If there is one upside to the fact that the attempted nding is going to happen immily, it's that the invading fleet has halted their on fire. Smooth bore ons aren't really accurate enough to avoid friendly fire at these ranges, so at least we won't be dealing with getting shelled while we're fighting their troops.
That said, their four smallest ships are now at the point where they're running aground. These ships have a slightly wider shape, ao be specifically shaped to let them run in more shallow water than the rger ships. They seem like a mix between a caravel and a viking longship. The water where they've grouhemselves is about four feet ih, meaning that their soldiers will be able to walk to nd, albeit with some difficulty. As I'm thinking this, ropes fall over the sides of the ship, and men dressed in armin to dismount.
They're still too far for us to properly hit them with most of our defensive implements, but it's still worth trying to aim some of the ballistae from the front-most positions to attempt to hit them. The way we've yered our beach defense, we rura ammo forward as needed, wood is cheap after all, but we keep most of the reserves of ammo further back, so that our own ons aren't turned against us as we cede ground.
Each of the small ships unloads about sixty men, who begin trekking through the water towards us. Unfortunately for them, they're realizing just how difficult we've made that trek, as they're being forced to navigate hardened wooden spikes ier. Even without the spikes, it'd be an exhausting trip up to nd, but with them, they're forced to slowly turn and crawl over the spikes, making the path even more exhausting and slow.
From further out, rowboats begin ing to shore as well. Overall, it seems like well over fifty rowboats are making their way to shore. They're different sizes, but the average rowboat has twenty soldiers, so we're looking at over a thousand soldiers whoing to be ing to shore soon. Through my telescope, I see there are still many more soldiers further out at sea in their ships. Around a third of the rowboats are also headed further along the coast where our defenses are fewer, but the terrain is much rockier and harder to unload in.
Ultimately, if we're forced to focus on the main invading force here tinuously, they make a few trips with the rowboats to the rougher terrain and fnk us given enough time. On some level, I feel for them attempting to invade a beach like this. During WWII, taking Normandy during D-Day required areme amount of human sacrifi the beachhead. When you factor ieology level of this invasion, and the fact that we're fighting with an informational edge, rather thaher way around, and it's holy quite a bad deal for them.
Oher hand, they've got signifitly more troops than we do, which swings the scales to a level that makes it hard for me to make any predis about the oute. All I say for sure is that we sank most of the smaller vessels which would have made their invasion much easier. At some point, we'll also be dealing with those unarmed soldiers who bailed from their sinking ships as well, as they swim to shore. Ultimately, this is going to get messy.
From where I sit using the telescope, I see that the ballistae have taken out a few of the soldiers marg through our waters on their way to dry nd. As they get closer, their speed increases due to the water being more shallow, while at the same time, our ballistae find it easier to aim at them.
As the first of the soldiers make it out of the water and onto the beach, the first of our steam ons fire grapeshot at them. I watch as three men fall, and the rest tinue charging forward. Of the nearly 250 men who dismounted from the small ships, about twenty have died so far. sidering we've only sustained one injury so far, that's pretty good. Never mind how many men have potentially died at sea.
As more of them start to make it onto more solid ground, the first of them fires off their own fireball attack towards one of our defensive positions, but given our cover, it is iive. It seemed simir to Zaka's fireball, flying through the air in a straight lihen bursting when it hit a surfabsp; Well, I 't exactly bme them for at least trying something. Until now, they've been receiving ranged harassment from our side, I'd also want to fire back myself in their situation.
Unfortunately for him, he stood still to aim his fireball, which resulted in him being shot by a ballista through his upper leg. He's not dead now, but without medical treatment soon, he'll die. As more of their soldiers make it to the beach, the distaween us and them has tio shrink. Our first yer of defense is built about 100 yards back from the high tide mark, and the tide has been reg for a few hours now, so they have a little less than a quarter mile distao close between us and them.
Some of their soldiers exhibit some unique magics I haven't seen before. A few dash forward at about four times the normal running speed for a human. Unfortunately for some of them, that means they're now the priority targets for some of the ballistae on the fort, as well as some of our defenses. More than half of the thirty or so who dashed forward in this way died before they even got to within a hundred yards of us. Of the remaining fifteen or so, nine fell into pitfall traps. At the very least they were injured enough they didn't climb out, although I suspect they're as good as dead. The remaining six had to slow down thanks to the rge wooden barricades that were set up. As they moved to maneuver around some of the barricades, or through ones broken by on fire, they were killed before they could actually reach our defensive line.
However, the remainder of the force was gaining ground during that maneuver. A sed steam on fired grapeshot into a clustered group, bringing down another six individuals. More ballistae fired from the fort and other parts of beach, and brought down more soldiers. Ultimately, we want to keep them from getting close, due to the uability of magic attacks. The row boats are beginning to approach as well. Within a few mihe first of them will make it to dry nd, resulting in thousands more batants.
A little more than half of the initial nding group now remains. Despite their best efforts, they're forced troups if they want to pass through the wooden barricaded areas of the beabsp; They attempted to gh o a time, but quickly realized that would just result in them dying to ballistae. Instead, as a group attempted to pass through a gap, a steam on unleashed mrapeshot onto that group, resulting in all seven of those attempting to pass through dying or being maimed.
In the first line of defense on the beach, we have six steam ons, and we've now used three. Once all six are used, we'll start pting falling back to the line of defense, where another six are located. The remaining three on this yer are loaded with single shells meant to shoot at those rowboats as they approach, so they should be firing soon.
As if on queue, one of the steam ons fires off towards one of the row boats, promising it's hull at about the same distance as the small ships had parked, f the twenty or so individuals io begin the slower trek towards nd, abandoning any additional equipment they might have had in the rowboat.
As the remnants of the initial nding parties got closer to our defenses, a few used new magic types. One created a defensive wall in front of themselves, which quickly colpsed as it was made of the same sand as the beabsp; It did eat a single ballista shot though, so it wasn't pletely useless. A few individuals surprised us with powerful leaps, allowing them to clear some of our barricades. Of those individuals, about half died on nding by falling into hidden spike traps as they repeatedly attempted to hop barriers. The remainder were focused on by balistae in order t them down.
Ultimately, the initial nding party didn't make it past our first line of defense. Which wasn't a surprise. Outside of some unseen magic, we have about 100 individuals in a heavily defended position. They only numbered 250 at most. That isn't enough to cim victory, and they didn't really have a choi the matter, other than to simply hide on their ship and wait for all the rowboats to nd. Holy, that was what they should have done.
My guess is that oheir fgship was sunk, the fleet had fractured in and somewhat, and most of the anders operated on whatever their pre-existing pn was, which likely involved all the small ships nding at ond invading. Given that only a handful of small ships actually remaihey attempted the attayway, and this was the result.
They did do ohing for the ihough. They no longer o deal with our steam ons on the front row. The three anti-persoeam ons are now spent. I give the word to our defensive line, we've done what we set out to do on this line. "Fire the remainder of your ballista shots, fire the two steam ons to sink some row boats, theroy your ballistae areat to the defensive line."