214 Chapter Two Hundred and Fourteen – Some Gratuitous Carnage (1/2)
Okay, an average lizard-man is a 2 HD scaled humanoid (lizardoid? Okay, bipedal sentient carnivore). They've got a decent bite attack (as in, it would rip off a normal human's face), and weak natural claw attacks. They're stronger than humans, but slower afoot, excellent swimmers, and prefer swampy/wet environments... and naturally there were subspecies with magical bloodlines that existed in other terrains.
Historically, large lizard man settlements end up dominated by gator-men, or Kroks, who are a head or two larger, and mass what an ogre does, with about the same strength, and have six to eight HD.
Adding dragon blood thickened their scales, gave them acid resistance for their Mire bloodline, maybe a breath weapon, and made them stronger... much stronger, if they were full half-dragons, with wings and everything.
Maybe they had 2-3 more racial hit dice, being part of a draconic kingdom ruled over by dragons. But in the end, it really didn't matter when they were slammed into by a wave of tricked-out Tens.
Yeah, I had a few of them behind me. Namely, fifty berserkers crazy eager for a fight. The North Wind. One hundred Ironblood axe and shield, bracing fifty elite dwarven spears, fifty elite elven archer/swordsmen, a score of gnomes on the Autoballistae, and twenty hyn infighters and hole-pluggers.
The order of battle was very plain and I had hammered it into them on multiple occasions.
The strong killed the weak. The weak ganged up on the strong. The really strong killed the really strong.
This was naturally completely at odds with what you were supposed to do, going up against foes of equal power for glory and proving you were better.
These foes were here to be slaughtered, not to be dueled. We were here to massacre them, not teabag them.
That meant the big berserkers with individual totems began a cleave-fest on the weakest of the lizardmen, one-shotting them and reaping on to the next. The big Kroks or mutated commanders were double and triple teamed by the pack-oriented berserkers, and taken down from multiple angles in seconds.
The dwarves crushed forwards in a line, a stalwart wall anyone could retreat behind, a moving juggernaut of punching longspears that let nothing past. Behind them, staying on their Disks, the elves drew endless arrows out of One More Arrow quivers, sparkling with various magical Reserve energies, and nailed them point-blank into the writhing walls of scales in front of them. Spears retracted, scaled bodies flopped and writhed, spears extended, and iron boots crunched into their scaled heads. Anything that managed to move past the dwarven spear line found itself instantly attacked on four sides by leaping hyn, and ceased to be a threat within two steps. The archers hardly bothered to glance at them.
My Ironblood kept the flanks of that spear advance clean, and swept up after the rampaging berserkers with unmoving expressions, sweeping past to rescue those held up improbably, finishing anything on the ground, and available to dogpile anything that looked particularly tough.
The North Wind roved and played favorites with the enemy, Casters being free in their loosing of spells, be it fogs to interrupt line of sight, fireballs and lightning bolts to open up lines, or Rays of death at specific Casters to tear them down instantly. A grizzly bear the size of a small elephant was sending lizard-men flying in every direction, Jhon and Talatha were cutting down the toughest commanders in seconds, Grym and Feist were shadow and fire in a driving wedge, leading my little sisters in a wicked, weaving dance of cutting blades, driving Spear, and roaring Hammer.
I was wielding Quaver, an adamantine longsword I'd also made at QL 55, but with a distinct catch. Quaver was +I Main Gauche, which meant she reflected the magic of the other Weapon to which she was attuned... which was Tremble.
This was because Tremble was flying around bestowing Cures on anyone who was too wounded. This was especially true of the Berserkers, who weren't too focused on defense when Raging away like they were. Through Quaver, she could initiate Transfer Wounds if need be, and I could simply heal them up with Healing Edge while on Cleave-trains. The berserkers were the main beneficiaries of this, as zipping Transfer Rays or AoE effects would wipe away the marks of ironwood spears, nasty bites, claw attacks, tail swipes, and hacking stone axes and clubs, and I'd be pummeled by the same... yet when I Supreme Cleave'd my way through a score of shrieking lizard men and buried Quaver in the skull of a Shaman who couldn't believe I could get through them so quickly, 20d8 of healing would inevitably wipe away the Health damage, and open wounds would vanish as fast as they were inflicted on me. Ow! Ahhh. Ow! Ahhh. Ow! Ahhh...
The berserkers were the only ones who weren't all Marked by me... although a few of them had evolved their viewpoints and taken that step into fighting for a greater cause, and helped lead the rest. Nevertheless, they were inside my Warlord Aura, and to a man, they all had Courageous Weapons, Greater Soulbound, and Furious, the last giving them +2/+2 while Raging, which was all they did. +5 To Hit, Damage, AC, and Saves was only a shade below +6, and with Tremble singing overhead and dispensing heals to everyone, their chances of dying were slim to none... which only spurred them to even greater frenzy when killing.
We'd learned that there was indeed a per person limit on Tremble's Cures... one per Valence Level per day. So, five Cures, from Light Wounds to Deadly Wounds/Mass CLW in step... or unlimited Transfers. If I was willing to take the hits, I could take it all.
In mass combat and with Healing Edge? Yeah, I didn't mind at all, and I had the Health to give a massive shot in the fundamentallum to even a dragon. When the big Shield Dragon Corgun, being ridden by Sir Harbrom, saw me take a 100-point six-foot long, scale-peeling and flesh-rending wound from him, and then Healing Edge it away in under six seconds, well, even the dragon was impressed by that... but not enough to stop him from ripping apart the mammoth-sized Behemoth Shadow Rhino that had given it to him back then, while I left a whole lot of wisps of Dire Shadow Rhinos burning behind me through the stampeding umbral crash it was leading...
And yeah, that had freaking hurt...
So, Tremble was taking over very active healing duties, and had a little sister who could borrow her combat powers, so I wasn't lacking for anything.
They outnumbered us better than five to one. Alas, it just gave the lads more bones to chew on.
They lasted about three minutes. The Mass Acid Resistances from the elves basically took care of their breath weapons from Ancestor Dearest, and after that, this bunch of buffed-up and impressive scaled bastards just died. The opening breath weapons of the dragons wrecked their formations; the berserkers got into the middle of them; Briggs, AA, and I blew through their commanders and Casters in a spray of scales and gore, and there were loud complaints that we weren't to do any more Cleave-runs before the main line smacked into the reeling scalies and displayed why you don't mess with an armed force of Geared-up Seven through Tens.