A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
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OK vote closed, starting on the Left flank.
I will be presenting these on a flank by flank basis generally since doing the full battle at once would be overwhelming in the sheer number to a people and formations acting.
I will be presenting these on a flank by flank basis generally since doing the full battle at once would be overwhelming in the sheer number to a people and formations acting.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Keep in mind, we actually got pretty decent communications between not only groups of PCs, but throughout the Legions. So situational awareness should be fairly high.
Yeah definitely, I won't treat them as separate IC this is just a narrative device to actually be able to show all this stuff given the sheer scale and complexity.
Even apart from the mind dragons and such just being able to fly over the battleground allows you guys a level of visibility over the battle that RL armies could not dream of until well into the modern age.
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- Argentina
So, this will clean up most of Kasath.
I wonder what remains in the city proper. If there is something that Undead have is that they can use 100% of their population as soldiers, while we can't. Maybe the Mob will have absorbed most of the remaining civilians by the time we arrive
I wonder what remains in the city proper. If there is something that Undead have is that they can use 100% of their population as soldiers, while we can't. Maybe the Mob will have absorbed most of the remaining civilians by the time we arrive
There will still be a lot of really dangerous things there. We know the colossus is still there, and stepping into the dead god's realm could easily be suicide.
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They might get desperate and start making more bargains with the Void. It wouldn't surprise me if following enemies further in the city were empowered with it, even if only a little.
They might still have a significant force in the city. There are plenty of necromancy spells that let you whip up undead from nothing or almost nothing that don't get fully exploited due to control limits. The Mob doesn't have that issue, or at least doesn't run into it until much later. It could use a basic animate dead spell for this sort of tactic, and it probably has some sort of trick to make necromancy much more efficient for it than that.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
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- Formerly of the Far Realm
Given their ability to command a virtually limitless number of Undead, I don't see why they wouldn't have gone ahead and animated every possible Undead they could have well before now.
Throughput issues I'd assume. They're probably resurrecting as fast as they can, but that doesn't mean they have everything done already. There could also be some gently increasing maintenance cost for the absurd control buff the Mob has, which could motivate them to only raise as many as they think they need at any given time.
Significantly more than 200,000 people must have lived in these cities across the whole of their history, regardless of what their populations were like in their final days. Add onto that very useful animal skeleton or body they can find and they could have surprisingly deep reserves.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
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- Formerly of the Far Realm
I doubt anything about how these Undead were animated is normal, from start to finish. For now, I'm assuming that if it could be animated that it has been animated, especially anything sentient or with class levels.
We saw a while back that they were buying slaves and kidnapping living Humans of Sarnori descent to kill and animate as Undead. Doesn't seem like they would go through that much trouble if they had a ready supply of remains to use back in the crypts and graves of their cities.
The problem with reanimating your ancestors is they have opinions of their own, and may well be able to back them up too. Getting a tomb that endures the ages isn't cheap, so on average the people buried and preserved such that they could be raised are going to be the rich and powerful, and many of them will be mages, priests or warriors of note.
Its basically what happened in Sathar: the more modern Sarnori undead raised the Queen and she promptly took charge because she wasn't going to do what a bunch of failures told her to. We can presume the other cities saw that and steered away from the tombs of their ancient heroes and rulers.
The normal people's bodies from ancient times most likely just can't be found, nobody remembers where they were buried and even if they did there wouldn't be much left to find, ancient skeletons anywhere near to complete are the exception rather than the rule.
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Did we actually see what they were using the slaves for, or just assume that? Because we just saw some rather impressive beasts created by human sacrifice.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
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- Formerly of the Far Realm
It was probably like that scene at the end of Home Alone, where Kevin's family returns to find the house not burned down and Kevin not in the hospital, so they're all happy and Christmas is saved. And then his older brother goes up to his room and sees how badly it's been trashed.
The Queen saw what had been done by her Undead descendants and had a metaphorical "KEVIN!!!!
" moment.
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
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- Formerly of the Far Realm
My memory isn't the most reliable thing in the world, but I'm almost certain that one girl who's POV we saw was told point blank by the Undead that they were going to raise her as one of them.
Inserted tally
Interlude DCCCLII: Death's Swift Steeds
Death's Swift Steeds
Nineteenth Day of the Second Month 294 AC
A fateful evening was falling over the plains that had once been the heartlands of Sarnor and later the Great Grass Sea of the Dothraki. Waymar Royce was wondering amidst that faintly nauseous excitement that always came before battle if whatever dark power that tainted the sky had planned it this way, to sow fear and confusion into the hearts of men.
It was a less awkward though than contemplating being the only person on foot in the midst of a host of cavalry. True he could keep up, more than keep up with a horse at gallop with all the magic both woven upon hm as blessings and bound his boots, but it was still a strange thing to be standing when Teana and Tyene were both flying in the guise of genie-kind and both red priests flew instead upon the fires of their good's will.
Maybe I should have asked to fly as well, the young knight thought, glancing upwards to see not just Nettles upon Sheepstealer but a full eight heralds and five of the sea drakes.
Fortunately the young knight he did not have long to wait.
Dead men marched under tainted clouds, line upon line and row upon row, puppets and hollow things in the hands of some unseen master. They marched to tear down the first recolonized city of a new Sarnor in service to some bleak and twisted image. Yet these puppets were not the direct concern of the cavalry of the Eighth Legion. In a formation as old as war itself the enemy had two cavalry units on its flanks, scythe-wheeled chariots carrying archers bearing bows that to Waymar's eye burned with dark fire. Sorcerers in their own right, he guessed, though ones whose magic was woven into their martial arts. Little good it did them against the Dothraki.
From the look of things they could probably use some Dothraki right now, he realized, senses sharpened by sorcery allowing him to see details that others on the ground might have missed, though he doubted the mind dragons circling above would have done so. The double-curved bows looked like they could outrange the lancers' horse-bows, and if it came down to a game of cat and mouse empty bones were a lot more likely to shrug off arrows than flesh and bone.
Glancing up Waymar saw the dragonS and drakes fly closer, they should be able to strike the enemy from out of their range and thus allowing the heavy horse to charge home, but would it be enough?
What does the commander of the Eighth Legion do?
[] Commit his flying assets and mages to pinning down the enemy so that the cavalry can deal with them
[] Call for reinforcements from the reserve
-[] Write in
[] Write in
OOC: Not the longest update, but it is a choice that needs to be made given the mismatch between short bows and composite short bows. You are going to need some way to get them to commit to fighting your heavier cavalry.
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They were kidnapping people to make sapient undead out of, if they just want a meat wall to throw at the legion they might not care as much.
I mean, even if their raise ability was something as straightforward as at will animate dead they could be raising 600 new undead an hour minimum. We could afford to make an item like that, so it doesn't seem too bullshit for this level of undead to be able to match or surpass that kind of ability.
If they want to tie up their sapient undead micromanaging something, they might as well make more war beasts. A wall of low level undead like that would be pretty worthless, we'd just deny battle again and make with the artillery. Also too susceptible to being taken over wholesale by our allies from Sathar or really anybody who can make their own undead if the leaders are killed.
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
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- Formerly of the Far Realm
Here's an edited version of the chapter, DP. There are some words I added in red where the sentence seemed to end prematurely.
It's odd for Waymar to deliberately choose to stay on foot, but he is superhumanly fast and can use his boots to Teleport if in danger of being overrun.
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A horse is a very fragile thing compared to a high level PC
Anyway good night guys, see you tomorrow with the battle for Sallosh.
Come to think of it, shouldn't Waymar be riding a Griffon? It was forever ago but they even practiced once, and there was that whole thing later with the knightly order of Griffon riders, even if we didn't bring them here because they're tiny and not very badass yet. Though it comes up practically zero times because we just teleport everywhere so I wouldn't know if plans had been changed.
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If I remember correctly Tyene was going to be riding the mate of Waymar's Griffon.
The leadership doesn't matter from a control perspective, the Mob is using its cheat to directly hold the leash to all of these undead. I'd be surprised if it was feasible to take them from it on the Mob's home ground.
My point was more about what happens if we wipe their field army. I don't think they're dumb enough to just throw the meat wall at us, but bulking out their defenses while they work on a more offensive plan would be viable. On prepared ground they could have all kinds of shit set up, and wading through a concentrated mass of undead with strong fortifications and direct support from a charnel colossus would be a nightmare battle for an army.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
@DragonParadox By this point our air force should be doing some serious damage to the undead considering their range. Are the ranks just too vast to tell how much tactical effect that will have in an immediate sense? I mean it should at least fuck up unit coherence before they've even closed into bow range.
With that said, DP, the Greatcrossbows of our Legions, which IIRC have two companies each, outrange both Composite Shortbows by a singifcant margin, and Longbows by a less significant degree as well. If they deny battle to the cavalry, eventually the cavalry will just target significantly more vulnerable infantry. Given we positioned the majority of our heavy horse on the left flank, with some of our light horse too, they also risk being outflanked and outmaneuvered.
With that said, DP, the Greatcrossbows of our Legions, which IIRC have two companies each, outrange both Composite Shortbows by a singifcant margin, and Longbows by a less significant degree as well. If they deny battle to the cavalry, eventually the cavalry will just target significantly more vulnerable infantry. Given we positioned the majority of our heavy horse on the left flank, with some of our light horse too, they also risk being outflanked and outmaneuvered.