hold additional juice in return for no longer automagically charging an amount every turn. Forty-two caster levels, a direct hit would take three of them to croak a whole stack of archons, so when combined with the Heavy Knights getting three stacks, and the tower’s ballistae could probably take out four more in an opening volley…. Yeah, one hundred eighty are going to go down at the first round of combat, although admittedly the ballistae don’t have as much anti-foolamancy, so maybe she shouldn’t count those? Then again, she’d need a thinkamancy link to successfully aim at that many different stacks anyway, so maybe she could use that to coordinate them with mathamancy? She ran the numbers again. Okay, that helped.
“I mean, the Shock Exchange means that I can refill my juice and keep firing more spells, but yeah, if enough live to start tossing shockamancy in my direction we’re going to have problems.” Tanya admitted.
“On that note, how’s your dittomancy coming along?” Isaac asked.
Tanya smiled. “It’s going okay. All I really need to do with it is make a duplicate of myself, and that’s one of the easiest dittomancy spells there is.” Tanya was ecstatic to learn that unlike duplicating literally anyone else, the caster duplicating themselves is incredibly inexpensive, following the trend of spells that were damned useful but were difficult to exploit as a squishy caster. It still had the caveat of ‘must infuse with at least one caster level of juice’, but she can use her wand to reclaim that. “Don’t ask me to make more than one duplicate, either.” She added. That was… rather difficult. It was a bit like folding, or unfolding? Each iteration was harder than the last. Only the greatest dittomancers could manage a triple fold, octupling something. As a novice dittoamancer, she can’t do a double fold.
“Hm, that improves the numbers, if we incorporate a duplicate on the tower while putting the real Queen inside the Mecha.” Count Harbinger said, casting a spell. “Hm, yes, that’ll lower the four hundred archon's chance of success to forty-two percent. Thirty percent if you promote your duplicate to Chief Warlord.”
“...Can you do that?” Tanya asked.
“Yes.” Isaac said, “It’s a known trick for capital defense when the Chief Warlord is in the field. Duplicate the ruler, if high level, and promote the duplicate to Chief Warlord. It avoids the political issues inherent to promoting any other warlord to Chief Warlord temporarily.” Also, high-level warlord rulers were not uncommon, given that the majority of sides were founded by such units. It was generally older sides that, like Jetstone, Transylvito, and Sofa King, were ruled by low level warlords that have known nothing but rulership.
“Okay, according to Wanda’s intelligence, Charlie only has around six hundred archons, “ Plus around seven hundred golems, mostly cloth designed by a contracted dollamancer named ‘Claude Gauntlet’ and assisted in creation by archons, as a garrison, truly murderous emplaced defenses created by a contracted dirtamancer names ‘Ivan Poe’, who also contributed to the creation of the remaining golems, and twelve hundred ‘etsies’ scattered throughout his territory that function as perimeter alarms… ”-so unless he puts everything on the line, he’s not decapitating this side.” The other sides of the Royal Crown Coalition, on the other hand… There are contingencies.
Charlie attacking the other cities of Yojo Mojo was also disregarded as a serious threat, after fortifications. He’d need to send over one hundred for each city, and he’d lose more archons than would be worth the prize. “What’s the status of Ivan and Claude?” Tanya asked.
“Claude was seen entering Charlescomm’s portal on a contract, while Ivan is nowhere to be found.” Isaac reported, having been given that information from the Great Minds. ‘Nowhere to be found’ was code in this case; one of the carnymancy tricks that Charlie possessed was creating a series of tunnels beneath otherwise-undiggable bedrock under the Magic Kingdom.
Damn. Ivan was now in a position to do something to the portal. What exactly Ivan could do to it undetected wasn’t really known to the Great Minds, so beyond putting some hefty defense golems in the portal room along with some fortifications to reduce the damage of explosives, there wasn’t much else they could do.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Something the Minds did know is that Ivan wasn’t sitting on some massive bomb that he could shove into the portal. Quite a few rocket launchers that gave any old unit a single siege attack of unknown but significant strength, but nothing that resembled a missile, C4, or a nuclear bomb, and they gave her a knowledge dump every single weapon they had in there.
Unfortunately, the guns Charlie had stockpiled down there were… unknown. They had absolutely no idea how effective they were, nor what kind of limitations they had. They used ammo, they could presumably be used by Archons, but beyond making them effectively archers… they had nothing.
How overpowered could they be, though? Ace wasn’t able to recreate one with just the descriptions given, as the thinkamancer’s understanding of the structure of the guns were woefully insufficient for Ace to work with, and Tanya’s knowledge didn’t do much better. It was actually a little strange, how he was unable to make it work. Tanya knew quite a bit about firearm manufacture, after all.
Janis had theorized, when consulted as a master signamancer, that ‘guns’ were sort of a… forbidden word. She had to explain that Language possessed words at varying levels of forbiddance, which explained the censorship filter that the spell imposed on her, and ‘gun’ was at the lowest level of that, right below ‘pain-word’. Tanya could say this level, like ‘die’, but not anything of higher levels, like boop, boop, and boop. No one knows ‘gun’, and it was too ‘far out’ of a concept for most units without some kind of concrete example. Carnymancy could probably get around this, if Charlie has them.
Tanya really wished they had time to bring in Prince Jeftichew on this… he was the only carnymancer that could possibly help them. But the Great Minds refused to bring Jeftichew to the secure area, so it was something that just got put off until it was too late. She thought the Great Minds were too stingy with their eavesdrop-proof meeting room.
…Ah, she should have had Sizemore just make a second one! Why didn’t she think of that before? Ah, the places one’s mind goes when one’s facing a potential nuclear exchange, metaphorically.
“Are there any other matters?” Tanya asked. No one said anything. “Then dismissed. I want to be ready for a night-time infiltration squad, if he can do that.”
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It took about seven turns of preparing further contingencies and watching for trouble that Charlie made his move. Tanya had sent a few of her knights to the column for general scouting duties, but more importantly, because unlike other scouts, Tanya’s 76 move plus the move of one of her knights, even the 54 that the level 1 non-nobles get, was enough to get full vision of the whole column, with them spread out as they were.
As Tanya had expected, Charlie decided that the column was a large enough threat to break out the guns instead of letting them crash against his city’s defenses. How strong were they?
The answer was: incredibly so. Tanya couldn’t use Analysis through a scout’s eyes, but it was Mathamancy, so by actually casting it she can examine observed phenomena and magically derive the underlying math behind them. By the looks of things, a gun in the hands of an Archon does twenty hits of damage at base. Not a twenty-sided die, just… twenty. The Mecha could do more on a good damage roll, but not even Dwagons hit that hard. Against anything that wasn't heavy? Basically an instacroak. Dwagons took a mere four shots to croak, sometimes only three.
Fortunately, it still acted as Archery, and thus operated normally using combat rolls against defense rolls. The guns gave a +10 bonus to Combat, but piling on bonuses did the job. The issue was… they acted as Archery. Which meant that the Archons didn’t even need to enter the hex to use those weapons, and could attack with impunity to anyone who wasn’t behind fortifications. The veil cloaks her scouts had helped her get a picture of things, and while Stanley’s Arkenhammer had a function that protected his stack from bullets, a defensive shockamancy barrier, all of the other Decrypted just turned into dust.
The rocket launchers acted like a purple’s breath, or other area-of-effect Siege special attack. Not only did it ignore the damage reduction objects normally enjoyed, but it did full damage, as if hitting the largest possible number of targets. In this case, the rockets did 5d10 hits against normal targets in an area, with a 150 cap, with a plus twenty to combat just to ensure it always worked. Yojo Mojo’s siege towers were probably the most resilient, and they only had 25 defense and 512 hits. Everyone else had substantially less. Taking one more attack to get destroyed was not exactly a big deal given the investment in training and twoll labor that required.
Led by both the level 6 Ace and level 10 Ansom meant that the Mecha were substantially tougher targets, though. One of the little oddities of the Synchronization special is that it allowed Ace to treat the dirtamancy golems as dollamancy ones, although it only applied to the Mecha ones specifically. It was probably because the designs had some dollamancy principles in them? Who knows. With both in the stack, the Mecha had 42 defense, which was difficult for the rifles to beat. The ones that actually had the leadership had even higher defense ratings, fortunately. Tanya doubted that Charlie wasn’t using something to counteract the penalty for shooting across a hex border.
The Archons… base rating of 6-11, depending on level, dollamancy +2, Arkendish bonus of +2 more (one stack gets +6 more from Charlie doing something), Chief Warlord bonus of +2, +4 stack bonus, most had at least a +2 leadership bonus, meant that the rifle wielding archons had 28 Combat at the low end, with 43 for the absolute strongest Archon, a level 9 with a +4 leadership bonus and Charlie’s direct bonus. Did Charlie use Carnymancy to make that Archon a Chief Warlord?
Tanya couldn’t really do anything to support their attack, of course. All she could really do is watch while the Royal Crown Coalition’s units croak to the bullets, watch Charlie’s Archons level up more and more-Oop, Leadership Archon just leveled, and got a fifth point of Leadership. Lucky…
Fortunately, the Siege attacks couldn’t cross the hex border, so Ansom’s hex hasn’t been hit with those yet. Transylvito’s limited contributions have already been croaked, along with Jetstone’s attacks. Ace kept healing the Mecha up after each chunk that got blown out of it by a bullet. Fortunately, most of the hex was underneath the fortifications that the diggers had dug, so they’ll have to come inside the hex to properly croak them. Note to self: Fortifications are effective against ordinary bullets.
Hmmm… Tanya started spending juice to fill in the variables. What is the probability that Ace and Ansom, asking for more seemed unwise, will manage to survive before Charlescomm runs out of ammunition? …60.927%. Ah, that’s a good number, but it needs boosting. “Is your Luckamancer friend, the Countess, available for work?” Tanya asked Count Harbinger.
“She’s already at your portal.” He said, a little smug as he took out a document and slid it across the table to her. Picking it up and reading the… employment contract, Tanya nodded. Reasonable terms, given the circumstances. She signed it with her wand, the glittery pink ink showing a much more elaborate signature than she recalled using before. Must be a Queen thing.
The instant she finished signing, Countess Fortuna walked into the portal and went straight to the Situation Room. As a ruler, Tanya could finely detect all units in the city, and track her by a pair of knights she had ordered to escort the allied caster, ordering replacements to rejoin the guard stack from elsewhere in the garrison.
Countess Fortuna was a serious-looking woman, who wore a white business suit and a fedora, looking a bit like a mafia hitwoman. She wore high heels and jewelry enough that her nobility was obvious, but it just reminded Tanya of how her own wardrobe has changed over time. “We’ll need to link up. You use Mathamancy, and keep the scout feed going.” She explained, “Anything further can be explained in the link.”
Count Harbinger nodded. “I’ve done some excellent work with Contessa-” Hm, Prince Jack called her that too… “-while linked up with one of the Great Minds. It’s like the path to victory unfolds before you, and you must merely take steps along it.”
Maggie held out her hands, and Tanya took it without hesitation. The Countess did so at exactly the same time. “See it all.” Tanya said suddenly, on impulse as Maggie started to wind their strings together.
“Open the Door.” Countess Fortuna said, picking up where Tanya left off.
“Silver Dawn.” Maggie said, before the familiar feeling of linking washed away her perception.
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“Conflict is a matter of pairs.” The Mathamancer explained. “Every action has a number, and every reaction has a number to go with it.”
“It is waves and particles.” The Luckamancer elaborated. “Only when observed is it a success or failure.”
“We must match the wavelengths of attack and defense.” The Thinkamancer said.
“But with the tiniest nudge to our side, of course.” The Mathamancer added.
“The numbers must go somewhere, a price must be paid.” The Luckamancer said, asking a question.
“Faq has a steep debt, Zero always calls.” The Mathamancer decided as an answer.
The coalition’s forces were spread over twenty hexes. There were seve- six perspectives of flying scouts, hidden under veil cloaks and high in the air, keeping an eye on the battle. A tiny amount of juice increases the fidelity of the connection, the Thinkamancer managing the multi-threaded inputs so that they could pick and choose their expenses.
“Prioritize the Arkentools, our eyes, and our siege.” The Mathamancer commanded. “With the Arkenpliers, casualties can be replaced. The siege cannot.” The Archons were still taking shots at the golems that protected the Siege towers with their rifles, refusing to enter the hex with their siege weapons. The fortifications protected all the remaining units in the hex, so they would need to use their Siege attacks to reveal them. While the rifles were powerful… they were not Siege.
The casters were rulers, so they spent juice on making precise orders. Step in this way, articulate your arm this far, each one representing a bare miss. Archery is the domain of Mathamancy, ballistics. This applied offensively… but also defensively.
Between the Mathamancer’s tracing the hitboxes between the barrage, the Thinkamancer’s coordination, and the luckamancer’s imposition of order on the chaos of the battlefield, Ansom’s stack continued to lose hits steadily, as they blunted the inevitable crits instead of preventing them entirely. As the bullets dropped in effectiveness against the high value targets, the decrypted of Faq suffered in equal measure… but didn’t even notice.
Eventually, the bent probabilities won out, and the Archons ran out of bullets. The Chief Archon sent in a single massive forty-stack of Archons wielding the rocket launchers while guided by Charlie directly, and the casters issued different orders, offensive ones: While their link-boosted foolamancy was clever, and they didn’t even enter the hex from the same border as they appeared to be entering from… the casters could see them just fine.
Half of the archons croaked before being able to get their one attack in, and the rest was guided to miss just enough attacks and with the damage distribution nudged just enough to inflict lots of damage… without actually croaking any of their units. Hits on the tower were distributed randomly to the diggers inside… but that was something that can be manipulated with luckamancy. The other half of the archons croaked shortly thereafter.
That wasn’t to say that Charlie didn’t inflict absolutely massive casualties. It would be faster to list the units that did survive: From Faq, literally just Stanley and Wanda’s stack. That stack had ten dwagons that were mounted by Stanley and nine casters, mind you, From Yojo Mojo: Ansom and Ace’s stack of Mecha, the siege towers they were protecting, the four 22-stacks of spidew cavalry that could fit in the fortifications, two archer knights and two with melee knights, the six scout knights, and that’s about it. Not even Harold survived, as apparently Flower Power flat out fails against guns.
Transylvito’s contingent was completely destroyed. As was Sofa King’s and Unaroyals, with the sole exceptions being a few high value units that Prince Jeftichew protected with Carnymancy, specifically Lady Sylvia, Vanna, himself, and Princess Cruz. For some reason, the Archons declined to finish them off with shockamancy. Rockem had tried to erect and keep fortifications to protect some units, but he couldn’t compete with the rocket launchers. In the end, his head flew out of the fortified position upwards in a rather amusing fashion.
HobbitTM also managed to preserve some of their numbers, as Grandelf was apparently a wizard with granting just the right special to help, pun intended. He didn’t keep a lot of their forces alive, but they saved both casters, their Chief Warlord, and their Gumps, through some sort of plant-only weirdomancy trick.
In most circumstances, this would be a war-winning move on the part of Charlie.
Against the Arkenpliers? It just wasn’t enough. The instant the turn started, Wanda decrypted every single fallen unit that was not already part of Faq, plus a few that were, mostly Stanley’s Dwagons.
The question was… what else did Charlie have up his sleeve?