Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

The city was not in good shape.  The outer wall had already been breached, but that was somewhat expected. The outer wall is so much larger than the inner wall, so it's harder to prevent a single concentrated attack from causing a successful breach.  From what I gathered, there seems to have been a few individuals with good siege magics, which also made the whole ordeal a bit more difficult.

The city itself was left with about half of our total combat forces, or a little less than five hundred soldiers.  They've suffered about 5% casualties in the past few days, which is definitely not what I wanted to hear.  Though from what I gathered, many of those casualties were due to sacrificial attacks to take down the enemy soldiers with siege magics, so it might not be as bad as it sounds.

Among those taken down, there were individuals who could basically liquify stone and a few who could cause an explosive blast at a moderate distance.  A few of the explosive blasters are still alive, but as far as anyone is aware, the ones who broke through the first wall by liquifying the stone, thus making a gap, are all dead.

With a much smaller area to defend now, with only the inner wall and citadel left, the defense has returned to our favor for the time being.  The enemy started out with about 8000 troops, and have lost around a thousand, a catastrophic amount for a normal battle.  However, they probably also expect to receive more reinforcements from the rest of the island over time.  My guess is that a few commanders are looking to earn points among their superiors by having already captured the outer wall, which is why they were willing to take as many casualties as they did so early.

The enemy apparently made land fall around the artificial tide pools, which we decommissioned about a month ago.  We had stockpiled plenty of preserved foods, and didn't want the enemy to have an easy source of protein, so all the pools were made to drain away, and all the trapping barriers were removed.

After getting the gist of the situation, I went to go find Zeb and Zaka, along with one of the dwarven commanders and a translator so we could read the letter I received from the dark elves.  Once everyone was gathered, the dwarven commander began to read.

"This letter is intended for the leadership fighting for the defense of Kembora.  If you aren't strategic leadership, and you're reading this letter, please deliver it to whomever is your commander, and have them pass it on to the top level.

This letter should have been delivered by a dark elf.  In short, dark elves frequently work as mercenaries, but that doesn't mean they can't be paid off.  We've fronted the money to pay the particular group that is working with the humans off.  They'll only functionally work as necessary for the humans as to not draw suspicion, but if an opportunity arises to turn a major battle, they'll switch sides.  This may not be much, but I hope that this at least affords you some opening.  Additionally, they'll be providing false information where possible to misinform Rathland.  The dark elves number about 250, but they're quite elite individually.  We can discuss financial repayment later, if you survive the attack.

As further advice, Rathland's leadership structure is pretty strict.  If you manage to take out their commanders, I'd expect the remaining troops will retreat.  Until then though, they're quite stubborn, as Rathland not only punishes deserters, but their families as well.  The threat Rathland poses to their neighbors is enough reason for most of them to also stay and fight with them as long as Rathland's leadership wills it, which is all the more reason to remove Rathland's leadership first.

When this letter was written, it does seem that a bit over 100,000 troops are being amassed to fight you.  I'll do what I can to keep other nations from joining their cause.

Best of Luck,

Elloetta"

After the dwarven commander finished reading the letter, and the translator in the room gave us the translation, we all looked at each other.

"It's definitely better than nothing." The dwarven commander stated.

"Well, it's too bad they weren't there on the beach.  Honestly, that would have been a good opportunity for them..."  I respond.

As I observe the room, it's clear the mood is quite grave.  I mean, of course it would be.  We're facing an absolutely overwhelming force, even this news doesn't change that by much.  It does give us another out though, and that's really all we can hope for.

After we read the letter, I informed everyone about everything I'd seen at the beach, as well as info on the scouting base I saw.  The news of how things went at the beach seemed to improve the mood more than the letter did.

Ultimately, discussion turned to our next stages of action.  For now, we're holding our own within the second wall of the city.  The enemy has moved back enough that we can't really hit them with siege weapons.  Which means they're probably waiting for backup to arrive.  I doubt they're expecting their backup to be as worn out as it will be though.

Similar to the situation with the fort at the beach, we have plans for a retreat from the city as well.  Ultimately, we're sacrificing everything to have a chance at victory.  Once an enemy army arrives, we'll gauge how well we can hold them off.  Once things seem bad, we'll retreat to our citadel.  From there, we'll begin evacuations for all but about fifty troops through the secret escape route.  At the same time, a handful of soldiers will be taking the sewer route out towards the beach.

Once the majority of the army is out, we'll be sealing and hiding the actual escape tunnel.  Our intention is to misdirect the enemy towards the beach instead of up the mountain.  We spent a lot of time hiding the dam and reservoir on the mountain.  We built large pillars within the reservoir, and then capped it off with stone, then dirt.  We also built up some degree of natural looking rockface on the front side.  Unless you know what you're looking at, you probably wouldn't assume it's a reservoir anymore.

Beyond that, the area around it is boobytrapped far more than anywhere else, and we've dedicated over one hundred personnel to the area.  Their goal is to bait enemies away from the dam, rather than towards it.  Ultimately, we had to do a lot of work moving the road further from the reservoir to prevent accidental discovery.  We've also slowly been filling the reservoir all year.  At this point, it's nearly full.

I've modified the city's water infrastructure, so if everything else goes according to plan the inlets to the city can handle significantly more water than the outlets right now.  Once the enemy takes the city and gets comfortable, like they did with the fort on the beach, we'll release all the water in the dam, and flood the place.  Ultimately, this will probably do more damage to morale and supplies than it will to individuals, but considering all our other attacks have also targeted exactly morale and supplies more than personnel, I'm hoping it proves effective.  If this also opens up the opportunity for the dark elves to capture enemy leadership, all the better. 

Having reached an agreement that we'll wait here until the enemy makes their next move, I swiftly fell asleep.

After all the excitement I experienced at the start of the war, this slow siege has felt like every day passes at a snails pace.  For a week now we've been holed up waiting for the enemy to do something.  It seems that the enemies' supplies that this side of the island have are in much better condition than the supplies that the other side of the island was left with.  I was starting to worry that I might have misjudged the situation, and that they would, in fact, starve us out, but as of today, a significantly large army, likely from the beach, has arrived.

The new army's condition is quite poor.  Their supplies seem limited, and their morale and condition isn't good.  It's very clear that our strategy is taking a toll on their average soldier.  They spent today reorganizing, and it seems like tomorrow they'll make their move on the second wall.  Our double wall structure seems to be discouraging them from attempting to make any siege engines of their own, as maneuvering them through the outer city would be too difficult.

Given the qualities of the wood on the island, I know first hand that without metal reinforcement, you can't make reasonable siege weapons either, so we don't need to worry about any trebuchets attacking us.  Soon, the next stage of our defense commences.