The Power of Ten

There had been a lot of preparation going into this day.

The Shroudlord might have been a wee bit concerned if he had been able to see behind our lines, and the rows of warehouses that had sprung up there, housing the munitions that were being trucked in, flown in, and most powerfully, railed in every day.

We had made track-laying machines just for the specific purpose of carrying ammunition and fuel out here. The conventional air forces of the entire planet had basically been flown in here, and now became active. National armories and munition dumps were emptied and sent here, because they were all going to become useless. If they didn’t get used now, then when?

And if they exploded, it was going to be out in the middle of nowhere, somebody else’s problem.

A pipeline wasn’t feasible in the time we had, but the trains carting stuff in were running non-stop... and the vehicles kept using everything they brought.

It was now time for modern munitions to go against older ones, and to exploit that other edge... that we still had applicable magic.

You couldn’t Cast at all in a Greyfield, as there were no ley lines to pull on, and the ambient magic was gone.

However, there was a way to Cast INTO a Greyfield, and that was Heavy Magic.

In principle, it wasn’t that hard. You wrapped your spell in an identical version of itself, and the first spell protected the second as it hit the Greyfield, getting suppressed but leaving the internal spell to do its job.

Making that work on an unending basis generally required two people, one Casting the Spell and one wrapping it to make it Heavy.

This method worked on all spells, all Sieged spells, and even Reserves. The latter two were the ‘endless Ammunition’ version for most people, although Shardcaster enhancements to Darts of Disruption Cantrips also became very popular suddenly. Being able to Cast three Darts with Kickers was already many Casters’ main form of endless offense against the undead, so doing it Heavy meant halving their offense... which was still pretty good.

Most Reserves didn’t have much Range, so Siegecasting was another method of doing this, and working in Ritual Casting for a Level Boost benefit was also useful here. Four people Sieging out two Shard spells at +4 Levels was almost as good as just Casting them by themselves.

However, that wasn’t the most powerful use of Siegecasting. That went to True Seeking.

Cast True Seeking on someone, and they received an instant +5 insight bonus to hit, +1 per Caster Level, max +10.

That is VERY useful if you are using One Shots with a Weapon whose lethal range is hundreds of yards, such as a Rifle.

Naturally, that meant you needed a target. People could still fly, get very high in the air, and spot for those down below. Mortars had no problem shooting behind walls, nor did howitzers, or tanks at enough range.

True Seeking made all those things lethal, indeed.

Weapons had their own magic, so they weren’t really affected by a Greyfield. While active Chi Forms weren’t usable, passive Techniques still were, as well as Disciplines and Feats.

It was a time for Forsaken to shine, in other words, and the Powered to play support.

Generally speaking, the Powered spotted from the sky, the artillery blasted vivic-imbued payloads into clusters of undead, Powered infantry scaled the walls while tanks blew open breaches in them, and the Forsaken flooded on through in all their numbers and a river of gunfire to mow down the enemy whose positions they already knew.

Then there was the Morningsun Family and my Traveling Knights of various sorts, including The Mick and Amaretta, who knew Ghost-Eating Ki, and could endlessly fire higher Valence effects, then potentially refill the Slots, be it by spell or Weapon.

The spell of the day was Arcane Fusion, which Azaia had introduced to the world. Two spells in one was nice, but the key here was that it allowed you to Heavy-Cast by yourself.

Granted, the spell was only a Valence I if you could only use V Valences... but if you had broken Ten with faux Levels, it scaled up as new Valences became available, and an endless full-power II Valence wasn’t weak at all, especially Seeking spells that could go right over walls and into trenches and the like to find targets.

If you were a certain someone who could Cast out of VIII Valence, well, an endlessly repeating IV was pretty nice, and the backup Fastcast II wasn’t too shabby, either.

Yes, it gave up a lot to my full display, but it meant I still had Twinned Chained Delimited Shards II, and 18 Shards, Chained, with Kickers, x2, which was still pretty damn good.

Very pointedly, I still had a lot of range, which allowed me to pick off incorporeals who might threaten our air power.

Anti-aircraft positions were not lasting long at all, rapidly taken out with missile or artillery fire as soon as they were identified. Flying spotters with Eagle Eyes up in the sky were looking for them as our planes swooped into and out of the Shroudzone, letting loose bombs, rockets, and missile fire with True Seeking to help aim and enchanted or Infused Vivic to make sure the targets stayed dead.

I was on the northern flank of the advance, which basically meant I was guarding against all the forces coming down from the north to attempt getting around us as we pushed in, in addition to helping make big holes in the walls the infantry could sweep through smoothly. I had spotters out for a hundred miles, just looking for moving undead under the Shroud I might be able to bounce over to and take out from a thousand paces away. I was basically helping run air cover for a coordinated front over five hundred miles long... but that area was compressing quickly.

Briggs had the center/South, with the strongest artillery and mechanized cavalry presence, which he proved a master at using to open ways for the infantry so they could crack open the undead lines. He had no problem doing it while rampaging through their formations, along wall tops, through trenches, breaching gaps, or tearing out anti-air defenses, either.

The Blood of the Irish, including the other Morningsuns, were hip with alternating between support and fire support as circumstances allowed. The Mick and Amaretta’s explosive use of Orbs at close range repeatedly drew a lot of attention, blowing apart the undead lines as aggressively as they cut through them to recharge.

Sama had the South/East flank, running the Dragon Warriors there who didn’t have anywhere near the same level of heavy weapon support, and so had to be very fast and clever as they chewed through the enemy troops. Of course, all of them were green with envy at Sama’s ability to run a Cleave Train through a packed formation and slaughter thousands of undead who made the mistake of bunching up too much in front of her.

Her people had the best ability to strike and fade, and flee when large numbers came streaming their way, drawing thrusts of fast-moving incorps or undead riders into ambush after ambush as they did so, exploiting the assets they had to maximum extent. Her Warlording ranged up and down the line, watching over two thousand people at a time and bouncing from command of one area to another, coordinating the other Warlords into ever-finer killing as she did so.

Initially there was some resistance to Briggs taking overall command. I had ceded him complete control of everyone under The Jet and Silver, which happened to include virtually all the Chinese and Indian forces, a big chunk of the Americans, and pretty much all the Heavenbound, Paladins, and Good Clerics.

The nationalists sort of grimaced under the overbearing pressure, and let him command the Grand Alliance that resulted... and the working Sixteen of a Warlord overwhelmed their resistance and soon had the whole thing humming along with a combination of bluff cajoling and grim determination that was just impossible not to follow.

An effective 48 Charisma or so, with +6 mods from Warlord, meant he was even more overwhelming to military types than I was. They just buckled under his stares and did their jobs, and if they were incompetent at them, he got someone else to do them while ordering them into positions where they were useful.

In the first two days, there were a lot of would-be officers who were sent into combat from command, and a lot of not-officers who got moved into command positions who were good at them. Someone was Casting powerful Allegiance and Alliance magic to really help the process along, I wonder who?...

Sir Pellier and the Traveling Knights were running my infantry while I ran air cover. Briggs borrowed my ability to see the entire battlefield and process it like using a computer, working off real-time feeds from Marks and Allegiance links to stay informed. This made him the most adept battlefield commander on this scale anyone had ever seen, and certainly better than any of the armchair generals in the flanks who thought they should be calling the shots... and he’d been doing this for, like, months.

He needed them for logistics, nothing more, and was even monitoring that for signs of inefficiency, with the help of Heavenbound Hall.

Warlocks had some unique problems in a Greyfield, as any active use of Wrath, including using it through their Weapons, was impossible, and activating anything was impossible.

Thus the whole paradigm for the past year had been making sure all the passive defenses and self-healing were in place, and fundamental skills were shored up so that you could contribute like everyone else even when the Wrath wasn’t around to really pump up your offense or defense.

Importantly, they could always pull back out of the Greyfield and act as support, especially those with Healing Wrath.

Interestingly enough, this was not an issue for Amazons, who were completely passive-Buffed, and there were a LOT of Amazons here at the biggest fight in the world, now joined by Valkyries as well.

For Legion, this meant they couldn’t fly with anywhere near their normal speed, couldn’t shapeshift wings out of the way in the field, and couldn’t project any Wrath anywhere. They couldn’t even run up a wall like normal.

They just stayed armed with Fred and Legion’s Grits, or with Idiot and a Grit, not bothering with the extra eyes, arms, tails, or wings since there wasn’t a lot of melee combat for them, and carried around a lot of ammunition, since Abundant Ammunition wasn’t working, either. With Damage Reduction over 40/-, nothing short of a small cannon could hurt them, and their Strength wasn’t impeded at all. Throwing one Tank at another one was a very acceptable tactic, as was dropping whole sections of the walls that were everywhere on groups of undead, loudly, and jumping really, really high if need be.

Needless to say, their unique appearance and being the strongest damn thing in the world meant Legion got a lot of attention.

Shvaughn stayed with Sama as Windwise, working with the other Warlocks out there. Like Legion, her Amazon strength wasn’t impacted in the slightest, and if she chose to keep her dark Wings out all the time, they just matched her hair. If she couldn’t toss a tank, she could certainly heave one over, and that was basically good enough to do the job, although she liked to casually bend tank barrels into U’s, too.

Both of the Warlock Grandmasters had Mighty firearms, which at their Strength meant they could punch right through several undead, no problem, and basically went off like true hand cannons. The Cohort was really good at setting up kill-swathes and working those angles for maximum carnage among the enemy, too.

Fighting here was basically the most powerful army that had ever existed in the world. Over a hundred thousand Seven+’s were on the job, all with magical Weapons, most with magical Armor, and Tokens and Baneskulls were everywhere.

Forsaken Interdictions and Stillflights meant incorporeals couldn’t fly or glide through solids around them, which meant they had to come down to the ground to fight, instead of being able to dodge gunfire up in the sky or hide underground. That was a bad place for them to be against enemies with Weapons that could hit them without a problem via Tokens or Vivic... and those Weapons all had the black fires of Undead Bane by one means or another.

Up above were all the fighter and bomber jocks in the world, pounding down their targets whenever they had an open route... which often depended on me clearing a road, hence why I was coordinating a lot of the air power.

Black and white streaks of flame lit up the night underneath the Shroud, undead exploded in vivus as they attempted to return fire or charge, and the battle-lines moved forward as the Shroud above fell back, and back, and back again...