{ === + === }
.
So it's almost summer now.
It's been a really busy five months since the end of the winter party…and the subsequent visit to Interdimensional Anna. I spent a lot of money.
We came back with the girls wearing their cat accessories, which…was an interesting experience.
Let's…not talk about it.
Right, so…
First order of business: Nowi's stone is still nowhere to be seen. We're keeping an eye open but considering the fact that Nowi is back in Ylisstol there's not much I can do to coordinate at this point. I've put in a few words with the merchants that travel in and out around the town, but there's been more false alarms than anything else.
Next: we officially moved out of the old house to the retrofitted mansion. We moved everything out, including the underground armory.
The Mansion's conversion to a barracks for our fliers finished sometime in April, and we (I) live in a connected room to it…I think it used to be a stable.
Nah…it used to be a toolshed. The stables are on the other side of the grounds. We had to demolish it to make room for an annex since the mansion wasn't big enough. The stable is somewhere else now.
Oh yeah. We had to annex a large plot of land outside the walls as well. That piece of land acts as the housing for the mounts and the practice fields for a lot of the air to air exercises.
Our airforce is more or less complete in terms of roster size: We have 40 Pegasus Knights and 20 Wyvern Riders not counting ourselves and Cherche.
I mean…granted, I would've liked to have 40 Wyvern Riders as well, but take the hand we're dealt, and all that.
Since the Mansion is a few hundred factors larger than the old house, Nina's got a job change. She's now my personal attendant instead of a maid (though she still dresses like it) and I had to hire about a hundred new people as staff.
Butlers, maids, groundskeepers, and squires.
(Un)interestingly enough one of the maids we picked up is actually named Sakuya, and she is good with knives…but only in a cooking sense.
...
What else?
The Mansion had a large front garden that we opened up to the public as a public park, so there are now a lot of commoners in what used to be a noble-only area. The nobles that lived here are pissed, but we don't really care.
The Workshop has expanded to hold a full carpentry division and we're producing Combat Rigging for the riders at full pace. The Metalworks branch is also busy making munitions…and since business is booming we're getting even more masters from Ferox, Ylisse, Plegia, and the Islands who want to be a part of the system.
I think I have around 2000 people on payroll at this point, not counting combat personnel. We're still producing largely stock Fire Emblem weapons though, and I'm really hating the fact that I don't know how to produce gunpowder…or napalm.
Why?
The first retrofitted Destroyer was completed in Mustafa's town back in February (or the local month equivalent). I think it's due to have its equipment installed by next week. It looks like a cross between a modern day Destroyer (sleek and shiny) and a block of wood (a block of wood).
It's more accurate to say that it is a marriage between the (relatively modern) Fubuki-class Destroyer and the old-age Caravel, with a length and width somewhere around the middle of both types of ships. What's the ship's name?
Maritime Patrol Vessel (MPV-01) Akatsuki. The second ship is nearing completion. The sailors of the ships are a bit disturbed by the fact that the ships don't have sails and masts, but they're adapting reasonably quickly to a ship powered by propellers.
The Carrier currently being built in our docks is behind schedule though…it's really large and the shipwrights are having a hard time. Even better, the catapult design doesn't work (too much stress on the wooden frame) so we have to go back to the drawing board. One of the Pegasus girls got injured pretty badly when the catapult exploded under her on takeoff.
So what type of armaments are the Destroyers supposed to have?
Four large scale rail cannons, anti-aircraft equipment in the form of turreted small railguns, a set of mortar tubes, and a set of torpedo tubes. Obviously not real mortar since I don't actually know how it works…so they're more like rail mortars.
We're abusing the fuck out of the whole electrical acceleration business and skipping over explosive powered devices entirely.
Compared to an average sailing ship of the age, which, according to the neutral island merchants that do business with both us and Valm, packs up to eight ballistae and rely primarily on archers and fliers…our Destroyers will clean house like nobody's business.
Ship to ship combat in game has always been more about boarding action rather than standoff combat…probably to ensure that the player has a say in what's going on. I didn't think it would actually be true though.
Uh…what else?
We "invented" the printing press, and paid off the debt to Outrealm!Anna by March. She gave us an armored maid outfit which we gave to Nina. Better not to question it.
We also purchased a large warehouse near the Dockyards and turned it into a library. Any booksellers that complained were bought out and we made them work in the library as service personnel.
Our own version of the Great Library fits the role of a Wonder oddly well. Since we have undisputed access to the Printing Press and rapid book production not requiring transcription by hand, the Library filled up with books very, very quickly and by the end of the month (the month of May. The Library came online in April) we're getting a lot of business from scholars and students flocking in from all around the continent…and the islands.
Well, mostly from the major towns nearby and some of its villages. Also, anyone can buy any book from the library (it'll just take us a while to make one for the customer).
Due to a spur of the moment idea from Morgan (read: kid loves helping people) the Library also hosts classes for people who want to attend.
Nino, the canonically illiterate mage girl, is a teacher in the Library…she specifically focuses on teaching any of the commonfolk how to read and write.
She even helped us brush up on our writing, too, since it was never too good to begin with.
Morgan also helps teach reading and writing…and math.
We drop in from time to time with Nina to help with math and science, and the fact that we (effectively the biggest noble in town nowadays) appear in the Great Library every so often helped cement its status as a place where learning takes priority over ranking.
It also made us more popular with the common folk, too.
Yeah, that too. By now all of the nobles in town are in the "if you can't beat them, join them" mindset and some of them are actually genuinely nice people once they got rid of that aristocracy bullshit.
We're also still bachelors.
Must we bring that up?
Yes.
Fiiine.
Politics is a thing that exists.
You can't weasel your way out of this.
UUUUGH.
All. And I repeat. ALL of the Pegasus Knights want to get into my pants. It… I realize that complaining about having too many potential love interests is quite possibly the most ironic thing I can do considering my status as a fuckin' nerd, but hell.
The reason being that the girls can be loosely divided on two groups of traits: political aspirations, and actual attraction.
By now I'm the de-facto lord of the entire Feroxi western coast, and my connections to Mustafa and Basilio (as well as the fact that I give no fucks about religious alignment) have made me the most influential man…pretty much on the western half of the continent.
Because of this (and, obviously, the whole 'bachelor' business) I've been getting a lot of wedding offerings because the families behind every girl wants a piece of that massive influence (and wealth) pie.
…Which brings us back to the Pegasus Knight girls. All of them are daughters of minor and major noble houses (I wish I can say 'we hired peasant girls and are training them to be knights' but honestly we don't have the time nor expertise to train a girl up from a civilian to a full blown knight at all) and all of them have a political reason to get me to fall for them.
The girls can really be categorized in four fields: Those who like us and care, those who don't like us but must, those who like us and don't care for politics, and those who give no fucks.
The last group is the best group, because they just enjoy flying and kicking ass and taking names. Almost all of the aces of our entire outfit are from the last group.
The second group is the funniest group, since their attempts are all so amazingly halfhearted it's endearing. One of them brought a cat into the mansion since she hated cats but figured that I might've liked them.
We love cats with a burning passion so she's now our favorite person (in a non-love interest kind of way).
While we're on the subject, the majority of the Wyvern Knights are men. They're also all nobility and are all primarily interested in getting the Pegasus knights to like them.
I wish for their success.
I think that's…it?
Risen.
…right.
The Risen have multiplied.
I don't know how. I don't know why. One night there was just suddenly more of them. More than usual, I mean.
"Boss, there's another issue with the Slums they want you to check out." Severa says through my door.
"Right, I'll be right there."
Severa tagged along with us. I assume it's because maintaining cover is easier when she isn't liable to run into her mother every day.
But yeah, with the Great Library and the Expanded Workshop and the Expanded Dockyard and the Trade With Mustafa, the town is developing at an alarmingly fast rate. It's gotten to the point where the slums on the southwest section of town (not really slummy but still a crummy place to live) need to be fully reclaimed. It's an operation that I'm paying for out of my own (now very, VERY deep) pockets.
Like the other nobles that hate me are SO MAD because I've made more money in a year than most of them have done in their lifetimes, and the peasantry looks the other way when it comes to how much money I have.
It's because I actually invest my money, instead of just hoarding it.
Uh…where was I?
Right. The Risen. The rapidly increasing amount of Risen.
Anyways, I don't have any substantial evidence, but based on information from Severa and my own conjectures, it is…well, it seems as if the Risen never die.
They only sleep for a year.
…
…
…
The Risen Resurgence was a force felt throughout both continents. In a striking turn of events, the Ylissean mainland was less hurt despite having more Risen to kill, while Valm was practically paralyzed due to the sudden influx of vapor undead.
The reason to this was…during the first year, the Valmese army was perfectly able to steamroll through the Risen while continuing their death march, while during the same year the Ylissean continent was caught off guard by the sudden Undead everywhere while fighting a much more even war.
During year two, however, the Valmese army is overtaxed trying to pacify the continent, while the Ylissean mainland has every town fully capable of sorting out their own attackers (up to a degree). Thus, despite the increase in Risen numbers (the ones being killed reviving plus newcomers) Ylisse held out much better.
…
[Other Places]
…
Virion and Gaius were able to collect a lot of information on cities and their defensive strengths before the increase in Risen activity. After the Risen amount increased, however, they were unable to do any more, and left Valm by the end of May.
…
The Rebels in Valm had a much easier job: they just focused on leading the swarms of Risen whenever they showed up to the Valmese garrisons and let whatever happens afterwards happen. This had the side effect of making the local populace hate the garrisons whenever they failed to win against the Risen forces and granted the Rebels the chance to play heroes.
Naturally this plan had a downside: quite a few times the Risen would overwhelm the garrisons and the towns, causing the wholesale loss of the town or village in question.
…
Ylisstol's Fast Reaction Cavalry (led by Sully) and the Shepherds (led by Chrom) had more jobs to do due to the increase in Risen activity. Though the individual villages were able to take care of themselves to a degree, more often than not the swarms of Risen ravaging the countryside required a professional's touch to handle.
In other news, Ylisse's projected tax income is expected to nosedive, and nobody has figured out how the Risen are setting fires yet.
…
Ferox: See Ylisstol and Valm and put it somewhere in the middle.
Feroxi khans have more troops to deploy and each individual Khan covers a smaller area than the Valmese army, but as a result the individual villages are less capable at dealing with the threats than their Ylissean counterparts.
…
Plegia's people: Screwed. Grima's people: Pretty okay.
Plegia was largely spared from the Risen threat last year, and thus the influx of undead this year killed literally everyone.
Figuratively.
If the Risen showing up had an upside, it would be that they acted as a common enemy for the Plegian Generals (sans Mustafa) and Plegia became a unified nation again almost overnight.
Mustafa's territory, it should be noted, was now considered an independent state in all but name along with Ash's territory.
…
Everyone: With the increase in Risen activity, banditry has gone up as the major towns dig in to weather the storm. The effects of the increased banditry is different in each continent, with the ones with a more mobile force (Ylisse, Plegia) doing better than ones that had other, more pressing worries (Valm).
...
[Ash, again – Town Slums]
…
"Alright, what's the problem this time?" Ash asks as soon as he sees Severa escorting a pair of local town militiamen.
The two men exchange uncomfortable glances. "Your highness, it's not a problem per-se, Lady Severa may have overreacted when—" Ash held up a hand. "Sorry, sir…but it's just squatters again."
"You called me for squatters?" Ash glances at Severa with a raised eyebrow.
"I believe I was right to do so, Boss." Severa nods.
"Alright. Let's go." Ash shrugs.
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
If it's Severa, then she has a damn good reason for calling me out for squatters.
For the record, our policy for squatters has usually been "convert them to tax-paying workers" by giving them decently paid jobs in the Workshop or Shipyard, so these kind of things usually resolve by themselves pretty quickly. With that in mind, having Severa call us out for something like this means that the person doing the squatting is highly unusual.
In any case…we arrive at the rundown house that the squatter is squatting in.
The houses around it have either been torn down or are in the process of being torn down, so it really sticks out.
Let's see…
We go inside. In the furthest room away from the door was…
A…bundle of rags? Whatever it is it's not looking at me.
"Luna, cover me." I say before I approach the rags. I don't smell anything besides dust, so whatever it is isn't biological and dead.
"Got it, boss." Severa pulls out a light crossbow and aims it at the rags.
We approach the bundle of rags and poke it a few times.
…
…
So as it turns out it was actually just a bundle of rags.
The two guys, however, were adamant that there was something else there, and judging by their description whatever it was had some very odd characteristics.
If we didn't know better we'd think that the two of them were drunk off their asses at nine in the morning.
On one hand I want to smack the both of them for making me come down here for something that didn't resolve to anything important, but on the other hand I'm worried that there actually was a something there and now it's loose in the town.
Better safe than sorry, right? "Luna, tell the town guards to watch for any suspicious movement. If they see something unusual, tag it with a stunner if they can." A stunner is a spear with a hollow tip. The tip has a piece of spell paper inside it that uses sound based magic.
"I think they were just drunk." Severa shrugs. "It's not like it's the first time they've said something stupid."
True. "I'd rather not get blindsided because of assumptions." I respond. "Get it done, please?"
"Aye aye, boss." Severa snaps a salute and leaves.
Hmm…Severa made the final decision to call me out here. Game!Severa was willing to dive into a Bandit fortress just to talk one villager out of being killed by the good guys, so maybe there's something else out here?
…
…
There was…kind of. After poking around for an hour or so we found out that one of the overseers responsible for rebuilding the slum area into something more habitable was pocketing the money we were giving him.
He has since been arrested. He also overpowered the guards through sheer surprise factor.
So we shot him in the balls. We missed by a little bit.
He is now whimpering in the jail cell in the guard barracks, largely because one of the guards is constantly aiming a crossbow at his nuts just in case he decides to pull some bullshit again.
The guard is known for having a twitchy trigger finger.
"Why didn't you just tell me?" I ask Severa on our way back home.
"The boss is too active when it comes to hunting down idiots." Severa grins. "So if I had told you he would've found out when you went to the Slums with your full combat gear."
…
Fair point. I only carried a small rail gun (standard issue for all air force units) into the slums. Plus my sword, but nobody cares about a sword.
We pass by the town square and the largest Inn in the town before
"Yo!" I hear someone loudly exclaim right as I hit the ground due to a large hand being applied to my back.
"Hi, Basilio." I say into the floor.
"Did I hit you too hard?" Basilio glances at his hand. "Sorry about that."
Severa looks to Basilio and to us on the ground worriedly, as if to ask herself "should I be doing something here?"
She eventually settles for a polite "good afternoon, Khan Basilio."
"Good afternoon to you too, lady." Basilio replies equally politely. "Your roster of girls just keep on getting bigger." He says to me.
"I noticed." I get up and dust myself off. "What brings you out here? Is your hibernation over?"
"Yeah, it's finally gotten warm outside." Basilio laughs. "I came out here to see what you were doing, Khan-to-be."
What? "I hope that was a joke." I frown.
"It's half and half." Basilio grunts. "A lot of people back home are talking about you looking to become a Khan. I know you've been rallying power alarmingly fast, but it didn't feel like you."
Hmm… "I'm happy with what I've got. Leave me out of the politics business."
Basilio looks relieved, if only a little. "I'll take that as your official response."
"Yeah, and…" I hear a bell. "Tower! Report!" I yell upwards.
The Biggest Inn also has a tall tower with a large spyglass for observation purposes.
"Unflagged ships offshore! Possibly hostile!" The man in the tower yells back.
…
Wait, wait, stop panicking. Chapter 12 has to happen before 14. This is probably the invasion from 12. Stay focused…also, stop the people from panicking.
The people walking the streets are making one hell of a fuss. They've never had a naval threat before.
We fire a loud, whistling flare into the sky and grab the attention of everyone around us.
We tap our pocket spellbook.
"Don't panic! Have a little faith in us, yeah?" Our voice is magically amplified, so everyone around could hear it just fine. "Garrison! Move and secure equipment for anti-ship combat. Tower, keep watch on enemy ship movements and alert us if they make any sudden moves. Ours is a coastal city, attacks from the waters is just a part of life. Let's do this right."
"Impressive." Basilio notes as the civilians all calm down and move quickly with purpose. "Your influence in the town wasn't just all rumors."
"Safety first and all that." I turn to Severa. "Severa, contact Cherche and have our air force ready to sally."
…
Oh shit I called her Severa.
She salutes as if nothing happened and quickly runs off.
"Where are you going?" Basilio asks (and follows) us.
"Home, I need to make some preparations."
…
…
So, combat equipment.
We have our smaller rail guns which is standard issue for all air units.
All standard Pegasus knights get a lance, a set of javelins, and their Combat Rigging that can hold up to four munitions.
All standard Wyvern knights get the same plus a Poleaxe, but their Combat Rigging can only hold up to two munitions.
We also have special corps, and the special corps is what we're going home for.
…
We practically ran back to our mansion.
"Nice place." Basilio mutters as we cross the threshold.
"Head maid!" I call out.
The head maid a nice old lady…also, terrifying if you cross her. She has control of the mansion.
"Yes, Sir?" She bows politely.
"Are the Blackbird girls up yet?"
She huffs. "I know you're bad with names, sir Ash, but an effort should be made nevertheless."
"Sorry, sorry, but right now we're in a bit of a pinch." I smile sheepishly.
"We saw, boss." One of the girls comes into view. "They have six ships in the water."
For those wondering, the Blackbird girls are so named because they fulfill the role of the SR-71 Blackbird. That is, they scout. The girls in question have exceptionally sharp eyes and use the snapshot tomes to get an unprecedented view of the battlefield.
The reason why they're SR-71s instead U-2s is because their Combat Riggings are designed to brace and hold a set of six Cruise Engines instead of two…and because the Blackbird is just a cool plane in general. In order to distinguish the girls they were given small black capes (complete with eagle image) that drape over one shoulder.
"Two are definitely transports, and the other four are escorts." The girl gives me a picture. I think she's Sorano. "I think there's around two, three hundred men on those ships."
We should have the maids put the girl's names on their capes.
"Definitely scouts then." Basilio says. "Odds are they're carrying more supplies than men…"
"But if it's Valm, then those troops are probably good." Now that I think about it, this is weird. I heard that Valm was having issues with dealing with Risen in their continent, so if that was the case then why did they send out a scouting force?
"If it's Valm then the bulk of the force on that ship is probably cavalry." Basilio corrects me. "Might explain why they're so light on manpower."
"Well…we're not counting on any oarsman they might have under the deck." Sorano? Amends. "So their actual combat power is a bit higher. Um…" She looks between me and Basilio.
"Ash, you have command." Basilio clarifies.
Not that I expected any differently. "Alright." Looks like the other Blackbird girl is here. "Blackbirds, I need you girls to act as mission control, so bring flares when you go up."
Both of them salute cutely, and I feel really bad for not knowing their names.
Physically they represent Thany from Fire Emblem 6. Both of them.
"Anyways." I leave the mansion and see Magna all rigged up and ready to go, with Cherche sitting on Minerva next to him. "That was fast."
Cherche and Magna were the only two Wyvern/Wyvern riders in attendance. Other than her, there were eight mounted Pegasus knights with a few dozen nondescript crewmen wheeling out bombs from the mansion's armory.
"Luna is a fast runner." Cherche smiles. "Her mastery of those jet boots is even better than yours."
Severa's really good with the wind-enchanted shoes...to the point where she can freely scale walls with them. It's pretty cool to see, actually...I can only scale walls if I hit it just right.
If Severa here translated to game terms she would be all sorts of broken: Increased move, Can walk through enemies, Indefinite Galeforce…
"Of all of our forces, only the Gripen and Rafale forces are available for action…or rather, we have limited ammunition and those two are the best squadrons so far." Cherche reports…so we have eight fliers besides ourselves.
"You have an odd naming sense, Ash." Basilio notes.
"Says you and literally everyone else." I roll my eyes. "That's good enough. What do we have?"
"Four torpedoes and four…uh…fletchettes."
Hmm…Both squadrons of four are Pegasus knights, and they don't really have the flight ceiling to make full use of the fletchette bombs.
More importantly, the Fletchette bombs are pretty useless against ships.
"We should have one or two AFMs ready, though." Nina joins in the conversation.
Since changing jobs, Nina's acting as our quartermaster. Odds are she'll fulfill this role for when the campaign against Valm starts for real.
"What's an AFM?" Basilio frowns at me.
"Anti-Fortress Munition." I explain. "Against ships they should work fine; bring them out."
"But their igniters…" Cherche points out.
"It'll be fine." I reassure her. "Give me the AFMs, The Rafales will handle one Fletchette each, and the Gripens will take the torpedoes."
"If you say so." Cherche sighs. "Crewmen, please start working. Mount one AFM on both Minvera and Magna, please."
…
[Valm Warships]
…
"So that's the rising Jewel of the Coast." Dalton, the captain of the expeditionary force, said as he observed the coastline through his spyglass. "It's quite something."
"To have built a no-name coastal town up to the center of the Feroxi coast, whoever this Ash is is pretty impressive." His lieutenant noted. "I've heard of plenty of rumors surrounding him, and none of them make any sense to me."
"So he's just like Basilio?" Dalton laughed. "Morons, the lot of them."
"If I may." Dalton's strategist chips in. "The rumors surrounding this 'Ash' character concerning his martial prowess paint him as an incredibly flexible fighter and commander…we should approach with caution."
"He's just a half-wit mage." His lieutenant snaps. "All we need to do is to get him in sword reach and he'll die like a little bitch."
"Enough." Dalton stops his advisors. "Looks like we've got their attention."
"The girls with the black capes again?" The strategist looked to the air with his own spyglass. "Were they just out to scout us the first time?"
"Looks like they're more organized this time around." The lieutenant noted. "They brought friends, too."
"Ten air units…but their shapes are odd." The strategist agreed. "Some kind of combat equipment, I suppose?" He looked to Dalton. "Your orders, sir."
"Ready the archers." Dalton said simply. "Heroes don't live long in wars."
"Yes sir."
…
[Good Guys™]
…
"Doesn't look like the ships are friendly." Cherche notes. "Ash, your orders."
Six ships…clustered fairly close together. Ash mulls it over. I don't have anything resembling targeting electronics, so dropping a precision target bomb from out of arrow range is literally impossible.
"Blackbirds!" Ash calls out. "Relay pointers!"
The two Blackbird girls dutifully fire flares into the air.
…
…
"Flares? During the day?" Dalton's strategist raised an eyebrow. "Is their captain a moron?"
"They came out here with ten units. They're morons." The Lieutenant snickered. "What are they going to do with just flares?"
…
…
"I see flares." Basilio squints. "I assume they have some meaning."
"That they do, sir." Morgan nods. "Alright, guys! Prepare for the first volley!"
The twenty sets of large scale rail guns arrayed on the coastline raised their barrels as one.
"I think I got my math right." Morgan mumbled, checking his notebook one more time. "Oh well. Not like we're actually going to hit them from all the way out here." The ships they were targeting were just specks on the horizon. "Stagger your shots, fire away!"
…
"The shit?!"
Dalton's two words captured the situation fairly well.
The situation being: the ocean suddenly exploding around the ships.
"Report!" Dalton roared.
"We're being shot at!" His Lieutenant pointed out the obvious.
"They're shooting at us from somewhere!" The Strategist followed suit.
"No shit! Where are they shooting at us from?!" Dalton looked to the skies, and saw…nothing.
The waters around them exploded again.
"One of our ships have been hit!" The Strategist said as the deck of one of the smallest ships exploded in woodchips and blood. "It's taking on water!"
A single shot?! Impossible! Dalton's face contorted into fury. "Alert all ships! Charge and strike at the enemy town!"
"They can't possibly be shooting at us from that far out!" The Lieutenant flinched as something zipped by his face very quickly, taking a piece of the ship's deck with it as the bullet-or whatever it was-shattered against the ocean surface.
"But we're being fired on!" The Strategist snapped. "Those girls up there must be directing the attack! Archers! Fire! Fire up there!"
"You won't reach!" The Lieutenant snapped as the ships cut their anchor and the oars men rowed with all of their strength.
"Mages! Unfurl sails and bring us to their shores!" Dalton commanded.
Using wind magic to power the sails is a common occurrence on the high seas for the major militaries of the Fire Emblem universe.
...
"Ash, the ships are moving." Cherche says. "It's time for us to make a move too."
"Yeah." Ash nods. "Alright, we're going to make our attack run! Gripens will target the ships, Rafales will target the decks! Cherche, you're with me."
Cherche nods.
"Blackbirds, send the signal to cease fire!" Ash said as Magna turned lazily in the air to find a good angle of approach. "All units, strike!"
…
…
"They've stopped shooting at us." Dalton's Lieutenant notes as the explosions subside. "Did they run out of ammo?"
"Probably; I can't imagine producing those spellbooks on any large level." The Strategist said. "What the…" He looked up. "Shit. Dalton! The fliers are gone! Only those black caped girls are left!"
"What?!" Dalton looks up to confirm then scans the skies. "Archers, look alive!"
The Lieutenant blinked when he noticed something else in the water. "Oy, look over there. There are ropes in the water."
"Ropes? What do you mean, ropes?" Dalton demanded, following his Lieutenant's finger to four streaks of white headed towards their ship.
…
Everyone aboard the ship (who could see it) watched with fascination as the white ropes in the water made contact with the ship's hull. That fascination quickly turned into horror as explosions rocked the boats again, and the horror quickly turned into panic as the struck ships started to list into the water.
"We…we might want to consider surrendering." Dalton's Lieutenant said faintly.
"We still have two more ships left and the enemy shoreline is well within reach." Dalton snaps. "I will not let these honorless curs defeat me!"
"Honor or not, they have you whipped." His Strategist mutters. "Heads up, one of their Wyverns is over our heads."
…
Ash looked down with a slight frown as the arrows fired by the archers uselessly flew back down. "Well, they get points for trying." He said.
If this ship is shooting at me then diving at it would be suicidal. He thought. So let's target the other large ship instead.
…
"He's diving at the other ship!" Dalton snarled. "What can he possibly hope to do by himself?!"
"Sink it?" The Lieutenant said dryly as the Wyvern rider pulled out of the dive. "Looks like he dropped something."
The two of them watched as the small something dropped from the Wyvern hit the ship…and then nothing happened.
…
Was it a dud? Ash thought as he pulled away from the ship spewing arrows everywhere. Nah, let's wait and see for a bit.
Waiting and seeing paid off: the ship began to smoke from the inside out and then quickly burst into flames.
"So whatever he dropped was a firebomb?! Dammit!" Dalton picked up a bow and notched an arrow. "You have no honor, Wyvern Knight!" He yelled into the sky. "Fight us on equal grounds, and we'll show you what a real man looks like!"
"I'm the only guy in the air right now though." Ash sighed, watching Cherche dive down towards Dalton's ship while they were distracted with him.
…
…
Basilio watched the last ship go under and gave a low whistle. "That's…quite impressive."
"Isn't it?" Morgan snapped his fingers. "Long range engagement. All of the victory with none of the casualty…as Boss calls it. I need to get the ships going." He bounces away even before he finished speaking.
"Going? Going where?" Basilio calls after him.
"SAR!" Morgan yells back.
Basilio shares a confused glance with the operator manning the turret next to him. "What's an SAR?"
…
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
…
So, that went way better than I expected. No munitions failed, no deployment issues…nobody on our side got hit…if we had this kind of equipment in game, do we get experience for the kills? I mean, I'm pretty sure I killed like 200 people with one bomb back there.
Probably less: a lot of the crewmembers of the ship we sunk bailed out into the ocean. Judging by the tremendous lack of organization it can be assumed that the majority of them don't know how to swim.
Hmm…oh?
The Akatsuki, along with a few of the smaller trade ships, have left port and are headed towards the combat area. The Akatsuki, despite how large it is, is the fastest ship in the makeshift fleet.
I guess Morgan deployed them?
We indicate to all of the fliers and dive down to land on the ship.
"General!" the captain of the ship salutes. Also, I feel like my rank is inflating. "Per Morgan's suggestions, we're out here to do Search and Rescue."
Yeah, thought so. "Understood, we'll assist. Cherche, grab the other fliers."
We tie rescue equipment to our combat rigging and take off again.
The 'rescue equipment' is literally just rope. We drop rope onto people in the water. They grab on, and we lead them to the nearest boat.
It's not like we can't fly the people to the boats, but uh…during practice we've overestimated the grip of the people holding onto rope and slammed more than one guy into the ship they were supposed to land on.
In one particular instance we underestimated how well our rescuee was at climbing and dropped him so far off ground he missed the deck of the ship entirely and landed in the water again. That has turned into a game the knights play with the town kids on their down time.
Anyways, rescue, rescue…
…
…
…
At the end of the rescue operation, we picked up maybe eighty people. None of them looked like officers, but then again being in water has the interesting habit of causing people to strip off their armor, so…
"Well, now what?" I look to Cherche. "I didn't actually expect to fish up anyone alive."
"Really?" Cherche sighs. "How reliable of you. Captain, please return to port; I imagine that most of these men will be more than happy to return to their homelands."
So she thinks we picked up primarily the crew, not the soldiers.
I'm a little bit wary about sending these guys home, to be honest. If they get picked up by Valm and spill the beans we're going to be in for a much, much tougher fight in the future.
Rebuttal: the amount of people who witnessed this fight, even if at a distance, amounts to THE ENTIRE TOWN.
…oh yeah. I guess that's a valid point.
…
We sort out the post-battle issues with Basilio's help. Ultimately we released all the prisoners we took.
I would've liked to hold a ransom for at least a few of them, but…meh, nothing wrong with taking the moral high ground every now and then.
We also got a request from Basilio to explain all of our weapons to him.
Uh…what is there to be said?
So…we currently have three types of ammunition that our air units use. All the Pegasus Knights can mount up to four at once, but if they do they effectively lose all air combat capability, so we stick with two unless they're using torpedoes.
The Torpedoes have a soft iron head with a metal tube body. It's propelled forward by a propeller spun with wind magic. Compared to the real torpedoes used by the Earth military it's a lot slower and a lot lighter. What makes our Torpedoes useful is the fact that it contains two spell circles (we usually use Arcfire and Arcthunder) loosely separated by a string. When the torpedo hits a boat the impact force drives the spell papers together, and since spells go kaboom when they come together…
The force of the explosion will tear the iron head to pieces and drive it into the ship's hull, hopefully ripping it a hole large enough for sharks to swim through.
We're currently working on increasing the torpedo's speed so the damage it deals isn't dependent on how hard we cross our fingers.
Next is…
The Fletchette bombs that we didn't use on the ships. It was a good call by the Rafale girls too, since the Fletchettes were designed against ground targets to begin with…I'm also pretty sure that using these bombs on ships would constitute a war crime.
Anyways, the Fletchette bombs are half Fletchette, half Self-Forging Munition. The bombs are stocky and their tips are fragile. When released, there's about a five second delay (Morgan worked this part out) before the bomb is suddenly stopped in midair via a blast of wind (kind of like VTOL thrusters). Spell papers collide, and the relatively fragile body goes kaboom.
We're relying very hard on the whole spell papers go kaboom thing.
After bomb goes kaboom, the payload of sharp metal fragments gets separated and flies everywhere (but mostly downwards) onto the unfortunate enemies below them. When dropped at low altitude the shrapnel is hurty and harmy and painy, but when dropped at a high altitude (largely achievable only by Wyverns since they have a higher flight ceiling) the shrapnel pieces heat and forge into molten metal droplets, and then it's pretty much burning metal rain from that point.
The biggest downside to the bomb is the fact that it's coverage area is too wide compared to how much shrapnel it drops, but if we have twenty Wyverns carpeting a single area we should be able to cover for that weakness no problem.
"No army on the ground can fight something like that, I suppose." Basilio had commented.
The third weapon is the Anti-Fortress-Munition, the AFM. This is my proudest work.
Even though we can't claim intellectual rights on it.
We can't really claim rights on the idea that things can burn.
Anyways. The AFM physically represent a guided penetration bomb (The GBU-24) with a supple wooden body, but with a reinforced drill attached to the head powered by (what else?) wind magic in the bomb's body. The drill doesn't have the force required to do any real bunker bustering (so we can't just lob it onto a castle and expect it to work) but against light emplacements it…actually I'm pretty sure if I dropped it onto a house it would go through the roof and then Chrom will kill me.
Ahem.
The bomb is filled with oil and tinder, and while the bomb is dropping it is also spinning, and while it is spinning it a piece of flint connected to the spinning center is being rapidly struck onto a grooved iron band built in the center of the bomb. The effect is not unlike taking a stick of wood onto a chain-link fence and listening to it go "tink tink tink tink"
Speaking objectively, this grooved iron band is why this bomb is both good and bad. When the bomb is produced, it is kept as airtight as possible based on currently (Fire Emblem Universe) available technologies, so the bomb doesn't ignite early when it's still being dropped.
Shit can't burn when there's no O2.
We don't have the tools to build a completely airtight body, so air eventually does seep in and the mixture will ignite, and then…if it's on the ground, it blows up and scatters hot oil everywhere. Well, ok, it doesn't really "blow up" but we put a sound-based spell in the middle to hurry the process up.
More on that later.
So in a small, enclosed area like a peasant house, everything inside it catches on fire, everyone inside it catches on fire, and the house then burns to the ground with everyone inside of it. Same for any structure that has combustible components, this bomb will take it down disgusting fast.
It is worse when the bomb head malfunctions after hitting a house roof and detaches: the oil from the bomb will leak out while on fire so now suddenly there's just a pillar of fire inside the house, before it detonates and then there's suddenly a blanket of fire inside the house.
It is…far worse, when it detonates in the air though.
When the sonic spell goes off, the burning oil is spread over a wide area. The fact that we use an oil mix that burns for surprisingly long (though not as long as petrol) ensures that if a bomb goes off prematurely EVERYONE in the impact area will suffer severe burns, if not die outright.
I'm not optimistic enough to believe that the Shepherds (hell, my squadron included) will be able to walk through a charred field filled with nothing but burned corpses and resist the urge to stab me in the back.
If the positions were reversed (Me serving under someone who just napalmed a village) I'd backstab him in a heartbeat, so…for that reason, we're trying to make the bomb of mass destruct safer.
"Here's to hoping you succeed." Basilio had commented.
Now, about the sonic spells.
Right, right.
We obtained the Megaphone tome and the Snapshot tome from Anna at a steep (but reasonable!) price. Almost immediately upon getting them I tore them to ribbons to figure out the spell circles.
Fucking hell Outrealm Anna is a genius. One page of the megaphone spell is a concentric 15 layer circle, and the spell doesn't even work until four pages are used together.
To give you an idea, Morgan can use five Fire spells for one page, and it's at best a circle plus a little extra per page.
Snapshot was, surprisingly enough, easier. It takes around 3 pages (17 layer spell circle) to 'take' the picture, and the rest of the 17 pages (24 layer spell circle per page) to turn the 'stored data' into a physical picture.
Incidentally, the above is why we brought the printing press to fruition. It took me around 3 weeks to make one charge of the Megaphone spell. The book she sold me was good for 20 charges.
Also incidentally, our handwriting has gotten a lot neater as a result of needing to make 4 point font with our bare hands.
No wonder Anna wanted more per book.
Oh well, difficulty of spell reproduction aside, the entire point of having those two spells were to learn how to manipulate and how to manipulate sound.
The sonic blast spell is the first fruit.
…
I had to mix it with the logic behind wind spells, but what it does is it creates an explosive force around a small localized area. It hits harder than its equivalent (Wind), too.
But it has no range.
…
Yeah, that. None of us can figure out how to turn it into a ball projectile so the spell detonates as soon as it leaves the caster's (usually mine) hand.
With that in mind, I can't really advance on the combat front any more beyond the Sonic Blast.
To be fair, it in itself is already plenty deadly. We embedded a pair of sonic blast spell pages into a pair of gauntlets.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Sending shockwaves into someone's body really sucks for that someone. At low output it fucks with their ears and they can't stand up straight anymore, and at high outputs we shatter their bones entirely. With successive pummels we stop their hearts from beating and their lungs from working, so on, so forth.
If I had any confidence in my Close Quarters Combat I'd switch to gauntlets permanently, but I don't, so I won't.
…
The light based spells haven't created anything tremendously useful yet. The only thing we have so far is…
Wait. Back up.
I delved into dark magic…only got as far as Flux and Nosferatu though.
Anyways, one of the fundamental aspects of dark magic is "knowledge", which is a little different from anima (fire, thunder) which is…uh…
Nino explained it as "unity."
There's never been a full scientific study for magic, so it's a little hard to put it into words. In the most simple senses, a mage's ability to use anima magic depends heavily on how well they…er, can use anima magic. It's kind of why anima spell books are all tiered (thunder, elthunder, arcthunder, thoron), the reason being so mages can quickly and easily adapt to using more power without needing to drastically learn a new skillset.
To put it in a different way, using anima magic just requires picking up a spellbook and going through it via trial and error; having an understanding makes it go faster, but it is entirely possible to brute-force the learning process.
Dark magic is different from a fundamental aspect. In order to use it there has to be an innate understanding of how the spell works before the spellbook will actually work for you…on that note, dark magic spell circles are deceptively threadbare in how much content they have.
For the record, we ARE guessing at best when it comes to these things. Documentation's pretty hard to come by when it comes to spellbooks.
So, Flux. Flux's basis is an understanding of geology…the more you understand the moment of the earth, the more powerful the spell is.
It's not pure scientific knowledge either, which throws us off a little bit. Either way, we can use a Flux that hits with the impact force of a Richter 6 earthquake, and all of it concentrated in the body of the poor sap that we're shooting at.
Nosferatu works on an understanding of biology. We also hit pretty hard with this spell.
Nosferatu deals damage according to which body parts we're hitting…for us, we usually aim for the tendons, muscles, and then nerves, in that order.
Can't move, can't scream, can't breathe. All you can do is feel pain in every part of your body before slowly choking to death. I love Nosferatu. I don't understand how the "heal" component of the spell works at all though, so I don't get that benefit.
We know that it is 'absorbing' something, but actually healing from it is another matter entirely.
Maybe I should invite Tharja? Seems like she'd know…or Henry, we…I can't imagine Henry sitting down and teaching, so maybe not.
Well, whatever. The point of this detour is that we figured out how to reproduce the 'absorb' mechanic from Nosferatu, and even though the 'stolen energy' or whatever the hell it is is entirely bled off into the atmosphere, it's still viable as a sub-component in a lot of spells.
To that end, with the absorption mechanic mixed along with some of the preliminary research into light manipulation magic means that the barding we use for Pegasus knights give them a certain measure of invisibility. I don't think we'll get to the point where the horses are literally invisible, plus it's not invisibility, but rather forcing the people observing them to fail a spot check if they're not paying attention, but every little bit helps…plus the fact that the spell paper has to be inserted into the barding with the spirit dust mixture makes it a fair amount heavier. Hmm…
Maybe we should just reserve it for the Halloween girls?
I can see it helping them a lot, so that might be a good idea.
For the record, the Pegasus Knight girls are given the following squadron designations: Rafale, Gripen, Typhoon, Mirage, Tomcat, Hornet, Fulcrum, Tornado, Blackbird, and Halloween, with the last two being special op units.
Some of the names were taken like Eagle, Falcon, etc. And some other names would've gotten our asses kicked (like Warthog, despite how amazing the A-10 is).
All of them have the cute little over-one-shoulder capes with emblems that denote their squadron affiliations. The Blackbirds are the only ones with a specially colored cape, though.
The Halloween girls are so named because they fulfill the roles of the AC-130U, and denoting their squadron as "Spooky" would've, y'know, gotten our asses kicked.
The Halloween girls are all tiny...they kind of need to be though, considering how much equipment they pack.
One anti-ship railgun, one rapid fire rail repeater, One fletchette potato gun, plus a fair amount of spare ammunition. Yeah, they have a pretty heavy loadout…hell, their Pegasi carry pretty much four girl's worth of weight.
Nino (plus two or three master smiths) figured out the preliminary design needed for a rapid loader. It can fire three or four shots very quickly, but it's a start.
…
So what do we do now?
"Basilio, do you think Valm is going to come after us seriously from now on?" I ask him.
This is the day after us sinking the ships, we're at lunch.
"If what you did to their ships become common knowledge, no." Basilio grunts. "With that said, I know Valm has had a lot of trouble with the Risen at home, so them coming here makes no sense to begin with."
'I know', huh? Sounds like he's got spies on the ground. Still, why's Valm doing this?
…why did Valm invade the good guys to begin with?
…
Oh.
Oh Shit.
"Looks like you know something." Basilio comments.
"Yeah…well, I think so." I say slowly. "Basilio, would it be possible for you to lend me troops?"
"Not in a million years." Basilio laughs. "Is it that bad?"
"It…uh. It could potentially be bad. If you can't lend me troops then lend me some officers and drillmasters."
Basilio shakes his head. "I'll see what I can do…but odds are you'll have to pay for them out of pocket yourself."
I wave it off. "That's fine; I have some pretty deep pockets nowadays."
"So I heard." Basilio raises an eyebrow. "How deep are your pockets nowadays? You've been doing this for almost a year."
Uh…Let's see.
"I think I have around eight hundred grand in raw funds, the Great Library is worth around five hundred grand, the Workshop is somewhere around a million…trade with Mustafa is around four hundred, and the Dockyard is around a hundred thousand." Or thereabouts…I don't have (and am not) a professional accountant, so the estimates are very roughly based on the income we're paying out in taxes to the town...huh? Basilio seems to be frozen.
Total tally: almost 3 million gold.
"You ok?"
…He's making words with his mouth but no sounds are coming out.
"How do you have that much money?!" Basilio demands. "Where is your gold mine?!"
Uh. "Well, we make good things and we make a lot of them." I shrug. "That's all there is to it."
"You should work as our economic advisor." Basilio sighs. "We would have an infinite amount of money then."
"I don't think it would work out." I laugh. "I'm only successful because the average person trusts me." And because the people I hired are all upstanding badasses.
"Well…I'll send you some candidates. What do you have in mind with trainers?" Basilio asks (and takes a snack from a tray Nina gives us).
"Improved ground forces. What else?"
…
…
[Elsewhere]
…
…
A young girl with a pretty red coat sat atop of a rock, watching the hustle and bustle of a mansion being hastily repaired and repopulated.
"Isn't that the mansion I fell into?" She wonders out loud and tries to pat down the strand of hair on her head (to no avail). "They made their base there?"
"Looks like it." Her travelling companion, a frail if angry looking priest, nods. "No sense of décor, the lot of them. What do you plan on doing?"
"I'm going to get Miss Nowi's stone back." The girl hops to her feet and stretches.
"Miss Nowi, not 'Mother', eh?" The priest notes.
"As our Boss says, until we meet, we're not related." The girl (by now I think we all know is Nah) says a little dejectedly. "Besides, my Mother is here." She pats a Dragonstone seated in a pouch on her waist (right side).
"Sounds reasonable enough to me." The priest (Brady) chuckles. "I'll get lunch set up. You gonna be back by then?"
Nah looked at the sky…it was maybe an hour until lunch. "That should be plenty of time." She reached into the pouches around her waist and pulled out both Dragonstones nested within and headed onto the mansion's grounds.
"You're just going to let her go alone?" The merchant responsible for finding the whereabouts of Nowi's dragonstone asked Brady incredulously. "She's just a little girl!"
"Nah? She's fine." Brady replied. "Even without her equipment she can easily take all of us in a fight."
"All of you? All of who?" The merchant demanded.
"Well, just wait and see." Brady passed the merchant a cup of wine.
.
.
.
{ === + === }
Author Notes:
I should probably update more frequently than once per 45 days.
Especially if I want to get this story done before I die of old age.