Combat Results:
Fire:
001 Bolter
400 Ravens
500 Imps + Adamant blunt weapons(-500=0) + adamant light chain(-500=300).
100 Imps+ Shadow Blades+ Flame Casters + Adamant Light Chain(-100=200)
020 Blackscales+ Bronze Blunt Weapons+ Adamant Light Chain
You appear as a pantheon before your legions as the first incursion begins, a bold step forward unto conquest. The Ravens and Imps lead the way through, setting up a guard perimeter around the portal island, at home in their element. The blackscale force follows, moving to the front with a grouping of imps to prepare a scouting party. It's hot for them, but they should be fine so long as the supply line holds and they find some forage.
Finally, the Bolter steps through. Its massive figure sends gentle tremors through the massive pillar the portal sits atop, and it stands by, ready to rain death upon the land beyond.
The scouting parties advance, picking their way through the scattered flames and across the landbridge towards the settlments sighted by your wraiths. The first party consists of the blackscales and the flame caster armed imps, overseen by a set of Ravens. As they take their first step into the mainland, a great cry echoes from a nearby rock crater, and a group of smoldering creatures emerges, each resting on 6 legs and with two primary grasping arms, their slender bodies shifting back and forth at a frentic pace as they advance towards your men.
You’ve been spotted.
The glowing creatures hiss back and forth with one another as they close in, each syllable washing over your men as waves of heat and ash. They carry weapons, too: unusually smooth stone weapons seemingly constructed out of one piece. As they approach, the lead imp cries out in the mother tongue, singing a war order. The imps close ranks, aim their staves, and release a cluster of magical fire at the natives.
Unfortunately, it doesn't do much. The beings writhe in what seems to be pain when struck, but suffer what appears to be a scattering of ash across the spots the blasts hit. The group numbers approximately twenty, so this slows them considerably, but they're close enough that your imps have already drawn their blades. At a second note from the commander, the imps charge, swarming the natives. The battle is bloody and swift, the natives stepping expertly through groups of imps while they swing their smooth stone war clubs with practised ease. The sharp edges make short work of imp hide, and can even cut through chainmail. Several go down, but the imps themselves use their numbers to their advantage, working with the blackscales to help box in the larger natives and land solid blows. The shadowcrystal blades that the imps wield slice through the creatures like butter, cutting in easily but only sliding through with intense force applied. The blackscales have a somewhat rougher time. As strong as the heat wave was at distance, the blast at melee range is tremendous, forcing back the unprepared lizards. Those that recover enough to swing run into another issue- the blunt weapons they wield are causing damage, but a good swing seems to need two arms to bypass the natural fluidity possessed by the flamescuttlers. Despite the good fight the scuttlers put up, they are outnumbered 6 to 1, and soon go down, the imp commander themselves leaping in to fight one of the last survivors and personally disemboweling it, dodging the burning blood as the glowing organs fell from the beast.
The party regroups after the initial conflict, licking their wounds and organizing their dead. The blackscales bore much of the loss, with only 5 surviving. The imps, by comparison, only lost 20 members, with the rest singed or lightly wounded. The ravens didn't get a chance to do much, due to the ambush.
The main force moves to reinforce, while the bokter remains at the portal for the time being. The dead scuttlers bleed over the rocks, covering the scorched rock with their glowing, thick, blood, internal organs literally glowing in the heat. As it cools, it appears to solidify to a sludgelike material with a light grey color. A single (severely wounded) survivor of the group remains, and the force restrains it before it can flee. What you plan to do with it is up to you.
With the initial gains secured, the force moves onward towards the main habitat. The bokter follows, descending down the narrow land bridge. As the bolter prepares to winch back the first of its bolts to fire at the small encampment in the distance, a force emerges, beating percussion instruments made from strange leathers and at least 100 strong. In addition, many of the warriors present seem to be wearing armor crafted in a similar manner to the warclubs used by the ambushers. The melee weapons look similar, but there is an additional group of scuttlers off to each side manning what appear to be siege weapons with stone bolts. These crews actually take potshots at the circling ravens, but summarily miss. A warrior in the main group manages to throw a stone dart through the body of one as it returns, to little effect. Now returned and armed, the ravens circle above the force as it awaits the final deliberations of the division leaders. The blackscale leader had died in the earlier ambush, so his second in command has taken his place. Unfortunately, the enemy sees this meeting and you hear sizzling whispers before a siege crew arcs a shot over towards them.
Had the ravens not seen this happening, they would have been slain on the spot. However, as the bolter was nearby, the warning was passed on, and it went to work. The massive gears turned and dark oils hissed at the elevations adjusted abruptly, before the deep thrum of the adamant bolt flying through the air. The first bolt smashed the incoming shot, destroying it and sending chips of stone raining down on your army. The second flew to the source of the shot, destroying the machine in question and sending orange sinew and stone shrapnel flying. The commanders quickly nodded, broke, and the warsong began.
As your imps charged the scuttler force, further flame caster bolts flew, as did darts. The former were primarily aimed at the dart throwers, as even though the stone darts have some difficulty breaking through the chainmail, lucky shots could easily take down an imp. As such, disruption of the skirmishing force was life-saving in more than one instance, and a scutter was believed to have been blinded by a direct hit to the head. Further bolter shots land within the enemy ranks, sending scuttlers flying, slicing them with shattered stone, and pinning them to the stone with bolts. Further shots are intercepted by your champion, with only one slipping by due to a misfire on the scuttler’s part. It lands among your bronze-armored imps, and impales one, spattering black blood on the grey stone before fragmenting and slicing the unarmored portions of those nearby. Before the armies even meet, the bolter has already claimed almost a fifth of the enemy force, with the siege engine crews routed and the dart throwers slain with large bolts. The only factor holding back the bolter from entirely massacring the enemy is the ability of the enemy to resist shrapnel.
Finally, the armies clash, the imps meeting the surviving scuttlers as bolts continue to rain down overhead. Unfortunately, the combatants are mismatched, and it shows. The low number of imps armed with slashing weapons limited the damage a group could do when they had a scuttler covered, and the weaker imps can't do as much damage as the stronger blackscales with heavier weapons. The ravens can do some damage, but the wounds they make clot quickly due to the viscous blood. They make a good showing in harassing groups of scuttlers, though some are lost to friendly bolt fire and warclubs. Given the mismatch, your forces focus on tying down groups of scuttlers for the bolter to shread with artillery fire. The tactic is slow, but between the bolts and the shadow blade armed imps, the enemy is routed after a relatively short battle.
Following along the heels of the retreating army with bolts flying overhead, the surviving imps (Only one blackscale emerged alive, rather singed) regroup and march on the settlement. By the time your troops arrive, the locale is deserted, as scouts can be seen scuttling into the distance as you approach. The natives have ceded you this much ground, and you have a strong foothold in the Fire Plane. In the distance, you see your next goal- a large pillar in the distance, above your current position and, from what you can tell, rife with activity.
Losses:
19 Blackscales (1 suvivor, notable)
30 Sword Imps (1 notable leader)
100 Blunt Weapon Imps
10 Ravens
Earth:
100 Ravens
180 Blackscales+ Bronze Blunt Weapons+ Adamant Light Chain
200 Imps+ Shadow Blades+ Flame Casters + Adamant Light Chain(-200=0)
375 Imps+ Shadow Blades+ Bronze Light Chain
The forces of The Catalyst step into the plane of Earth, certain of their victory. The blackscales take up perimeter duty in the plane, quickly and efficiently clearing the area around the portal in the first cavern. No obstacles are encountered in this intial stage- while some imps do run into issues with bugs attempting to swarm lit flame casters, the bugs themselves are easily dispersed by simply firing the staff at them.
Delving into the cavern systems, the blackscales split into three main scouting parties, with 20 ravens and 40 blackscales in each group. The rest stay at the portal, on guard for intrusions. The scouts map out a large amount of ground, not running into any contact with anything more notable than a fungal colony that made the blackscales sneeze a bit. The parties eventually return when they start running low on provisions, though after reporting their progress and general location, a patrol group did have half its number go missing.
While the absence and loss of an entire patrol group is concerning, the returning parties run into a more concerning sight: while they were gone, the portal itself had been attacked. A group of hulking grey creatures had emerged from one of the paths a patrol group had left through. Equipped with the dull metal armor and weapons that the scouts had mentioned, these creatures quickly set themselves upon the defending imps. While the initial ambush resulted in the loss of an easy 20 imps, the quick eyes of the defenders located the intrusion quickly and descended upon the tunnel the creatures had emerged from.
The creatures themselves weren't overly tall, instead being comprised of thick muscle and fat, with pebbly skin and dull eyes that somehow took in the entire landscape. They possessed four large arms and we're bipedal, and had what appeared to be cillia along the sides of their nonexistent necks. They exhimited moderate movement speed in the cavern itself, closing with quick, leaping strides to swing disturbingly heavy maces and axes upon the defending imps.
As soon as the response came, however, the tide of battle turned quickly. The blasts from flame casters heated the creature’s armor to a glowing red, and the resulting head resulted in rumblings of pain from those struck. While the armor the attackers wore was resistant to shadow blades, and fractured several in failed strikes, the blades could still get through in several crucial areas, spilling darkly glowing green blood to the cavern floor. The blackscales added further damage, swinging their heavy weapons and moving nimbly around the Rocky caverns to deal several fatal and crippling blows, though it was noted that the armor worn by the Maln was harder than bronze, as shown by the dented and bent weapons. Ravens proved themselves useful once again, swooping in to aim at eyes and cillia, though many missed their mark due to the poor lighting.
Despite its initial fury, the incursion was quickly squashed, and the survivors fled to the tunnels. Investigation of the tunnels the Maln had fled to showed little other than some patches of disturbed earth that they had likely dug through to escape. With few lost beyond the initial few, the fighters re-established the perimeter and settled in to wait for the scouts to return.
With the scouting parties returned, a brief meeting is convened to discuss the direction of attack. The escape tunnels appeared to have been dug towards the general direction of the missing scouts, so the direction of attack was decided, with a lead arm of blackscales and ravens. Descending into the caverns, with a defending force of 20 blackscales and 50 imps, the army marches onwards. Following a good several days march, the force runs into signs of life: disturbed earth and unusually hesitant insect life. The front lance was reinforced at this point, the commanders excercising extra caution and the ravens summoning their claws.
This caution proved wise shortly afterwards, with a group of ten Maln dropping into the tunnel with weapons raised. Initial strikes cut right through the armor and weapons of the blackscales, but the beefed up scout group was able to hold out until reinforcements arrived, swiftly dispatching the remaining enemies. The reason for the ambush quickly became clear, as a short half day’s expedition later, the assault party came across a wide bore tunnel lined with glowing crystals and dug out habitats. The arrival wasn't unexpected, however- as soon as the first blackscale stepped into the cavern, a hail of dense metal projectiles came raining down. While the solid metal arrows had little trouble felling the first few soldiers, massed ranks of flame caster fire quickly eliminated the nearby archers the army advanced in, crowding to provide cover to the imps with flame casters, while blackscales made dashes for the elevated perches the archers were firing from to engage them in melee combat. Ravens joined in on this effort, screeching high and fast to claw out the eyes of archers, the simple metal bolts passing through their incoporeal forms with little impact.
As the army broke into the cavern, a group of Maln advanced on the leading edge as the ravens screeched out a warning of an impending rear ambush as they detected movement on the back wall. The surprise thwarted, the elevated blackscales moved to flank the oncoming force while the imps poured massed flame caster fire onto the incoming front wave to buy time to deal with the back ambush. The pincer was bloody, but the imps pulled through, slaying the last of the ambushers as the front line descended on the Army of the Catalyst.
With all breathing room gone, the battle descends to a bloody melee, the front rank of imps dying so that the row behind them could fire another wave of flame at the hulking Maln. The flanking blackscales proved their worth, as they assisted in kills on the edges of the battle, preventing an encirclement and slowly collapsing the edges of the fight on the Maln to encircle them and bring them down. The blackscales not flanking continue hunting archers with the aid of ravens, and soon the tunnel is coated with green blood up to the midway point. Notably, not only are there no survivors, but there are no civilians. It's concluded that the Maln must have evacuated the settlement in advance of the attack, but with the strong hold you now have in the Earth Plane, you're set to advance further into the realm.
Losses:
½ scouting party (20 Blackscales, 10 Ravens)
45 Blackscales
195 Shadow Blade Imps
75 Flame Caster Imps
5 Ravens
Dark:
2 forges
650 forgebound + nudity
The newly created forgebound look longingly out towards the portals leading to the new realms. Their wanderlust doesn't last long, however. They have work to do.
The spreadsheet has been updated. Take a peek, let me know if you can see the updated deployment and forge numbers.
Design Phase for turn 3! Make three designs, feel free to to do them all at once.
Author
Topic: Gods Race Rebirth: Dark (Turn 3, Design) (Read 15112 times)