Dead Man's Switch
Oct. 23rd, 2010 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
Dread Lord Kallikas was a scourge and blight to all the freedom-loving peoples of the world. His relentless army of the undead spread like a putrid swarm of locusts surging over kingdom and empire. Humans, Dwarves and Elves all fell before his black armies. The world was within his bony grasp.
The problem, surprisingly, was one of logistics. True, the Dread Lord’s minions didn’t require food, sleep, or much of the equipment that living troops require, but zombies would go dormant without a fresh supply of meat, skeletons had difficulties with long-distance marches, the Dread Lord’s acolytes required supplies both regular and magical to animate and maintenance, and his opponent’s adapted their tactics forcing Kallikas to improve the equipment for his troops. Plus, there were management issues. Putting populations to the sword was a quick way to silence opposition and increase the size of the army, but the newly dead needed more Lieutenants to control them. That meant Kallikas needed mortal wizards and enough of a society to support them. Populations declined sharply in the areas he conquered, but there was always a rump of population left behind.
So the armies and the cities needed supplies moved between them. Acolytes lead huge wagon trains manned by undead along the roads from place to place. Soon, the heavy tread of the wagon wheels left deep ruts and a rather inspired (if somewhat lazy) pair of acolytes realized that the wagons slotted into the ruts and pretty much stayed there. So one of them could send off a group of wagons and they’d mindlessly follow the grooves all the way to the next town where the other acolyte would halt them. Shipments run on time like always, but they could spend more time in a warm, cozy pub rather than out in the weather. Until Lord Kallikas discovered their little scheme life was pretty good.
Never one to let iron-fisted discipline stand in the way of a good idea, Kallikas considered the system created by the now soul-shorn Acolytes cum wagon pullers. By posting Acolytes at every town and major junction in his expanding empire, he could make more efficient use of his limited mage-power. Wherever practical, he set up a system of rut rotters.
The system wasn’t perfect. Many roads and trails had switchbacks or inclines that the wagons had trouble following. Ruts didn’t always form or got filled in and bad weather tended to wipe out whole sections of rut road. Kallikas brought in a few engineers from the Dwarven lands he’d conquered and had them look at it. They proposed putting the wagons up on a pair of metal rails and attaching the rails to a purpose built roadbed. In many places these roads would have to be built rather than use existing roadways to keep it as level and straight as possible. It would take a massive effort to construct all this, but an inexhaustible labor supply was the one thing Kallic had in spades.
As the new “rail-roads” were being pushed out, Kallikas took another look at the wagons. Long strings of wagons pulled by skeletal horses seemed inefficient. Kallikas wanted one big horse to pull all the wagons at once. Several entertaining, but failed experiments later, he was forced to give up on the idea. Instead, he hit upon the idea of binding the spirits of horses to the wheels of the wagon. A master wagon was placed up front where an Acolyte could hold the hundreds of fine threads representing the “reins” and thus control the whole thing. It meant putting an Acolyte back on the road, but the volume of cargo these new wagon trains could hold and the speed at which they moved was enormous.
So in the lands deep in Kallikas’s shadow, the rail-roads fanned out and the wagon trains rolled. The terrifying trains, echoing with the screams of horses became a common sight and Kallikas’s armies where shuttled quickly to the every expanding front.
The rails that made the Dread Lord’s expansion so easy was also the cause of his downfall. Teams of dedicated heroes snuck aboard trains heading deep into the Dead Empire on hit and run missions. Trains were captured and diverted or subverted. Eventually, a large train, packed with explosives pulled into the Dread Lord’s fortress and brought the whole thing to the ground.
It took many long years to wipe out the undead and clear the taint left behind from Kallikas’s rule, but the allies persisted. They also recognized the value of the rail system and did their best to keep it running. Although the trains required minimal magical effort to run, maintaining them required more necromantic magic than anyone was comfortable using. Every year, more wagons ran out of spiritual energy and the small, horse-pulled wagon trains began to appear in many parts of the rail network once again.
A number of high-level meetings were convened to consider how this problem might be resolved and although everyone agreed that something should be done, no one had a good idea for how to replace the necromantic wagons. At least, publicly no one had any good ideas. There were any number of private programs working to solve the problem. Kallikas had shown the Allies the power of rail transport. Being the first one to find a new way to travel the rails without the hellish wagons would give someone a serious edge in an Alliance that was showing signs of fraying.
later
Tom
Dread Lord Kallikas was a scourge and blight to all the freedom-loving peoples of the world. His relentless army of the undead spread like a putrid swarm of locusts surging over kingdom and empire. Humans, Dwarves and Elves all fell before his black armies. The world was within his bony grasp.
The problem, surprisingly, was one of logistics. True, the Dread Lord’s minions didn’t require food, sleep, or much of the equipment that living troops require, but zombies would go dormant without a fresh supply of meat, skeletons had difficulties with long-distance marches, the Dread Lord’s acolytes required supplies both regular and magical to animate and maintenance, and his opponent’s adapted their tactics forcing Kallikas to improve the equipment for his troops. Plus, there were management issues. Putting populations to the sword was a quick way to silence opposition and increase the size of the army, but the newly dead needed more Lieutenants to control them. That meant Kallikas needed mortal wizards and enough of a society to support them. Populations declined sharply in the areas he conquered, but there was always a rump of population left behind.
So the armies and the cities needed supplies moved between them. Acolytes lead huge wagon trains manned by undead along the roads from place to place. Soon, the heavy tread of the wagon wheels left deep ruts and a rather inspired (if somewhat lazy) pair of acolytes realized that the wagons slotted into the ruts and pretty much stayed there. So one of them could send off a group of wagons and they’d mindlessly follow the grooves all the way to the next town where the other acolyte would halt them. Shipments run on time like always, but they could spend more time in a warm, cozy pub rather than out in the weather. Until Lord Kallikas discovered their little scheme life was pretty good.
Never one to let iron-fisted discipline stand in the way of a good idea, Kallikas considered the system created by the now soul-shorn Acolytes cum wagon pullers. By posting Acolytes at every town and major junction in his expanding empire, he could make more efficient use of his limited mage-power. Wherever practical, he set up a system of rut rotters.
The system wasn’t perfect. Many roads and trails had switchbacks or inclines that the wagons had trouble following. Ruts didn’t always form or got filled in and bad weather tended to wipe out whole sections of rut road. Kallikas brought in a few engineers from the Dwarven lands he’d conquered and had them look at it. They proposed putting the wagons up on a pair of metal rails and attaching the rails to a purpose built roadbed. In many places these roads would have to be built rather than use existing roadways to keep it as level and straight as possible. It would take a massive effort to construct all this, but an inexhaustible labor supply was the one thing Kallic had in spades.
As the new “rail-roads” were being pushed out, Kallikas took another look at the wagons. Long strings of wagons pulled by skeletal horses seemed inefficient. Kallikas wanted one big horse to pull all the wagons at once. Several entertaining, but failed experiments later, he was forced to give up on the idea. Instead, he hit upon the idea of binding the spirits of horses to the wheels of the wagon. A master wagon was placed up front where an Acolyte could hold the hundreds of fine threads representing the “reins” and thus control the whole thing. It meant putting an Acolyte back on the road, but the volume of cargo these new wagon trains could hold and the speed at which they moved was enormous.
So in the lands deep in Kallikas’s shadow, the rail-roads fanned out and the wagon trains rolled. The terrifying trains, echoing with the screams of horses became a common sight and Kallikas’s armies where shuttled quickly to the every expanding front.
The rails that made the Dread Lord’s expansion so easy was also the cause of his downfall. Teams of dedicated heroes snuck aboard trains heading deep into the Dead Empire on hit and run missions. Trains were captured and diverted or subverted. Eventually, a large train, packed with explosives pulled into the Dread Lord’s fortress and brought the whole thing to the ground.
It took many long years to wipe out the undead and clear the taint left behind from Kallikas’s rule, but the allies persisted. They also recognized the value of the rail system and did their best to keep it running. Although the trains required minimal magical effort to run, maintaining them required more necromantic magic than anyone was comfortable using. Every year, more wagons ran out of spiritual energy and the small, horse-pulled wagon trains began to appear in many parts of the rail network once again.
A number of high-level meetings were convened to consider how this problem might be resolved and although everyone agreed that something should be done, no one had a good idea for how to replace the necromantic wagons. At least, publicly no one had any good ideas. There were any number of private programs working to solve the problem. Kallikas had shown the Allies the power of rail transport. Being the first one to find a new way to travel the rails without the hellish wagons would give someone a serious edge in an Alliance that was showing signs of fraying.
later
Tom
