2 Chap 2

I spent the next week alternately studying magic and conferencing with a variety of craftsmen. Not practising magic, mind you, studying. Much to the dismay and annoyance of my hosts, I had no interest in the magics they had prepared to teach me.

Most of the heroes had jumped at the chance to gain great amounts of personal power. The fantasy that they can somehow personally turn the tide of a war like this must seem appealing.

"You don't win wars by creating heroes. You create heroes by winning the war."

They really didn't know what to say to that. Apparently, for their entire history, their great battles had been fought and won by great heroes, summons and blessed in-born champions. I suspected that the armies and strategies had been more important than history remembered, but their actions hadn't been recorded in detail.

Beginning the next week, I began my campaign. I had a list of magics to learn, all of which my hosts questioned vehemently. They scoffed at my desire to learn 'Mold Earth', and to enchant objects with assorted magic effects. They nearly killed themselves when I handed them the rest of the list.

The magic system of this world was eerily similar to a certain famous RPG of my world, enough so that I've written this list using the RPG names. My list was all low-level magic. Half of them at the level known commonly as 'Cantrips'.

I would, in total, learn:

Mold Earth

Dancing Lights

Message

Spare the Dying

Prestidigitation

Mending

Alarm

Create or Destroy Water

Cure Wounds

Faerie Fire

Healing Elixir

Healing Word

Heroism

Purify Food and Drink

Continual Flame

Darkvision

The strategy I was developing would require 1 in every 5 soldiers to know this entire list. According to my hosts, I as a summon, had nearly infinite magic capacity. I could have learned the highest spells in their library if I wanted. But none of the soldiers would have managed it.

My hosts were of course flabbergasted that I would want to train common soldiers to cast magic. They were confused as to my intended use of these spells in combat. And of course they tried to convince me to follow the standard hero path. I tried to explain my strategy academically to them, but eventually came to the conclusion that they would have to see it in action to really grasp the concept.

The rest of my time was spent putting a mass production program in place. I was about to advance the era of warfare on this world by about 500 years, and I would need a lot of materials and tools to do so.

They had no system of recycling at this time, so most of the metal waste they produced was literally wasted. I had crews formed to collect every bit of scrap they could find. Iron, copper, tin, even gold and silver. If they used it, the leftovers were discarded.

The smiths and craftsmen I had contacted were employed to produce parts as I had designed. Each shop was supplied and equipped to produce one or two parts. Until proper factories could be built, this was the only way to achieve consistent parts inter-compatibility. The only industry at this time that approached mass production was the military armouries building swords and other bladed weapons.

Despite the strangeness of my requests, most everybody was more than happy for the work. I also had soldiers from defeated forces recruited to my service. Soldiers who survived one of these melee battles and still had enough wits about them to take a chance on a new strategy wouldn't break easily.

As a summoned hero, I did have a budget allotted to me for fighting. The intention of course was for me to spend it on myself, but it was enough for all my operations, especially using recycled metals, so my hosts didn't object particularly to that part. I think they assumed the whole thing would be a waste, and then I would get to the normal hero schtick.

It was amazing how expensive the hero schtick was. I was effectively outfitting a Battalion of 500 men, with firearms and magic support equipment, for the same amount of money spent on getting one of the other summons personally outfitted. The only cost beyond that was their personal wage, which they would have been collecting regardless so long as they remained in the standing force.

I had my battalion assembled long before the equipment would all be ready, so I started by teaching them magic, mixed-unit tactics, and the value of strategic movement.

"Good morning my soldiers. You've all volunteered to this force whose purpose is to wage effective war against an enemy which cannot be fought with conventional methods.

Everything you learn from this point forth will be unfamiliar to you, but I promise will be well within your capacity. You cannot reach the level of a summoned hero, and you don't need to. Individuals don't win wars. However powerful they may be, a lone person will always succumb to enough weaker beings.

Thus we have the value of tactics and strategy. You will first learn skills, then tactics. Once you have mastered both of those, you will learn how to apply them to the large strategies of which you each will be a small part.

The tactical arrangement I've devised for this battalion will see you all grouped into units of 10 soldiers. Each soldier will become proficient in at least the cantrip level spells on the list posted behind me. Each unit will also have at least two soldiers capable of the full list behind me. You will train to use these spells as a unit, and in cooperation with other units.

Each soldier will be trained to use, and equipped with, one trench-gun, and one sidearm pistol. These devices are being constructed as we speak, and the first batches will arrive for training within the next month.

The firearm is a class of weapon which can be most accurately called a 'force multiplier'. In standard melee battle, your forces tend to lose 2 soldiers in the process of killing one enemy marauder. This is unacceptable and unsustainable.

Using trench-guns and the tactical principles you will be taught, this battalion will not exceed 5% losses in open battle. In an ideal situation, I expect victory at the cost of nothing but ammunition.

A well trained, fully equipped, and tactically located unit of trench-gunners, will be worth 100 spearmen. In short, each of you will be worth ten standard soldiers."

There was a noticeable, dead, silence as I left the podium and my assistant stepped up to relay and explain the schedule. To their credit, they listened well enough to her that we didn't have any major problems with the training rotation.

We only had so many people and so much equipment for training, so we ran 5 groups of 100, each doing something different in each block of time.

We managed to procure 100 basic wooden models of the trench-gun I had designed. It was a mechanically simple double barrel, over-under shotgun, chambered for a mostly paper cartridge. The design was made to be as forgiving of ammunition inconsistency as possible. Of course since these were wooden models we focused on ergonomics. They learned how to handle, carry, manoeuvre with, and safely stow a shotgun.

The next block was trained in magic. I was also lacking in practice with magic, so I spent as much time with this as I could afford. Since we lacked only teachers here, we had the groups practising with actual magic. The Mold Earth, and Message cantrips are the most important to my tactical model, so I insisted on perfect mastery of both for every soldier.

The other cantrips were also necessary, but each soldier only needed functional proficiency in them. The more promising soldiers were identified for officer training, to learn the full list of spells later.

Block three was tactical theory and strategic awareness class. It was mostly taught on a series of chalkboards, though later it would be put into practical training along with magic.

Block four was the least popular, but simplest. Physical fitness training. These soldiers were already healthy, so the primary purpose of this class was to drill into them both movement as a unit, and stochastic evasion for retreats or baiting operations.

The fifth block was non-combat training. An army cannot operate without supplies, so it was necessary to teach every soldier the importance of supply-chain management. They were educated on the principles of equipment maintenance, conservation of resources, manufacture and refurbishing of ammunition, and inventory accuracy.

We blocked out this schedule such that at the end of every five days every soldier had received the same education. Then they had 2 days off to rest and review. The potential officers were notified of their status and given the option to receive the higher level of training. Only three declined the offer.

That gave us 113 officer candidates to fill 100 spots. All of them would receive the higher training, and those not selected as officers would be integrated with the rest of the soldiers and considered 'on reserve' in case one of the other officers was no longer able to perform their duty.

"There is no harm in having regular soldiers reach that level. In fact I would prefer to max out every one of you, but we simply don't have the time."

I participated in the training as much as I could, but there were many more duties expected of a general while forming a new battalion than I had expected. The acquisition of special equipment was one such time sink.

I had managed to contract an array of peasant and merchant class civilians to make and deliver my guns, but magic users were another story. Even my status as a summoned hero didn't make it easier to deal with them.

I had studied all I could about the magic of this world, including magic devices. The most famous ones were of course enchanted weapons. Desired by every would-be hero in history was a Holy Sword of Awesomeness. I'm paraphrasing of course, but they were the most prominent in history.

The things I wanted were somewhat more mundane, so I had expected to acquire them more easily. The problem was, they were so mundane that nobody produced them in quantity. They were considered either elements for the personal use of wizards, or simply as tools with no strategic value.

So when I asked for:

1,000 Beads of Force

100,000 Beads of Nourishment

6,000 Candles of The Deep

200 Large Flying Carpets

150 Chests of Preserving

150 Protective shells for the Chests of Preserving

20 Cloaks of Invisibility

5 Instant Fortresses

200 Driftglobes

30 Eversmoking Bottles

550 Goggles of Night

200 Immovable Rods

15 Iron Flasks (for capturing stuff)

1,000,000 Paper Birds

10,000 Assorted Potions of Healing

550 Rings of Regeneration

50 Ropes of Climbing

Most of them looked at me like I'd sprouted three heads. One of them actually fainted when I got to the Paper Birds.

It should be noted that this was to be an order of mostly long-term equipment. Only the beads, candles, birds, and potions were consumable and would be ordered in quantity regularly.