A N T E B E L L U M
Frost 70, 121 Age of Steel
Battles were fought by far more than masses of line infantry slamming into one another, and Kalzasi in particularly was an avid proponent of the war of maneuver. Though Avamande had slowed their production of supplies to the Sky Guard after a... less than pleasant thought experiment, they had not ceased. No matter how they considered the annals of Clockwork Empire, or the dangers posed by the rising Gelerian Imperium, the threat that faced them now was all too real and all too close to let such distract over much from the task. Kalzasi was sliding deeper into conflict with every passing day, and required every edge it could. Which is how the Hytori found themselves aiding the war of maneuver.
Unlike the simple shields requested by the Regiment of Infantry, the Regiment of Rangers had far more discerning tastes. Almost all of their requisitions made use of Traversion, leaving the Scrivener with them on their docket. After finishing with the simpler of the tasks to build his experience and rote muscle knowledge, they turned to the motley collection. It was as if every Hakumo in the Regiment had been given leave to make a wish list of spells for their soldiers to hold in their back pocket, some of which were flagrantly impossible and crossed the line into Archmagic.
It was almost enjoyable getting to sift through the requests that Ale'Ephirum had received, Avamande having been instructed in no uncertain terms to use their best judgement when fulfilling the orders. At very least, it was novel getting to write the rationale for a rejection of an order for one thousand Scrivened bows that would teleport their arrows directly to the closest enemy wherever they may be. Half of the orders seemed designed specifically to make anyone with a magical education tear their hair out in frustration, but after processing the most outlandish of such requests a fellow mage in Lyra's employ decided to let them in on the secret.
The Rangers required precise, accurate work that they knew would work and very often could not fall upon the recourse of a comrade in arms with a working product. Only novices, fools, and charlatans would accept some of the commissions that had fallen on Avamande's lap - and the Regiment would not work with anyone who possessed even one of those qualities. As a matter of course, Lyra was exempt from such scrutiny, her name and that of her institution typically seen as votes of confidence and proof of quality in their own right. But so great was the need for materiel and vast the procurement that the typical filtering of such nonsense had been overlooked.
Avamande took some pride in not falling for such a trap, though the inefficiencies beginning to show in the system ate at them. War had not yet begun and already Kalzasi was beginning to show strain, its administrative state making mistakes that it would have never done a season ago. In the end however that served only to bolster their resolve to work through the backlog of requests and complete the great work that had been set before them. After removing the impossible, the impractical, the pointless, and the stupid, there were two general trends in requests remaining before them.
While both called for Traversion, and true to their status as cheap, mass produced, magics rather elementary facets of the Rune, the disparate Rangers utilized it in two different ways. By far the lions share of the requisition orders were for what amounted to Blink scrolls, which could serve as get out of jail free cards to the lucky or the desperate. These were far from subtle or elegant work, and Avamande could churn them out in job lots without difficulty or much in the way of thought. With Dragonshard or their own mana, the inscribed glyph could be activated, hurtling the user through Slipspace in a truncated and none too comfortable trip.
Favored by those who prized a quick getaway, or simply used to rapidly alter elevation by a method that would at worst cause a sprain ankle instead of the certain death that tended to follow tumbles from great heights, most Rangers who went into the field without one had been born with wings. And, of greater interest to Avamande, the glyph was painfully simple to replicate if one held an intimate connection with the Cardinal Rune of Traversion. Ignoring the elements from that, which was in any case already scrawled upon the Hytori's soul, the rest of the design could just as well have been made for a bomb instead of a Blink. A single Mirror set within the confines of the more complex glyph, the finished product did little more complex than accept incoming mana and immediately direct it towards the work of magic. So extreme was the uncontrolled flood of energy that it was not uncommon for such scrolls to burst into flames upon use, a fact that many within the Sky Guard considered a feature instead of a flow and opted to retain it instead of complicating the design.
The second set of orders were for what were in effect single use scrying glasses. Incredibly thin sheets of reflective metal, shined to a mirror sheen, were a common element of soldier's kits in most every army. Typically these were used to aid in shaving and other grooming tasks for professional armies, but here they were being forced to play double duty. A few thousand of the Rangers' hand mirrors had been given over to Ale'Ephirum, and from thence to Avamande, to work at with a finely wrought stylus tipped with truesilver. The runes for these would have to be etched into the metal itself, the back then covered with a lamellar word panel in order to protect the glyph from any damage.
When the time came, aether would have to be channeled into the pictograph - either by dragonshard or the inborn power of a mage. The latter was far more likely for Rangers at the least, but how they acquired the requisite power was not something Avamande cared about. They just had to make sure that it worked. Where the scrolls were effectively Blink, the mirrors were carved with the instruction set to manifest a Window. by which one of the forward scouts could spy upon the enemy or report back to base camp. The variables that a mage could control at the time of casting - where the Window opened, the size of the Window, and the amount of time it remained open - instead needed to be set now, and Avamande was considerate enough to inscribe the effective range of each.
Operation was simple, albeit rather more complex than the Blink scrolls. By holding the mirror up into a certain direction, a Window would then open at the designated distance away, permitting any operations that one would typically make with such holes through reality's substructure. They were, however, quite small both for the safety of the operator and also to prolong the life of the portal. There was little use in an aperture that closed after mere moments, after all. With these in hand, a force in the hills or mountains so common throughout Karnor could, after establishing line of sight on an enemy column, crack open one of their hand mirrors as a one use spyglass.
Combined with the Regiment's mobility as well as their ability to move throughout the wildlands of Karnor with relative freedom, the scrolls and mirrors granted unparalleled flexibility to the Sky Guard. Even with Zaichaer's sizable airfleet, they had no true response to a force that could range throughout the hinterlands surrounding the main roads and rivers. In the ensuing conflict, the countryside would hold only death for the High City's forces. The fact that Avamande's work, drawing and etching, dragging brush and stylus, directly led to that capability gave Avamande some pause. But not much. No matter how they felt about the morality of warfare, the notion of letting the Order of Reconciliation extend its influence was ludicrous. For the sake of they, and their parents', work, they would craft all that the Shokaze demanded of them. It helped that he paid rather well.
With any moral qualms as to being a member of the burgeoning military industrial complex assuaged, they returned to the repetitive process of scribing the same pictographs over and over again. It was calming, almost meditative, and if the affairs of states and princes were impacted by their work, they cared not at all. What mattered was that there was work to do, and they intended to do it well. All else was secondary to the quiet pride of the rapidly growing piles of completed products, to be delivered to warehouses across northern Karnor. As they worked, they felt a measure of solidarity in the knowledge that across countless workshops in Kalzasi, others did the same. The work may not be done until the war was won, but no one ever claimed that it waited for a declaration to get started.