They'll do their best to reason with him or disable him nonlethally, but it's quite likely Vesch will simply have to eat the Armor and its unfortunate occupant.
Minor Typo: Vesch -> Versch
In an effort to make myself more on board with Armoury of Night, I tried to think up some cool shit it enables.
1. Basically ends the War before it can really get started
Man, the strength of four Armaments acting in concert is not something the powerbalance of the Human Sphere is capable of calculating. Taking out Procyon probably really screwed Republic pretty thoroughly. Even in their worst estimations, I don't think they would've believed that Procyon would fail to escape from Verschlengorge. If we can lure Fervenweirr into the VR and deal with him, even with whatever deal the Republic has with the Sovereigns, it's almost certainly not enough.
If that's not the case, we can always work on some kind of instant movement tech to pull a blitzkreig of the Republic Armaments. If taking out three of them isn't enough to knock the Republic out of the war, we've got bigger problems. Even if the Apocryphal props them up, that's effort its not spending on fucking with us directly and forcing the four Armaments to be within reinforcement range massively constrains their possibilities.
And four is if Letrzia is piloting it. If it's Hunger, that estimate is probably a fair bit higher, at least once we become accustomed to piloting. This is saying nothing about further improvements we could provide like Refinement of Battle or the potential effects a Praehihr pilot might have on the thing.
2. Automatically completes our conquest
With the support of Archduchess Letrizia and the fucking yawning maw of oblivion, I don't think anybody would really bother contesting Hunger assuming the Imperial Throne. We'll probably just foist the work off onto Adorie and Gisena in all honesty. The main problem is how we're relatively unprepared to actually keep the Throne in the face of whatever bullshit the Apocryphal will throw at us, either in terms of power (if we don't use the Empire as ablative armour) or experience (if we do). It would be a lot easier if we ended up grabbing Sword in the Stone beforehand; we need to get Fisher King anyway.
3. Allows Hunger to remain relatively out of the limelight.
If people are focusing on Verschlengorge's new and extremely bling form, they're not going to be paying as much attention to the mage her pilot picked up along the way, at least without divination or substantial reconnaissance. Even somewhat mitigating the public attention we'd otherwise receive would be fairly useful depending on what we're deciding to do.
4. Giant Robot
Fuck yeah.
1. This is vastly underestimating the Power Levels of the universe we're in. IIRC there are around 20ish Armaments in the Human Sphere, if the mere combined strength of 4 Armaments is enough to tilt the scales, it would make it trivial for a Progression-type Cursebearer to outscale simply through tactical elimination of the first few Armaments encountered.
However, let's say Upgraded Versch is sufficiently strong enough to dominate the Human Sphere and break the status quo. It wouldn't necessarily win the war because Armaments are strategic resources that cannot literally be everywhere at once.
2. Taking out Procyon evened out the scales, at best. The Empire lost Verschlengorge at the beginning of this Quest and it's been at least 2 months since then while this war's been slowly building up all the while. The Republic is also noted to have more advanced military technology, Mage extraction operations, alliance with at least 1 Astral Sovereign-class entity, a larger territory, and less scrupulous behavior than the Empire. I'd be willing to bet the Empire has been on the back-foot the entire time.
3. Losing contact with Procyon would likely spook whoever signed off on the operation to begin with, and I highly doubt anyone with common sense would send out the conventionally weakest Armament to investigate without knowing the Opponent's strength. Fervenweirr's pilot is also noted to be a coward and lacks proper combat skills, making them even more vulnerable and sending them out would be akin to sending bait.
4. The Human Sphere will have sophisticated communications technology for instant transmission, thus I doubt Hunger would be able to find a comparably flexible Instant-movement technique for intercepting Armaments, without us investing very Heavily into such a build. Such a build would frankly be very gimmicky and I'm not sure how appealing it'd be for the high effort.
5. On the contrary, a plan hinging on blitzkrieg tactics is vulnerable to Apocryphal intervention by simple fact that we're acting recklessly and within the spotlight of the entire Universe, so Apocryphal only needs to expend little effort to push literally anyone to pop up and stall our efforts. It's incredibly dangerous with little gain, since we'd be acting
hastily without acclimating to the change in environment.
6. As soon as Hunger encounters any Armament, they'll immediately know he's a Praehir, revealing his unique status. Furthermore, Procyon was able to detect a connection between Versch & Hunger and who's to say that connection is only one-way? Versch running around battling everywhere could also expose that Versch is linked to a Cursebearer.
7. Last but not least, while sufficient Power can overcome political difficulties, I highly doubt the mere strength of 4 Armaments will make the Empire bow down and kneel for Hunger. After all, why should they trust this newcomer Tyrant demanding submission, with the support of the traitorous Duchess Letrizia in such a blatant power grab?
While Hunger is napping, Versh can carry us. Both in the sense that he'll be doing a great deal of the work needed conquering shit and in the sense that he will probably literally be transporting our slumbering selves. Also, we might end up with some of the Sleep of the Just advancements! That said, all of the options are really good, so I'm not super worried about what wins.
While Versch is very capable of taking up Hunger's combat duties, it also means Hunger is not advancing for the duration of sleep, meaning we'd be wasting precious time when the Apocryphal is a concern. We'd also likely see more narrative time-skips, so keep in mind there's likely to be a change of pace where the narrative is split between short & intense bursts of Hunger's waking period & catching up on sleep.
)
