Livestock space requirements, stampedes, nuisance

[SonofJohn]

Surpluss Animals and epic magic would call for some blood magic, if you simply would get only one point out of every sheep killed you would still have some pretty nasty ****storm headingtowards the PCs.

Some Priest with the right spells on nearly the same power level as the PCs could simply deep impact there army with this kind of raw magic energy.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by SonofJohn

Surpluss Animals and epic magic would call for some blood magic, if you simply would get only one point out of every sheep killed you would still have some pretty nasty ****storm headingtowards the PCs.

Anhur is a god of warriors, physical prowess, rain and storms. He is honourable to a fault, deeply protective of his own people and as merciful toward an honourable enemy as possible. And he despises those who prey on the weak. As such, his attitude towards blood magic is perhaps negative.

There are gods in the setting who would be in favour of mass sacrifice, but I think that Anhur is one of the least likely. In setting, ceremonial magic and sacrifices are possible, but require a Perk to learn and only work with certain spells. Regular priests cast spells with just their own Energy Reserves*.

One problem with summoning a kick-ass storm, however, is that the priests there have already done so, not more than two hours past. And they've been casting a lot of other spells. Most of them are at half Energy Reserve or so.

Also, being junior priests, they don't have access to the kind of truly epic spells as their seniors are granted.

They could form a casting circle to call another storm, imbuing it with Anhur's fury and having lightning strikes find his enemies. Wouldn't need any sacrifices to do it, even. On the other hand, that would take ten minutes or so and it would mean that the priests who would otherwise be bufing their elite troops and attacking the enemy elite with their spells would be absent during the PCs attack. And the storm would, ultimately, not be enough to stop the PCs, though it would mean that the battle was fought at near zero visibility.

*Which, however, are fairly massive. The junior priests there have ER from 20 to 50 FPs each.

Originally Posted by SonofJohn

Some Priest with the right spells on nearly the same power level as the PCs could simply deep impact there army with this kind of raw magic energy.

The priests who built the fort spent their winter in far more comfortable quarters more than fifty miles back. Those who are there are more junior priests. They can Move Earth, but not on the scale that their high prophets and captains of the war priests can.

I think that the greatest contribution the priests of Anhur can make to the battle is to make sure that all the elite soldiers on their side are imbued with divine strength, fury and defended with all that magic can do. Elite guards wearing orichalum armour and wielding magic weapons, with Weapon Master and skills in the 18-20s are bad-ass enough, but when these have +4 to ST, +2 to DX, +2 or +3 to all defences, some extra natural DR and the ability to keep fighting until -5xHP because their god is with them... well, let's just say that the PCs will have their hands full in that tunnel.

[Icelander]

Hmmm... this went rather well. PCs suffered 20% casualties, but that's fairly good for an operation like this. They did take the strongpoint and now the fort lies open for an assault.

The equivalent of two 13th level wizards in D&D turned out to wreak insane amounts of havoc. Being opposed by a dozen priests of the equivalent to 7th-9th level and some sixty acolytes of lesser levels did not do much to reduce their awesomeness. Of course, it did mean that the elite foes that the PCs faced were operating at +3 to all rolls and had Attributes and various Advantages buffed to the gills. But them's the breaks.

More detail coming up.

[Icelander]

When we left our heroes last session; Ankhapet Si'Hamet, the eastern scholar, strategist, viceroy and horsearcher, was busily hurtling through the air at 80 mph trying to find ways to spin-stabilise a human. Also, he was momentarily confused by a magic spell. In his mad spin, he dropped Nuraun Teltree, his evoker ally who had been stunned by a well-aimed lightning spell.

Sir Michael Carragher was standing with ready sword near the mouth of a 20' wide tunnel in the earthworks wall, facing down the whole garrison and daring them to try to stop the magic-workers behind him from bringing down the drawbridge. In front of him was a merrily burning blaze of alchemist's fire oil and some eight yards behind him, Abadas 'I Just Get These Headaches' was channelling elemental fire to melt the chains holding up the drawbridge while covered in burning oil*.

Ubarum Bronzehand was reading some sort of mystical scroll. No telling how long he'd be. You never know, with wizards.

Let us first turn our eyes to the outside of the fort. We've got the usual torchlit besieging horde, but this time, it belongs to the protagonists and their allies, not Sauron or his lackey Saruman. A heavily-armoured column numbering some two hundred men of the Immortal Phalanx, points of their 17' long sarissas gleaming in the firelight, is steadily marching toward the still upright drawbridge. They trust in the PCs to get it down before they reach it in a couple of minutes.

Behind them are two companies of battle-hardened heavy infantry mercenaries from Akanax, the City of Soldiers. Bearing before them their heavy rectangular shields and 7' warspears, each of these men has been a soldier for more than half of his thirty plus years. Their duty will be to follow the phalanx in through the chokepoint and then defend the sides of that formation.

Behind those comes a single company of leather-armoured swordsmen with small shields and wicked-looking khopeshes. Their task is to fan out to the sides of the heavy infantry and take the ramparts by storm. What they lack in modern military equipment or disciplined formations, they make up for in patriotic fervour. After the disastrous campaigns of the past years, each of these men has survived on countless battlefields where others have died. While that has discouraged and dispirited many others, this unit is made up only of those it has merely served to anger and harden. The swordsmen are not an elite by scientific selection or extensive training, but by the more Darwinian process of the survival of the fittest on the field of battle.

Still further back there are more troops being dispatched to join the fight, but until that drawbridge is brought down, they'll be marching in there to stand futilely around while every catapult, sling and bow in the fort peppers them with missiles.

Above them in the night sky, we might yet see a strange sight, or at least we would, if we could see in the dark. Let us imagine that we can. We look, perhaps, at the battlefield through the eyes of Esarheddon of the Enclave, an ambassador to Messemprar there to observe events in the behalf of his faction, as yet unaligned in the war. As an ambassador, we are, of course, utterly neutral in this conflict. We are merely there to observe and report.

With our sorcerous sight, we perceive a madly twisting human drooling idiotically high above us in the air. He is wearing a cuirass, greaves and bracers of what appears to be very well shined bronze, but what we know to be orichalum. The rest of his body is bare, presumably to show off the elaborate Thayan-style tattoos of protection and mystical power that cover his scalp, chest, back, arms and the side of his face that is visible. An alabaster mask covers the other side, hiding the hideous scars that he got slaying the black dragon whose wing bone now makes up his bow.

Going in a parabolic arc, this strange figure of a man reaches at least 400 yds of height before he starts descending. Probably as the result of an ill-fated attempt to regain control, he is accelerating. This proves unfortunate when he starts to head more or less downwards. On the debit side of the ledger, it does mean that he manages to outdistance the fearsome lion-bird beast that came out of nowhere and is diving right after him. By its golden glow and proud bearing, this is probably some servant of Anhur, summoned from his celestial realm to rend the mercenary heathen who assault the fortress at the tip of Anhur's (figurative) lance in the godless land of Unther, which cries out for His benevolent guidance**.

With a practised eye, our observer now notes that unless the Mujhari regains control within the next second or so, he will not have to worry about being rent by celestial talons or opened from groin to gizzard by a hooked beak of divine fury. The good old ground will do for him first, given that he has reached almost 120 mph and the ground is less than a hundred yards away.

Despite making an attempt to match speeds; clasping his forearm is a shock. The mudward-bound spin of the Mujhari is in less than a second of frantic and complicated activity involving vectors and momentum transformed into a more leisurely motion of two men linked at clased right forearms, spinning perpendicular to the ground. During that spin, the Mujhari's left draws a scimitar and while the twin-humanoid carousel twists around a hurtling Heaven-beast, he scores a deep cut down its flank, sending a shock of electricity along the blade. As a result of his momentary distraction, the bird-headed lion creature does not manage to pull up from its swoop, but does get the opportunity to really get back to nature, be close to the soil.

There is a short interval of silence. At least distant shouted orders and a roar of battle a quarter-mile away sounds silent when compared to air pounding one's eardrums and one's life flashing before one's eyes. We find ourselves saying: "You'll excuse me for interrupting your exercise, Mirza Ankhapet, but your method of locomotion looked so interesting that I was tempted to observe it more closely."

*To replenish his Energy Reserves, naturally. Abadas keeps it real.
**And for Pharoah and Horus-Re, naturally. Though the priests of Anhur are fairly certain that it cries most loudly for Anhur's protection and succor.

[Icelander]

Inside the earthern passage between upraised drawbridge and the fort proper, the crackling of flames and the rapid chanting of the Bronzehand are almost drowned out by a chorus of mooing and bleating from the fort courtyard. A few tense seconds pass as Sir Michael can hear orders in a foreign language given and see the shapes of running men on the other side of the wall of flames in front of him, but no one tries to jump through. Finally, he glimpses two ranks of men with shields coming towards him. On the flanks are armoured swordsmen with round forearm shields and in the centre, six heavily armoured spearmen side by side with their rectangular shields covering most of their bodies. The two ranks march through the flames as if they didn't exist.

Mickey takes a deep breath. From experience, he knows that their helmets, cuirasses, greaves, bracers and the outer facing of their shields are not made out of bronze, but of enchanted orichalum. A light breastplate made from that mystical metal will stop the heaviest crossbow bolt or a musket ball at point blank range. Even for his mighty sword Cairlachan, Stone Cleaver, it is a formidable obstacle. On the other hand, Mickey has drunk deep of magical potions of heroism and giant strength. He feels strong enough to heft a full-grown man with one hand and he does not know the meaning of fear.

He backs away from their line in two short paces, batting the spear of a spearman in the center of the first rank right, taking it out of line. His second parry is a lightning swift riposte to the man marching on that one's right, following the line of the lunging spear past the shield and into the face of the spearman. He falls forward, but before he hits the ground, Cairlachan darts over him to pierce the side of the spearman next to him, the side supposedly protected by his now-dead right-hand man. That worthy staggers and tries to get his previously parried spear back in line, but the leaping claymore has already been pulled back into left high guard and swept back for a powerful diagonal downward cut at his midsection.

Sir Michael expected his foe to stumble back at that cut, but he didn't expect him to fly backwards like the floor had no friction. Even more surprising, the four men nearest the eastern wall of the tunnel, the ones Sir Michael expected to be able to skirt the area he could bar with his flashing blade, have tumbled into a confused heap a couple of paces to his right. Some magic at work, no doubt, but it seems to affect only that half of the enemy ranks to his right. Still, only a fool looks a gift horse in the mouth, particularly when he has better work to do than hostlery. Two brutal chops of Cairlachan later, two of the four men who fell will not be getting back up. The other two are beyond Mickey's reach, at least if he doesn't want to allow the enemy on the other side of the tunnel free rein.

By the red paint on his muscular body, Mickey identifies one of those five as a war priest of Anhur. Deciding that this was the most dangerous of their foes, Mickey leapt on top of the body of the first spearman he slew and hacked down at the priest. His cut was blocked by his orichalum shield, but the priest almost lost his balance when he discovered that his feet were rooted to the ground. Another blow split his shield, but either divine favour or inspired swordcraft allowed the priest to fend off Mickey's terrible swift sword even so. The expected lethal counteracts from the other four on that side were hampered by their feet being equally stuck to the ground. Observing that for now, these five were no threat to the spellcasters behind him, Mickey decided to save them for later.

He leapt off his corpse-perch and landed in front of the two swordsmen who recently regained their feet at the eastern wall. One of them moves around Mickey for the split second he is gaining his full balance back after landing. He is going after Ubarum Bronzehand. The other manages to block Mickey's initial strike with deftness and facility. An older man, not as large or strong as some of the others and lacking most of his teeth, he nevertheless caused Mickey some trouble. They were still duelling when Ankhapet Si'Hamet came flying over the heads of the earth-rooted enemies and took up position on the western side of the tunnel.

Ankhapet had parted from his rescuer without even a 'thank you, ma'am' or a 'by-your-leave' and immediately sought to make his way to his companions. They were to be four there to hold the tunnel while Abadas did his magic and the Adama only knew what was going on with only half that force. He crossed the walls of Fort Anhurmose for the second time this night, but this time without falling prey to any confusion spells and not even slowing as he sent an arrow into the face of an enterprising artilleryman who tried to plug him with a scorpion.

Upon taking up his position, Ankhapet starts to shoot at the five men trapped in whatever spell holds their feet immobile. Their shields deflect his first two arrows, but his third penetrates a shield to find a face behind it. Sir Michael brings Cairlachan up for a powerful cut from the right, but when his foe moves up his shield to meet it, Mickey instead snaps a left hook into his jaw. Surprisingly, the swordsman only staggers, but keeps his feet.

Ankhapet can see that a great mass of enemies is forming outside the tunnel. They have not dared to cross the burning Thayan oil yet, but those flames are already starting to dim. He pauses to incant over an arrow while he selects a target. If he aims for the face of the now shieldless ochre-painted Anhur priest, a missed shot would mean that the arrow was bound to find a target among some of the newly formed ranks in the courtyard. He looses and his one arrow magically multiplies into five. All of them, however, find secure lodging in the red priest's face.

While Sir Michael matched swords with the older guard, his tall and lanky companion had moved to attack the Bronzehand. While continuing to cast his spell, the wizard had almost lazily parried the cut to his face and then swept his staff to fold the legs from under him. As he tried to stand, the staff moved this way and that, neatly preventing him from getting back up. Having to match staff with sword in this way didn't appear to discomfit the Bronzehand any and it didn't interfere with the growing orange orb in his hand. When he judged the concentration of enemies outside in the courtyard to have reached a critical mass, he unleashed the sphere.

It exploded into an inferno. Almost everything not magically proteced from fire within 60' from the center of the new formation of enemies was lit up. Scores of enemies were blown to pieces and standing almost 30' away, even massive Sir Michael, weighin in at 230 lbs. and immune to fire, staggered two steps away from the blast and almost lost his footing.

[Icelander]

For a few seconds after the massive blast, there is an eerie lack of activity. Mickey and the toothless guard still exchange furious attacks and Ankhapet sends arrow after arrow at the four other survivors of the initial charge, still rooted to the ground*. But instead of a huge force about to attack them, there are slightly more than a score who had already received protections from flame and a few scattered burn victims moaning weakly. Even so, a score of their elite might be more than Ankhapet and Mickey can handle.

Sir Michael sidesteps with his sword in high guard and instead of the expected rightside cut to the head, he reverses direction and cuts from the left at the upper thigh. Cairlachan cuts through steel mail skirt like butter** and the gaptoothed swordsman who had occupied Mickey so long slides back through the slippery section of floor.

As the lanky swordsman whom Ubarum Bronzehand had sprawled on the floor with his staff is finally managing to rise to one knee, five magical missiles from the Bronzehand's bracer stagger him again. Before he can get a knee under him, Mickey chops at the back of his head. Incredibly, the elite Mulan guard manages to block with his shield. It avails him but little. Cairlachan splits his shield, cuts his arm off at the elbow and slices into his helmet. The next swing takes off his head.

In the meantime, Ankhapet is picking off the trapped men on his side of the tunnel one by one. He is pleasantly surprised to see Nuraun Teltree, the wizard he dropped on his aerial adventure come flying through the ruins of the courtyard. Teltree is protected by some field that turns away missiles targeted at him, but a thrown javelin almost spits him, missing him by less than an inch. He lands inside the tunnel, within an arm's reach of Ankhapet, and starts chanting something.

Mickey, meanwhile, decides to go back to the men trapped on the west side of the tunnel, the ones Ankhapet has been shooting. He has hardly begun attacking them, though, when Teltree imperiously orders him "Back!". Realising that he's probably in harm's way if Teltree lets loose with some destructive invocation, Mickey hastens to obey. Ankhapet, meanwhile, finishes off the last of the trapped men and starts to chant a spell of his own over another arrow.

The enemy at the tunnel mouth are standing in a literal storm of fire. This does not appear to bother them overly much, perhaps because the only ones still standing that close to the tunnel are the ones who have received some magical protection against fire from their priests. More and more people are coming to join them, crossing into the storm of flames as soon as they have been properly protected. Even after taking massive losses from the fireball, the enemy has the numbers to keep coming until the five heroes are overwhelmed.

Several battlepriests are blasted by four missiles of magical force that the Bronzehand sends to unerringly seek them out, but that leaves a lot of other priests still working on dispelling the two areas of abnormal floor the Bronzehand left at the tunnel mouth, the slippery patch and the sticky one. It appears, however, that they lack the raw power needed to easily remove Ubarum's enchantments. With time, however, they will no doubt find some way.

They do not get all that much time. Teltree sends a cone of magical frost blasting through their ranks, cracking their shields and armour and literally burning their flesh and freezing the blood in their veins. Those who are not killed are left griveously wounded and a great number of the troops and priests standing behind the front lines are also taken down.

During this display of magical power, Mickey turns around to look for something to throw at the enemy. He is momentarily surprised to see that Esarheddon Fireheart, Wizard of the Inner Circle of the Enclave and absolutely neutral observer of the current conflict, is leaning nonchalantly against the eastern wall on the other side of the Bronzehand. Deciding that explanations can wait, Mickey picks the swordsman he previously beheaded. He grabs the body and his sword in one hand and strips off his belt with sheathed dagger with the other. Changing hands so that the belt and the body are in the same hand, Mickey sends the sword into the thigh of an enemy in the courtyard. Biting the hilt of the dagger, Mickey next swings the belt and empty sheath like a bolas and sends it at the neck of another, snapping it. The dagger is thrown into a face of yet another foe and finally, the corpse flies ten yards to knock down a wounded enemy.

Abadas, in the meantime, has successfully melted one chain down and started on the other. When the everburning oil he had soaked himself in burned out, he grabbed a 20-lb glass sphere filled with more oil and lead bullets and exploded it with a searing bolt of fire. He took some shrapnel, but more importantly, he was again soaked in burning oil and could continue to channel elemental energies.

Ankhapet follows the freezing cone with a smaller cone of his own, this one an arrow that explodes into fiery fragments and flenses five of the wounded left by Teltree's spell. He then proceeds to pick off other wounded one by one. Ubarum Bronzehand finally finishes a spell that calls into existence a glowing sword that fights for him. Declining to send it outside of the tunnel, though, he orders it to wait for the enemy to manage to circumvent his sticky and slippery spells.

Not having anything more useful to contribute until more enemies close within melee range, or at least range at which he could toss a body at them, Mickey goes to help Abadas bring down the drawbridge. He begins hacking at the four iron-bound bars that hold the drawbridge in the upward position, realising that even if Abadas melts the second chain, the drawbridge won't budge with them there.

Nuraun Teltree calls down stinging hail the size of men's heads on the few survivors of his freezing spell. Behind those scattered few, now running in confusion and terror, though, the heroes can see that someone has been diligent in organising a proper assault. Long pikes and ordered ranks are moving closer, more than a hundred foes. And on the flanks there are more of the elite guards that form the retinue of Anhurite priests, warriors chosen for courage, skill and dedication. Ankhapet is shooting at them once per turn, but it hardly seems to matter with numbers like that.

*But immune to the fireball that engulfed them as they were immune to the flames they previously walked through. That's the thing about priests, they're good for layering protective magics on you.
**Compared to orichalum, steel mail is almost like no armour at all.

[Icelander]

While the massed ranks of pikemen inexorably move closer, Ankhapet spots an orichalum-armoured warrior running from the blind spot to the side of the tunnel. He's wielding a small shield and carrying a thick-bladed sword with a slight curve. All his dimensions seem slightly more than human and around him roil and flicker divine energies. From that quick glimpse, Ankhapet deduces that he is either an extraplanar servant of Anhur or one of the elite that they previously fought under the effects of powerful magics that imbue him with the might of such creatures. And he is probably not alone.

Ankhapet shouts 'Celestials!' and then whispers a charm of magical unraveling over his next arrow. Bringing the bow to bear, Ankhapet can already spot several other warriors who are running into the tunnel, having approached from the side to minimise their exposure. He looses the arrow, but the first among the running warriors swats it upwards with his shield. Then he leaps, bounding over the patch of slippery ground and landing nimbly just three yards short of Nuraun Teltree. The other warriors, all over 7' tall and glowing with an otherwordly power, come jumping after him. Seeing that things are likely to come to a melee in a second or two, Ankhapet yells out: "Mickey!"

Some four Anhurite warriors fail to judge the extent of the slippery area correctly and slip when they land, ending up sprawled near the eastern tunnel wall. Another leaps too far and stumbles on a corpse on the western tunnel side. Some six of the celestially-empowered warriors do manage to land on their feet, though. And Ankhapet recognises the largest and most intimidating of them easily enough, despite a helm with cheekpieces and nasal guard that covers most of his face. Ser Sawati Buikhu, the man who in a duel earlier that night laid his stomach open with an axe like gutting a fish. Buikhu lands a mere two yards away from Ankhapet and the momentum of his running charge carries him forward as he strikes a mighty blow.

Ankhapet manages to dodge the axe with some difficulty and barely escapes being caught between Buikhu and the western tunnel wall. The force of the man's impact with the wall is incredible. Hard-packed earth is thrown in all directions as Buikhu rams into it, but it does not appear to faze him for even a heartbeat. "Mickey, aid!", Ankhapet shouts as he looses an arrow at Buikhu. The arrow is deflected from his shield and Ankhapet drops the bow behind him as he draws both his scimitars for defence.

Teltree abandons whatever spell he was casting when these dangerous foes appeared and runs to the western wall, taking up a position behind Esarheddon, still observing things with a close interest. Ubarum Bronzehand starts casting a spell at the men in front of him and directs the flying sword he still commands to attack them as well.

Using his boots of dragonflight, Mickey comes hurtling through the air to interpose himself between Buikhu and Ankhapet. Ankhapet, meanwhile, steps behind his ally to meet a warrior coming to flank Mickey. In their little world of a few square feet of battlefield, the two of them are facing Buikhu and three other warriors whose names they do not know, but whose ferocious attacks leave no room for doubt about their prowess.

The Bronzehand deftly keeps away the charging attacks from three foes that make it within melee range of him, all the while he continues to cast his spell. Even allowing for the protective magic that no doubt deflects attacks and guides his hands, his skill with that staff is remarkable. Teltree, in the meantime, wards himself with a spell that requires him to sprinkle some brightly sparkling dust over his body.

[Verjigorm]

Verra nice. Quite impressive.