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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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Let's see, so one bomb is about ten pounds, each Wyvern can carry fifty bombs.

If we consider how many munitions have likely already been used, we probably have enough for 900-1,000~ Alchemist's Fire bombs.

Not sure how scaling works, but if we assume most cities don't really get bigger than ancient Rome in its heyday in Planetos, combined with weather conditions to make it spread edge to center, that's... probably enough to do some damage?

We might actually have to Shadow of the Doom some stuff to keep the fire going.
 
Crake said:
Let's see, so one bomb is about ten pounds, each Wyvern can carry fifty bombs.

If we consider how many munitions have likely already been used, we probably have enough for 900-1,000~ Alchemist's Fire bombs.

Not sure how scaling works, but if we assume most cities don't really get bigger than ancient Rome in its heyday in Planetos, combined with weather conditions to make it spread edge to center, that's... probably enough to do some damage?

We might actually have to Shadow of the Doom some stuff to keep the fire going.
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There's also the 5 Manticores, carrying 3,000 lb of bombs each, or about 300 full sized bombs. In total, another 1,500 bombs.

I'm pretty sure this would normally not be enough to get a firestorm going, but the weather control can cover for that.
 
Duesal said:
We can try to interspace this with Wildfyre by using a Wildfyre flask as a component with Firebrand. A very small area of effect, but with strategic placement it can do a lot of damage for us.

[X] Azel
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The Wildfire isn't really ready yet. The way our industrial alchemy works means the processes need the full month to cook up a batch of whatever they're producing.

Also, I really, really don't want to experiment with that stuff as a replacement component for Firebrand in the middle of a battlefield. That's more something you do in carefully controlled conditions, with several Companions on standby to help Dispel and extinguish the effect in the event of unforeseen...excitement.
Azel said:
Hm... definitely too little to use it on that scale. The regular fire will have to do then. We can turn the city into glass without it.

[X] Plan Melting A City
-[X] Use the Moonchaser-class vessels weather control units to create an updraft cell centered on the city.
-[X] Load up the Wyverns and Manticores to capacity with Alchemist Fire bombs, then carpet bomb the city, starting with the outermost regions.
--[X] The bombing run is done at high velocity and altitude, as precision is not a huge concern, but this way the attackers are too fast to be intercepted by any conventional flyer or ghost.
-[X] Meanwhile the Moonchaser-class vessels get ready to load their Steam Cannons with Ghost Touch +1 ammo in anticipation of incorporeal foes.

The artificial updraft cell will suck the heat to the center of the city and transform the whole thing into a firestorm. This will definitely destroy everything in the city and should get hot enough to open cellars and catacombs that are directly beneath the surface.
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Just a heads up, we have 11,970 pounds of Alchemist's Fire, minus any that was used in the defense of Sallosh. After that we'll be tapped out until more can be produced. We're going to need to start running Alchemist's Fire production lines again.

[X] Azel
 
Azel said:
There's also the 5 Manticores, carrying 3,000 lb of bombs each, or about 300 full sized bombs. In total, another 1,500 bombs.

I'm pretty sure this would normally not be enough to get a firestorm going, but the weather control can cover for that.
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Well no, more like we only have around 9-10,000 units of Alchemist's Fire, and thus around 900-1,000 bombs potentially. Not so much that our delivery mechanisms aren't up to snuff, more that we just don't have enough fire bomb to go around.

Potentially you could sprinkle in some wildfire bombs... which don't burn out very quickly, even without fuel. That would continue to spread, too.
 
Goldfish said:
Just a heads up, we have 11,970 pounds of Alchemist's Fire, minus any that was used in the defense of Sallosh. After that we'll be tapped out until more can be produced. We're going to need to start running Alchemist's Fire production lines again.
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We should probably seriously consider going on a hiring spree for people with Level 5 and alchemical knowledge. Getting as many factories up and running should be a higher priority if we're sort of scraping together enough munitions to do things like firebomb a city.

That should be one of the easiest things we can do! This is after stockpiling the stuff for months, too...
 
Crake said:
We should probably seriously consider going on a hiring spree for people with Level 5 and alchemical knowledge. Getting as many factories up and running should be a higher priority if we're sort of scraping together enough munitions to do things like firebomb a city.

That should be one of the easiest things we can do! This is after stockpiling the stuff for months, too...
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To be fair when we usually want to firebomb a city we do it ourselves because magic is a lot quicker and we have ways to make it punch a lot harder than it feasibly should.

This is basically trying to make dinner ourselves instead of ordering out and finding out our pantry is a little more bare than we anticipated or remembered.
 
Crake said:
We should probably seriously consider going on a hiring spree for people with Level 5 and alchemical knowledge. Getting as many factories up and running should be a higher priority if we're sort of scraping together enough munitions to do things like firebomb a city.

That should be one of the easiest things we can do! This is after stockpiling the stuff for months, too...
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We've only been running a couple production facilities for Alchemist's Fire, up until the end of last year before we retooled them for Wildfire.

I agree, though, about hiring more Alchemists. We've been bottlenecked pretty significantly the last few months due to a shortage of adequately leveled project managers. We should be able to find some 5th+ level Alchemists, or mages of other types with the necessary skill ranks, in Armun Kelisk or the Opaline Vault.
 
Goldfish said:
Just a heads up, we have 11,970 pounds of Alchemist's Fire, minus any that was used in the defense of Sallosh. After that we'll be tapped out until more can be produced. We're going to need to start running Alchemist's Fire production lines again.
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Huh. I could have sworn the stockpile was an order of magnitude bigger then that.
Crake said:
We should probably seriously consider going on a hiring spree for people with Level 5 and alchemical knowledge. Getting as many factories up and running should be a higher priority if we're sort of scraping together enough munitions to do things like firebomb a city.

That should be one of the easiest things we can do! This is after stockpiling the stuff for months, too...
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Seconded. The amount of munitions we can toss out in a serious engagement is huge and I'd rather not run out during the Long Night.
 
I fully expect the dead god to pul some bullshit and make us lose one vessel, but I like the idea of torching a city.

[X] Azel
 
@Azel If you've got a moment, I wanted to talk about space mechanics. I think there was some (pseudo?)scientific speculation about how a ship going really fast could avoid splatting against small debris. Though I'm wondering if that was just for really, really high speeds or to what degree one would have to worry about a moving object's durability generally not being able to take hits like that consistently without hull breaches occurring... that honestly requires more physics talk than I'm comfortable with.

Some kind of energized sheath for the front of the ship, like a plow, or a gravity manipulation trick...

I was going to suggest something deflecting average micrometeorite impacts with constant use of Brilliant Barriers at the least, though that's not really wholly a travel concern. I get the impression that would more than deal with them though, since apparently we build our spacecraft such that the overall impact of impacts over time is described as "sandblasting"? And real materials used in them aren't generally harder than aerospace grade titanium.

This might all be redundant if it actually takes a really long time to pick up any appreciable speed, but if the speed builds up at a reasonable level in-system exploration might be a possibility at the very least. I'd bet on at least half the people here being curious about surveying some gas giant moons, or trying to mine asteroid belts for metamaterials.

Edit: A whipple shield! Forgot about those. And it's a practical engineering idea too.
 
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Speed53066 said:
[X] Azel

When in doubt, use fire, and if that doesn't work you did not use enough fire.
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I'm honestly underwhelmed by the amount of fire being used here. :(

Oh well, we only have ourselves to blame. We could have been making enough bombs to turn the Sea of Grass into a wasteland months ago if we'd put more effort into stepping up production.
 
Crake said:
I'm honestly underwhelmed by the amount of fire being used here. :(

Oh well, we only have ourselves to blame. We could have been making enough bombs to turn the Sea of Grass into a wasteland months ago if we'd put more effort into stepping up production.
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Well, we just have to set up an Alcamist collage, and schools all around our empire. That way, we will always have enough fire to anilate a cupule of cities with. That and once we discover Gun Powder, well, we can automate the process.
 
Speed53066 said:
Well, we just have to set up an Alcamist collage, and schools all around our empire. That way, we will always have enough fire to anilate a cupule of cities with. That and once we discover Gun Powder, well, we can automate the process.
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Just got to get that Wildfire Production Plant set up, with Imperial Steel walls, ceilings, floors, and equipment to avoid any undue production issues.

And possibly Imperial Steel Warforged employed as workers once we figure that out.
 
Crake said:
I'm honestly underwhelmed by the amount of fire being used here. :(

Oh well, we only have ourselves to blame. We could have been making enough bombs to turn the Sea of Grass into a wasteland months ago if we'd put more effort into stepping up production.
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This just caught us at a bad time, when we were transitioning between regular Alchemist's Fire and Wildfire. From this point forward, we're going to have at least 648 pounds of Wildfire per month to use, but I think we've also seen just how much Alchemist's Fire we can use in a real battle. 12,000 pounds of the stuff seemed like a lot...

As soon as it's reasonable to put it into a vote (probably when we do our retroactive item commissions this month), we need to have our people make inquiries into hiring more project managers for our production facilities. If we can hire some, we'll be able to get the facilities built and ready next month so that they can begin production in the fourth month. More Alchemist's Fire, more Explosive Packs, and more Wildfire are all on my list.
 
Crake said:
@Azel If you've got a moment, I wanted to talk about space mechanics. I think there was some (pseudo?)scientific speculation about how a ship going really fast could avoid splatting against small debris. Though I'm wondering if that was just for really, really high speeds or to what degree one would have to worry about a moving object's durability generally not being able to take hits like that consistently without hull breaches occurring... that honestly requires more physics talk than I'm comfortable with.

Some kind of energized sheath for the front of the ship, like a plow, or a gravity manipulation trick...

I was going to suggest something deflecting average micrometeorite impacts with constant use of Brilliant Barriers at the least, though that's not really wholly a travel concern. I get the impression that would more than deal with them though, since apparently we build our spacecraft such that the overall impact of impacts over time is described as "sandblasting"? And real materials used in them aren't generally harder than aerospace grade titanium.

This might all be redundant if it actually takes a really long time to pick up any appreciable speed, but if the speed builds up at a reasonable level in-system exploration might be a possibility at the very least. I'd bet on at least half the people here being curious about surveying some gas giant moons, or trying to mine asteroid belts for metamaterials.

Edit: A whipple shield! Forgot about those. And it's a practical engineering idea too.
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Alright, a few things:

1. Everything in space is really, really fast. Maintaining an orbit close to earth means you are going at 7.8 km/s. Everything that is in a stable orbit thus will be very fast. If that is dangerous or not depends on the relative orbits. If you have an orbital inclination of 0° and hit something flying in a 180° orbit, you will collide with a relative speed of 7.8 + 7.8 = 15.6 km/s, which means a lot of energy. This turns specks of dust into bullets and a bowling ball would hit you with enough force to be measured in kilotons TNT equivalent.

2. Space is big. Really, really big. The odds of meeting, let alone hitting anything out there without trying to is absurdly small, unless you are diving into a field of debries.

3. Planetosi space should be entirely clean. Earth space is littered with the remnants of human space exploration, which is where all those dangerous things come from, but Planetos should have none of that.

4. Space debris are not Mindblanked. You can simply divine a hit in advance. The House of Mirrors can provide that service easily, giving ample warning ahead of time.

5. A Brilliant Barrier is a force effect and will stop any kinetic impactor dead in it's tracks. If you have divined that a hit will occur, all you have to do is to get up a Brilliant Barrier and let it hit that instead.

6. Thrust of a Moonchaser is indeed a bit low compared to rocket powered space-craft, but still much higher then that of ion-drive crafts. You need a bit more time to make large changes in velocity, such as initiating a Planetos -> Moon transfer, but we are talking about something that took Apollo 11 a few minutes taking the Moonchaser a hour, maybe two. Space exploration is easily possible.

7. The thrust characteristics of the Moonchaser change a bit depending on where you are in the system. This is, generally speaking, complicated, but no hindrance to exploring space. We will learn a lot about physics from examining why the engines keep doing weird stuff for no apparent reason. The astronomy department of the Citadel will go green with envy, get an ulcer from rage, or both.

8. Transfers to other stellar bodies take a long time. A transfer from Earth to Mars takes about 260 days and that is when you launch in the optimal time window. Said optimal window happens every few years. Such optimal transfer windows to other stellar bodies, such as the gas giants, are significantly rarer.

Overall, I would suggest focusing on getting a space station built and that network of spy satellites. Then do some exploring of the moon on the side.
 
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