Jemini
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2019
- Messages
- 1,909
- Points
- 153
How big (and numerous) are the fairies? They would need to be able to drop so much flechette (<-correct spelling) of at least enough size to puncture through armor and skull from very high up after carrying them however far (endurance issues) that it would largely be likely not particularly effective and at best maybe moral dropping if they manage to do some damage, but without modern production means, that also means the flechette has to be produced one at a time (notably by the fairy's or their allies blacksmiths, and that's a lot of metal that could be going into much more productive areas).
It would be better to have the faeries act as skirmish units and pull off hit and run tactics as well as saboteurs. Their small size, unless they glow, make them much harder to spot, and give them an oversized razer blade (shad covered this for them even) and they can sneak up, cut throats and disappear before being noticed. All it would take for a saboteur would be a little poison in the enemy's water supplies, fires started in their dry goods (such as fodder for their animals if they have fodder, and if not their dry foods then) or a few commandos who go into the enemy camp and kill a bunch of soldiers in their sleep. The faeries even have multiple ways of sneaking in (overhead or from the sides.
Actually going back, rather than dropping flechette on them, waiting until the enemy has set up camp, then dropping fire pots on them (it would probably take more coordnation, like teams of fairies working together to carry them and light them before dropping them) would be way more damaging for moral (also making the flechette attack during the night would be better, especially if they simply hit obvious command tents).
Actually, the whole operation was meant as a demoralization exercise against an invading army. The fairy side is aiming for a human casualty rate of around 10% with the majority of the losses the army faces being in the form of deserters.
Also, there are great-fairy leaders in the raids who are human-size, the small fairies are just suplemental to the attack if anything. The tactic would be that they attack every single night. They start the attack with blowing war-horns and using light-magic to set flares everywhere. In the confusion, the flechette start dropping on the soldiers in their sleep.
Also, the flechette attacks only make up a small portion of the night raids. The majority of the night raids are just them sending out the flairs and blowing the war-horns but not actually doing anything to harm the soldiers. The flechette are only dropped maybe 2 or 3 times through the night, but the war-horns and flairs go off every 30 minutes and the flechette on those 2 or 3 times are only to make it so the human soldiers have no choice but to go on absolute full alert every single time the war-horns and flairs go off.
So, it's ultimately a psychological attack not really meant to wipe out the army in terms of casualty numbers.