Tyranomaster

[Vol.5] Ch.6 Mana Drain

After eight more days of work, I finished building the prototype windmill for the well, and had Karsh help shape a straight steel rod of the necessary size for the pump.  The snow started melting on the mountain half-way through my work, which then resulted in nagging from Tiberius that I should go brave the remaining snow to get him crystals.  I retorted that if he had simply hauled enough water to the lab in the first place, I wouldn't have felt the need to build this well first, ...

[Vol.4] Ch.56 King Besmond III

Once we join up with the dark elves, we have some dwarves who can use healing magic begin to treat our captives.  Most of them were severely injured, so the last thing we wanted was them potentially dying and losing our leverage. While the dark elves captured four individuals, our side only captured our one target.

As our captives were treated, I started talking with the dwarven leadership and a representative of the dark elves to get a better grasp of our current situation.&n...

[Vol.5] Ch.5 Well Water

I continued working on the lab space for another twenty-six days until I finally completed the shell of the space.  The facility is built into the hills bordering the side of the valley with no roads currently.  While I worked, I spent some time cutting trees down along a trail that led here, so we have the beginnings of a road at least, though I imagine it will be some time before a proper road is built.

The facility itself is quite large with the first floor forming a large ...

[Vol.4] Ch.55 Terrifying Presence

As we charge in, more and more of the nearby enemy soldiers realize what's happening.  Unfortunately for them, most of them are unarmed.  Most of them turn and run from our force, causing even more chaos on the battlefield, which works as excellent cover, preventing more of the enemy from interfering in our attack.

I wasn't wrong in my assessment of the suited up soldiers, everything isn't going perfectly.  One soldier fires off one of those powerful cutting attacks I saw...

[Vol.5] Ch.4 Lab Space

Negotiating with Elora to get our debt reduced was only partially successful, and it was very stressful.  She made it clear that what I was doing was treading a very fine line between negotiating and threatening.  I responded that what they had done was treading a fine line between helping and extortion.  The back and forth continued behind closed doors until it was agreed that we'd only have to pay half of the cost previously agreed upon, meaning a quarter of the total cost. 2024-03-22 16:59:01 +0000 UTC View Post

[Vol.4] Ch.54 Turning Tides

The enemy moved after two days of reorganization.  From what I could tell using the telescope, they spent most of their time getting the new soldiers into better shape.  Many of the soldiers are still suffering from a cough, and it seems like we did a pretty good job of damaging their supplies.  Unfortunately for us, their numbers are still insanely larger than ours.

As their attack began, it became apparent just how overwhelming their strength is.  I was hoping we c...

[Vol.5] Ch.3 Rathland’s Refugees

After fifteen days, Shasta returned with the refugees and the two goblins who had been taught the dwarven language.  I spent three days interviewing all the refugees with the help of Shasta as a translator.  Of the thirty-two refugees, six have decent reasons for being here as refugees under Elloetta's guidance, and the remainder are direct family members of those six.

One was a political leader named Lucian Armand who started spreading the rumors of The King and Baron's death...

[Vol.4] Ch.53 Elloetta’s Aid

The city was not in good shape.  The outer wall had already been breached, but that was somewhat expected. The outer wall is so much larger than the inner wall, so it's harder to prevent a single concentrated attack from causing a successful breach.  From what I gathered, there seems to have been a few individuals with good siege magics, which also made the whole ordeal a bit more difficult.

The city itself was left with about half of our total combat forces, or a little less ...

[Vol.5] Ch.2 Safety in Numbers

We all waited with baited breath for the first two weeks of winter until the first news from the outside world finally made it's way to us.  Initially, we became very apprehensive when we saw fifteen ships approaching the island, but after we recognized the ships as being part of Kao's fleet, we became relieved.

Kao, Shasta, and a handful of other military personnel arrived to both pick up the dwarven soldiers as well as get first hand accounts of what happened in the war here.&nbs...

[Vol.4] Ch.52 A Confusing Encounter

The first few hours of my return trip went well.  I wanted to reach one of our hidden safehouses far enough from the beach that sleep would be relatively safe.  Perhaps it was because it was night time, but I didn't run into any problems as I travelled.  This particular safehouse is a hidden underground chamber with small holes for air that is large enough to allow seven individuals to sleep within it.  There are five of us in this particular safehouse tonight.  We've...

[Vol.5] Ch.1 Reconstruction

The reconstruction process has been going well, though we aren't rebuilding everything to be exactly the same as it used to be.  We started the repairs by rebuilding our artificial tide pools, and moving on from that to other necessary functions.  After almost a year, we've gotten a lot of things back to the way they used to be, but we've maintained all our new defensive structures, and even expanded them to some degree.  Elora insists that they aren't necessary, and that we wo...

[Vol.4] Ch.51 Chemical Attack Aftermath

The explosion woke up all the sleeping enemy troops.  Many individuals are scrambling to find the enemy and prepare to fight.  Those who were closer to the fort are making their way into the fort to try to help anyone harmed in the explosion.  Although they might save some people in the fort, the entire inside of the fort is probably full of sulfur dioxide gas.  Anyone going in to save others is going to be affected by it.

After a few minutes, it becomes clear that t...

[Vol.4] Ch.59 Demands

Heeding the warning, I sent a handful of messengers to return to the rest of our army.  If all goes well, then we'll return in one piece and the original messengers will have been pointless, but if things go south I want to make sure the rest of the army has adequate time to hide.  After the messengers had their message and had left our location, I stepped out with the remainder of our forces that were over here.

As we approached, the scene was clearly very gruesome and contra...

[Vol.4] Ch.58 Power Struggle

Although we didn't have much time to execute on the plan, I managed to make it work out.  I informed Zeb and Zaka of the full details, including the Baron's secret.  Then, in the early morning hours, we moved the commanders down to scouting base for the handoff.  Honestly, if the Baron had planned to use this as an opportunity for an extra ambush, it wouldn't have been a bad idea.

We had safety concerns given we were transporting prisoners who knew where we were keeping t...

[Vol.4] Ch.50 The Battle for Kembora Part 6

I'm pleasantly surprised to see our fort actually hold out longer than I expected it to.  I expected it to fall fairly quickly to the overwhelming size of the enemy force, but as things ended up working out, the enemy force took some time to properly land.  It took a little over ten minutes for each round trip of the row boats, which meant that it ended up taking almost three hours for all the enemy troops to make landfall.

It seems the enemy had made a second miscalculation b...

Health Update

As many of you are aware, and some of you may not be, for the past four months or so I've been dealing with respiratory issues.  I'll spare you the details, but I'm going to see an allergist in ten days (and I've had the appointment scheduled for a month now).  That said, I'm currently on things which have helped me manage my symptoms for a week now without relapse, so I'm thinking it's a good sign.  I also want to apologize further for what has probably been lower quality work...

[Vol.4] Ch.57 Castelet Marionnettes

By the morning a few information reports came in related to the troops that we had sent out as a distraction.  While they successfully drew away enemy troops also resulted in pretty bad losses due the sheer size of the enemy armies and due to lacking a significant amount of already prepared traps.  A little over one hundred troops were killed on our side.  After that, a few dark elves were sent out to deliver a letter to the enemy to schedule a meetup to discuss prisoner exchan...

[Vol.4] Ch.49 The Battle for Kembora Part 5

After a few minutes, all the remaining ballistae on the first line of defense had been fired, and then destroyed.  Shortly after we retreated back about 100 yards to the next defensive line.  The second defensive line consists of five steam cannons armed with grapeshot, one armed with a large shell for a particularly tough target, and another fifteen ballistae.  Between the first line and the second line were more barricades and hidden pitfalls.  Given that many of the hid...

[Vol.4] Ch.56 King Besmond III

Once we join up with the dark elves, we have some dwarves who can use healing magic begin to treat our captives.  Most of them were severely injured, so the last thing we wanted was them potentially dying and losing our leverage. While the dark elves captured four individuals, our side only captured our one target.

As our captives were treated, I started talking with the dwarven leadership and a representative of the dark elves to get a better grasp of our current situation.&n...

[Vol.4] Ch.48 The Battle for Kembora Part 4

If there is one upside to the fact that the attempted landing is going to happen imminently, it's that the invading fleet has halted their cannon fire.  Smooth bore cannons aren't really accurate enough to avoid friendly fire at these ranges, so at least we won't be dealing with getting shelled while we're fighting their troops.

That said, their four smallest ships are now at the point where they're running aground.  These ships have a slightly wider shape, and seem to be spec...

[Vol.4] Ch.55 Terrifying Presence

As we charge in, more and more of the nearby enemy soldiers realize what's happening.  Unfortunately for them, most of them are unarmed.  Most of them turn and run from our force, causing even more chaos on the battlefield, which works as excellent cover, preventing more of the enemy from interfering in our attack.

I wasn't wrong in my assessment of the suited up soldiers, everything isn't going perfectly.  One soldier fires off one of those powerful cutting attacks I saw...

[Vol.4] Ch.47 The Battle for Kembora Part 3

Our artillery fire off another pair of shots at the flagship, landing one decent hit, and missing the second completely.  The flagship fires another blast back at our beach.  The shrapnel from the explosion pierces one of our pre-boiled steam cannons causing it to also rupture, sending even more shrapnel flying.  Thankfully, the rupture propels the majority of that boiler upward and outward towards the ocean and avoids causing any extra damage.

Our artillery fire off a sa...

[Vol.4] Ch.54 Turning Tides

The enemy moved after two days of reorganization.  From what I could tell using the telescope, they spent most of their time getting the new soldiers into better shape.  Many of the soldiers are still suffering from a cough, and it seems like we did a pretty good job of damaging their supplies.  Unfortunately for us, their numbers are still insanely larger than ours.

As their attack began, it became apparent just how overwhelming their strength is.  I was hoping we c...

[Vol.4] Ch.46 The Battle for Kembora Part 2

As the morning dragged into mid-afternoon, all the boilers for cannons had been started, and I finished up all my checks in the fort on the beach.  Any moment we should start spotting the ships on the horizon.  In fact, I'd bet that the artillery embedded in the cliff can already see them.  I started pacing along the beach double checking our defenses.  I was anxious, as were most of the goblin troops.  The dwarven troops were more battle experienced, and even if they...

[Vol.4] Ch.53 Elloetta’s Aid

The city was not in good shape.  The outer wall had already been breached, but that was somewhat expected. The outer wall is so much larger than the inner wall, so it's harder to prevent a single concentrated attack from causing a successful breach.  From what I gathered, there seems to have been a few individuals with good siege magics, which also made the whole ordeal a bit more difficult.

The city itself was left with about half of our total combat forces, or a little less ...

[Vol.4] Ch.45 The Battle for Kembora Part 1

The air raid sirens were the signal everyone had been anticipating for the past few weeks.  We had an entire year to practice and prepare our defenses, and the earie sound of the sirens coming from the mountain now are indicating that soon the battle will be upon us.  At three evenly spaced locations on the mountain, a few hundred feet below the cloud layer, we had built watch posts, each equipped with a simple telescope.  Every fifteen minutes for the past few weeks, someone h...

[Vol.4] Ch.52 A Confusing Encounter

The first few hours of my return trip went well.  I wanted to reach one of our hidden safehouses far enough from the beach that sleep would be relatively safe.  Perhaps it was because it was night time, but I didn't run into any problems as I travelled.  This particular safehouse is a hidden underground chamber with small holes for air that is large enough to allow seven individuals to sleep within it.  There are five of us in this particular safehouse tonight.  We've...

[Vol.4] Ch.44 Final Plans

The detailed meeting took about half of the day to complete.  Many of the finer details were left to be planned later, but to prevent any extra suspicion among his soldiers Kao called the meeting to an end so that his group could return in a timely manner.  Kao said that we should expect his troops to return in a little over three weeks, and that he'll also give the go ahead for the Elven emissary, who has been waiting on their island, to travel to our island.  He had apparentl...

[Vol.4] Ch.51 Chemical Attack Aftermath

The explosion woke up all the sleeping enemy troops.  Many individuals are scrambling to find the enemy and prepare to fight.  Those who were closer to the fort are making their way into the fort to try to help anyone harmed in the explosion.  Although they might save some people in the fort, the entire inside of the fort is probably full of sulfur dioxide gas.  Anyone going in to save others is going to be affected by it.

After a few minutes, it becomes clear that t...

[Vol.4] Ch.43 Battle Plans

"Then we should begin a strategy meeting now, as long as that is ok with you."  I say.

The dwarves briefly discuss the idea and then give consent to begin.

"I'm thinking that despite the numerical disadvantage, we do have other advantages that we should play into.  First, we have the advantage of secrecy and information.  The other side's plan is at least partially understood, whereas our plans should be easy to keep hidden.  Second, we're a mountainous volcani...