The chat’s reaction to Charlie was… spirited. Memes flowed freely, and Tanya’s mystifying ability to show some foolamancy in the live stream that the recording completely misses was a huge hit as she did a face reveal for “Mao Chari” for the fan artists.
“Don’t go insulting him just because he’s a fat cripple, though.” Tanya warned after the next match was over with. “Insult him because he’s a contemptible con artist who makes sport of making extremely long and complicated contracts to screw over his customers.”
Tanya spent a moment reading chat’s replies to her statement. “Oh, he runs a mercenary organization, with a dash of telecom giant. The artifact he used to hack my stream can also act as a global phone network, and he gets a lot of money just connecting calls telepathically. The casters that can use those spells normally really hate him.” She looked over more replies. “He fields these expensive mage-knights called Archons that can cast a limited list of spells, and more importantly can fly far and fast, allowing him to deploy along large swathes of the world. The most important feature, of course, is that they can channel his artifact’s power for him, so he can actually handle the call volume he gets paid for.”
The messaging program that Tanya set up so that her parents can contact her without disrupting the stream showed a notification, so she checked that while letting chat come up with more questions about “Chari”. It looked like Grandfather, from the phrasing. “The soldiers are on the phone again.”
Tanya quickly typed back: “Tell them it can wait until after the stream.” Or rather, when they take a two hour break to have dinner and transition to the nighttime stream, where she wears pajamas and plays more laid back, story-oriented games. “If they’re calling about what I think they are, they’re already watching it.”
After a beat, the message program pinged again: “Done.”
Now, back to chat. “They mostly wear skirt suits, but that’s not inherent to them: mine dress up as magical girls, thus my desktop background.” She tabbed out to the desktop, showing it off again. “I only have a few Archons, but I have a lot more ordinary flying knights that are cheaper to field; I plan on using my Archons as support units attached to my knight formations.” An Archon with Leadership and at least one additional level of caster special besides the default shockamancy can be attached to a stack in the ‘caster’ leader slot, and she planned on assigning her best foolamancy archons to those roles.
They had, at Janis’ suggestion, hired some Signamancers to help her Archons get useful combinations of random specials rather than just rolling the dice; apparently Charlie used to hire out for that but decided that it wasn’t worth the cost for his mass archon strategy, particularly as Janis explained that Archons were smart enough to plot against each other like courtiers and other commanders, and making specialist archons tended to bring that tendency out. As Tanya will be able to better protect her Archons, and a mixed unit composition means that spending extra on the expensive units causes no problems at all, she can still take advantage.
For example, with Chibi’s honor guard, only one of the Archons was allowed to have Leadership (and another was popped to fill out the stack, whose name was Crone Owes), they only developed one level of dance-fighting each, one focused entirely on foolamancy (Amy), and the rest was a bunch of shockamancy levels. As a bonus, the non-honor guard archons will have their acquisitions weighted towards the excluded specials, which will excellently allow her to accumulate some dollamancy specialists to create sellable accessories.
“Of course the dresses are armor.” Tanya said after reading more of the chat's questions. “The most basic trick that the magical clothiers have is making armor look like basically whatever they want without compromising function.” Well, there were limits to signamancy. You couldn’t be deceptive, as an example you couldn’t make good armor that looks like tattered rags. Lingerie? Absolutely. Potato sack? No. It doesn’t need to look durable or protective, but it did need to look expensive, or badass, or… well, you could just make it look durable or protective. “One of my subordinate rulers owns a bikini that gives a +5 armor bonus on top of a swimming bonus.” Specifically, the ‘Water-capable’ special, which makes one float and able to fight without penalty in water hexes that aren’t ocean. It does not let you breathe water. “That’s a bigger bonus than you get from a shield wall.” i.e. maxed stack bonus. Nero did have a tendency to overspend on the contents of her closet. “She wore it when we invaded a beach city.”
One more… “No, I’m 169cm tall. Everyone in the other world is just short. The average height is like 140 or something like that.”
Still, it was time to focus on the game. They have another hour or so until dinner, and they plan on fitting in three more matches if possible.
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“What part of ‘I didn’t know he could do that’ confuses you?” Tanya said into the phone as she waited for dinner to be ready. “The only one in known history to attune to his artifact is him, the only reason I know as much about it as I do is because my subordinate is highly placed within the guild of casters whose jobs are most threatened by him.” Maggie was inducted into the Great Minds Who Think Alike while Tanya was a barbarian, and while her membership was officially suspended while she was sided, it still gave her a reasonable amount of soft power within the collective. “However, that artifact’s part of a set, and the one that lets me cross over is a peer to it. Mine is oriented around Motion, transportation. His is oriented around communication instead. If you want something to tell people, just insist that no one accept his requests for communication, if he does telepathically reach out.”
“What about the rest of this set?” General Jost asked. Him handling calling her personally was a sign of respect, which she appreciated.
“Charlie has the other two as well, but their functions are a bit more… direct. Less esoteric. More importantly, he’s not attuned to them. So even if they did have functions beyond my understanding of them, he couldn’t use them.” Tanya weighed the odds of him finding out her little fib, and decided to be a little more honest. “Don’t mistake me; Charlie is a threat. His magical specialty is oriented around lies and cheating, so I wouldn’t call his possession of the other artifacts harmless like I would if it was held by literally anyone else, but it’s not something you really need to worry about; his ideal scenario is me being alive, but without being a threat to him.” Tanya glanced at the kitchen, using Recon to peer through the wall. Hm, maybe another two minutes. “This means he would ideally try to sabotage my ability to cross the boundary while I’m on this side. As all he can do is communicate, the most important thing for you to remember is that he is a consummate liar, and anything he says about me will be tailor-made to sabotage our working relationship or anything else to accomplish this end.”
“...Why does he want you alive?” Jost asked, sounding like he very much did not want to know the answer to that.
“Complicated magic reasons.” Tanya summarized, “Prophecies are involved.”
“Prophecies.”
“Yes.” Tanya said, “One entire discipline of magic is all prophecies, so there’s a lot of them going around. It’s the whole reason we’re in conflict, he’s prophesied to have his life ended by a warrior from another world. As long as I live, there won’t be another one that’s empowered to defeat him.” This was actually part of the function of the Summon Perfect Warlord spell. There can only ever be one Perfect Warlord at any given time. Further attempts to cast it will outright fail. That wasn’t to say that other people couldn’t be summoned from other worlds, but they will not be Perfect Warlords. “I may have overly simplified the conflict, but again, complicated magical reasons.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Can you see the future?” Jost asked bluntly.
“Me? No. I have a wand that predicts the weather, and another that lets me detect imminent attacks, but that’s about it.” She sighed. “I’m not a big fan of the discipline, to be frank.” The only thing that was a bigger headache than Predictamancy were the Predictamancers.
“...My bosses are going to want a full write-up on what magic can do.” He said insistently.
“You’re not getting one.” Tanya said firmly. “Most of it is just stuff that will lead your analysts to panic at the implications, without actually deserving it. Then there’s the stuff that’s actually scary, and I’m not bringing that stuff over.”
“That’s not going to make them feel better.” Jost deadpanned.
“Tough.” Tanya said, hanging up the phone. Huffing in frustration, she walked to the table where dinner was waiting. “I humbly receive this meal!”
Really, the issue with giving the government types too much information on how Erf’s mechanics work is that it might give them an excuse to dehumanize the people inside, so she had to be careful to not mention the stupider names, some of the effects of signamancy, and other things to make them think that Erf was a lot more like Earth than it actually was.
It was an incredibly small step to move from ‘most of the inhabitants of that dimension aren’t real people’ to ‘all of them were philosophical zombies at best and thus aren’t real people’, after all. It was why, if she ever got the chance to meet those vaunted Titans…
Well, let’s just say that she’d be completely unsurprised to see Being X in that Elvis outfit. She’ll be treating them the same, nonetheless.
---------------------------
Tanya’s next trip back to Erf was as scheduled: Twenty turns back home, five dealing with whatever piled up while she was away. If there wasn’t anything in particular to deal with, she just spent an enjoyable time with her units; Chibi most of all. This incentivized Chibi to do a good job as interim ruler, which in this case…
“Welcome to the…” Tanya resisted the urge to sigh. “-Holey Moley Empire.” They didn’t, strictly speaking, need a name for the empire as a whole, but practically speaking they did, and Chibi was the one tapped to do it. “As was explained to you, your cities will only be upgraded to level 5 once the tunnel systems properly expand the reinforcement infrastructure to protect your holdings.”
“Your Majesty, with the treasury as it stands, it would be easily affordable, and the increased income-” Said her new subordinate, Steve “Lord Capital” Hill. He ran the side of Croger, which held some very fertile territory that nevertheless had next to no mining, a true breadbasket of a side. “-would make the books look very impressive indeed.”
…That was such a basic, unpersuasive point that she was actually a bit insulted that he thought it was compelling. She turned to Chibi, who was on the smaller throne next to her. “How badly was he acting that you decided to pass the buck rather than deal with him?” Tanya asked rhetorically. “The Signamancy/Dittomancy magic should allow everyone to know what I’d say if consulted, he should know he was wasting his time.”
“I thought so too, Mom.” Chibi said, smugly grinning at the odious Overlord. “But you were going to meet with him anyway, so…”
Tanya nodded, understanding. “Yes, I would have wanted to see my new subordinate ruler for myself, regardless.” She turned a look of disgust at the greedy Overlord, his suit screaming ‘executive’ rather than ‘ruler’. “I’m not impressed.”
Steve bristled at the dismissal. “Well maybe I don’t want to be in your damn Empire!” He shouted, which… he really shouldn’t have done. He immediately became a Barbarian, and the stack of knights he used to be a part of, with their livery now depicting her own symbol, immediately croaked him before Tanya could decide to order his capture.
“So that’s what happens when someone breaks the agreement.” Tanya mused, “Someone call in Klein, we have a level 7 warlord body he can animate.” She said it out loud, but Maggie moving her hand to her temple proved it was being followed. “Oh, and someone get now-Overlord Howard’s Enormous Butt over here, he needs to personally affirm the agreement between our sides if he wants to stay in the alliance.”
Still, after the outstanding meetings were done, Tanya found herself in the airspace, dancing with her personal bodyguards with Chibi’s stack just for fun.
A thinkagram from one of their utility Archons groups (they were 3-stacks spread throughout the territory, mostly for scout coordination) flashed in her head. Hm? “What is it, Blossom?” She asked.
Blossom’s image, a girl with long red hair affixed with a bow, white tights, and a short but simple red dress with a black horizontal stripe, appeared in her mind’s eye. “Mojo the Jojo’s attacking Townsville!” She sent, an undisciplined sense of alarm flooding the mental link. Townsville was one of Croger’s cities, if she recalled correctly. Still vulnerable, in other words.
Quickly consulting Maggie, the distance was… 271 hexes. Which means she’d need to spend about half a caster level per knight she’d bring with her… “Send a full scout report.” She commanded, and Blossom and her stackmates, Bubbles and Buttercup, gave her a reasonably accurate count. Okay, that was a lot of Jojos. They seemed to be accompanying the side of… HIM? She wondered what it stood for… Anyway, the enemy forces certainly seemed overwhelming… but she casted some calculations.
…Okay, so odds of keeping the city was… 37%? Not great odds they attacked with. If she brought just herself, that went up to… 61%. Bring her own stack… 72%. Bring Chibi’s too… 97%. Yeah, doing it.
“Hey Chibi, want to protect our new subordinates?” Tanya asked rhetorically.
Chibi grinned good-naturedly. “Off-turn? But how?” She asked, covering her mouth in faux-shock.
“With the Titans and Turnamancy on our side!” Tanya declared, taking out her turnamancy wand. It was an upgraded version of the basic wand that she could use to merely redistribute Move among units of the same kind, now able to allow her to expand the definition of ‘same kind’. Archons and her own knights were similar enough that it wasn’t even remotely a problem. “Conga!” She shouted, binding all 26 other units in the airspace to her and starting to fly to intervene.
The Arkenshoes gave you infinite move. You cannot have this move reduced below infinite. This means that she has infinite move at all times. Start of turn? Infinite Move. End of Turn? Infinite move. Off turn? Infinite move. At night? Infinite. Move.
The amount of juice transferred move costs was dependent on how mobile the receiving unit is. As archons and her knights were among the most mobile units in existence, this meant it was relatively cheap. But it was a long way, and that meant each unit was expensive. That cheapness just made it possible at all for defenses to occur.
As usual when she personally intervened, she spent a little bit of juice duplicating herself and promoting her own duplicate to ruler, allowing her to enjoy her Chief Warlord bonuses once again.
The City of Townsville… was under attack! The instant they arrived in-hex, the defenders redoubled their efforts from the massive spike in their Chief Warlord bonus. “Chibi, this is your show.” Tanya said, after they arrived. “Who should engage what? You should have been reviewing Team Powderpuff’s intel on the way over.”
“Let’s dance!” Chibi announced. “Team Powderpuff, you have dedicated your lives to fighting grime, and the forces of evil!” She cleared her throat before striking a pose. Her stack of archons struck their own. Tanya spent some juice to support her plan with Rhyme-o-mancy. “Fighting evil by moonlight, winning wars by daylight, never running from a real fight! She is the one called Princess Moon.” She began, and the fight ensued.
The sound of their guns magically just so happened to accentuate the music, as they slaughtered the Jojo army. Team Powderpuff personally beat up Mojo the Jojo, and victory was had without any casualties from the intervention force… after Tanya healed up two downed archons.
“Mojo the Jojo.” Tanya said icily as she loomed over the until-just-now incapacitated Chief of the Jojos. “Being Charlie’s catspaw yet again? I thought you had learned your lesson last time: All you win by fighting me is a croaked tribe.”
“We are enemies, opponents, peace cannot exist between us!” Mojo the Jojo said in his usual rapid-fire tone. “It is the nature of tribes and sides that we conduct war with the risk of decimation, large losses, mass casualties!”
After a brief questioning that was extended to a not-so-brief timeframe, confirming Charlie’s involvement via the presence of a nondisclosure agreement (which Tanya considered ironclad proof, given that literally no one else used them so ubiquitously) Mojo the Jojo was executed by Chibi, as were the rest of the Jojo survivors. There were a few captured infantry and such that were earmarked for a visit from Elya next turn, but that was a tiny fraction of the force sent to defeat them.
Still, she needed to retaliate. She loaded up her duplicate with ammunition and sent it on its way to annoy Charlie, flying straight to Charlescomm and croaking whatever Archon it could find in his airspace.
Once back in the capital, she had Maggie send a message, creating a secure channel straight to Charlie. Naturally, it was intercepted by an Archon, but Tanya tugged at the heartstring between them and seized his attention. Normally, this wouldn’t do much, but given how angry he clearly was, it was tantamount to a compulsion, directing that emotional energy to the confrontation.
Charlie’s mental avatar was that same red-suited blonde with clown makeup from the conversation where the Jojos betrayed them, but mutated into some demonic being, horns and fire along with red eyes and sharp teeth. “You killed them.” He roared, “I warned you not to return!”
“You don’t get to dictate terms, Charlie.” Tanya stated bluntly. “I don’t make empty threats.”
“Neither do I.” Charlie promised, before disconnecting.
