Tyranomaster

  Our artillery fire off another pair of shots at the fgship, nding o hit, and missing the sed pletely. The fgship fires another bst back at our beabsp; The shrapnel from the explosion pierces one of our pre-boiled steam ons causing it to also rupture, sending even more shrapnel flying. Thankfully, the rupture propels the majority of that boiler upward and outward towards the o and avoids causing ara damage.

  Our artillery fired off a salvo at the fgship again, poking two more holes through the hull below the waterline. This fgship has en 12 of hty shells that were to be used in the defense of this beaot only that, but it's bought the rest of the fleet more time to get in nding range.

  Just as I'm starting to run new emergens through my head to try to adapt our defense in light of potentially needing to retreat, we get a lucky break. Our artillery fire another salvo, and I see the fgship lurch sideways and begin to turn away from both me and the beabsp; I 't tell exactly what happened, but my guess is that part of it's hull broke enough that the ship is going to sink, it's possible that a munitions cache exploded.

  Seeing that we are likely freed from the oppressive fire of their fgship's forward on, I order our troops to repair as much of the damage as they in the en minutes, aurn to defensive positions. It'll still be at least fifteen minutes before those ships get close enough that we would o potentially worry about any ndings and on fire.

  As I watch our defeart troup, I see the fgship is sinking deeper into the water. Looking through my telescope, I see individuals bailing ship. It's a bit less than a mile to nd from where they are, so they could theoretically make it to shore by swimming, although they'll be exhausted. I'd much prefer if they drowned personally, but I'll settle for them being exhausted as part of this fight. Plus they'll be without equipment, sihey'll actually o swim to shore. Of course, with magic being an option, I'd expee will be able to fight back, and that some might even have some swimming or water reted magic or traits.

  Our artillery are a little out of sync with each other now as they fire, but given the closer distahey have to their targets now, they're actually quite accurate in their shots. They're accurately shooting, and sinking, the smallest ships that have pulled ahead on the nding invasion. Ultimately, we o stop the smallest ships so they 't ground themselves close enough to fight us easily.

  pared to the fgship, their smallest ships sink in a single, well pced hit. As our artillery tio fire, the water gets flooded with more soldiers attempting to swim to shore, and their fleet has to navigate the still sinking wrecks that have started to block their path to the beabsp;

  They do seem to have realized what we're attempting to do though. They've started taheir fleet now that they know where we're firing from. They've started maneuvering their smaller ships towards the ter of the fleet, proteg them with the hulls of the rger ships as they attempt to make it closer to nd.

  Their ships are now only about three-quarters of a mile out from ndfall. Including the fgship, we've sunk eleven vessels. Much further, and their own ons will be able to easily rain onballs on us if they so choose. We're positioned ba the beach by nearly a half-mile. I suspect that the rger of the ships will probably turn to broadside us soon. I doubt that those shots will be explosive shells though.

  We have built our defenses with earthen mounds to make general onball fire iive, the problem with the fgship's on was it's exceptionally rge explosive bst. It meant that we were getting hit from behind by shrapnel. All of our defenses are desigo allow us to fall back easily, which also means we're generally less defended from that dire, which is why that on was so important to take out. We hide behind our earthen defensive mounds with embedded steam ons and ballista when it es to smaller on fire without much .

  Almost on cue, some of the rgest of the ships have begun turning broadside while at sea, and started to fire towards our defenses, including our bunkers with the artillery. By this point, our artillery is probably through about a third of their ammo. It'd be a tragedy if the bunkers fail, but they've been carefully desigo make them as resilient as possible to impact damage, so I suspect they'll at least survive until they've fired all their shells. Speaking of, they've sunk twenty vessels in total now.

  Make that twenty-one. They've started to have to fire upon the medium sized vessels that are attempting to protect the smallest vessels on their way to the shore, and that most ret shot must have hit a munitions arsenal on that ship because a rge amount of it just bleart. Those are the kinds of hits we're hoping for. Most of those sailors and soldiers are as good as dead.

  Unfortunately, we don't have a good way for one crew to inform the other of this discovered oint, but they have each been traio pay attention and attempt to hit the ships in those locations if they spot them. It be hard to properly hit a ship with that degree of accuracy, but at least narrowing down where you know you d a critical hit should make it a little easier to actually do so as they get closer.

  On the beach however, we're dealing with onball rain. Given some of the traps we've set on the beach, carpeting the area with onballs might actually be safer terrain for their nding parties. I've already seen a few of the hidden spiked pitfalls colpse due to a onball hitting the false ground c them.

  The onballs are actually doing a better job of destroying the defenses we put down that were meant to be more of an annoyahan a kill trap. Sharpened wooden caltrops that had been id out are occasionally getting obliterated by onballs, making the beach a little bit more maneuverable for the iable nding parties.

  The nding fleet has made it to a half-mile from shore now, putting them a little over a mile away from myself. Some of the medium ships have now also turned broadside to fire their ons at us. It's really annoying, but we haven't sustained any losses from the on fire so far. Every on shot they use now means they'll have less avaible to potentially use during a siege of our city if they decide to haul the ons ashore for that iure.

  The artillery has sunk about two-thirds of their small ships now, and they're getting closer to running out of ammo. I would guess they have between ten and fifteen shots left in each bunker. Luck seems to be on our side though, as the tide ge started about two ho, so the water level is reg. The enemy probably p this way, such that they could get their ships close to nding, thehe tide go out to ground them enough to unload. What they probably don't expect is that we've buried hardened spikes of wood within the beach all the way out to the low tide mark.

  What they probably expected was that they'd fight a difficult fight, then take the bead be able to use their smallest ships to make the nding easier. I holy half-expected them to retreat by now given the amount of vessels we've been sinking. Though I suppose with so many soldiers being forced to swim to shore, they might be thinking in terms of sunk cost. If they tinue and take the beach, many of those men might live. If they retreat, they're as good as dead. Given that one of said ships appeared to be a fgship, there robably more than one important person on that ship, although I suspect they've probably already been helped aboard a different vessel by now.

  Unluckily, or perhaps luckily, for the soldiers trapped ier they're swimming slower than the ships around them, so they'll arrive ashore after the worst of the battle is fought. If we mao stop them here, that means at best they'll be political prisoners, and at worst, dead. I don't think I'll take that many prisohis time. Given the sheer numbers of individuals and the retive size of armies and the power of individuals with magic, I figure it's impossible to keep a rge number of prisoners effectively, so we'll have to kill them...

  After a few more shells are fired from our artillery, they stop firing. We've sunk what we with what we had. All but four of the small ships are derelict at sea too far from shore to be useful. Overall, 33 of the inal 72 ships have been sunk. As I expected, the smallest ships are still headed straight for nd. They're close enough that I see them starting to get all their ons and armor on in preparation for attempting their nding.

  O starts to bee clear to the other ships that our artillery has stopped firing, more of their remaining ships start to maneuver back towards nd. I see that they do, in fact, have some rowboats on their decks, which will probably be used shortly. My hope is that we've disrupted their initial nding enough that it'll give us an advah the proper battle that's about to begin.