Sage_of_Eyes
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V7: Chapter 10
🕑 Added 2024-04-28 05:22:21 +0000 UTCV7: Chapter 10
…
Anyone who’s played a multiplayer game can tell you that vision is incredibly important.
While I was born past the age when four player split screen was a thing, I managed to catch the tail end of split screen gaming before everything went straight to multiplayer. Dividing our lines of sight with some cardboard, playing rounds with just one bullet in the chamber up to 2AM and just eating fake cheese with crackers and tons of sugary carbonated drinks… yeah, those were the days.
Anyway, while screen-peaking and using x-ray hacks is a sign of a low IQ individual looking for clout in an online game, scouting and cheating to get as much actionable intelligence as possible is essential in reality. Without a doubt, it’s imperative that you know what your opponent is doing, so that you can respond or even do something to stop whatever they’re planning.
Find their factories so that they can be sabotaged, find the places they’re using to supply to factories and secure those areas, and put the vice on their civilization population. If you hit those places and threaten the right people, you can get the enemy to come to you, avoiding whatever entrenchments or plans they’ve cooked up. If you’re on the defensive, knowing what the enemy has at their disposal is even more essential. Their troop movements tell you where they’re not, where you can hit, while you try to gain the initiative, make them split up their forces, and do your best to defeat them in detail or lure them into your defenses or traps.
All of that, of course, should be based on how many troops you have (manpower), how long you can keep those troops in the fight (logistics), how well those troops can fight against the enemy (tech level), and how fast they can move (movement). Information and the leadership to put that information to work, makes it so that all that’s been prepared can be used to achieve objectives and campaign goals. Once those objectives and goals are met, then victory can be said to be achieved.
Information alone is useless without the ability to make use of it.
Having an army capable of fighting and moving around is useless without knowing what the enemy is doing and how to fight them.
Finally, having both won’t matter, if you don’t have achievable objectives and goals.
You can have perfect information, and an incredible army, but you’re shit out of luck if your campaign objectives are poorly thought-out dogshit.
Like, y’know, trying to build a nation in a country whose majority population hates you, or trying to force an enemy country to surrender solely through air power without putting boots on the ground.
Failures you can get back up from and learn from aren’t failures.
They’re vital pieces of information to learn from and keep in mind for the next fight.
…
Erlan of the Forgers, Celia of the Guardians, and Khalai of the Wardens all surrounded the latest iteration of my war table for the campaign. We stopped long enough for everyone to catch up, while we were processing refugees. For all intents and purposes, we had the Death Lord surrounded, and now we were grouped up nice and neatly to plan the final push.
Even though we were several kilometers away from the Death Lord’s spellcasting range, and behind several lines of static defenses and two armies, the current gathering was pretty dumb. All the defenses we had layered on the building we were meeting at, all the extra patrols, could’ve been avoided if we had the ability to communicate with one another over long distances.
Alas, we were still working on morse code, let alone telephone, and a lot of what we were going to discuss today was dynamic and the transit time for even flying messengers was too long.
Sieges are complex and ridiculously expensive even against a single castle. We’re putting a whole province to siege, and our opponent can hit us from its tower from twenty kilometers away with barrages of artillery-grade magic. Sure, we can just charge our forces in and exhaust the mana of a Death Lord capable of raising up hundreds of thousands of Undead through sheer attrition, but troops aren’t as easily replaced in reality as it was in game. I needed them alive… so… I had to plan a siege with three different factions on the wings, since I wanted their armies alive, too.
I thought that it’d be a headache and a half, but I was glad to be wrong.
“I can have a weapon that we can use. The anti-air weapons we’ve developed have proven their worth as a replacement for ballistae and trebuchet.” Celia spoke up. After a week resting and waiting for her advisers to arrive, she came to the meeting in deep-red, Victorian-era military uniform with her hair tied up. She looked more like a general than a leader, fitting in with Erlan more than me and Khalai. Anyway, the pseudo-drone hives the Undead developed had been an interesting unit made to counter my air supremacy. They used small, undead flying creatures like bullets which swarmed the air and collided with the enemy and detonated. Its success against the Harpies was well-documented, but the news of it being aimed at ground forces was news to me. “The current mobile hives we’ve created can only reach ten kilometers, but with time and resources, we can flood the air of the enemy and provide the Death Lord with targets it cannot ignore.”
“Tell me what you need, and I’ll get it for you.” I looked over my shoulder at Ayah, and she nodded. Turning back to Celia, I instructed her as best as I could without demeaning her ability. “We will need many. Dozens. A hundred would be best.”
“Do you aim to kill the Death Lord with just that alone?” Erlan asked, in his capacity as general of the Forgers. “Supplies and materials may be better used for conventional battle.”
Celia frowned at him, seeing his words as contest to her own proposal.
I raised my hand to end the argument before it began.
“As of this moment, we have a month of supplies for equipment, munitions, and food for all four of our combined forces. Whatever is brought in now will not change our ability to run rampant and wage a conventional battle.” Erlan nodded, mollified by my statement, though I took note of the fact he had no proposal beyond that. The Forgers were really leaving him and his people out to dry without reinforcement or extra support. I knew the guy well enough to take note that he didn’t like being at the table without being able to offer anything else. “And, in regards to that, Khalai, I believe that you had something for me?”
“Of course, Jackie. Only the best for you.” Khalai was covered in near-see-through silks and golden bands and a veil. A belly dancer outfit, basically. With his hair grown out into a long braid that went over one shoulder, if not for the crown on his brow, you’d think him an exotic dancer that wandered away from the entertainment camp I set up. What? It’s better than the soldiers getting stupid ideas with the people we’re trying to integrate, and I can make sure they can get checked for venereal diseases going in and out. “We’ve studied the descriptions of the magic the Death Lord used against the Familiars that you’ve sent and we have countermeasures tested and at the ready. My Priests and Paladins can work together to repel the attacks, though it will take much of their strength. Enough strength that I cannot promise the return of all that perish before Paradise tempts them away.”
In the lore of the game, it was described that the Wardens had ridiculously high magical damage resistance thanks to their ability to use miracles to weaken magics. That high magical damage resistance kept up with magics the whole game, no matter the tier, so I guessed that they could improve on whatever they used and passively improving their techniques.
My guess proved correct, and now we had something that could protect us once we waded in to take the place.
Now, it was my turn to leverage what I had at my disposal against the Death Lord.
“My forces will advance on both fronts. The main one present here will be supported by the Forgers. The Wardens and Guardians will act as they believe they ought.” I decided against ordering Khalai and Celia around. They were the leaders of their people. It was best to stay in their good graces. Also, Khalai’s forces had poor defense against physical attacks, while most of Celia’s forces couldn’t afford to leave their holdings in the Academy’s former territory to be raided. “Besides the main force, I have a new card to play. Ayah, bring the piece.”
Ayah nodded and gingerly took out the piece propped up on a circular pedestal and held aloft.
The map was covered in various shapes and sizes. Triangles represented cavalry. T-shaped blocks infantry divisions. Squares fortresses and circles supply points. My aerial cavalry’s bases were signified by horse hooves surrounded by outstretched wings.
Finally, the new piece was my mobile air-base.
I didn’t pretend like they didn’t know about it.
“I’ve armored the prow with enough magical and physical defenses to withstand siege weapons and magical artillery for days.” It was a flying box with on of the sides given a trireme-like shaped prow to better bounce of attacks and ‘lengthen’ the armor. “It’ll advance with my second army and its payload is Guardians. Five thousand of them frozen and set to defrost right when they hit the ground. They’ll be able to operate for several minutes after being dropped on the enemy. They’ll be supported by all the Conquerors I can spare. Not commandos, but warriors all the same. It’ll reach the enemy’s position in a week.”
The job of my flying box was to get to the enemy’s last, entrenched position and rain down thousands of Guardians. The living weapons, with their speed, toughness, and ability to cut through most foes will act as shock troops and terror weapons, while Conquerors enact one of the first parachute jobs since the Ancients fell. Armed with melee weapons, explosives, and our first models of Conqueror-sized revolvers, as well as exceedingly well-armored, my flying platform was rendered little more than an oversized transport… but that was good enough for the job at hand.
Or, it would be if not for the problem that we found out several hours ago from our scouts.
“That would be enough to shatter the enemy, if not for their Death Lord’s final project.” Erlan stated grimly, while Khalai and Celia nodded. They looked at the base of the tower where a token with a skull sigil lay. “That damned monstrosity will be mobile before then.”
In-game, one of the T3 units that the monster nation that the Death Lord can create after taking a Citadel was the Legion Amalgam. A Titan unit, which every army can only have one of, because it was equal to several thousand men in terms of firepower and strength and hit points. Endgame has you rolling around with at least one in each army, because if you have one and the enemy does, you’re absolutely boned.
Anyway, back to the Legion Amalgam.
The massive creature was composed of thousands of sacrifices. A hulking hill of sloughing flesh and corpses on a frame of bone. It resembled a snail with a giant human torso protruding out the front, which had two massive arms that swept the battlefield to cause massive AoE damage. It had a crush ability that can be used on Champions to instant-kill anything not specialized for the fight or overqualified for it. Then, to top it off, when its ‘shell’ opened it revealed a massive orb of Undead magic that would revive any dead around it and deal damage to anything not Undead over the whole battlefield. On the overworld, it could raise Undead if it reached a place where a battle took place the last five turns, practically spawning a whole stack of T1 Undead units for free and with no maintenance cost, and any opponent unit in the same region would have a morale debuff as long as it existed. Its main weaknesses were the facts that it didn’t have an anti-air attack, it’s slow on the overworld so it can be kited over several turns, and despite its crush skill… it wasn’t much of a match for a dedicated titan-killer Champion.
Most of the sacrifices made to create it were Beast Tribe Soldiers, Harpies, and lesser monsters. The Death Lord effectively ate the part of its army that needed extensive maintenance and support, took their weapons to arm its legions, and used the mass to fuel a massive ritual sacrifice. Now, it had a lumbering, powerful titan that’ll roam around the map, creating armies if it reached battlefields, and generally being a nuisance until it got put down.
Just like it always did once it was cornered at the end of the tutorial event.
“As terrible this weapon is, the fact remains it can only be at one location at one time and once the Death Lord is dead, we have control over the skies. I can burn this titan away until it is ash.” This part of the tutorial is meant to teach the player the design of Events. They’re meant to be memorable at the very end. They’re rites of passage for new players and benchmarks for veterans and places to earn style points for experts. The Legion Amalgam, supported by Undead, was something I killed thousands of times over. The problem was that it usually didn’t have anti-air support from the Death Lord. “The Death Lord either needs to die, or its weapons must be targeted elsewhere.”
Celia looked my way with concern, while Khalia raised an eyebrow.
I shook my head, as I realized what they thought was going to happen.
“No, I’m not going to lead you another strike team into enemy territory to assassinate the enemy leader.” I raised my hands up and let that idea die in its infancy. I have many assets at my disposal now, so I didn’t have to wade into enemy territory. “Celia, you’ve already met her. Morgan, come on in and introduce yourself.”
Hm.
Was it just me or was Celia not looking forward to meeting Morgan again?
Strange.
Morgan said that they got along.
Comments
Jordan Holman
Hey pretty sure she got upgraded to Jack’s future concubine as far as Morgan is concerned because she’s willing to not fight to the death of her nation to keep power.
N U
To Morgan that means they get along perfectly because all she wants is for everyone to know their damn place, get their shit together, and roll over the Ancient's enemies.
Valerian
Morgan established the pecking order, that does not mean they get along.
Luis Zepeda
Morgan: hello there new sla I mean friend Celia: ...
