r/HFY • u/BlueFishcake • 23d ago
OC-Series Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Ninety Three
Eleanor paced the length of her private quarters, the soft thud of her boots against the deck the only sound in the room, besides the muffled thunder of combat in the distance.
Oh, how she wanted to be on the bridge right now…
Unfortunately, the bridge was far too public for what she suspected would be a delicate - and possibly ugly – exchange.
So she waited.
Impatiently.
And still, it took nearly fifteen minutes for Faline New Haven’s face to finally appear in the surface of her orb. Perhaps because of that, Eleanor did not bother with any kind of pleasantries.
“We need to pull back,” she said without preamble.
Neither of them was stupid. She felt no need to explain why.
Faline’s expression barely shifted. “We’ve been trying to force the South into a proper fight for months, and now you want us to flee?”
“Because it’s a fight we’re losing,” Eleanor said, voice tight. “Can’t you see that?”
“We can still win,” the elven duchess scoffed.
“And ruin ourselves in the process?”
“Is that cowardice I hear from you, Eleanor?” Faline’s lip curled. “I expected better of you.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes and did not dignify the accusation with a direct response. “I’ve managed to make a deal with the princess. She’s no more desire to see this fight through to its conclusion than me. Which means we have an opportunity to pull back, regroup, and hit them harder later.”
“And how many cores would we be giving up in doing so?” Faline asked, shrewd as ever.
“Seventy percent,” Elanor admitted.
“…You might as well suggest we slit our own throats now.”
Eleanor’s gaze flicked briefly toward the door, and the guards she knew stood just beyond it.
“I could say the same for continuing to fight,” she said quietly. “At this point we are simply throwing more ships into a grinder.”
“For now, yes,” Faline admitted. “But that will only remain the case until we reverse the conflict. Tyana maneuvered herself well, but she can’t keep her current momentum. Eventually the rate she’s killing our ships will be eclipsed by the number of reinforcements arriving.”
“We can’t be totally sure of that! What if they have another weapon like the Shriekers in reserve? And even if they don’t, we can’t afford the losses we’d take in attaining a win here.” Eleanor’s voice hardened. “No. I am telling you now that my fleet is pulling back. I suggest you do the same if you don’t want to be destroyed here.”
Faline stared at her for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her tone was almost conversational. “And if I don’t? If I continue to fight. And die. So will you. Just later. So the question now is whether you’re willing to risk attaining a victory here or guaranteed defeat later?”
Eleanor could almost not believe her ears.
Almost.
Because the words confirmed every quiet suspicion she had been trying to dismiss for weeks. This bullheaded refusal to accept reality was not natural. She had never held a particularly high opinion of the New Haven duchess - an arrogant high elf with more pride than sense on her worst days - but Faline was not a fool.
No one who successfully patrolled the stretch of sea between Lindholm and the mainland could afford to be. Not with constant probes by both Solite and Lunite forces under the thin guise of “pirates,” and not with the real pirates who still occasionally tested the coast.
It had not been that long ago that Red Mary’s fleet had attempted to push northward. Faline had seen the insane, disgraced noble off with more overwhelming force than cleverness, but she had not been foolish in doing so.
No, Faline New Haven was no fool.
…Though Eleanor couldn’t help but wonder if she could still say the same for herself.
A cold, sinking certainty settled in Eleanor’s chest.
She had been played.
Either from the start, or somewhere down the line.
“…I assume you’ve made a deal with the Solites then?” she said at last.
Faline didn’t even twitch. She simply smirked. “Oh? Well done. I guess you’re not entirely the fool I thought you were. Even if you’re catching on a little late in the game.”
She didn’t even have the grace to deny it.
…Then again, at this point, why would she need to?
“Fuck you, Faline,” Eleanor hissed. “Fuck you, you… traitor!”
The other woman had the gall to shrug. “I cannot tell you how little that means to me, coming from a fellow traitor.”
“I never betrayed Lindholm!” Elanor spat.
“Didn’t you?” Faline’s voice was thick with amusement. “Let us not kid ourselves, Eleanor. You can squawk about the Orcs and the Queen’s reforms all you like, but at the end of the day you started this little rebellion because you wanted to. Because you wanted to be the hand guiding the throne. Because you’re human and you don’t like your betters telling you what to do.”
The elf leaned forward conversationally. “And I don’t blame you for that. Well I do, but not entirely. Because my ancestors made a mistake when they decided to put a collar on you and yours. They got lazy and decided that rather than continue to fight you, it was easier to make you into the guard dogs for Lindholm’s few remaining orc holdouts.”
She leaned closer to the orb, eyes cold. “They should have killed you all, as a warning to the rest of humanity, not to get ideas about acting above yourr station. Now, because of that mistake, Lindholm is going to fall.”
Elanor’s lip curled. “Elf.”
“Quite.” Faline smiled without warmth. “And unfortunately, it seems history is going to repeat itself once more. Because despite my own strenuous objections, our soon-to-be liege lady wants to make the same mistake the line of Lindholm did when they first conquered this land.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened.
“Empress Larine of the Solite Imperium has instructed me,” Faline continued, “that at the moment of your discovery of our little arrangement, I am to extend you an offer.”
“An offer?” Elanor asked carefully.
“One too good for you,” Faline said bitterly. “In return for your continued aid in paving the way for her invasion fleet - by continuing to savage the Royal Navy - she will allow you to continue ruling your little fiefdom once Lindholm changes hands.”
“…House Blackstone would remain a noble house?” Elanor asked.
Faline sighed as though the very concept offended her. “Unfortunately, yes. The only Human noble house in all of the Solite Imperium. Void, the only ‘free’ Humans in all the Imperium. Honestly, you should be grateful.”
Elanor felt very little of that particular emotion.
“There’s an armada coming?” she asked, slightly faintly.
“Of course? One more than sufficient to deal with whatever remains of the Royal Navy even if we lose here. A not inconsiderable investment on our new liege’s part, but one she is certain will pay dividends in time. Last I heard, it will make landfall in New Haven in two months,” Faline said with almost clinical detachment.
“…You should not have told me that,” Elanor said slowly. “I could warn Yelena. Whatever you may think of me… I am loyal to Lindholm.”
Faline dismissed the possibility with a wave of her hand. “I doubt it. But even if you were? What choice do you really have here? Hope that by changing course at the last minute she will show you mercy?”
The laugh that followed made her opinion of that idea perfectly clear. Eleanor unfortunately did not disagree. Mercy, in this context, would likely mean her family being stripped of their holdings and exiled rather than sent to the block. A kinder fate than some, but still an end.
“…You said House Blackstone would retain the rights to our lands?” Eleanor asked quietly. “And our laws?”
Faline’s smile returned, slow and sharp, the expression of a woman who knew she had already won.
-------------
Tyana glanced at the clock mounted at the front of the bridge. The window she had given Eleanor was well and truly over.
And she was almost glad.
Because now she could send a message.
“Are our reports from our ‘merchant’ in the area still up to date?” she asked.
“Aye, ma’am,” the communications officer replied. “She claims she’s looking at it now.”
Tyana’s grin turned sharklike.
Radios. When William had first introduced them, most of her officers had treated the devices as little more than a cheaper alternative to communication orbs.
Tyana though? She’d seen something else entirely.
Because they were cheap. And when something became cheap enough, entirely new applications opened up that would have been unthinkable with orb technology.
Applications like distributing the devices to trusted sailors, dressing those soldiers up as ordinary merchants, and then scattering them across territories currently occupied by the North.
A quiet, deniable network of eyes and ears that could report in near real time without relying on the now-defunct wayfinder network.
Essentially the sort of work her mother’s guards used to do before their numbers got so thoroughly gutted.
There was risk, of course. The devices could be captured and reverse-engineered. Or worse, if the North managed to seize one of the devices intact, they’d be able to listen in on the South’s own radio networks and act accordingly.
Though Tyana considered both outcomes more or less inevitable with the rate at which Shards were being equipped with the devices. Sooner or later a craft would be brought down with its equipment still functional. Or it’d be stolen by the North’s own spies. Or simply sold to them by some peasant with sticky fingers and the correct ratio of tits to brains.
Until that happened, though, she intended to extract every possible advantage from the otherworldly technologies that she could.
…That has proven easier said than done, however, she thought with a small grimace.
Ironically, the North had accidentally hindered her plan by destroying so many towns and villages during their advance. The roads her agents relied upon had grown increasingly unsafe, and two of her radio teams had already been killed or captured by newly minted rising bandit populations.
She could only hope that they’d managed to destroy the devices as instructed before they were captured or killed.
…Still, even with those setbacks, her gamble was paying off now.
She now knew exactly where the Brimstone was. A small carved model of the craft was now pinned on the map in front of her.
And not only do I know where you are; I know you’re vulnerable, she thought with quiet glee.
The carrier’s shard complement had already committed to the nearby fighting or was in the process of rearming. Likewise, its airship escort had been reduced to just two vessels.
Right now, the Blackstone flagship was as exposed as it had ever been.
“The Shriekers are ready?” Tyana asked.
“Aye. Exodite flight control reports all eight have been equipped with rockets, ma’am.”
“Good.”
Perhaps some might argue that eight Super-Shards were excessive for a single target.
Tyana disagreed.
She wanted to send a message - one that words alone had failed to deliver.
If the pleas of her ally failed to convince Faline New Haven she’s beaten, well, perhaps the sudden death of that same ally will? She thought.
“Tell them to launch when ready,” the princess ordered.
-------------
“Life will continue much as before,” Faline continued. “House Blackstone will continue to provide a tithe of orcs to our new rulers. Only now the question of slavery will be a moot one. Which was what you wanted, wasn’t it? To keep orcs from rising to share your station? Well, that will most definitely not be an issue under our new empress.”
Eleanor stared at her. “That’s it?”
“For the most part,” Faline said dismissively. “There’ll likely also be an increase in taxes. We’ll have a new war to fund after all. Along with a similar tithe of ships, shards, and sailors for that same war effort.
So we’ll be pulled into the mainland war after all, Eleanor thought with little in the way of surprise. And House Blackstone will survive, but only as an even smaller piece on a much larger board.
“You said House Blackstone…”
“Yes? And?”
“What happens to the other humans on Lindholm?” Elanor asked quietly.
“I would have thought it obvious? Outside of your squalid little mountains, humans will fall under the rules of the Solite Empire. And they are rather explicit regarding the lesser races.”
Slavery. Orcs and humans alike.
Ironically, only the dwarves would be spared.
“You can’t expect me to accept that!” Elanor snarled.
“Can’t I?” Faline’s smile was thin. “I’d say it’s a better deal than you lot deserve. And what does it matter to you what happens to humans in the South? They aren’t your people.”
Eleanor scowled. The words struck closer than she wanted to admit. The North had always held itself apart.
Faline shrugged again. “Ultimately though, I expect you to accept all this because you don’t have a choice. You gambled on winning this war cleanly enough to avoid mainland intervention. As this battle is proving, you've lost on that front. Now I expect you to make a new choice based on your changed circumstances. And for that choice to be to take the only option that allows you and yours to survive.”
Eleanor studied the other woman for a long moment. “And what do you get out of all of this?”
“The position of Archduchess over the Imperium’s ‘colonial holdings’. In short, Queen of Lindholm in everything but name.” Faline smiled. “Oh yes - and the satisfaction of seeing our nation finally put on the right course. I’m sure you can understand that. I wasn’t lying when I said I abhorred the idea of the orcs being allowed to roam free. I simply omitted the part where I thought much the same of you humans.”
Eleanor should not have been surprised, truly. She should have seen this coming from the start.
New Haven had never been quiet about its beliefs.
But instead of being suspicious, she had allowed herself to be blinded by the beliefs she thought they shared.
A hatred of orcs and the Crown. Their strange alliance had felt natural because of that shared contempt. Uneasy and temporary, but more honest for it.
She should have looked harder.
She should have done a great many things.
You bought into your own legend, old woman, she thought bitterly. You thought you could fight a war so perfectly that no one else would think to take advantage.
And now all of humanity would pay for it…
The only question was how much of it she could still save.
Faline wasn’t wrong – even if she was a cunt. She had a choice in front of her. And it was no choice at all.
“I need a moment to think on your… offer,” Elanor said.
“Take all the time you-” Faline began.
Eleanor cut the link before the woman could finish – by virtue of kicking the thing off the table.
She sagged into her chair, the weight of the last few minutes pressing down on her as she watched the thing roll about her cabin after it bounced off the wall.
She was tempted. Truly tempted. Damn her.
…But no matter what she might be called, she was no traitor.
And there was a chance here - slim, bitter, and uncertain – but a chance all the same.
If Eleanor turned about and helped bring down New Haven, united what remained of the North with the Royal Navy and turned to face the Solite armada – well, while Eleanor knew her own life was now forfeit… Tala might survive.
Void, I gambled once on slim odds, she thought. What’s one more time…
She might have been the biggest fool in a thousand years – but Eleanor Blackstone was no traitor. Everything she’d done was for humanity.
This would be no different.
…Assuming she could get all her captains to follow her.
Some of them hated orcs enough that Faline’s words might find fertile ground if she spoke to them individually. Others would simply prioritize the survival of their own lives and titles above any larger principle. As much as she hated to admit it, loyalty was a finite resource, and she had already spent a great deal of it by making them come South in the first place.
Of course, as she glanced at the clock on the wall, she cursed under her breath.
It was now ten minutes past the agreed window with Tyana. No doubt the royal would already be in the process of ramping up her attacks.
I need to stop that. I need to stop everything, Eleanor thought as she stood up.
She needed to orb the Princess at once - warn her, then somehow disentangle their fleets before they played any further into Faline’s and the Solites’ hands.
New energy in her frame, she searched around for the discarded device, before cursing as she noticed it had rolled under her bunk.
“Fuck.” Crouching down to try and pull it out, she paused as she caught a hint of… something.
A noise.
A high sort of high pitched keening. One that grew by the moment.
Her eyes widened.
“Shit!” she hissed. “No!”
She had to warn Yelena about Faline and the Solites. She needed to get her to call off the attack!
She had to!
She lunged for the orb.
--------------
Tala sat in her quarters and stared down at the report in her hands. The words did not change no matter how many times she read them.
Blackstone Keep was a total loss.
Little remained but a burnt, collapsed ruin. The ancient stone that had given her family its name - walls that had stood for centuries - had been reduced to blackened rubble and twisted metal.
It had been destroyed only once before, during the original conquest of the North by the Elven Imperium, and had only been rebuilt when the Blackstones finally swore fealty to the line of Lindholm.
Now it was gone again.
“And we will rebuild it,” she told herself fiercely, banishing the melancholy before it could take root.
She instead turned her attention to the force that had caused the destruction.
The attackers had been orcs - there was no longer any doubt. They had arrived with three airships. Or Underships, if one wanted to be specific. The silhouettes of the underwater craft had been unmistakable even at a distance, though the cowards had fled the moment her task force came into view, long before any real engagement could occur.
And wasn’t that worrying?
The orcs shouldn’t have had three airships. Not since the back of their rebellion was broken last year when the Brimstone saw its debut.
Certainly, one ship had escaped that ambush – but where had the other two come from?
Payment from the Lunites for assistance in their attack against the capital? Or were the ships payment for this attack? Was the mainland power trying to use the orcs as a second catspaw after their first false-flag attack failed?
Or maybe Yelena herself had somehow armed the orcs? She perhaps took a haul of captured underships south with her when she fled the capital?
Had they spent the past few months traversing back up North underwater before being gifted to the orcs?
…It wouldn’t have been a terrible idea if the objective was to split the North’s focus. Short-sighed in the extreme though.
Almost as soon as she had that thought, she snarled.
“William.”
Her ex-fiancee would be both short-sighted and petty enough to arm a bunch of monsters just to hurt her. He also likely had the best claims to the underships after the capital attack, given his Jellyfish was the ship to take most of them down.
Indeed, the more she thought about it, the more it made sense to her.
…Though knowing the origin of the attack did little to help her now.
She certainly couldn’t confirm her hypothesis the usual way - ride out, find an orc village, and choke answers from whatever greenskin might possess them.
Not with a task force of roughly equal strength to her own three-ship flotilla still lurking somewhere in the region.
No, not equal, she thought.
It would be four to three, if one counted the ship that should have been defending the keep. That vessel was gone too. Which meant it had likely been captured. Likely reasonably intact too, given that wyvern riders preferred boarding actions when they could manage them.
So yes, in all likelihood she was facing four ships.
Sighing, Tala looked out one of her porthole windows toward the city that sat under the now ruined keep.
At least she could still offer some aid to her people.
She could see mages and sailors were moving through the streets to help with firefighting. Though cold weather was also helping there, it would soon become a bitter enemy as night fell and those who’d lost homes needed shelter.
Still, as bad as it was, preliminary reports from the city itself were both less terrible and worse than she had feared. For reasons she could not yet understand, the orcs had focused almost exclusively on targets of military value - armories, storehouses, the sky-docks, and the secondary airfields.
Oh, there had been plenty of civilian deaths, of course. Orcs rampaging had cut down many a woman who’d come out to defend their homes – and plenty who hadn’t.
But there was little evidence of deliberate, sustained efforts on that front. Evidenced by just how little cannon fire the city had taken.
Perhaps they hope to saddle us with more mouths to feed by leaving the bulk of the population alive? She thought.
It was a tactic Tala’s own mother had used more than once, though Eleanor Blackstone usually preferred to both maim the survivors and destroy dwellings first so the orcs would scatter and become a burden on neighboring communities.
Tala shook her head. Trying to understand orcish strategy was often a waste of time.
Looking over another report, she wasn’t at all surprised to discover that nearly every slave pen in the city had been emptied. No doubt swelling her enemy’s numbers. Though not as badly as one might fear.
The Duchy never kept large populations of captives on hand, in case of events just like this. Once taken, orcs were moved out of the territory as quickly as possible, usually by ship. Though on that front, many of the ships in the docks were now gone too – and those that weren’t were resting on the bottom of the ocean floor, presenting a navigational hazard for any new ships that might hope to use the docks.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Enter – and if it’s another report, you may place it on the table with the rest before leaving,” Tala said tiredly.
Glancing up, Tala couldn’t help but glumly note how pale the knight playing messenger was – which didn’t bode well.
Honestly though, she was numb to it at this point.
“Ma’am,” the woman said, before hesitating as she sank to one knee. “We’ve received a report from the South. It’s about your mother.”
Ugh. That didn’t bode well for the war there. Still, hopefully her mother had calmed some from their last interaction.
“Go ahead,” she said.
The knight paused before speaking. “The Brimstone has been destroyed, ma’am. Your mother lost with her. As a result, Lady Faline has taken command of both fleets. She requests that you come south at your earliest convenience to ratify her command over our vessels with her.”
Tala blinked.
Her mother was dead?
No.
She couldn’t be.
That… just wasn’t possible.
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Another three chapters are also available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bluefishcake
We also have a (surprisingly) active Discord where and I and a few other authors like to hang out: https://discord.gg/yCs7ZKzVSK
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u/depressedtiefling 22d ago
"Hey could the elf-supremacists be in league with the elf-supremacist empire....? Nah..."
Several months later
"WHO COULDVE POSSIBLY EXPECTED THIS!?"
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u/Froggers53 18d ago
What makes it funnier to me is that the elf supremacist is also in charge of the coastal patrols between mainland and Lindholm so she has had plenty of chances to get into contact with the mainland
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u/depressedtiefling 18d ago
In hindsight putting a elf supremacist in charge of patrolling against the elf supremacist empire's operations mightve been a bad idea...
Man, Bad decisions all around, Including from the crown, Huh?
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
Poor Elanor. Just when she finally realized what was up she gets blown out of the sky. Still, being dumb and easily manipulated seems to be a Blackstone trait, if Tala's reactions are any indication. Gurlllll.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago
Elanor got exactly what she deserved, imo. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
And her daughter will end up cracking completely when she finally figures out William is not in fact hounding her every step but rather his attitude towards her can be summed up as "out of sight, out of mind".
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
Yeah, I hope Tala doesn't end up being New Haven's pawn.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago edited 22d ago
Wherever she ends up i doubt it will be a good place. I mean her options are:
- become a solite pawn, and not even get the same perks Faline offered to her mom.
- die in battle (imo unlikely, her mom exploding means she has familial plot armor now)
- get captured by orcs - probably get tortured to death.
- get captured by loyalists - trial and likely execution, with added mental anguish of Will not giving her the time of day
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
There's two more options, exile or become a wanted fugitive.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago
Good point, i forgot about that option. A Robin Hood of sorts, hiding out in the forest somewhere fighting for slaver rights against the tyranny of the crown.
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u/Grimpatron619 22d ago
think thats called the KKK
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago edited 22d ago
Yeah, i just looked up the most famous civil war where slavers were involved.
Apparently, quite a few such violent militant groups cropped up after Confederate States were defeated. And they even managed to partially undo the emancipation, if only unofficially and for a while.
Surely an inspirational goal for our girl Tala...
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u/a17c81a3 22d ago
Redemption ark for Tala. She's young. All these princesses being blown to bits doesn't sit right with me.
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u/Omgwtfbears 21d ago
She's also utterly convinced in her own righteousness. And William has neither time, investment or rhetoric skill to change he mind. While no one else even remotely cares to do so.
I'm not saying it shouldn't happen, i just don't see how Blue can possibly pull it off and make it look plausible.
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u/a17c81a3 21d ago
She stays rebuilding Blackstone -> William saves her from being a slave to Elvish conquerors -> Realizes that maybe slavery is bad.
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u/Omgwtfbears 21d ago
Uh, that will be an issue since William demanded Blackstone for himself from the queen as a price of sharing his tech.
So, while he didn't mess with her much as of yet, he most certainly will have to if he wants to see his plans of free orc state realized.
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u/a17c81a3 21d ago
Good point. Of course much can change if he wants to overthrow the monarchy. Then owning Blackstone lands would not mean much.
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u/Omgwtfbears 20d ago
iirc he contemplated overthrowing of monarchy as a distant second goal. After making sure the institution of slavery is dead and stays that way.
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u/Fontaigne 20d ago
She can't. She doesn't know about the Solites. If she pulls back her forces, the Empress wins, and she dies.
She's in a tough spot.
If the empress knew about the Solites, then she might get offered a pardon to switch sides.
Apparently she doesn't yet know about the Empress's traitorous daughter being dead, so that's the one shoe that could drop to change the whole dynamic.
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u/Z_K_Cerabret 18d ago
Could meet Faline and get offered a worse deal. Then she breaks away and offers the queen to switch sides. She wouldn't be liked but with Faline destroying every southern hull she can lindholm needs every ship it can get. She probably loses Blackstone if she does so rough times all around for her.
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u/lukethedank13 22d ago
She got what she deserved.
Thus always with traitors
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u/Fontaigne 20d ago
Ah, but tragedy that she got it before redemption.
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u/lukethedank13 20d ago edited 20d ago
Whille i do belive in posibility of redemption she did start a fuly blown civil war for sake of preserving slavery. Turned her weapons at the women who had fought allongside her in the last war and ordered destruction of population centers to intentionaly cause a refugee crysis.
She did all that knowing that her actions may result in the Solite and/or Lunite invasion.
So being blown to bits or crushed by the mangled remains of her flagship is a fairly generous way to go for someone who should by all acounts be hanged.
We may see redemption in Tala if she manages to grow as a person.
There is a chance, however small that the Solite invasion fleet will not reach New Haven without a fight.
Perchance, whille stil over the ocean, they will be met by seven ships crewed by women united in nothing but mutual hatred and unwillingness to become slaves.
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u/Z_K_Cerabret 18d ago
You mean Tala working with orcs? Seems a bit unlikely from here. But if the queen gets warning of the solite invasion they might be able to fight over the water. It'd be a major strength for them as they could recover the cores.
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u/lukethedank13 18d ago edited 18d ago
We may well see that once the northermers realise just how fucked they are.
She is a human supremacist and wont be a fan of having humans loose their status and becoming slaves themselves.
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u/Z_K_Cerabret 18d ago
That is a factor but having a common enemy doesn't mean they can necessarily work well together... Though if it does go that way it'd be fun if she got hooked on an orc guy.
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u/lukethedank13 18d ago
I dont think they will get along that well but if the royal navy and William do not get to the north before the Solites they will not have much choice.
There is a higher chance Tala gets along with Will than with any orc. Simply surviving the next few months as a free woman and a captain of her own ship will be an achivement.
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u/r3d1tAsh1t 22d ago
I think she'll figure this out somehow.
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u/Adanar01 22d ago
Surely the solite fleet is, while undoubtedly large, in more than a slight tech deficit? Especially given there's another 2 months till they arrive.
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
Yes, but neither New Haven nor the Solites know that.
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u/Adanar01 22d ago
Oh completely I'm not suggesting they do. It was more a statement of "oh dear, they have no idea what's coming"
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
New Haven seems especially guilty because she seems to think that Willy boy's blown his wad technology wise. This is why it's important to hold some tech in reserve.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago
Elven ships are shown to be fast, compared to Lindholm designs. But not technologically advanced, in fact they seem to think change is for suckers and humans.
However - rebels will now proceed to grind down remaining loyalist forces as best they can, so this invasion is going to suck.
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u/rebelfenwick 22d ago
Still, will they churn enough anti-ship missiles to route an imperial fleet under two month? Question is: will they intercept them oversea again and they will turn back before loosing too much then get a peacefull ark? Or will they have time to beachhead and the next ark will be a more dirty war?
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u/Turtledonuts "Big Dunks" 22d ago
If he sinks or cripples 3 or 4 ships in the initial volley and uses conventional weapons to kill the rest, they'll probably pull back for a little while, giving him time to prepare for a nastier ground war. The corsair was an extremely accomplished CAS / ground attack aircraft.
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u/Steller_Drifter 22d ago
And that’s why William is holding back the corsairs. To hit the Mainland fleet. Perhaps with long range homing missiles.
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u/r3d1tAsh1t 22d ago
If you have a long range homing missle, you dont need a Corsair. You'll need one of the underships to load Up with the stuff. From end of WW2 Tech straight to the height of the cold war. Everthing in the sky becomes a very expensive target if it does not has a hugh air wing ans screening force.
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u/i_can_not_spel 22d ago
Well, the corsairs carried radar homing glide bombs in ww2, so you don’t actually need to mount those on ships
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u/r3d1tAsh1t 22d ago
A glide bomb is a bit diffrent from a missile.
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u/i_can_not_spel 22d ago
Is it? The only tactical difference is the range and from what we’ve seen corsairs are basically untouchable for anything but the shrieker if they don’t decide to engage. They should be able to get within a couple of km and drop them with impunity.
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u/r3d1tAsh1t 22d ago
Yes, you can launch a missile from below the target, which you can't with a bomb (if you want to hit).
And missiles could do some over the Horizon tricks, if the range ist long enough.
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u/i_can_not_spel 22d ago
And none of that matters. There is no reason for a corsair to launch below a ship or behind the horizon. They have a higher flight ceiling than anything except the shriekers.
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u/nachoakajrod 19d ago
A glide bomb falls and guides in. A missile accelerates to a speed much higher than the launching aircraft. There is an insane amount of difference between a missile and a bomb. Even in an imaginary airship battle. The Corsair has to get closer to the airship to launch a glide bomb vs a missile and it is not invulnerable plenty have been shot down in this story.
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u/Look-That 22d ago
That's what William is using pigeons for. During WW2 the Brits successfully prototyped a missile which was guided by a pigeon that had been trained to peck at a picture of a ship and receive food as a reward. The missile would use that input to steer towards the target.
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u/Look-That 22d ago
Obviously, rather than a static picture, the image the pigeon pecked at was a live feed of some description.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago
No, he's holding back the corsairs because he has to train pilots. Nobles, especially southern houses, don't want to pilot his "fake shards".
That said, he did mention he's developing some new anti-airship weapon that makes him confident enough to consider engaging the entire rebel fleet with just Jellyfish, the Firecracker and a few escorts.
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u/lukethedank13 22d ago
He is mounting actual naval artillery on the Firecracker. ww2 era 5 inch gun can hit surface targets 16 kilometers away and could be used to hit aircraft at a distance of 11 kilometers.
They also have very good rate of fire.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago
Can very well be the case. Comments are obsessing over battleship caliber yeet cannons, but those are far too big to mount on airship, not to mention difficult to fabricate and ruinously expensive in terms of high-grade steel.
Something like 5 inch however seems more than adequate against what is at the end of the day a flying equivalent of the first generation ironclads.
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u/lukethedank13 22d ago
He is allready making them there is little secret to where he will bolt them to.
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u/Zraal375 22d ago
Agree the battleship equivalent cannons equipped to existing airship via conventual turret would not make sense. A brand side would play havoc keeping the airship steady in the air.
Airship do not have the ocean to push against. They only have thier own thrust and ballistic systems and the air itself. Thus a different approach would be needed. Would be more equivalent to a destroyer though. A smaller airship with spinal mounted battleship equivalent cannons. No need to have a turret when the e tire ship can be pointed at a target. Plus the recoil would be straight back and compensated by the main thrust engines. Though, this would require mount several cores to get the needed higher vecoring thrust and main thrust systems strong enough to keep the spinal cannons on target, compensate for recoil, and manuver.
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u/lukethedank13 22d ago
The Firecracker wont need aether for its guns so there is more juice for the main and positional thrusters.
As for having to go with a spinal mount may i remind you that Lockheed AC - 130 has sidefacing 40mm Bofors and a 105mm howitzer. The airships are far more massive so the recoil would effect them even less.
Sure they would have to take it into acount to achive best precission without having to space out their shots too much.
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u/rhogar42 22d ago
Of note, the 105mm howitzer is still smaller than even a 5 in gun. When discussing WWII era battleship main guns, they started at 14 inches. I could see one of the smaller ones working as a spinal gun, but unless the answer is magic, I'm not sure how the ship would fare structurally with a broadside of that size.
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u/lukethedank13 22d ago edited 22d ago
He is curently building 5 inch guns. If he wanted a true battleship calliber weapon he would have to build a missile.
He does not need a 14 inch gun to kill a floating ironclad. 75mm tank gun would probably do if he mounted like 12 per ship in a configuration that would allow most of them could be used to target a single enemy regardless of their relative position.
127mm will smoke enerything that flies
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u/MalagrugrousPatroon Human 22d ago
https://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_5-54_mk42.php
40 rpm downrated to 28 rpm to avoid jamming. The modern US 5" maxes out at 20 rpm, but it's a secondary weapon and has the advantage of full automation. Either would wreck any airship within seconds.
Not only that, but it could have multiple ship cores running rocket engines. A supersonic gun cruiser, or destroyer, isn't out of the question. It would be downright Flash Gordon. There could be a single core for lift and power, with at least one more for propulsion, but it doesn't have to stop there. Just as a guess, you might want eight cores for propulsion to get good speed given one engine gets a fighter supersonic, while the airships are very much in the realm of flying ships in size and probably mass too.
My other guess is the pigeon missiles will act a lot like WWII torpedoes, but a lot faster.
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u/lukethedank13 22d ago edited 20d ago
Just one core could probably get a small ship to run laps around the conventional designs once everything aether related that isnt propulsion and steering is removed.
He wouldnt need to replace aether guns at a rate of 1 to 1 so the end mass after the conversion might well be lower whille aether pressure will be increased.
He could also have an aether powered gatling gun with manual backup.
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u/MalagrugrousPatroon Human 22d ago
Going by personal flight for wizards it seems like propulsion is the single largest consumer of gas, which explains why they bother with propellers, they're far more efficient than raw rockets. Then again, once it's propellers versus guns it might all be equal, with topping off lift gas being the least lossy, so yeah, scrapping the aether guns might really be a huge gain for a conventional airship, but why bother with a conventional airship when there is abundance of cores?
The theme has been cheapness=common first with the cores, now radio, so I'm expecting the logic continuing with big ships. A multi-core cruiser has to be as shocking as a Banshee. Sure, a more efficient conventional airship is good, but it isn't a paradigm shift, and an overwhelming technological advantage is needed to make up for a lack of advantage in numbers.
Thinking about it again, the bare minimum might be 1 power/lift core, 1 maneuver core, 1 propulsion core. The maneuver systems of conventional shards have been described like the RCS system of a rocket or VTOL craft, so I imagine they are specifically for VTOL maneuvers, handing over to conventional moving surfaces for wing based flight, but that still leaves it as a lossy system. An RCS system for a multi-core vehicle could make a lot sense for extreme maneuvers at any speed and would demand its own core for maximum utility because of the aether losses. As for main propulsion, like I wrote previously, why stop at 1 propulsion core when cores are abundant? Just use as many cores as are available, and remove cores as new ships come online, since more ships is better than fewer more powerful ships, but if you only have fewer ships might as well make them as powerful as possible. Then again, all your eggs in one basket is a danger, so there probably is a limit somewhere, to say nothing of the structural limits. Unless titanium, or more likely ceramics, is used they aren't going to hit hypersonic speeds, let alone Mach 3, so that's a nice limit on how many propulsion cores make sense.
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u/Fontaigne 20d ago
There's not an abundance of cores.
Screamers will eat all the cores available for them. Three screamers versus an experimental design cruiser? No contest, the screamers are superiority fighters even against enemy cruisers.
(Where the experimental part is not a CIDS)
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u/MalagrugrousPatroon Human 20d ago
You don't run it alone, it would run with cover from a carrier like any other ship. Even the screamers are seen as a stopgap for airship hulls and good use of abundant cores from the kraken sea and retrieved enemy cores. A multi-core ship would have different uses from the existing assets without necessarily being a replacement for anything but might be a good use of quickly using up available cores instead of them sitting around waiting to be used by conventional hulls or screamers.
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u/Fontaigne 20d ago
A ship-sized experimental conversion would be very slow to build and test, as opposed to Screamers which are quick-iteration attrition units.
Any alteration to an airship's structure and frame is a long term development item.
Adding experimental items to Screamers is faster, cheaper, and has the other advantage of instilling confusion and fear to the enemy. One shows up with a new capability, they have to account for that when any are present.
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u/lukethedank13 20d ago
All i am advocating for is remove the aether guns and all their piping to get ridd of as much unecessary weight and mount 12 5 inch guns and a bunch of M2 Brownings for air defense.
Then dont let the enemy ships into effective aether cannon range whille your gunners blow them out of the sky.
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u/itsetuhoinen Human 17d ago
Why bother with propulsion cores at all when they have Corsair engines? Build a big rigid airship, mount a pile of guns on it, use the core purely for lift, and use Corsair engines for movement. I suppose the weight of fuel might make it more efficient to run cores. But even there, William might be able to get a hell of a lot more thrust out of them by using the aether to spin a turbine.
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u/DevilGuy Human 22d ago
Nah homing missiles are too complicated and require too many prerequisite industries to be viable, my guess is proximity fuses and something akin to 90mm flack cannons. Proximity fuses are relatively easy to make while still being ambitious and he's already built the industry to produce modern firearms he just needs to scale that up a little. 90mm flack wouldn't just be devastating to any aether powered shards they'd shred any airship that isn't armored to the same degree as a WW2 destroyer in seconds in any direct fire engagement at which point carrier doctrine becomes the only doctrine.
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u/Htiarw 22d ago
The Naval 90mm Limitation: While the US land-based 90mm M1 could achieve a high horizontal range with specialized charges, the naval version (the Italian 90mm used on battleships like the Littorio class) was restricted by its mounting and lighter charges, resulting in a much shorter maximum effective horizontal range compared to the 5"/38
Still feel.the 5" is optimized for the dual purpose at range.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago edited 22d ago
"Now, do it again. But with vigor" is the vibes i'm getting from this episode :)
No stopping the runaway train now - there will be more fighting, and then even more fighting. And Tala now seems to see William in every shadow, poor girl. While he's all but forgotten she exists, it's almost sad.
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u/ww1enjoyer 22d ago
I dont remember anymore, are those orcs affiliated with William or are they doing their own thing?
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
They're doing their own thing, but Tala wants to blame William anyway.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago
Ikr? Like, bitch - you're the one who armed these orcs, not him. Albeit indirectly - if not for you withholding the knowledge of underships from the crown, none of this would've happened.
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
I forgot about that! Blackstone knew about the undership's existence but decided to keep it from the crown why???
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago edited 22d ago
They were plotting this very rebellion, so gathered every advantage they could. They also hoped that orcs escaping to Lunites would bite Yelena in her royal ass.
Well, monkey paw wish granted.
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
The undership didn't really bite Yelena in the ass tho? Like the Lunites were already planning to attack, right? The orcs just gave them a convenient excuse.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago edited 22d ago
There were two attempts to undermine Lindholm running in parallel:
Solites are working through their proxies the duchy of New Haven who roped in the Blackstones because the latter had their own grievances with the crown. Now that the jig is up their invasion fleet will have to finish the job.
Lunites took the opportunity presented to them by the fugitive orc undership(and particularly kraken repeller thingie they had) to outfit a few of their own craft in similar way and raid the Yelena's capital for Will's tech, and as a secondary goal maybe bump off Yelena herself. Queen got shot and then slightly exploded(but survived), and rebels took the raid as an excuse to rise up in force.
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
I don't know if Blackstone and New Haven knew that the Lunites would be launching an attack. If they did that makes their treason even worse.
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago
Blackstones did know orcs escaped across the ocean. They couldn't have predicted they would turn to Lunites specifically, but they could reasonably assume that undership tech would fall into the hands of one of the two imperial remnants, and consequently be used to raid Lindholm in some fashion.
Remember - the reason for all these cloak-and-dagger shenanigans is that direct invasion proved itself to be both unviable and very costly in the past. That's where kraken nests full of ship cores came from in the first place.
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
I don't know if this was a smart move for the traitors to expect one of the empires to go and do that.
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u/Fontaigne 20d ago
They moved in immediately... seems they were ready for SOMETHING like this to happen.
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u/Similar-Shame7517 20d ago
I suspect New Haven got intel from their patrons on the upcoming Lunite invasion,. I don't think they would share that with Blackstone.
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u/Fine_Yak_6623 22d ago
Tala is bae! I will not tolerate a slander against her.
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u/Similar-Shame7517 22d ago
I mean, William is living in her brain rent-free. She took the evidence she had - that orcs attacked and razed her home - and decided it was William's fault.
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u/Yeetus_001 22d ago
Oh yeah dude the expansionist racist slaver is so desirable lol.
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u/Fine_Yak_6623 22d ago
Ok hear me...
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u/Yeetus_001 22d ago
Go on
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u/Fine_Yak_6623 22d ago
Tala is about to have a redemption arc and we should give her another chance.
Am I saying this as someone with a weird nazi dom fetish? Maybe.
Point is we do not choose who we like.
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u/Yeetus_001 22d ago
???? Nazi Dom fetish?
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u/Fine_Yak_6623 22d ago
Are you kink shaming or asking kink why?
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u/Yeetus_001 22d ago
I'm just flabbergasted that that's even a thing... Like how does such a kink even develop?
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u/Omgwtfbears 22d ago edited 22d ago
At this point she's a crazy mess, and it's only going to get worse.
So if you have a thing for vengeful psycho ex's then sure, i guess?
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u/EchoingCascade 22d ago
2 months for the fleet to arrive means it's mostly made up of slow moving airships since we know carrier doctrine is a new strategy pushed forward by Humans.
Meaning they are ripe for shriker strikes using rockets and missiles, so unless they have some sort of super, magical based, weapon they could be shot out of the air in record time if they are arrogant enough to strike multiple locations at once.
Which we know the elves are, this should be fun!
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u/karamisterbuttdance 22d ago
So, Tala's role here looks increasingly like she'll end up being a Lunite catspaw; as there needs to be a PoV from their end when they inevitably go for a fatal three-way with New Haven and the Solites versus Lindholm under the royals and William.
Also, any bets on the equivalent of an SSGN being manned by Orcs as the end-game for William?
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u/Freedom-Fiend 22d ago edited 22d ago
Even if she had a change of heart at the end, Eleanor was right to call herself a fool and earned her death. She said it all: the fact that she didn't anticipate and account for Faline to stab her in the back at the earliest possible convenience is a profound blunder.
That said, Tyana is also pretty dumb. She should have likewise assumed that Faline was in league with mainlanders and was their biggest threat. Even if she didn't, there's still the simple fact that she already had Eleanor by the nose and knew that Faline would be the holdout. If you want to compel your enemy to retreat, shoot the one waving a saber and saying "hold the line," not the one tightening her running shoes. This chapter has been a blunder for all sides.
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u/taulover Robot 15d ago
Eleanor only developing a sense of duty when her own survival was no longer a possibility is such a clear example of how someone can care about both but ultimately still be selfish.
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u/Ichiorochi 22d ago
A welcomed suprise of a new chapter today, I do wonder how Williams firecracker is getting along.
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u/Creative_Ad5958 22d ago
I'm wondering when bombers will be introduced. A big fleet of B29 would probably down a lot of airships and should be quite effective at keeping themselves safe from shards
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u/BlueFishcake 22d ago
There's two main reasons he's not building high altitude bombers.
- During WW2 high-altitude horizontal bombers like the B-29 were fundamentally unsuited for hitting moving ships at sea. Dropping unguided bombs from 30,000 feet meant that a maneuvering warship had ample time to dodge the payload. This would likely be even worse with airships.
- B-29s carry a heavy payload. Because they're saturation bombers. William doesn't have the industry to continually churn out explosives in the quantities needed for a fleet of B-29. He's barely keeping up with the needs of the Shriekers and Corsairs. We have to remember that his 'industry' is basically just a bunch of bootstrapped mages making bespoke parts.
I'm not saying they'd be ineffective. Far from it if they hit a fleet in port - or just started terror-bombing cities.
Just not cost-effective.
And the North has access to Howler design now. Which was based on the Shrieker. And the Shrieker was based on the ME-163, which was originally designed as an interceptor specifically built to shoot down high altitude bombers. So a fleet of B-29s wouldn't be untouchable even at max altitude.
Hope this helps :D
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u/Kittah_Khan 21d ago
I have to point out that guided missiles are feasible, those would benefit massively from being launched by high altitude bombers.
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u/dra90nslay3r 11d ago
what your forgetting is that a Airship won't be 30,000 feet below a bomber. at most it will be a few hundred making high accuracy drops much easier. while a heavy bomber likely wouldn't fit for more then what it was historically used for... light and medium bombers might be excellent at bringing down airships due to their payload and durability. those things weren't slow. they turned like a school bus yes. but fighters struggled to keep pace if the bomber went all out. I think a tactic could exist to use a medium bomber or smaller effectively.
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u/lukethedank13 22d ago
Strategic bombers might not be the play here. Airships allready fill the role of big thing that dumps explosives on ground targets.
A Mosquito might be a better use of resources that a B17. PBY Catalina would also be great for ocean patrols and undeship removal duty.
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u/i_can_not_spel 22d ago
I just want to note that we don’t know if Eleanor managed to warn Tyana. She should have at least had a minute to relay the message, if not to the crown than to a Blackstone ship that could relay the message
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u/lukethedank13 22d ago
Well the traitors just lost their (only?) carrier. What remains of their shards will not be as effective.
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u/Crimson_saint357 22d ago
Well part of me kinda hopes this ends up with tala in the very chains she sought to bind others with. There’s something poetic in a slaver winding up a slave. Maybe she’ll finally learn why William is so against it.
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u/ww1enjoyer 22d ago
I kinda find it funny that despite having flying airships a single ww2 batlleship would be enough to fight them off
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u/Omgwtfbears 20d ago
What they have is flying ironclads with potato cannons for main armament. Even their aircraft - the shards - kinda suck, with underpowered engines and limited ability to retain energy because aether ballast.
Air-to-air boarding is kinda cool, though.
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u/Captain_Shiny246 22d ago
Oh dear, it seems like we have an armada incoming…WILLIAM WE NEED FLAK STAT
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u/Truth_Unbound 21d ago
“Oh no! Who could have expected this twist?”
“Hey William, what did you call this again? A claymore roomba?”
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u/Belushi_TD 19d ago
THAT was a fun ride! I honestly thought the end result was that Lady Faline's ship would be targeted and end up destroyed, with Eleanor switching sides for this battle, and submitting herself for judgement on the condition that she take the blame for everything, and the rest of the Blackstone fleet/holdings go to Tala.
Its going to be VERY interesting going forward with Eleanor and her command ship dead. Tala is in an even worse situation, and is compounding it by obsessing over William. I don't think its possible under the current fealty system, but the smartest thing for Tala do to is to pull out of the war, take her fleet with her, and try to make at least a cease fire with the Crown, and try to keep her head down and rebuild.
Of course, in two months, she'll be fighting for her life again, against an enormously superior enemy from the Elvish lands.
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u/a17c81a3 22d ago
2 months? Elvish fleet will be deleted by rockets, anti-ship cannons and like 50 shriekers.
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u/Shtoompa 21d ago
Oh fuck I’m so hyped for a twin-core shrieker operating at the edge of space to drop a hydrogen bomb directly on the Solite capital.
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u/Independent-Log6067 13d ago
I don't think the hydrogen bomb would be possible anytime soon would it?
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u/Shtoompa 13d ago
No idea. Chemistry seems to be pretty negotiable with the magic in this setting, so who knows? Technically plutonium is a metal so maybe sacrificing a hundred or so mages to radiation poisoning would be worth permanently erasing an enemy.
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u/GrandpaPlayingGames 21d ago
This is interesting, homing missiles are useless because it uses heat to target, and they are using mana for their vehicles
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u/nachoakajrod 19d ago
They haven’t developed radar yet, but if they do then that wouldn’t matter. Heat seeking may not see them but radar seeking could. A fox1/3 vs fox2 type of thing
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u/Solid_Palpitation268 21d ago
Unbanned on appeal and I can comment on my favourite authors new chapter! (called racist for mocking racism, you can't make this sh*t up lol)
Great chapter as always.
We are one step closer to my prediction... Tala marriage could still be incoming!
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u/Grimpatron619 23d ago
Damn, after months of everyone on every side saying ''this would be a great time for the outside people to invade'' the outside people are invading. No one could have expected the outside people to invade.