Leader: Harticus
Excavation of Gizarkill: £1594 to date.
"Gizarkill is nothing but a myth, an old legend. If it ever existed, nothing will be left but a handful of pillars and some foundations."
These were the words of the Gnomish scholar Byron Falmouth, over a hundred years ago. They were wise words from a wise man, but you are proud to have been the first in thousands of years to prove him wrong. Heavily backed by the treasury, you send a series of explorers to excavate the hills of Central Farland, looking for the supposed long-lost city. The archaeologists find a number of old settlements, mostly human, sunken into the ground. One explorer, the grandson of the scholar Falmouth, had better luck.
The original entrance was buried under thirty feet of earth. We would not have found it but for a farmer's plough hitting the ancient tip of a weathervane, once the highest point of a spire. We dug down from there.
We have excavated the site of a large town, a major community by the look of it. It seems that a river once flowed this way, and the town sprung up around it. Potsherds and burial sites suggest the population to be mostly gnomish, unlike the surrounding region. We have recovered bronze and iron artefacts, including several spoked wheels of unknown design, and there is evidence of a long-destroyed pier or bridge.
Have we found Gizarkill? I doubt it. If we have, legend has overstepped reality. This town is impressive for the time, yes, but it was clearly aboveground. In all the accounts, Gizarkill is at least said to have been dug beneath the surface, as reminiscent of modern gnomish burrows. More likely this town was a trading post with the people above, which does suggest that the first gnomes were not as unaware of the existence of humanity and other races as popular myth ascribes. We may not have found Gizarkill yet, but the existence of the trading post suggests that we are at least looking in the right area. We will continue scouring the site for further clues.
As your scholars strike the earth, your soldiers take to the sky! Or at least, as far as their efforts can manage. Regrettably it seems that self-powered flight may never be a possibility; gnomes simply do not have the strength to flap artificial wings of any sufficient size for lift. Nevertheless your engineers have been able to put together false wings on a wooden framework to allow users to glide from off the edge of cliffs or similar high precipices at a certain high speed before landing.
Many of the initial attempts either failed to fly, or landed so spectacularly that a lot of the funding for the experiment went into death benefits. Your continued pressure for them to develop some means of taking to the skies paid out, though, as working prototypes that include additional sails for the reduction of speed at the last moment (allowing for non-crash landings of a sort) have made the basic principle viable.
The chief problem is weight. Whilst it is possible to use momentum to achieve a sort of 'sweep' with a glider (swinging low and then returning to a greater height), the transfer of energy makes it impractical to use for melee attacks. Picking enemies from the ground and dropping them like a hawk with a turtle is not a viable option. Similarly the impact of weight on successful flights means that most operators have to be stripped down to a bare minimum of clothing to conserve weight, so armoured combatants are equally non-viable.
Nor can the gliders be used reliably for long distance travel. They are only able to maintain flight for several hundred feet at best, even from high launching towers.
Despite these problems your engineers have devised a method of turning this new piece of engineering into a weapon. Operators launched from the top of a high movable platform akin to a siege tower are able to glide over attacking or defending armies (in most cases ignoring walls and similar defensive structures) and release lead bullets (akin to those used in slingshots) from a carried pouch. The hail of bullets will strike the enemy with the additional force of the fall, crippling attacking armies.
The chief weakness of the hail glider is its lack of armour. Against purely melee forces, the hail gliders will be impervious to any sort of retaliation. Versus anything ranged or anything else capable of flight, they will very likely succumb quickly.
New Tech: Hail Gliders.
New Unit: Hail Gliders. £500. Attack 0, Defense 0. Upkeep £40. Ranged, Buzzer. Tech: Hail Gliders
Though unarmoured and ill-suited for ranged or aerial combat, Hail Gliders can strike at ground-based melee forces with impunity.TerritoriesFarland W (£574/turn): 1 light macemen, 2 spearmen. Palace, Farm. Grain.
(+£29/turn from grain)
(+£100: Farm)
(upk: -£90)
Farland S (£159/turn): 1 light macemen, 2 spearmen. Farm.
(+£100: Farm)
(upk: -£90)
Farland C (£15/turn): 1 light macemen, 2 spearmen. Farm. Sheep.
(+£1/turn from sheep)
(+£100: Farm)
(upk: -£90)
Finances:Cash Reserves: £0
Revenue: +£1078
Trade Pact(Taikeni): +£212 [Access copper, game, iron, wine, gold, coal]
Trade Pact(Arcadia): +£194 [Access lumber]
Trade Pact(Brent): +£400 [Access fish, marble, stone, cattle, pottery, cloth]
Trade Pact(Free Tempest): +£228
Trade Pact(Greenblood): +£140 [Access silver, spices, ivory]
Upkeep: -£270 [3 light macemen, 6 spearmen.]
Total: £1982
TechnologiesAdaptive Farming I
Infrastructure I
Mechanics I
Mechanics Ii
Mechanics Iii
Hail Gliders
Author
Topic: Fiefdoms @ War: Turn 15 (Read 130234 times)