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[Failbird105]

Well in that case, I'm bringing this back up because I feel it would be quite the thing in those caves, though it would be basically worthless in fire-world

Design: Grue
Grue, an old word, to shiver or shudder from fear or cold. It fits the darkness, and indeed fits this idea we have conceived, these monsters, for they cannot truly be called anything else. The Grue are creatures formed from the etching darkness, the purest form of our masters cold, consuming grip, stabilized and solidified into a form that is, in shape, not too dissimilar from an ape, with a head taken up almost entirely by a mouth of ferocious fangs, and long forelegs that function as arms with feet that function as hands. The Grues most dangerous trait is its own flesh and blood, the darkness that makes it up may be stabilized, but it is not harmless, its skin burns to the touch, its teeth leak the etching darkness like a venom, and the bile in its makeshift stomach is also etching darkness, pure and unaltered. The Grue do not breath and thus make little noise, the Grue step softly so as to not be heard, the Grue move with purpose so as to never be noticed, by the time you notice a Grue, it is already upon you.
The Grue is not without its flaws however, to a degree they are by design. They cannot wield our equipment for any weapon, tool, or armor will slowly crumble away to their touch. Additionally, light is the Grues bane, too much indirect light, artificial or otherwise, repulses them, direct light burns their skin like pressing upon a wound, concentrated light tears their bodies apart. This makes them vulnerable, but means that the Grue are unwaveringly opposed to our enemy above all else, for the light is antithetical to their very being.

going to take a bit to come up with some good ideas, problem is that most of the obvious stuff to make for these planes is probably going to be the stuff we get from conquering these planes

[RAM]

Yes, I feel that ashen ravens are somewhat different to what the fire plane provides, and yet quite capable of massively contributing to its conquest. They are still ash monsters though. Golems are another option. Flying golems are difficult, but not impossible, and metal should hold up fairly well so long as it isn't insanely thin. That said, the updrafts in plane offire are going to be stronger than pretty much anywhere else, a glider golem that flies there might only fall slowly most other places. Of course, a flying transport would also be good, but almost useless in what we have seen of earth, though I expect there to be vertical shafts that need to be explored...

Or we could just try for dragons. We haven't seen any in Fire so far...

[Failbird105]

Well I don't know, the flying things in the fire plane might be pretty dragony, we don't know that much about them yet but they seem to be at least somewhat reminiscent of eastern dragons.


So lets go over what we do know of the two planes we have.
Fire has very little land besides some small islands, including the entrance(and probably exits), and a big central landmass. There are fire Wyrms(or well, some kind of flying serpent-like things that can withstand fire easily), there are fire elementals(? it mentions them being fire-creatures, don't exactly know how literal that is) who have and actively use gliders to get around. There's some sort of event that happens occasionally which scares the fire people(and maybe the animals too?) into hiding.

Earth is a network of caves with relatively little light, which is only provided by crystals, would be good for blackscales(and great for Grues). There are small swarming insects that are attracted to light and might be dangerous in swarms, there are molemen with multiple pairs of arms(probably at least, multi-limbed makes me think of extra limbs rather than just having more than one limb) who have armor and weapons which implies there is something down here that they fight(possibly something we haven't seen yet, though it might just be other molemen). There's something dangerous that tends to cause cave-ins(my money is on giant worms).

Reviewing it all, I honestly feel like some Ballistas would actually be fairly useful for the fire plane. The creatures there are flying(or gliding in the case of the people) and fire resistant, and our only ranged weapon is a fireball projectile. As for the caves, well, I say Grue would be good but I might be biased because they're my idea.

[dgr11897]

worker
A small hovering golem the worker is equipped with a set of two small arms, It senses the world through echolocation, and is equipped with basic fire manipulation. It pays for this and its low price tag with being relatively slow, being utter cowards, mild curiosity, and having low intelligence. They serve as workers, Building whatever is needed and Forging weaponry for our main forces.

[Taricus]

The events that causes the rumbling of the earth are likely linked in the realms of fire and earth. I would hazard those are just earthquakes or the like. Fire resistant creatures would be a plus in the realm of fire (And our blackscales would perform extremely well in the realm of earth already).

But, one of the biggest bottlenecks is going to be production, lets see if we can't get that out of the way.

Design: The Forge With the newfound mass production of armour and weapons being necessary for our army, this gigantic forgeworks complex is designed to create untold amounts of equipment for far less effort that what we've previously needed. The only downside is that it needs mortals to operate, though the forgeworks are intended to be easily expandable should we have a larger workforce.

[RAM]

The grues feel like they would be poor in the plane of fire. Too open, too much light, and not enough to walk on.
Earth they would be good in, but the cramped quarters feel like they suit the blackscales well enough. Coupled with grues, probably, being expensive, and they are... well, nice, but their stealth is largely wasted in tunnels.

Probes shoot fire, which is not great in fire plane, unless casters have a kinetic component. The darkness bomb would be grand, but expensive? Honestly, with that bomb they look much more effective than they sound, but also more expensive. I also worry that they are too slow to scout ahead of our forces without slowing down our armies. But flying bombs would work well in small twisty caves and etching darkness should work well against anything in the fire plane, anything they can catch that is...

The forge is something that I would love to have the support of the fire and earth plane in its construction. A permanent source of heat and minerals is something that manufacture would greatly benefit from, but the forge could serve as a prototype for that? Also, spontaneous generation of material through divine means was cited as an advantage to our armour. It might be that forged armour is inferior...

each ring welded together by divine power, the fit tailored to each different species of soldier. ... the bronze version of the chain shirt is not overly heavy, despite being twice the weight of its Adamant counterpart, due to the power-fueled welds and limited coverage.

I support the forge in theory, and setting things off to some future point when more resources are available often goes wrong, but it seems ill-suited to our immediate issues and might be better later. In earth we have generally tight quarters, where quality tends to win over quantity, and fire is dominated by open skies, and the forge would currently provide neither flight nor ranged attacks. This just doesn't seem like the time for it.

[dgr11897]

Oh, that version of the probe was meant to be caught, at which point the canister is ruptured killing whatever caught it. This is the new version, which works very similarly.
Seeker
The seeker is a small hovering golem shaped like a sphere It has several small tentacles wrapped around its form, It uses these to manipulate it's enviroment and as a way to defend in emergencies. It is quite a fast little thing, zipping along with incredible speed. For armaments it has a darkness caster (firebolt caster that shoots etching darkness), fire manipulation, and a set of canisters of pressurized etching darkness, it will rupture these canisters in a sucide attack should it be caught. It pays for all of these with low intelligence, mediocre survivablility, and insatiable curiosity. It is also designed to be cheap-ish, serving as a front line swarm unit, and suicider clearing out the area before our troops enter.
Also
Forging darkness
Based on etching darkness, this form of the deadly substance is able to be commanded by our forces. Strategically solidifying into crystal and able to absorb and eat other substances to turn them into more of itself it is the ultimate tool for making fortifications, roads, and buildings in the field.

[Taricus]

The forge makes our quality cheaper, meaning we can afford reserves. Such reserves would be vital just about anywhere. Moreover, given that it's just the welds that would be affected, and that only affects the weight, the actual quality of protection remains unchanged.

[crazyabe]

Deamons, Based upon Imps, Deamons are tall Maroon skinned monsters with somewhat short wings and long claws, in general they can be seen as significantly scaled up imps in many ways. They have a Significant Affinity for Fire, and despite not being capable of true flight are able to glide fairly effectively.

[Doomblade187]

Welded rings are a forging technique where instead of locking the form of each ring with a rivet, the Ring's ends are welded together. It's fairly easy to to this with magic, so it's not a big deal. Just make sure any forges can use magic.

[Taricus]

Or else ensure the forger workers are capable of using such magic?

[Doomblade187]

Or else ensure the forger workers are capable of using such magic?

Yes. Also, this does add some difficulty.

[RAM]

Or else ensure the forger workers are capable of using such magic?

Which is potentially similar to avilities that might be held by native denizens of the earth or fire planes. An earth-shaping ability might be translatable to metal-shaping. An ability to burn with a touch might translate to welding with one's bare-hands, or flame-control might enable heating a weld without heating its surroundings. It is possible that we don't gain anything from the native denizens, and it is possible that they have no pertinent abilities, but the possibility that they might... It would just be so much easier to start with some sort of basis, rather than constructing a new magic from scratch or imparting our own power into the forge for the mortals to wield.

Or we could have inferior tools. Weight it pretty much the most important aspect of armour. Pretty much everything comes down to weight economy. It also looks as though divine manifestation was improving the armour's fit, but that is debatable.

[Taricus]

If we have inferior tools, then it behoves us to improve those tools to the point of them being superior. And we need to get on that train early for best effect; we can't just sit back, wait and rely on conquest to being in things we need to do ourselves.

[Failbird105]

Currently one things that's going to be a big problem for us in the fire plane is the fact that our only actual ranged weapon uses fire to do most, if not all, of its damage(which one would imagine would not be effective against things that live in a plane filled with fire). Therefor I'm bringing back this suggestion from the last round of designs as well


Ballistae
Ballistae, theoretically we already have experience making these. They are after all the main weapons used by Bolter. In practice however, making versions that can be utilized by our armies soldiers is trickier then just changing the size and adding on a set of wheels. The primary reason is that Bolters ballistae are parts of its body, controlled by the gears and machinery that comprise it. This means that the primary challenge will be removing some of the mechanical components, and adding methods of manual aiming and firing. Once we have a manually usable ballista, then we can attach it to a basic metal cart(or set of wheels) to make it mobile. Optionally, they can have a pair of large metal plates like tower shields on either side of the place where the bolt fires from, these make it a bit harder to aim, but help to defend the crew from ranged attacks.
In the end, these ballistae will likely be less effective than an automated ballista of a similar size due to requiring a crew to load them, aim them, fire them, and move them. Each ballistas effectiveness will depend on the capability of its crew. The other side of this is that they will have less moving parts to break down, likely take up less space, and will almost certainly cost less than a ballista that can do all those things by itself.



The other option is that rather than modifying them to be manually usable, we instead just make a smaller golem to attach them to.

Also, if the natives have better stuff than we do, what exactly is there to stop us as gods from just taking it? I'd imagine we could do a research action to learn more about the native peoples and beasts of these planes, and then we can just make designs to replicate or improve upon that.