Epilogue - 002
Turns since TBfGK: 1
The six dwagons were at full strength, of course. Two reds, a green, a purple, a blue, and a yellow, cutting through the clear western sky. Their spotless scales glittered in the sunlight, and their breath puffed fiercely in the chill mountain air.
But to Parson, the group of them still managed to look ragged and defeated. He remembered how many of them had flown out.
From the tower office, he watched the new armored blue join the incoming stack with a joyful roar.
This new office had a strange new shape and decor, almost Chinese-imperial. In fact, the whole tower was redesigned. It was square and fluted now, less like the Space Needle and more like Big Ben. Parson picked up his eyebook from the corner of the red and gold, ivory-inlaid desk, and headed up to the parapet where Maggie and Sizemore were waiting.
Stanley was taking his time surveying things, but there was a lot for him to see. The new Gobwin Knob sat on what was left of a mountain that Parson had exploded, and so the city took on a wildly different form.
It was no longer symmetrical, but tiered, with half of the city walls extending down around a permanent lava lake. The lake didn't seem inclined to cool and solidify like Parson thought it probably should, but Sizemore had said the "terrain type" there had changed to a lake of lava, and that was that. Only fliers would be able to cross that new zone of the city, and would not be able to land. Half the tunnel zone was also permanently gone.
But they were still a Level 5 city, with special defense bonuses adding up to something theoretical like a Level 8, which was supposed to make them the hardest defensive position in the world. Parson had his doubts, having just watched this city fall, but the new layout did look pretty tough.
The old city had lacked a front gate, a configuration which gave extra strength to the outer walls and avoided a specific weak point. The trade-off was that they'd had to deploy all of their non-fliers out through the tunnels. That was why their only heavy units were Spidews and Dwagons.
The new Gobwin Knob had a prominent and ridiculously well-defended gate, with two square towers almost as high as the new Tower of Efdup. The walls were lower than before, but thicker, with toothed edges and blockhouses so densely placed around the perimeter that it looked like the toothing continued on a larger scale. This square fractal design was worked into a lot of the architecture, so that despite its lopsidedness, the new city looked artful, ordered, lordly.
This was a city that was meant to rule other cities. Maybe the world.