[center] [img]https://i.imgur.com/C7nwoGY.png[/img] [b]2,134[/b] +3 (-5) [b][color=ea590c]Edward Portsmith: Level 7 (18 cells)[/color] [/b][color=ea590c]//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color]//// (66/70) [b]Location[/b] Frozen highlands - The Midnight Walk [/center] Edward supposed it was hard to beat the bodyplan of the Reindrix when it came to effective wagon pullers, the man putting his more outlandish schemes of Swinubs with longer legs to bed upon seeing the ShielDrix. [color=ea590c]”They’re even easier to see past with those armored heads of theirs”[/color] He commented as he stepped up to the seat of the stage coach, ready to set off. Also ready to set off where a squad of four Snoruyo as the Dreadnought, satisfied enough with his examination of the prototype, had committed to a field test of more of the units. He’d also, before tearing down the equipment to recycle any resource from it, made one more unit which was a fusion of a Somnacanth and a Chillet, [hider=fusion result] Chillanth: Sporting the forelimbs, head, crest and tail of the Somnacanth, and the neck, body and rear limbs of the Chillet to create a being with most of the abilities of a Somnacanth (sleep powder breath, [url=https://i.imgur.com/JtQeGD9.png]quill[/url] launching, and tail balancing/leaping) but with a few minor additions from the frosty dragon’s parts. It has even better resistance to cold thanks to its fur and ice typing, is usable as a mount (buffing the rider’s attacks with dark type dragon energy), and can create a dragon blast from its core to strike all nearby enemies, or one at its feet to do a rocket slam attack. It is, however, now especially vulnerable to fire (on top of still being weak to electricity), unable to use its softer belly for shell cracking, and its furred core and little rear legs are far less suited to the water. It also retained the Somnacanth’s aggression. [/hider] This new beast’s first task was to hunt down and knock out one of the crab creatures that had scuttled off. As ordered, the beast stalked through the cars, fore libs dragging it forwards while rear pattered away in sync with its slithering tail. Accompanying it was a scout drone which marked any traffic cones it found, prompting the Chillanth to bat them over. Soon enough an approached cone got up and started to run instead of being slapped by the beast, only for said beast to coil up its tail, and for a purple blast to pulse at its feet as it launched itself after the crab in a mighty leap. It landed directly on the cone shell, whose tapered shape slipped to one side and, improbably, let the crab slide to the side of the rocket slam rather than being crushed beneath it. Not that that was Edward’s desire. He wanted a sample, not ash and a spirit. The Chillanth seemed to be extra aggressive in its execution of his instruction unfortunately, forcing him to restate his desire for it to [color=ea590c]”Just knock it out please”[/color] from his seat on the stagecoach. Fortunately for the crab, this got through before the Chillanth finished charging a blast of dragon energy, and prompted it to swing its head around and blow a cone of sleeping powder over the crab, causing its attempt to stand up after the near miss of a slam be cut short and end with it slumped on the floor. [color=ea590c]”Excelent, now just retrieve a sample of it and-”[/color] Edward called over, only for the Chillanth to grip the crab with a claw, bite into a rear leg, and then proceed to rip said limb clean off. He was going to need to send someone or something more delicate to do the extraction in future apparently. Naturally, this woke the crab up, and did not please it one bit, so while screeching in pain launched fire at the chillanth, which it in turn did not like. Thus it was now the Chillanth’s turn to screech in pain as its fur was scorched, causing it to drop the crab (and crab leg) in the process. Said crab began to try and crawl around and get off another shot at the weak to fire beast even as it rapidly bled out. [color=ea590c]”Rediculous”[/color] Edward bemoaned the situation, having stopped their ride and marched over, commanding his creation to [color=ea590c]”Leave it!”[/color] as he plucked a friend-heart from his chest. This he then hurled it at the trafficrab to revitalize it and also let it just leave rather than keep fighting like any other form of healing would. As the trafficrab’s eye light blinked (literally) in confusion Edward ordered the Chillanth to [color=ea590c]”Fetch!”[/color] the severed leg that had just been replaced and then turned to return to his driving duty. While slowly rolling the stagecoach forwards while the other sniffed out and handled lurking droids, Edward (through golem eyes) found that he was being not so inconspicuously followed, prompting him to lean out around the stagecoach, stare down a traffic cone, and with a touch of exasperation said [color=ea590c]”Well, come on then!”[/color] while waving it closer. A few seconds passed, and then the trafficrab popped up out of its ‘shell’ took a few tentative steps forwards, and then scampered up to join him by the driver’s seat [color=ea590c]”Is this a ‘friend heart’ thing? Or were you secretly sentient and now want to know what in the world just happened?"[/color] he asked the monster, but if it was the latter, it didn't give much indication, just blinking its eye light (again, literally) at him a few times before it turned its eyes to the road. [color=ea590c]”A question for later, then”[/color] he said to himself, and possibly it, before ordering the ShielDrix [color=ea590c]”Forwards”[/color] and keeping them moving. While they did, he sent the Snoruyo forwards for their own test run, getting them to engage a stray droid together. The results were a little less impressive than he’d hoped, as while the ice shards they tossed came out fast, reducing the eye count to one had some… detrimental impact to their aim. Suffice to say, the drone managed to close the distance, which was when all the defensive skills came into play. The targeted Snoruye raised a protective barrier, blocking a blade strike, while two more used double-team to crowd the drone with threats, and the final released a burst of static mist, smothering the area in a sight blocking electrical hazard. Vision glitching under the static, blurred by the mist, and filled with targets, the drone was swiftly overwhelmed by close ranged shard strikes, the Snoruye seeming to communicate through the static mist and in so doing neutralizing the issue of their lack of depth perception. [color=ea590c]”Successfully done, but that was only one threat”[/color] Edward noted to himself, and, he supposed to his new traffic cone wearing companion, once the impossible creatures were done. He considered testing out the Thoroughbred Reindrix as well, but by then they were out of lone targets, and into the center proper, where it turned out they’d be splitting up. [color=ea590c]”I shall endeavor to keep us on task down here in that case”[/color] Edward informed Sandalphon, implicitly taking on her (light) leadership duties while she was away. The first of those tasks: dealing with a mass of corpses reanimated by squid like parasites. Edward, naturally, had the coach hang back, reins in hand, ready to move their transport out of harm's way if anything broke through their lines. Still, he also remained in shouting distance because unlike the golems, the impossible creatures were not directly linked to him via magic (other than his boons), and so needed direct instructions. The Dreadnought sent the more expendable golems in first, naturally, specifically using a pair of iron golem squads to put a wall between the horde and the stagecoach. Those were the only constructs being used however, leaving him with a spare 5 cells after the buffs were taken into account, and so the actual firepower, and killing, was going to be done by the impossible creatures. This, then, was the true test. The Chillanth started well, coiling up on its tail behind the golems, placing a clawed hand on a pair of shoulders for support, and looming over them. From this perch it launched large darts that stuck into the front ranks which stymied their charge, before blowing sleep gas down onto them causing several of the cephalopods to slump off of the bodies they were puppeting, corpse and creature both hitting the floor. The golems initially held the rest back neatly, hammers crashing futilely against shields while the Chillanth evaded poleax thrusts, until the ranged gunners got involved, blasting the creature with toxic blight, sending it reeling back, squealing and wrenching. These toxins did nothing to the iron golems, naturally, but with the Chillanth commanded to fall back for healing, it was up to the Snoruyo to take its place in the damage departments, the retaliatory clubstikes of the golems only doing to do so much harm. Fortunately, they’d been pre-buffing. Rather than four cyclopses, a dozen emerged from the side of the golems to stymie the efforts of the skulltroops to circle around and flank the stalwart shields. The fearlessness of the skulltroops sadly undermined the impact of such numbers, but it still meant that when they charged, several picked illusory targets rather than true foes. Those that picked true found their targets forming shards of ice in rounded hands which were swiftly tossed their way, the sharpened chunks embedding into the corpses of the skull troops. Unfortunately, this didn’t really do much, as the Snoruyo’s poor aim met the, well, dead nature of their targets, and so most hits simply ignored the damage and kept on coming. Edward’s enchantment improved the physical attacks a little, one of the corpses igniting, another being armor sundered, but that would only help in the long run. As such, only one that happened to hit and cripple a leg really achieved much in the moment, resulting in two of the Snoruyo having to raise barriers to protect themselves from sledgehammer smashes. The other two released a static mist, further increasing their own evasiveness, but frazzling the golems next to them in the process. Suffice to say, the area was now a mess of dopplegangers and static mist with the various fighters all jumbled together in it, and into which toxic fluids where benign sprayed by the skull gunners. There was no restoring order in that, and so Edward was left to simply throw everything he had into the fray. The healed Chillanth, friendly Trafficrab and even the Thoroughbred Reindrix were all sent charging forwards with the simple command of [color=ea590c]”Destroy the enemy!”[/color] which had to be quickly amended to [color=ea590c]”without friendly fire!”[/color] when the Reindrix began to summon a giant chunk of ice above its horns in response to this. The Pal snorted, lowered its horns, and then thrust them up which caused a skulltrooper, Skullings and all, to be impaled on a Blizzard Spike lancing up from the ground beneath it. It then charged in with its freezing antlers, bringing its freezing aura to the mess (but at least the ice types Snoruyo more resistant to this than the skulltroopers). The Trafficrab meanwhile, staying clear of the aura, also entered the fray, and thus the electrical mist, which promptly clung to it. The plastic typed beast became statically charged as a result of this type advantage, and so when a Skulltrooper struck its traffic cone shell with a poleaxe the Naytiba recoiled as far more lightning than had been in the cloud arched through its weapon, frying its arm in the process. The crab then approached and gave it a smack, causing yet more lighting to arch out of this normally weak strike to devastating effect. Finally it deployed a [url=https://wiki.cassettebeasts.com/images/3/3c/Plastic_Wall_spawn.gif]wall of plastic bricks[/url] to clog up a hole in the iron golem’s formation left by a member of it falling to flanking hammerers. The Chillanth finally leapt over the fray entirely, wanting nothing to do with the electrical cloud it was weak too, and went straight for the skull gunners. First it nailing them with darts during its leap, and then charging with an evasive serpentine motion till it could get close enough to spray them with sleep gas and knock them out of the fighting. Edward helped the mess as much as he could by using his Designate Target spell to specifically mark the skullings for death, allowing the Snoruyo (accuracy already bolstered by the static cloud) to aim specifically for this softer, weaker, and far more vital part of the foe with their ice shards. Suffice to say, however, that it was an absolute mess of a brawl both best avoided and also in dire need of a strong singular force to bring decisive victory to the moshpit of a battle.