[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/zG1CMLw.png[/img][h3]Harbour[/h3]
[@Paradox Witch][/center]

Right on schedule, Sstrategist smugly thought to herself, standing on the bow of her newest charge as its completed keel slid into the waterways. Within the gloom of the moon, the Servant could be seen standing steadily onboard an oddly-shaped ship. Unlike an ironclad or any of the 'newer' ships - seemingly fantastical - that Strategist had planned for and assisted her crew in making, this ship's profile was akin to an elliptical cylinder, tapering at the bow and stern and topped by a ship's gun and a steel, half story-high tower, topped by periscope sights. Small winglets sprouted off the bow and stern and the strange ship sat in the water to the point where one can reasonably slide off the side and into the water for a 'dip'.

However, as with all of Strategist's designs, this wasn't a pleasure cruiser or yacht. It was a ship patterned on a series of ideas trailing as far back as when a keg barrel-shaped that once wrecked terror on the oceans of America. A ship designed not to float on the sea, but to hide [i]beneath[/i] it and to sink any enemy craft without being seen.

An E-class submersible.

Smoothly stepping off the bow of the HMS [i]E21[/i] and onto the pier, Strategist admired the handy-work she and her co-opted fellow sailors and Marines had been working on until this evening. Aside from the submarine, two more destroyers had been commissioned, while the half-completed hulls of three more - scraped together from whatever steel and relevant materials and equipment they could find and repurpose - were being swarmed over by welder-wielding work crews. The last two, idle ships were seized cargo ships secured to their piers; Strategist were saving these for one last project.

Aye, [b]the last for now[/b]. As of tonight, she was effectively running short of practically every resource: steel, salvage, armaments and - if push came to it - what little Mana she'd been hoarding on to. She also knew that she could not last on what the Harbour could provide or could be taken by force-of-arms; the people within the City were suffering enough as it was [b]without her[/b] destroying what little livelyhood they had left as well. Come the dawn, she would have to take her small fleet to track down more ships at sea to commandeer ... or to actually put her pooled-together assets to decisive use in the War, whatever the outcome of the proposed 'meet-and-greet', going on in the newly-created crater, turned out.

Problem was, even [i]with[/i] this small task-force she had assembled, she knew she wasn't ready to make an audacious move on the Grail itself. And the latter, in of itself, was becoming a problem: tracking it down was one thing. [i]Holding[/i] it and fighting off every other Servant who'd do-or-die to [i]get it[/i] was another.

She sighed in audible frustration, putting a gloved hand to her forehead. [i]"The mathematics of defeat, Fleet Admiral."[/i] she bitterly muttered, to both herself and through her link to Carly-Beth, if only to prompt the latter for advice.


[hider=E-class][img]http://militarynavalhistory.net/shippictures/igs_submarines/low_res/E_class_01.jpg[/img][/hider]