Shark_Force wrote:the daemonix did hold up to their end, except for the part where they cost tolkeen pretty much every single ally they had (not that they had a lot) the one time they were actually deployed into a fight.
I can see your point but wouldn't put the blame for that problem squarely in the Daemonix's shoulders (i was going to say lap, but with their morphology i not really most have that). For starters because it's fair to say from the text sources in the box that what got Tolkeen in that situation in the first place was Creed and his council's refusal to relocate Tolkeen - when that was a quite viable option for them almost up to the tragic end - along jingoistic and agressive stance toward the Coalition, going to the point of making an actual declaration of war first. That seemed clear even in pieces of 1st person fluff like Erin Tarn's final plea with Creed, so it relates to issues higher and farther than the decision to use the Daemonix.
Shark_Force wrote:so, you know, apart from that minor detail... sure. they held up their end of the bargain. unless you consider that bargain to include, say, following orders instead of stopping to torture and kill people for fun (probably including a number of formerly pro-tolkeen forces that tried to stop them, as well as any prisoners captured by the CS which they may have found). in which case, no, they screwed tolkeen over, which really should not have been a surprise to anyone because they're demons, and demons are kinda known to do that.
Let's all be honest here, Tolkeen used A LOT of big, bad monsters beside them in the conflict, specially in the buildup for the Sorcerer's Revenge, when they were so crazy-desperate for meat-shields to add extra padding to their move they were basically opening dimensions at random and making deals with what they got through, if the case of the Wormwood exiles is any indicator. So the problem was not the Daemonix per se, but their misuse of an enormous variety of dangerous, unruly monsters out of desperation, that came from a lack of sufficient preparation for the scale of conflict involved. It's just dumb luck that saved Rifts Earth from an accidental invasion of the Host and other creatures like the Unholy and his ilk in Wormwood.
That lack of preparation per se is something that goes beyond stupidity.
On the matter of atrocities of war, as you said yourself "they're demons, and demons are kinda known to do that" and really should not have been a surprise to anyone in the bargain, so, no, i can't agree with you they screwed tolkeen over. It's like saying the gun screwed over your aim because of the recoil or your artillery's blast radius betrayed you.
Recoil, that right there is something that every form of firearms is known to possess and be an issue, but those inexperienced in their use are too quick to forget until it smacks them in the face (sometimes literally) and requires practice and familiarity to account for effectively. Tolkeen mostly lacked that kind of ruthless familiarity, that is probably far more common in the True Federation of Magic or similar groups.
That said, in both Tolkeen and the Daemonix's defense, it was only in the Sorcerer's Revenge, after what, more than a year of war, that monster followers' atrocities really become a strategic issue, up to that point
they had managed it. This apparent success in effectively using the Daemonix and other critters against the Coalition's forces led them to believe they were prepared to do more of the same in a larger scale. Unfortunately for them, tactics that work in hundreds of engagements of guerilla units
does not translate well to one big engagement with hundreds of guerilla unit fused in an army - and then you add boatloads of freshly summoned (and far from coordinated) horrors to the whole.
If the Daemonix screwed Tolkeen in any way was that their overall compliance with their mortal liberators lead them to underestimate how terribly unruly and hard to direct a real monster army might actually be and they didn't throw the next batch of summons as badly in the grinder as they could - or should - for this.
It's quite telling of this lack of preparation and overconfident mismanagement that things like units of gargoyles, brodkill and black faeries lead by a cyber-knight of all people, or far more importantly, the total clusterf#*k with Free Quebec, would come to happen during that phase of conflict.
On the matter of equiping the Daemonix with tech-wiz implants - well, old school tanks are good (and the way the Daemonix are statted they are more armored cavalry than heavy infantry), tanks with cannons are even better.
The Daemonix had enormous
untapped natural reserves of PPE that would go to waste otherwise, so trying to get some use out of it is logical - it might not have been the most cost-effective way to do so, but it's not like you can just give each of the things a bag of scrolls and expect them to
read and make effective use of these in battle, demons in general are not quite sharp and the Daemonix are sort of primitive at that. Also, providing the Daemonix with such magic capacity
was something that played a major role in getting that compliance i previously mentioned out of them.
So, overall Tolkeen had a lot of problems in the war and it stands to reason that the Daemonix wouldn't be that necessary or helpful forever, but the war did not reach a point where their rulers might be forced to deal with this issue. The mistakes that ganked them were many others. Yes, now that it is over there will be rogue monsters aplenty around and the Daemonix among them - but of all those involved they might be most willing of joining any revenge squads instead of striking on their own, due to their techno-wizardry dependence.
it helps show that the listed BM costs ARE much higher than the actual production costs.
