Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

[RGTraynor]

A three hundred foot long snake/worm???

I cannot possibly imagine a TL3 army that wouldn't flee in terror before it. Let's start there.

Nor are any of the other "solutions" presented viable. Poisoned meat? You'd need enough poison to fill a competition-class swimming pool with enough to get the barest fraction of its mass. Ballista bolts? The largest torsion-mounted artillery in the history of the world would trouble it no more than a splinter would bother any of you. Trapping it at the bottom of a ravine? Leaving aside "and doing what to it?", snakes and worms can cope with scaling elevations just fine, and at three hundred feet long, a good bit better than the poor schmuck humans trying to trap it. Tricking it into a fall? I think by definition square-cube law doesn't apply here.

Nope. It's run like hell, rely on the Court Wizard to magic it to attack the nation next door instead, die messily, or hope that TL7 and air strikes comes real soon.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Lovewyrm

Ah, yes, the dragon could whisper (didn't actually think of that), but that's also kind of funny to me.
Like, converse with a cat or a dog in whispers only. It's subtly inconvenient (in my opinion)

A lot depends on the specifics of the dragons. How close do they normally get to converse? If they tend to get fairly close, their normal speech may not be much louder than how humans talk (particularly if they've got good hearing), even if their maximum volume can level buildings and break eardrums at short range. Of course, if their normal speaking volume is louder than what a human is comfortable with, that can certainly be used as a subtle reminder of who has the upper hand (or claw, as it were) - the dragon need only speak at a whisper, while the humans must shout to make themselves heard.

Originally Posted by Lovewyrm

And well, maybe it won't penetrate the worms defense, but it could perhaps inflict pain.

Sort of akin to microwave area denial systems (which I guess have been renamed to Active Denial Systems)? I could certainly see that - from what I understand about the testing, even hardened soldiers with high pain tolerance found themselves unable to do anything but flee from the sensation of being burned alive, even though they had assurances the device wouldn't actually cause them harm. The giant worm may well be in a similar situation. Of course, focusing sunlight enough to have that sort of effect on a moving target is nearly impossible, particularly with low-tech mirrors... but in a setting where such a creature could exist without collapsing under its own weight*, perhaps it would be doable.

*The largest blue whales would have ST around 150, and the largest land animals to ever exist were estimated to be around half the blue whale's weight, for around ST 100. ST 200 implies this worm weighs around 500 tons.

Originally Posted by Anthony

Larger creatures have a higher terminal velocity, which makes a lot of difference for long falls, and simply falling over (trip, etc) is a longer fall for a larger creature and thus more dangerous, but other than that, no, large creatures don't suffer proportionately more injury for the same absolute fall distance, ability to withstand injury is not proportional to lifting ability.

I've read some of the larger animals prehistoric humans hunted (like the wooly mammoth and wooly rhino) could break their legs from falls that the human hunters had little issue with, but perhaps the source there was incorrect.
(Of course, this was based on biomechanics and physics, not any sort of historical record of a hunt, given this all happened before the invention of any known writing system)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

A three hundred foot long snake/worm???

The creature actually seems to be a bit weak for its size - 100 yards long implies SM+10, but it "only" has ST appropriate for SM+8. Humorously, if we assume skin proportionally as thick as for a human, and further assume a human functionally has DR 0.5, at the low end it actually has appropriate DR for its size. I do agree that most methods of combat available to a mundane TL3 military would be unable to do much to it, however. A fall could still work, but only if you can manage to get it to throw around half its weight over the edge before it can stop and back up, and unless it also has a ridiculous speed, that probably isn't going to happen. But if you can rig something like a pit trap, that might be doable. IIRC the GURPS collision damage calculation works out to something like HP*Velocity/30=points of damage; ignoring DR, that means a depth of around 50 yards to drop it to 0 HP, 200 yards to drop it to -1xHP, or 2,000 yards (a bit over a mile) to drop it to -5xHP. I suspect that's not really achievable in any sort of timely fashion, however. A 150-foot radius cylinder with a depth of 150 feet contains around 10 million square feet of soil; even if it's regular dirt, Campaigns puts digging speed at 1xBL per hour IIRC, so with an average of ST 10 (and thus BL 20), you need 500,000 man-hours just to dig the pit. And that's just to put the worm at 0 HP! And it doesn't account for building (and concealing) the bridge or whatever that the worm would travel over (and that would break once enough of it is on that area that it can't hold itself up).

EDIT: Just for the heck of it, I decided to calculate how many death cap mushrooms you'd need to feed this thing to kill it. LD50 - which works out roughly to a straight HT roll to survive - for the relevant toxin is 0.3 mg per kg of body weight for many species. Assuming this holds true for our giant worm-snake, that's roughly 150,000 mg - 0.15 kg. The cap of the death cap is around 0.036% toxin, but other bits of the mushroom are higher, so let's just say 0.05% to make the math easier. That's 300 kg of death's cap mushroom, and at maybe 100 grams per mushroom (I'm finding values of 60 grams for the cap alone), that's 3,000 mushrooms. Yeah.
EDIT2: Something above is off - the 60g estimate for the cap's mass is based on half a cap being stated as 30g and being enough to kill a person... but that only reaches the LD50 for a 36 kg creature, which is around half the weight of GURPS' assumed 150 lb average character. Still, you need to feed this thing a lot of amanita mushrooms to take it down.

[ericthered]

Thanks for all of the answers!

Originally Posted by zoncxs

Low Tech starting on page 78, Mechanical artillery.

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

And dodge. Remember, the worm is mobile and primitive siege engines are doubleplusungood USELESS against a moving target.

Direct fire weapons like very heavy ballista are more promising... Maybe it works, probably a lot of people die.

Ok, so artillery isn't useless, but it is hard to use well, and its a lot more effective against DR 20 than DR 40. That's some good analysis.

A very heavy ballista with properly designed bolts that have triangle shaped bodkin point heads and plenty of barbs. Thoroughly rub the point and barbed shaft with dung, rotting flesh, etc... Triangle points keep wounds from properly closing.

So what other optimizations can be made to make a ballista bolt more effective? Can you get armor divisors on the weapon? How would it differ from conventional artillery?

I suggest re-designing the monster. Either change the DR (make it slime-based ablative, for example) or give it the traditional "weaksauce weakness" (rooster crowing, holy water, green rocks, what-have-you).

If you intend to use the monster in a pitched battle I would advice to lower DR to 7 at most and increase HP if needed, but 200 is a lot already.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Depends on what other traits it has. Does it have any form of Injury Tolerance? Nictitating Membrane?

Originally Posted by transmetahuman

Is the DR tough skin? If it's a hard rigid armor, as a worm/snake it will need many relatively vulnerable joints in order to bend and curl - either ring shaped segments or giant scales, overlapping. Those vulnerable points could reasonably be considered the equivalent of "chinks in the armor", and to hit penalties would be offset by the size modifier...Same for the mouth or eyes, especially if they're to scale.

Originally Posted by Lovewyrm

Maybe lure it into the sea?... into the snow.
Or the desert...
Blind it when it sleeps (if it's a worm, would it even have eyes?)

So the creature is still being designed. DR 40 was my initial thought, but it seems to be quite high. DR 20 looks a bit more manageable. I'm still trying to figure out what the creature looks like and is. the initial inspiration is a polycheate worm, but adapted for land, and perhaps mixed with a little bit of snake and dragon. Chinks in the armor is a great idea.

They will 100% have eyes, and I'm torn about how much nicitating membrane they should or shouldn't have. Getting an eye put out is serious, and healing magic is hard to come by. I think the eyes should have weak but present defenses, be smaller than you'd expect, and perhaps have more than just two.

I'm still debating on how aquatic the wyrms are. The area is based on south-east asia, so water is common, and deserts much less so. I was thinking they could be amphibious, but that might be too much. having an island that's unihabitable because a hostile wyrm lives on it and can't get off is a cool idea.

Originally Posted by TGLS

2) ST200 probably has heavy demands of food. Harass/cut it's supply lines, engage in scorched earth warfare to starve it out

Nighttime attacks could be good.

That won't work as well against a worm with allies, but its a really solid idea against the solitary worms... they may be limited in what they can do by the need to sleep in safety. Logistics may also limit that... I'm still deciding what these things eat. the obvious answer is "A Lot", but I'm thinking of making them mostly carnivores, but able to digest heaps of cooked human food as well. Which means that the enemy itself might be the best source of food. But if the wyrm can't get that food, it may need to go back to its own territory soon. So now I have a reason that the solitary wyrms can only raid without really fighting wars!

Originally Posted by Thamior

Human level intelligence is not genius by the way. And often humans are more easily decieved because of intelligence. So maybe use it somehow? Also what is its diet, does it breathe, needs water? How about trapping and suffocating/starving it? .

Fire will kill anything sooner or later, but the technology to apply fire isn't nearly strong enough at that TL to take out a non-flammable target of that size and mobility. burn down the forest it's in is a viable strategy, but very costly (loose the forest) and you have to get the fire going without it realizing what's going on until too late or it will do ye-old "jump through the flames" and then your ****ed.

Fixed installations like castles and forts could be designed and built like large scale traps that could kill them: have a giant castle sized spring loaded spike that fires up when the roof is ripped off (read that in a fantasy book for killing a dragon once), arm the keep with a vast battery of ballista strategically place to strike at it based on how it's likely to approach the keep, etc. These are going to be extremely expensive and often one use only traps. But they'd work.

It does sound like fortifications are the best places to put traps. I don't think fire is the best option, but pits do show some promise... though a worm/snake is perhaps the most resistant body plan to pits. Walls will keep it out if large enough, but that large enough is probably 40 feet tall and you need to be pretty thick too. Other places would require a pretty good general to get the wyrm where it needs to be... which is fine, but relies on presenting a credible threat in some other way. (and thus the rest of the thread).

Originally Posted by Rolando

Also poisons, may need high concentration but may also work, depending on the poisons.

Poison is also an option

Cake every spear in p00.
Send out stabbing/infection parties.
And oh with that DR 'dirty spears' migh not work, but ballista bolts could.

Poison its food. Even if it's humans.

That's a useful thought. Perhaps a specific type of poison works well against them? Maybe a plant or tree has a sap that acts like poison ivy to them? Making them merely face weeks of pain may be enough in a lot of situations: they're long lived and presenting a threat of persistent irritation can count for a lot.



I suddenly wonder what the DR on the roof of the mouth should be. especially as it might not be vertebrate.

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Ropes. If you can get some ropes secured to it, then lots of people can be used to immobilize it, and then you can stab it in vulnerable spots.

Or, if the hooks on the ends are the right kind, get on top and ride it about. Khul Wahad!

I reread the first post, magic is a minimal concern means it is not developed or the creature have MR or some anti magic aura?

It means that the setting's magic is not terribly flexible or powerful, especially in combat.

EDIT: I don't actually support genocide or hunting things to extinction, it just seems like the best military strategy in the context described. Ethically, rather then hunting them to extinction, maybe just use diplomacy wherever possible.

But I like the idea of just negotiating.

Human level of intelligence... Is it capable of communication? If your setting is low magic it is very unlikely that it could have human level intelligence without some kind of a functional society of such things.

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

Bribe it.

Or use its human intellect to strike a deal, treat it like a dragon and pay tribute to it. Maybe it'll become an ally of a kingdom.

That's a really good thought, and its sort of built into the society. a good number of the worms are allied with various (often multiple) human groups, and some are philosophically opposed to the idea. Also, there is a human faction that really dislikes the worms and refuses to work with them... though it will agree to treaties. So I need military threats for when your friendly wyrm is not here, or when you don't have a friendly wyrm at all.

Failing that, predators (presumably this thing didn't appear out of no-where) - either small, vicious things that eat it from the inside, or a truly enormous blackbird.

So nothing bigger is going to be around... but a parasite might be possible. I'd prefer external parasites that can be handled... its a thought: What sort of parasites do they have? Can they be bred in other situations and then aimed at the wyrms?

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

Bows, swords, spears, cavalry... all useless. Can't hurt it at all. Cavalry might be able to give it some bruises, but only if you're willing to let all of your expensive horses and best trained soldiers die for the cost of bruising it.

Is cavalry really that ineffective? Even if DR drops to 20?

The key way to deal with these is not militarily or conventionally. They're not a conventional opponent and they're nearly immune to conventional attacks. You don't fight them. You hunt them like bears.


Let it bleed out or get sick and die while tracking it carefully with trackers from safe distances.

That doctrine works for at least the solitary wyrms... though in practice you probably set up a treaty where you don't fill the forest with traps and they don't trash your villages.

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Paging the Earl of Lambton...

What's the reference? Looking up the Earl of Lambton doesn't give me anything.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

So the creature is still being designed. DR 40 was my initial thought, but it seems to be quite high. DR 20 looks a bit more manageable. I'm still trying to figure out what the creature looks like and is. the initial inspiration is a polycheate worm, but adapted for land, and perhaps mixed with a little bit of snake and dragon. Chinks in the armor is a great idea.

May I suggest the chasmfiend, from The Stormlight Archives? It's similar, albeit a bit smaller - it appears to be around 20x the size (its length vs his height) of Kaladin Stormblessed, who is himself I believe around 6 feet tall, for around 120 feet long. They can be fought by armies, although this is difficult and will result a great deal of loss of life without Shardbearers (guys in magical powered armor with oversized cut-through-anything swords) involved.

Originally Posted by ericthered

What's the reference? Looking up the Earl of Lambton doesn't give me anything.

I had the same issue initially; look up Lambton Worm instead.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The creature actually seems to be a bit weak for its size - 100 yards long implies SM+10, but it "only" has ST appropriate for SM+8.

It probably only has SM+8 weight as well, or even SM+7; snakes weigh a lot less than other creatures of comparable length. Of course, even SM+7 weight would be on the order of 250 tons, and giant monsters don't generally obey the square/cube law (if they did, they'd just die under their own weight), so I'd probably want to give it ST 500-700 (BL 25-50 tons).

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The creature actually seems to be a bit weak for its size - 100 yards long implies SM+10, but it "only" has ST appropriate for SM+8.

Its long and thin, well outside the scope of simply taking the length and looking up the SM. The goal was the height of the creature is eight feet tall. I know snakes often have a circumference in inches equal to their length in feet, so multiplying 8 by pi and then by 12 gives me about 300. So its quite long and thin. The calculated weight is 450 tons.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Is cavalry really that ineffective? Even if DR drops to 20?

What's the reference? Looking up the Earl of Lambton doesn't give me anything.

Yes, cavalry can't pierce DR20 with lances in 4e. It might ahve been possible in 3e.

The lambton reference probably googles to "lambton worm". There's also a "Sockburn Worm" linked to the Conyers Falchion.

http://www.foxtail.nu/bjorn/h_conyers_eng.htm

[Lovewyrm]

If the worm doesn't have vitals above the mouth (or the part that isn't already basically 'death' for the stabber)
Then that probably wouldn't matter much anyway.
Not sure in worms or snakes, but many animals heal very quickly in the mouth mucosa.
Which makes sense since that's a major interface between your metabolism and probably unwilling food.

And thinking about that, I'm now wondering about segmentation, as in, assigning hitpoints to the creature for segments.
Like limbs for humanoids, with the result that hurting a limb after it's basically mangled doesn't do much more damage overall.

So if the worm has 100hp for example, and it can live 'chopped up' then even bisecting it won't put it into death zones.
Perhaps that could be used instead of very high DR?

Not saying you should make it wet tissue, but if you plan on having both of these features then maybe it shouldn't be too tough as a double whammy.
Or do make it tough. Make them humans work for their glory.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

So what other optimizations can be made to make a ballista bolt more effective? Can you get armor divisors on the weapon? How would it differ from conventional artillery?

LTC2 suggests being able to make impaling weapons armor piercing at, IIRC, either +3 or +4 CF, by making them with hardened steel... but that's TL4. I'd need to reread "The Deadly Spring" to see where that places armor piercing arrows at.

Originally Posted by ericthered

So nothing bigger is going to be around... but a parasite might be possible. I'd prefer external parasites that can be handled... its a thought: What sort of parasites do they have? Can they be bred in other situations and then aimed at the wyrms?

It occurs to me this could be part of their deal with humans - perhaps the parasites are of a similar size to humans (or a bit smaller) and the worms have difficulty dislodging them, but humans are able to clear them off - largely by fighting and killing them.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Is cavalry really that ineffective? Even if DR drops to 20?

You need around 5d+2 damage to have a ~50% chance of getting through DR. I think that's around the damage of a Wall Gun; even a cavalry charge isn't getting through that (and charging right into the worm is probably going to kill the horse and possibly rider from the impact, it's not like you can charge past something that size and do anything more than scratch it).

Originally Posted by Anthony

It probably only has SM+8 weight as well, or even SM+7; snakes weigh a lot less than other creatures of comparable length. Of course, even SM+7 weight would be on the order of 250 tons, and giant monsters don't generally obey the square/cube law (if they did, they'd just die under their own weight), so I'd probably want to give it ST 500-700 (BL 25-50 tons).

Originally Posted by ericthered

Its long and thin, well outside the scope of simply taking the length and looking up the SM. The goal was the height of the creature is eight feet tall. I know snakes often have a circumference in inches equal to their length in feet, so multiplying 8 by pi and then by 12 gives me about 300. So its quite long and thin. The calculated weight is 450 tons.

Ah, that adds up, then. I wasn't sure how a snakelike body would scale in this situation, but it sounds like ST 200 is about right.