Tanya looked at their collected casters after wiping at their face, dismissing the makeup spell. It was supposed to make her look more respectable to Ansom, improving the odds of the negotiation’s success. Why Ansom was more likely to respect them if they resembled Sailor Moon, Tanya didn’t understand. “Hand me the scroll.” They ordered. Sizemore presented the green scroll, one of the fruits of his shopping spree with the Hippiemancers. True to his claims, they gave him full access to their stores and a discounted price. They focused on the agreement that Maggie had composed for them, loopholes and all. “John Hancock.” They intoned, activating the second Signamancy scroll. It was difficult to describe the feeling of the contract inscribing itself onto some ephemeral part of Tanya, spreading out to every unit of the side. Signamancy was really something, wasn’t it? Even if for some reason it covered both ‘physical appearance’ and ‘contract enforcement’. It presumably made sense to signamancers.
They turned to Wanda. “So you’re sure Jillian will break the agreement?” They asked.
“Of course.” Wanda replied. “I control her mind, as I said. Her hate for Stanley will never allow her to accept such limits. And then the Arkenpliers will be mine in truth.” She grinned sadistically as she imagined her ‘Fated’ attunement to an Arkentool. Tanya wasn’t fully convinced that Wanda was correct that the undead bane weapon would attune to a necromancer, but as gambles go, it wasn't a bad one.
But the real point of that strategy was to get Ansom to agree to a different contract after Jillian breaks the first one. The plan was to demand that he sit out of the battle instead of Jillian, as the sunk cost fallacy would tempt him to sign away that greater advantage just for honor’s sake. That would be 2 less leadership bonus for the entire coalition, a mighty impressive advantage. Hopefully, their plan would allow their in-hex bonus to match or possibly outmatch his out of hex bonus after they accumulate the necessary experience.
They had four stacks worth of dwagons, and six warlords to boost them. Each of them could fly the forty hexes there and back, with at least six more move to spare. Stanley had, as part of the previous turn, recalled all field forces back to Gobwin knob, so they had essentially zero presence on the battlespace beyond their city. They couldn’t be fancy about it with them that far away, but they didn’t need to be.
Among the scrolls sold by date-a-mancers was a fascinating spell that enhanced the natural bond between a mount and their rider, effectively allowing the temporary bestowal of the Knight special to non-knights. They were relatively inexpensive, so Sizemore bought three. He assured them that more would be available if they check back in two turns, and his good relations with them would ensure that they do not gouge him. Each stack had an uncroaked Warlord, with Wanda and Tanya each in the caster slot of two stacks.
The RCC’s column had approximately ten thousand units total, a little less. There was a limit as to how many units you could put in a single hex, so they had to spread out over about sixteen hexes. Twelve of those hexes were the ‘weak’ hexes, with very close to identical ground force compositions.
The weak hexes each had two to four towers, a piece of siege equipment that allowed several stacks of digger units to be protected while they wore away at city walls. Each of these towers were pushed by two gigantic teddy bear golems, known as battle bears. These golems were Jetstone’s signature siege unit, in fact. Very dangerous, a dwagon could not win in melee on equal footing. But equal footing was for corpses. Or, as the Count said during planning, the only equality was net zero. It was an excellent math joke, and Tanya was looking forward to the magic lessons that were to follow the battle.
Protecting those critical siege assets were about six hundred on average basic infantry or units of similar strength like marbits or elves, seventy-five stacks worth, with plenty of archery, and some relatively weak flying assets, mostly some infantry-class owl units called Orlies, about three stacks per hex. The column possessed more impressive fliers in the form of knight-class Unipegataurs and Princess Jillian’s remaining Gwiffons, which are heavy fliers, but there weren’t enough stacks of those to cover every hex. Just the ones surrounding the leadership hex and the leadership hex itself. They won’t be attacking those hexes.
Tanya got to fly in a ten-stack with Ensign Toast, the highest level (and lowest freshness, he was practically a skeleton) of the uncroaked warlords and the other three stacks held the other uncroaked warlords and Wanda. They also brought as many hobgobwin knights as they could fit, as they were somewhat stronger than the regular knights. As Stanely had limited the number of knights for what were presumably financial reasons, this required some promotion to fill all of the saddles.
Most strategy games had a tendency to create jan-ken-pon matchups when it came to what was the most favorable. The basic matchup set in Erfworld was as follows: The damage reduction, high stats, and ability to attack multiple smaller units at once meant that heavies tended to destroy infantry in large numbers. Knights had even higher statistics and lower upkeep, so they tended to carve up heavies, and infantry’s pitiful upkeep meant that they overwhelmed knights. Naturally, these matchups could be overcome by numerical advantage, either in actual numbers or in force multipliers, and it also assumed that the upkeep represented by the units were equal, so given that a dwagon had the upkeep of six basic knights, knights tended to win handily if they outnumbered the dwagons six to one. If it was, say, four to one? Much more even.
The offensive operations for this turn had multiple phases, but the first was the most critical one: completely croak one of those twelve weak hexes. This was… a bit of a tall order. Fortunately, dwagons had one important advantage: their breath weapon. It was a limited use shockamancy attack, with each color of dwagon having a different one. Each example had their own strengths and weaknesses, but each could only inflict a certain amount of damage per use, as the shockamancy was soaked up by the other units. This was enough to croak a whole stack of infantry, mind you, But there were additional considerations.
For example, the pink dwagons had an incapacitating bubblegum attack, which was very short ranged and did not have the area of effect necessary to capture more than half a stack at a time, and even that required them to stupidly clump up instead of spreading out a bit. These were unled infantry, so at least they can be counted on to do that much. The yellows had the longest range, but that was because they used ‘battlecrap’ as kind of an acidic aerial bombing run. They had 30+ shots instead of the 6+ shots the other varieties had, but the area was tiny, only enough to hit three clumped up targets at most. The blue dwagons used lightning, but this had just as tiny of an area when pointed down. So only the purple, green, and red dwagons could use the ‘expected’ performance of those specials against hundreds of infantry before closing into melee. As a mitigating factor, the green dwagon’s toxic gas was flammable, so following up one of those with a red dwagon’s breath drastically amplified both the power and area of effect of the fire breath, effectively doubling the potency.
Naturally, Tanya loaded reds and greens onto their stack, to maximize the leadership experience points granted to their stack. The experience point mechanics were not… completely understood. Mathamancers knew the most, but there were hidden factors that occluded precision unless they spent juice to bridge that gap of understanding, which was greater magic than simple number crunching. Commanders got a bundle of bonus experience for their stack’s performance, but the fact that the other warlords were uncroaked, under the direct instruction of Tanya no less, meant that Tanya may be allocated their share of it, or possibly Wanda would. What was not ambiguous was that Ensign Toast would not be receiving any, as Tanya was ‘in command’ of their stack. Chief Warlords also got the experience point shares of unled stacks in their hex, but they couldn’t afford to let any of the stacks go without a Leadership bonus.
As the Count explained it, a twenty point edge in Combat and Defense stats was the… he used the term ‘diminishing advantage’, but given his benchmark probabilities, Tanya immediately translated it as ‘soft cap on opposed twenty-sided dice’. More advantage helped a little bit, but that was the point where the chance of your enemy damaging you became as low as it would go. One of the weaknesses of dwagons is that their Combat and Defense ratings were actually low compared to other heavy units of similarly high upkeep. They only had 6 base in each, while basic infantry had 1/1, 2/3, and 3/0 for pikers, stabbers, and archers respectively. So to achieve that cap of effectiveness, they needed to gain 17 points of force multiplication over theirs. The Arkenhammer granted them a +2 bonus in the same way Wanda gave all uncroaked on the side a bonus, so with that, Tanya’s +1, and the uncroaked’s bonuses of +3 to 5, they were nowhere near that value, and Ansom provided his units a +3 even without his presence. The leveled dwagons did have higher stats… but it was mostly move, hits, and breath weapon effectiveness/uses. They needed to be level 3 to gain another point in combat and defense, and there was only enough for Tanya’s stack to have those.
With all of this taken into account, the battle plan was as optimal as Tanya could make it. Thus, they took flight. Dwagons were, as Tanya expected, essentially dragons, but they were… rounder and fatter than one would usually think, with much smaller wings. Like it was a plush toy brought to life rather than a real living thing. The highest level remaining dwagon that Tanya claimed for themselves, a level four yellow they named ‘King Bomber’, did indeed have scales, although they were smooth like a snake’s rather than the rough or sharp armor they’d expect from a dragon. Flying through the air felt right, but there was a certain discomfort with the saddle that fortunately vanished when the date-a-mancy scroll was used.
Hex borders were fairly interesting, in Tanya’s opinion. Traveling through one stole something from each unit that passed through, even from Tanya, but not, oddly enough, from the other mounted units. How unusual… Isaac had advised them to keep note of any previously unnoticed senses they may possess to gain an insight into what kind of caster they were meant to be, so they made sure to, as they traveled by air to the column, memorize the sensation of move being depleted.
The hex they picked out was the most infantry-heavy one, with only two siege towers, four battle bears, and eighty one stacks of infantry level units, thirty of them archers and about a quarter of the lot being Luckless elves. Given that they were the ones that Tanya decided to attack, this moniker was accurate. The other hex Tanya had considered had Schlemiel elves instead, but apparently they had bonus hits, so they were particularly suited to soaking special attacks and the blows of heavies, which increased the projected dwagon attrition by 50%.
Issuing orders was apparently a complex skill, but Tanya didn't find it too difficult to execute. "On my mark, opening volley!" She shouted, before pointing straight at the most exposed battle bear and shouting "Fire!" Despite only saying those words, the intent was communicated along the psychic connections they shared as unit and commander, with the uncroaked warlords acting as a repeater. The orders referred exclusively to yellow dwagons using their battlecrap special to attack the designated target, with the follow-up triggering that volley with a precise designation. Pointing was more of a flourish than anything else, but there was a certain visceral satisfaction with looking down the length of their blade towards something that promptly died.
The sword was surprisingly nice. Wanda explained that it was something the foolamancer, Jack, had in his quarters as a gift he never got the chance to give. It was a genuine katana, if a bit larger relative to their size than the bokkens that they were used to, even after it shrank to match their tiny little girl hands, and it shined with lethal intent and apparently a +3 bonus. After a few dozen test swings to analyze their sword forms, the Count confirmed that Tanya did possess, or effectively possessed with their kendo skill, the combat rating of a typical level 1 warlord, which is 6. So they should be able to croak things with it.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Tanya felt a little awkward using a weapon clearly meant for a specific person that was not them, but the summoning spell didn't feel the need to arm them, and they did order the others to find the best sword in the city…
It was also a little strange to see someone prepare a sword as a romantic gift, but this was a world that functions like a war game… it was probably a normal or even extravagant gift to a warlady. Or he just fell in love with a sword swinging madwoman, but it was probably the cultural thing.
Still, each battle bear had a 86.432% chance of destruction after each of the eight yellow dwagons crapped out two shots. "Do not dive!" Tanya ordered as they spotted Sir Leeroy Jenkins' stack about to close into archery range. One, two, three, and four zeroed out battle bears. With that handled, Tanya brought out the third scroll of the turn.
Foolamancy was a bit more complicated to use through a scroll than other disciplines, due to the fact that the caster needed to, at least a little, think like a foolamancer when directing the magic. As Headmaster Isaac explained, the basic gist of it is that you needed to firmly picture the objective reality in front of you and then make a specific change in how it is perceived. "Mirrororrim!" Tanya shouted as their stack went one way… and the appearance of their stack went the other.
As they slowly descended, the unled archers immediately unloaded their bows on the image, completely missing Tanya's stack. Going from maximum height down to ground level gave the archers two attacks against the diving units, but Tanya's display wasted three rounds of ammunition before they ordered the dwagons to unleash their breath weapons. "Breathe!" She started, before continuing with "Release!"
The foolamancy dispelled as both the gas-spewing greens and sonic-shouting purples in all three stacks unleashed their breath, as the unveiled stacks had rushed down after Tanya had attracted attention. "Burn!" Tanya ordered, prompting the reds to explode the toxic gas clouds with their own breath, croaking even more soldiers.
The archers, much diminished, got two full volleys of arrows into the hides of the dwagons before they were able to repeat the deed. There wasn't exactly a good chance for those arrows to inflict damage, but sheer quantity winnowed at the hits of the stacks as they prepared to breathe again.
After four rounds of breath, the number of troops remaining was small enough that Tanya ordered the stacks to land and start engaging in traditional combat. As expected, Tanya's sword was able to easily cut through the flimsy armor that the infantry possessed, with the uncroaked warlords and hobgobwin knights experiencing similar amounts of success.
Eventually, the engagement was finished and the siege towers dismantled, without a single dwagon casualty. Although it was rather close in several cases… the stack without either Tanya or Wanda engaged the remaining luckless elves in melee, and while they took out those easily enough, but then they inexplicably took several more hits that inflicted damage from the other infantry than the other two stacks. It seemed suspicious…
As the last infantry fell, Tanya felt a sudden rush of power. Before they even checked their stack's points, they knew what this meant. They leveled up! It was a glorious experience, difficult to put into words. They heard a high-pitched gigging, before releasing it was them who were laughing. Now for the final step of phase one. The four pink dwagons had each managed to incapacitate a dozen units each, so Tanya giddily skipped over to the prisoners, practically floating as they walked. “Let’s see if I can level again!” They shouted happily, slicing off the head of a stabber.
On the thirty-fifth infantry head falling on the ground, they smiled. There it was again! That glorious rush of power! “DING!” They cried out, tears of happiness forming as they bounced in place, dancing in celebration while laughing wildly.
“Gratz.” Wanda said drily. Tanya looked over at the other units that came to battle, seeing the hobgobwin knights all bunched up, crouching behind the small caster and her coterie of uncroaked warlords. Ah, it was too soon to celebrate. It was strange, one would think that a war maniac’s paradise like this one wouldn’t be so squeamish about executing prisoners. Tanya took a few deep breaths, continuing to do so until the giggles and laughter subsided, the adrenaline leaving their system. Cutting off the last stabber’s head calmly, they turned back to the group. “Right. Get ready for phase two.” They ordered, which had Wanda starting to cast as the other units all moved to the central area where the battle bear bodies were. “Trioxin.” Wanda intoned, with each and every unit that was croaked rising as the weakest variety of uncroaked, with only one combat and defense, and six hits each. Which meant the pikers were actually at full strength. Automagically, the archers had their bows and arrows all turn into thick clubs to reflect their new status as melee units.
As Wanda focusing on animating the massive quantities of bodies, Tanya sorted the dwagons, flying in the sky with arrows, spears, and swords sticking out of their bodies, and sizable chunks carved away. None of these otherwise serious wounds bled a single drop of blood, which made the injuries look utterly fake. Still, they inspected each one for their remaining hits and split them into two groups: ones with more than twenty hits, and ones with less than that. This lowered the amount of available dwagons from thirty-four to twelve. Unfortunate. The Yellows were all separated into a bomber stack, led by Archduke Ferdinand, the most unfortunately named one of the bunch if you asked Tanya, while the remaining nine dwagons who had those hits were loaded up with the highest level knights and Sir Leeroy. The thirteen remaining heavily injured dwagons were put into a single stack with Lady Phat-Singh. Organization finished, Tanya walked right next to Wanda and brought out the next scroll.
Dance fighting was an unusual mechanic, in Tanya’s opinion. Turning your battle into a musical really shouldn’t make you better at fighting, but for magical reasons, it worked. When you were dance fighting, the stack bonus was instead replaced with a Rhyme-o-mancy modifier, which was different based on circumstances. This meant that unled stacks had a massive disadvantage in a dance-fight, as they can no longer rely on the stack bonus to bolster their pitiful combat and defense. Normally, uncroaked couldn’t dance fight, but Wanda’s ability to empower uncroaked with her magic allowed her to bypass this limitation.
However, Wanda’s rhyme-o-mancy modifier suffered immensely when her troupe (the usual term for the super-stacks that occur when dance-fighting) constituted anything other than uncroaked, if she was the leader of the dance. However, given that Stanley and his knights were fantastic at dance-battles, there was always a possibility that Stanley would order her to lead his knights in one. For when those circumstances came to pass, she had acquired a Rhyme-o-mancy scroll to allow any caster to lead a troupe in Rocking Out.
Wanda had dressed up specifically for this part of the plan, wearing a leather jacket and ripped jeans with a spiked belt and wristbands as she wore the same black and white face paint of the hobgobwin knights. Tanya had taken their hair out of the buns that the makeup spell put it in and kept it down and messy, with their own outfit consisting of blue jeans, a white tank top, and a white leather jacket, which looked vaguely silly on Tanya’s eight year old frame. Actually… did it shrink? Tanya swore it didn’t show that much stomach when they first put it on. And while it wasn’t exactly baggy before… They suspect they’ll need magic or knives to get these pants off. Such magic probably existed, but they were not this tight before the battle.
No matter. Tanya readied the scroll and marched into the next hex of the column, with three siege towers and six battle bears backed up with seventy-four stacks of infantry, including the unfortunate schlemiel elves. Scroll in hand, she shouted its command phrase: “Hail to the one true Queen!” The hobgobwins roared in response. With that, the familiar sensation of a drum beat thrummed through their body. Ah, karaoke. How they missed it. The words sprung to their mind, and their body twitched to lead them in the dance. Tanya began to sing:
“The Queen walked on down the street, with her hair hung way down low.”
“Aint no sound but the sound of her troupe, dwagons ready to go!”
The uncroaked, with Wanda providing her full caster bonus of +8, Ensign Toast providing his +5, and Tanya providing +2 more from their new in-hex Chief Warlord bonus, were absolutely overwhelming the comparatively pitiful +3 from Ansom’s bonus. The Rhyme-o-mancy bonus of the enemy was zero, of course, but between Tanya, Wanda, and the hobgobwin’s synergizing outfits, combined with the Master-class Croakamancy allowing the uncroaked to properly dance along, meaning that the only one in the stack that didn’t have the dance-fighting special was Tanya. When backed by the scroll (which also granted Tanya that special), it was an impressive +5.
The uncroaked may have been weak, but with bonus piled on bonus, they both outnumbered the enemy infantry and could trade at unfair exchange rates. The only sticking point was the battle bears… Which was why the dwagons entered the hex at high elevation, first the strong stack to croak the fliers, then the yellow stack to bombard the battle bears as they waded through their allied infantry. Following an odd impulse, Tanya looked up, right at a single bat that was flying on the other side of one of the hex borders, the one that led to one of the three strong hexes in front.
“Are you ready? Hey are you ready for this? Are you sitting at the edge of your throne?”
“Off the mountain, the dwagons crap, to the sound of the beat, yeah!”
Right at that point, the yellows scored three critical hits and no misses on the second battle bear, croaking it in one volley rather than two. Tanya continued singing the song magically placed within their heart.
“Another one bites the dust. Another one bites the dust.”
“And another one down, and another one gone, another one bites the dust!”
“Hey, I’m going to get you too, another one bites the dust!”
Tanya kept singing, staying at the center of their hobgobwin honor guard as Wanda strummed an air guitar to accompany the song. The four remaining battle bears had reached the front lines of the conflict, and crushed eleven uncroaked in their opening attacks. Tanya started approaching them, their honor guard approaching as well. Through the magic of Rhyme-o-mancy, and possibly date-a-mancy, the mosh pit of uncroaked parted without missing a single dance step as the knights prepared to accomplish their primary purpose: croaking heavies.
“How do you think we’re going to get along, without you when you’re gone?”
“We took out everything we had, and kicked you back to the box!”
“Are you happy? Are you satisfied? How long can you stand the heat?”
The other dwagons descended to the back lines of the battle, where the archers were, and unleashed more gas, sound, and fire on them. The hobgobwins scored great blows on the battle bears, and even Tanya got a sword slice inbetween stanzas.
“Off the mountain, the dwagons crap to the sound of the beat, look out!”
On cue, the injured battle bear fell to the battlecrap assault. Tanya continued to sing. Wanda did, in fact, have a scroll of mass uncroak on hand, personally penned by her hand over several turns, as the juice cost of scrolls becomes more and more inefficient as the complexity of the spell rises.
After the battle, Tanya felt it. That surge of power. Another level up! This was… the best feeling. It was even better than the last two times! They barked out another laugh as the tiny ‘ding’ noise announced the feat. “Yattai!” They shouted. Unfortunately, the last phase of the plan waited for no one.
Tanya focused on Maggie. As Maggie was monitoring the situation, she instantly came in contact. “fifteen stacks lost.” Tanya reported. It was a higher number than it should have been, a rash of bad rolls after the schlemiel elves croaked. “A troupe of 820 uncroaked versus the third hex?”
Maggie’s response was quick, which was mostly because of the odd interactions of time between different hexes. Tanya very much liked the idea of not needing to wait much when it came to getting things done. They always hated loading bars. “60.253% chance for a victorious engagement without the use of the offensive scrolls or dwagons. With the dwagons, that improves to an 84.764% chance. With the scrolls, 71.034%. With both, 92.931%.*
Tanya grinned. They liked those odds.