Wow, we are a good part of the way through this month? I know Goldfish mentioned we were stuck-in there pretty good with Vialesk and Water for a couple weeks, but we're also nearly two thirds of the way done with the month.
With that said, a huge weight is also off our backs with this. Let me explain why.
One of the greatest concerns with having three enemies (Tiamat, Big Red and Deep Ones) after our jock is that the other two would definitely attack during that time because, while it was stupid in Varys' case to take advantage at a time where an existential threat to everyone is being taken off the board, that's less of a concern for an enemy that just wants to see the world burn anyway.
So one disadvantage to making our big moves (invading Westeros) contingent on having enough men and hardware to just steamroll over the Seven Kingdoms was that we wanted to delegate it entirely and focus our real power on all the 'real threats'. That is a bit of a display of contempt, sure, and while Westeros would be genuinely threatening if they were ever to show even a fraction of unity against us, we've subverted people in every Kingdom by this point, one quarter is completely unenthusiastic about fighting us in the first place even if they're not queuing up to betray oaths, and the last quarter couldn't intrigue or fight their way out of a paper bag.
But they could still be a large pain in the ass and pull something that embarrasses us like that wildfire fiasco. Which is almost worse.
And therefore, having around 5-7 Moonchasers and several dozen Wyverns early into next year completely changes everything. Let me continue explaining why.
Force projection. Who has the greatest? In a way, it is a bit of a tie between Asmodeus and the Deep Ones at the moment, but in different areas. Asmodeus is trying to catch up in the Deep Ones' area by finding a way to transport large forces onto the Prime Material, but at the moment he reigns supreme in moving intelligence and counter-intelligence assets around and setting up shop pretty much wherever he feels like, with relative impunity. Our intelligence community has some neat toys finally, and a handful of really competent leaders, but most are still in their teething phase, and to Big Red this is old hat.
The Deep Ones on the other hand have the edge in military force projection. They have enough assets and avenues to move them (planar portals) that there's largely nowhere they can't strike out at.
Both pretty much can't be ignored because of the fact that one is trying to make lack of the latter irrelevant, and the other is trying to make up for lost time and get a nice spread of moderately useful assets in place.
Tiamat is more like a crackpot with suitcase nukes and dirty bombs in evidence. They don't have the edge in either case but they can pick a fight at a really bad time.
And then we've got extraplanar military commitments...
So how do we juggle a Westerosi conquest if we still have too many knives in the air still by the time we really need to push forward with it? The timeline we've worked out is extant for a reason--it's about how long I would say we have until someone does something really dumb. Every month people over there in "I stabbed you in the back because I got greedy/fumbled my scheme/got caught having an affair" land are getting twitchier. What if they kick off a war and what's really forcing us to bother with it instead of stuff that ACTUALLY matters makes us have to move to intervene to defend our vassals?
ENTER THE MAGITECH ARMS RACE.
L E T M E E X P L A I N.
One Moonchaser makes stone fortifications irrelevant. Wyverns can drop bomblet loads that can rout entire armies. Dragon Constructs can bitchslap air-mounted fey knights out of the sky. Flesh Forged spirits can comb over an entire region and flush out guerillas. We could win Westeros with three Legions right now if we had half a dozen air ships and several dozen fighters specifically because nothing over there actually seriously threatens us, but everyone wants to settle an old grudge and we're oathbound to prevent hundreds of scores being settled. The pacification could be auto-completed if we alpha striked the enemy PCs at the start, then went back to focusing on the things that matter again.
"But Crake," you say. "We could still do that now."
It's been suggested before, but also, kinda actually, not really? The 'alpha strike' has one chance to work, and it counts on us having the initiative. And no one can seriously think at the time that we're completely ready to invade, or they will bug the fuck out and then play the asymmetric game against us. And, you know, again, completely demoralizing the enemy into low-level resistance is the ideal here, so that our auto-pacification systems can do that without us babysitting everything in case someone starts poking us in the asshole from the left field, or while we run around putting out fires we tripped up during it.
