NOVEL NEXT V11: Chapter 3
V11: Chapter 3
…
Some game developers called a few cosmetic and stat changes to a faction DLC and called it a day.
Not my game devs.
A modding kit was one of the first things released with the game. New factions, cheats, and everything can be downloaded to a specific folder in the game, then activated in specific sequences in the game. People can make whole voiced campaigns with their own custom factions. Multiplayer lobbies just need everyone to have the same mods, and they can co-op on those campaigns. Some people made entire games using the modding kit, and the devs just let everyone play around in the servers.
But I'm getting away from my point.
This game had supporter DLCs that gave new models and some glamour for champion weapons, but that was just to support the company while they developed the real content.
Expansions.
Every expansion came with revamps to the entire system, new units for every faction, a whole new campaign, a crisis, a whole slew of new events, and some new wonders. The base game had only one crisis, no intrigue layer, a dozen wonders, and pretty vanilla units. One expansion turned the game into a different beast entirely. Building off each expansion, the devs slowly unleashed the game that they wanted to make but didn't have the time, money, or audience for when they first started out.
I should've figured those crazy motherfuckers weren't finished with the last one.
Unfortunately, the fact that there was a fourth expansion meant that everything was officially off the freaking rails.
It meant that there was likely to be a fifth crisis lurking around somewhere.
It meant that there were units, wonders, and technology that I didn't know existed.
It meant that there were events that I couldn't guide my faction through.
Were there still only three Divine Engines?
Did they each only have three lines of upgrades?
Were there new artifacts and weapons out there?
Was I missing out on benefiting from an entire freaking system that I could've been using this entire time?
Could all my decisions up to now have been leading me to an early grave?
I didn't know.
That fact terrified me, but at the same time there was a thrumming in my heart.
Excitement.
Despite all the possibilities, despite the fact that it was possible that I could get fucked over, I was excited.
It's been nearly three decades since I last played my favorite game.
And, now, it's like it's risen up from the grave to give me something familiar but new to enjoy.
It's the worst, but it's also the best.
The 'best' part will probably wear off in a week, and I'll become even more paranoid, but I'll do my best to enjoy it for now.
…
With the potential existence of a new crisis, as well as the need to acquire the rest of the Citadels to finish the 'great work,' I kicked off a contingency plan.
A mandatory period of conscription along with the creation of new factories to build up weapons for them to use.
Now, you might be wondering why I didn't already have factories churning out weapons.
The answer is that the weapons I wanted the masses of my population to have experience with just became possible to mass produce. Going from breech-loaded muskets to semi-automatic rifles and machine guns takes time, especially when I wanted WW2 small arms rather than WW1. There's also the caveat that I didn't want any parts of the weapon system to be manufactured in any of the Citadels, including the machines involved in making them.
We weren't just making guns but the entire supply line for those guns. Steel quality needed to be improved. Primers and gunpowder needed refining. Lathes needed to be made to cut through and rifle the new steel. Trigger and blowback mechanisms needed to be made from the new metals and tested. The resources for this production line needed to be secured, the people who'll be manning the factories sourced, floor plans needed to be made, and everything had to be tested.
These were weapon systems that I wanted to use to win against the entire world, and barely three decades ago blacksmiths and alchemists were skilled professionals; a village was lucky to have two or three of them.
Anyway, the weapons were good enough for mass production to train the masses with, so mass conscription was a go.
Naturally, it started with an understanding of the current population."
"Two million here. One million in every other Citadel. Two million in non-Citadel municipalities. Adult population only." Ayah read the statistics off. It wasn't what I wanted. 7 million adults sounded like a lot, but the vast majority were already working. I put everyone that I could to work. My main interest was in their children, but the vast majority of incoming young adults were still three years away. We had high population growth. People were encouraged to have kids, and we took care of them in boarding schools. People paired off, had kids, and enjoyed none of the responsibilities that having children entailed. That was a big boost, but those kids still had to grow. "Within the year, that number will be supplemented by three million Iterants, given our new focus."
"Ten million mortal souls again in the world." It was a nice and neat number. Pleasing to think about. Again, though, most of that population couldn't just be taken out of the picture, given a gun, and trained up. Then, there was the fact Britain and France had like fifty million people for their armies during WW2. As for the two hyperpowers that rose to prominence after the war, America had 120 million and the Soviet Union nearly had 200 million in terms of population. Since I intended to live, I had to be mindful of what came after all this conflict. "A fine starting point, but we will need more."
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Ayah opened her mouth to speak, but I raised my hand.
We've been through this before.
"The Iterants are not to be turned into an army. You and your people are needed everywhere. More importantly, you all should have a choice." A part of me really wanted an army of shapeshifting terminators. Just focus on biological and chemical warfare, supplement them with magic, and go crazy with melee troops with ridiculous armor values and high DPS. But after all these years, the Iterants were far more valuable as people. People that were happy to work, who didn't need food, and when not expending their power in combat and infiltration, could produce two more Iterants each in a handful of months. I was styling it as giving them choices and treating them well, but the numbers were clear: my nation is better off when they're working and producing than dying in droves and fighting. "Now, let's move ahead and go over plans for the mandatory draft."
Ayah gave a prim bow at my words and went back to telling me of our census.
My mind, though, turned towards what was to come.
We had militias established all over our territory. We encouraged our population to volunteer time with local militias and learn how to use and maintain small arms. Local armories and militia commanders were Iterants vetted by Ayah, so the militia forces weren't any sort of threat. In militias, people were taught to shoot, how to march in full kit, and listen to basic orders like hold ground, fire, and retreat.
They were mostly meant to provide support fire for our legions of Citadel Guardians meant to bog down the enemy in melee.
At most, I expected them and the Citadel Guardians to heavily attrit enemy forces in our lands with support from various strongpoints in defensible positions.
We were going to start churning out armies now.
The mandatory draft was going to be a massive recruitment and training effort. We couldn't take all the males of military age without straining our infrastructure and massively committing our fabrication capacity to paying the soldiers, but we could still afford a massive buildup of 80,000 armed soldiers. Half of them were going to be trained up to be flying bombers, artillery units, and cavalry, but the vast majority were going to be general infantry. Semi-automatic rifles, a bayonet, primitive grenades, and green combat fatigues with another twenty more pounds of equipment. Some units will be testing our submachine guns, and I wanted a machine gun or two for every twenty men.
Ten months of training, including two months to acclimatize to being given enhancements left behind by the Ancients.
This was the culmination of years of work and effort starting from my search for ancient weapons while I attended the academy, and as I personally directed the research of all my universities. It was the reason why I had such a small force all these years.
Again, unlike the game, I didn't just magically get the ability to churn out the weapons that I researched after I finished researching them.
So, with that fact in mind, I wanted to make sure that when I committed to churning out an army, I would have them armed with the weapons needed to win the coming war. I could've gone with more research into magic, invested in the production of golems, researched the use of magic for agriculture and for industry, gone for more aerial units, and more. Instead of being at the cutting edge of those fields, I had scholars just keep the research alive and going to give some of us some of the early-game benefits, because more than anything… I knew what I really needed was a lot of firepower in a lot of hands.
Breech-loaded armor-piercing cannons that can be pulled by horses or pushed around by infantry.
Semi-automatic rifles just shy of big-game calibers.
Submachine guns that rattled out pistol rounds with enough punch to knock a man down.
Machine guns that can be lugged around by a gunner while another brings along links of ammo.
I basically maxed out the tech tree for my basic units because I can make the most of them. One in four people had the potential to be living, magical artillery as a mage, but everyone can be taught how to shoot a rifle, crew a machine gun, and load and aim a cannon. Not only that, but I hoped that they could also be taught to fly biplanes and crew long-range artillery.
I could only hope that it was the right call, as we were committing ourselves to manufacturing them all in truly massive quantities.
It was a ton of risk, but if it worked as I expected it to work?
The reward was that we'll have a slim chance at actually winning, rather than just surviving.
…
Interlude: Riegert
…
Experimental weapons.
Our king had asked us to bring some along for field testing if time permitted.
It was to be my first sight of the future of conflict.
A mere fifty soldiers were sent with their weapons against an outpost of the Stymphalians. They were supported by a few Conquerors who were not instructed to interfere unless lives were at risk.
The outpost was manned by nearly a hundred Stymphalians, and they held reign over an outlying length of forest between their lands and that of the Ascendants. The forest was thick enough to give them an advantage against Ascendant raiding parties, but the Ascendant scorched the earth in the surrounding lands to deny the Stymphalians from growing more of their infernally large and strong trees.
An Ascendant 'Dagger' of four of their warforms was destroyed by the hundred warriors of the outpost.
Judging that the outpost would likely sight our expedition as we passed through, it was set up for destruction with magics replicating the weapons of the Ascendants.
That way we could continue on our journey while the Ascendants and Stymphalians fought against one another.
I expected the experimental troops to succeed but require aid from their Conqueror auxiliaries.
Instead, I found myself watching them lay waste to the outpost.
"If you told me that those were fifty mages two decades ago, I'd have believed you." Oswald observed by my side with his own pair of binoculars. I watched through my own. The fifty men we sent in had adopted an L-shaped formation around the outpost. They took cover, sighted the large building built into the large tree, and opened fire with a withering deluge. "It's like I'm seeing a thousand men firing. Not fifty."
"It's the new weapons. The automatic guns." The new weapons were robust. Even with enhancements to their bodies courtesy of the Ancients' gifts, those charged with carrying the weapons and ammunition had many complaints. It looked like a box with handles on one end and a barrel out the other. It fired munitions of the same caliber as the Conqueror's Citadel-forged cannons, but manufactured by our own people. Brass ammunition with steel tips nearly the length of a bottle. I doubted that they would complain about their weapons now. It roared a continuous stream of thunder, and the wooden, hanging building came apart in large chunks. "They're devastating."
Only two of the weapons were with the fifty men, but I could tell the initial barrage of two ammunition boxes, or one hundred rounds, was devastating.
The building turned into a ruin in but a few minutes, and both flesh and chunks of wood fell to the ground after the barrage.
The remaining Stymphalians tried to charge out from their broken outpost to avenge their comrades, but that's when the rifles began to bark. A steady cacophony of cracks in the air resounded as forty men fired a barrage of fire into the descending Stymphalian flock. The flock in question came apart at the constant stream of fire from overlapping fields of fire.
"Some are getting through." Oswald observed. The veterans or elites of the Stymphalians used magic to create barriers of wind. The rifle rounds punched through but did not kill, as they were tougher than their younger compatriots. "I think that's where the smaller automatics come in, correct?"
"Correct." I nodded and kept my gaze towards the last of the Stymphalian outpost. Of the hundred that inhabited the building, only a dozen remained. They had reached fifty stride-lengths of the group, mere seconds away from using poison and magic to kill our men, but then the last remaining eight soldiers fired. From our distance, it was like the sound of a clock ticking right next to our ears. The small automatic weapons put down a barrage of lead that pushed back the last of the outpost. Grenades were then thrown to shower them in flames that set their wings alight. They fell to the ground… and the rifles were already done reloading. "It's over."
I put my binoculars down and took a deep, calming breath to try and slow my racing heartbeat.
In the next ten years, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were to be armed with these weapons and set off to war.
Despite all that I knew of our enemies, I could only wonder one thing:
Were the remains of the Ancients' foes really strong enough to push back against the monsters that the King of Wisdom has created?