Fighting the other races

Fighting the other races is a Dalmer book that proposes solutions to fighting the other races and certain creatures of Welt. 
== Monstrous ==
=== Dragon Warfare ===
==== Fighting a dragon ====
Wing bones: being flying creatures their bones must be hollow to allow flight. These bones are relatively brittle, and can sometimes be broken with blunt objects at close range. Breast muscles are not a good target as they are very strong to allow the beast to fly.
Skin: dragon skin is thick, as such regular weapons are ineffective. The optimal target is the eyes with sufficient force to pierce the brain.
Tactics: Primary long range assault should be led with ballista fire, spread in a circle around the creature. Given the creature's size, only a direct hit to the heart with sufficient force can reasonably stop it. War bows with heavy arrows are useful for this. The best tactic is to use projectiles with ropes to force it to the ground. If the creature closes to melee combat, pikes are good to fend off the creature. In a pinch, blunt and blunt bladed weapons such as axes are recommended.
==== Fighting dragon riders: ====
Given the creatures size, other races tend to have multiple riders at once on the dragons back, generally up to eight people. They favor ranged weapons as single target lances and swords are equally useless while on dragon back, this allowing to fire in multiple directions. The dragon riders use short bows, and empty projectiles from large bags to bombard large tracts of land and render it either inaccessible (caltrops) or to wound and kill opponents on the field (drop spikes). This makes the dragon a veritable flying turret capable of reconnaissance, air support (with its fire breath and drop spikes), and guerilla tactics (caltrops). If necessary, the dragon can be armored, making it a more effective fighting force on the ground.
Given these traits, dragon riders are incredibly destructive especially in field battles, the same tactics as with an individual wild dragon still apply, the wings and eyes being priority targets along with attempts at immobilizing the creature. 
=== Minotaurs ===
Half hominid, half bull creatures that use two handed double edged axes culturally, but since axes have no defensive advantages, they rarely use them. Minotaurs use armor in addition to billhooks, and bear swords as only they have the strength and skill to wield these monstrous yet balanced weapons.  
Minotaurs have superior strength to median races, as well as in terms of speed, build and weight. Their forward facing eyes also allow them a greater field of vision.
They do not use their horns as much as they risk their heads getting stuck or being overly exposed in combat. 
They are also adept at using bows, even better than orcs perhaps as they are generally stronger than them, as such they also use monstrous bows that fire ballista class bolts. However, the minotaurs horns sometimes prevent them from pulling bowstrings to its maximal extent. 
When in labyrinths, minotaurs are more inclined to charge at enemies when using a tower shield. The confined environment makes for deadly charges especially with the momentum and weight of the minotaur. They also use messer swords when in labyrinths. Minotaurs make shields from doors most often. 
=== Centaurs ===
The hybrid horse/hominid are known to use warswords culturally. They possess average upper body strength similar to elves and humans, but much greater strength for the equine portion of their anatomy, notably in terms of speed and mobility. 
The best weapons against centaurs are akin to mounted warfare, shields, spears, maces and swords. They perform cavalry charges when in groups, as they have significant mass upon impact. Their spears when used in a charge risk breaking their backs due to backlash in their shoulders. 
Centaurs also use heavy bows while in motion, making them deadly at greater range than regular cavalry archers but they are a lot less accurate. 
In melee combat, centaurs are disadvantaged due to their size and width, as such rank charges and formations are not useful, they prefer hit and run tactics. Shields are not very useful for them as they need a much larger shield than median races, with no greater strength to compensate for this. They use infantry halberds, polearms, massive two handed sabers and greatswords when in combat. They also can carry more great and are used as beasts of burden, making them useful as suppliers for units while on the field.
==== Tamed centaurs ====
Tamed centaurs use riders to protect them and to serve as turrets and an extra pair of eyes on the field. Centaurs sometimes kidnap and breed humans to ride them and fight for them. The humans carry shields, fire bows while escaping, and can be dropped at a moments notice in combat. 
====How to fight Centaurs====
Centaurs are fast and agile, but they are also large creatures meaning ranged weapons with rapid rates of fire are a necessity against them. 
==== Underbelly of the beast ====
Underbelly of the beast is technique used against centauri and other six limbed foes. The user can crouch underneath the target and spin strike, ensuring the target loses its ability to harm the user with spin attacks. To ensure the user stays safe, jump canceling the spin is necessary to reposition correctly.
====Centaur combat technique====
It begins with a parry, SPF hits, then the tri-boomerang is launched to swirl around the Centaur, confusing it. And then dodges while leaving a bomb in the Centaurs attack route. All the while, the boomerang continues to turn around the Centaur to avoid escape.
====Centaur combat recommended gear/load out====
Anti Shock armor, Beam sword, Unibike, Lance, Multishot bow, Strength Enhancers, Stamina over reserves, HP over reserves.
=== Mermaids/Merman ===
The half hominid half fish that live in the water, culturally they use tridents in combat and to hunt. Due to the drag of water and difficulty of combat underwater, spears and scimitars are their weapon of choice. 
When fighting surface dwelling creatures, mermen use grappling hooks and rope to drag and drown their victims. They prevent counterpull from the victim by tying the rope end to a stone or to an anchor underwater. 
==== How to fight mermen ====
Given their unique environment, the surest way to fight mermen is to poison or heat the water to a point where the mermen cannot survive. However no tactic beyond staying away from the edge of the boat is viable. Use of thermal imaging is recommended however to spot mermen before they attack.
=== Naga/ Snake people ===
Snake humanoids with a reptilian lower body and hominid upper body. They culturally use scimitars, but their snake body portion is their most useful weapon, constriction. The amount of force is equivalent to resting a Grepan on someone. They are able to maintain this tension for 20 minutes, making them incredibly deadly when using their combat technique. 
For protection they use tower shields disguised as foliage, and for armor they use mail all the way down their body to avoid injury when constricting. Constriction is only useful for one on one combat however. When fighting multiple enemies, it will coil up and leap at its opponent to lunge and strike up to ten meters away, making their lethal potential incredibly far away. When using coil combat the naga use spears to make their striking distance even greater behind the protection of a tower shield. These attacks allow the Naga to return to its initial position immediately, safe ten meters away from its opponents. The naga can also rise themselves up for greater view and to trick its opponents into coming into its lethal striking distance. 
For ranged weapons the naga use their ability to keep muscle tension for extended periods of time, meaning they can take their time aiming and are incredibly accurate when firing. 
These capabilities make naga formidable guerilla warriors.
Because Naga are cold blooded, they are invisible to heat sensors. However this also means they are weak to cold related weapons. Cryo weapons are particularly effective against them. When traversing Naga territory, the best tactic is to fire temperature lowering weapons to thwart eventual ambushes, rendering them sluggish.  
=== Sand whale ===
====Sand creatures====
Since sand predators only breach to hunt, a user activating energy shields at the moment of contact is a good way to stun it when breaching. It can then be safely eliminated while stuck on the sand.
== Anthropomorphs ==
=== Giants ===
Given their strength, they are effective siege weapons as they can lob boulders, and burst through fortified doors.
Giant are vastly strong, their capacity to send enemies flying into the air by striking the ground is legendary. Capable of sending anything in a 2 meter target radius 200 meters into the air in under 5 seconds with each strike delivering over 200 000 joules and rupturing all eardrums in the vicinity of 25 meters.
In terms of weapons, giants are ill equipped for swords, they use maces for combat and polearms when hunting. 
Giants when fighting use lances, and clubs. For protection they use tower shields, padded armor underneath heavy armor as they are projectile magnets for median races. They also have metal protections on their shoes and boots to kick and stomp median races. Their most lethal weapon is the scythe when fighting median races
Giants are faster but do not accelerate as fast as median races. Also, their strength is not proportional relative to the median races strength, in fact they are less strong comparatively due to the energy used to support their great weight and size. 
==== How to fight giants: ====
Giants are generally armed with spiked boots, scythes or slings that hurl catapult sized rocks like pebbles.
A giants clothing is generally thicker than the usual clothes the median races will use, as such swords and bladed weapons are generally useless, however pikes can impale them easily if enough momentum is used.
Giants being much larger create more internal heat, and since their lungs are much larger, they expel this heat much easier. This makes them ideally acclimated to cold environments, and they will generally avoid hot and tropical climates. As such a solution to trap a giant is to lure it into a circle of bonfires where the hot air will make it pass out.
Since they are larger, more of the giants strength and structural integrity is devoted to supporting their own weight, as such their ability to jump is lesser than that of the median races. As such, a giant falling from a height greater than that of their knees will be at risk o shattering their legs. This makes pit traps very useful against giants. 
If no traps are available, barbed ballistas and caltrops are very useful against giants. Finally, an arrow through the eye is a viable option using à high powered bow and thick arrows. This is because Giants eyes are much larger targets than the usual median race eye. This tactic is known as “Giants eye”.
Finally mobility is key when facing giants so no armor is necessary to preserve speed. Also terrain is key when fighting giants, in forests they will have difficulty moving around, and nets can be placed. 
====Supersized adversary combat tactics====
Concentrates on immobilisation and chopping off their limbs, as these often regenerate quickly. 
=== Elves ===
The elves are graceful, agile, coordinated and possess very good eyesight. They do not possess more physical strength than other median races in general. 
They use most of the baseline weaponry the median races use (swords, armor, shields, bows etc). They use bows culturally in combat, this is also due to their eyesight making them adept at night combat, however they are not more precise in their archery than other races. 
In melee elves use dual wielding profusely given their higher coordination. They typically use both swords equally for defense and attack. Dual wielding daggers is also popular but not combat effective, so they use them as backup or throwing weapons. 
==== How to fight Elves ====
Being coordinated and possessing excellent night time vision and no major physical flaws, dealing with elves is more a matter of fighting them in conditions that do not allow them to exploit these advantages.
As such night time and melee combat is out of the question. 
Their propensity for dual wielding makes ranged weapons ideal against them as they wear light armor to allow greater freedom of movement.
Their habitat also is an accident advantage as most elves live in forested areas, making setting the forest on fire a viable tactic.
=== Orcs ===
Orcs are a very diverse race, but in general they are tall, resistant to injury, broad shouldered, very strong and are very good at fighting. They are no less intelligent despite other race literature. Their height gives them a reach advantage, their bloodlust, aggression and warlike culture makes them constantly armed with battlefield level weapons, shields and armor in their everyday life as self defense sidearms as they are constantly at risk of being attacked. Orcs do not use swords a lot but rather polearms, pole axes, greatswords and warhammers. For ranged attacks they use bows who are advantaged by their great strength who can fire arrows that can penetrate armor with ease and at much greater range. This range advantage makes them good snipers and keep other median races at bay given their superior range. 
==== How to fight Orcs ====
Given their obvious advantages in melee and bow combat, orcs are generally best left alone. Infiltrators in orc territory find that provoking fights between orcs is easy enough as it happens often in their society.
Sieging orc strongholds is difficult because of their greater range often leading to an arm's length war. 
Creating infighting during a siege is difficult as they are known to have frighteningly high morale when united against a against a common foe.
The general adage about orcs amongst the Dalmer is “if you don’t want them to kill you, make sure they kill each other.”
Wield battlefield weapons, and enormous bows. 
1 v 1 combat: the best tactic is to take advantage of the terrain. In forests, the orc will have difficulty using its bow, cover is paramount when fighting an orc to close the distance. The orc will probably be using armor, depending on the clan, so often arrows can be used to kill the orc. A thick shield (heater, pavese or tower) is useful to deflect the heavy arrow the orcs use while returning fire.
Cavalry is useful as it makes the attacker mobile and harder to hit with the orcs arrows. 
In battlefield combat, an orc volley of arrows cna be countered by tetsudo 
=== Dwarves ===
Given their short and stocky physique which makes them sturdy but they have less reach and makes bows less useful. The fact that they have less draw makes crossbows more useful than bows as they can fire heavier bolts given the shorter draw strength.
Given their stature they use polearms and halberds in combat to compensate for their lack of reach. Dwarves use axes, hammers but the lack of reach makes longswords more viable for them in combat despite their cultural attachment to axes and hammers. As such, longswords messer swords and falchions are popular among dwarves for combat. For protection dwarves use shields the same size and weight as median race shields, this makes them completely covered from head to toe while wearing the shield.  However the shield severely impairs the dwarves ability to protect itself, the dalmer exploit this often using shield breaking tactics
The more modern dwarven military use their cultural weapons as throwing weapons.
Dwarves use their spears to wound legs and to immobilize, making use of their greater strength, and sometimes tackle their opponents legs. This tackling technique is an excellent tactic for one on one combat as they have more mass than humans. Dwarves also use high guards often, as their short stature means their legs are not often at risk. 
==== How to fight dwarves ====
Fighting against dwarves generally end in a firefight given their mastery over time of the crossbow. In close combat they are used to employing tetsudo formations, shield walls, and they oversized shield for optimal defense which makes them slow in their advance in melee combat.
To break a dwarf advance requires heavier ordnance than the average patrol will have at their disposal. As such picking off dwarves at a distance can be viable provided they do not have crossbow covering fire.
In most situations against dwarves, picking them off one by one is key as they have poor perception outside their caves. Inevitably the dwarves will regroup either into a defensive tetsudo position or take cover to repel the attack.
If it's a tetsudo, leading the formation into traps and pitfalls is essential.
If they take firing positions the Dalmer must continue by focusing fire on each target to whittle down their numbers.
=== Halflings/Hobbits/ Gnomes/ Goblins ===
The micro races are universally short, giving them a stark disadvantage in terms of reach. 
Their reduced physical strength makes polearms less effective as well. 
They are however stupendous dirty fighters, they are light of foot and sneaky. They use guerilla fighters fighting at night, using overwhelming numbers. 
They use daggers over swords, their size makes them easily concealable. They use shields and armor on the battlefield, where they aim for the shins and legs in general using swords, clubs and hammers. For ranged combat they throw things with precision but without much strength, they use assisted crossbows as well. 
==== How to fight micro races ====
When the Dalmer invade micro race settlements often they find them empty as their scouts are swift and stealthy and would have warned the village long before the Dalmer arrive. The road to said village is probably laden with traps and ambushes from blowpipes and crossbow fire.
As such the only real way to fight micro races is to use equally subtle means of combat. Diversions, decoys and infiltrators to spy on them and recover intelligence of their traps is the only real way to catch them off guard and avoid months of bloody urban warfare.
=== Faeries ===
Faeries are typically tiny, winged, fast, maneuverable, and capable of flying backwards. Their comparative ratio of strength is very advantageous, being able to wield enormous single edged swords the size of lances (relative to their size) roughly twice their height. These razor sharp swords are useful to spike through an enemy's eyes, hitting the brain, or to slice wrists and necks, their speed being paramount to the horror factor they create with their terrifying combat abilities. 
==== How to fight faeries ====
The faeries are afraid of fire despite the fact that they emit light themselves, torches are the only viable defense against them, as they can set their wings alight easily. It is also believed torch fire affects their delicate eyesight. Another tactic to fight faeries is to get their wings wet, immobilizing them.
Faeries have an allergy to Iron. 
=== Skeletons ===
Fighting skeletons: their brains remain a weak spot. they use weapons unlike zombies.
they are 7 times lighter compared to a flesh and bone equivalent, they are more agile and fast generally, and do not fatigue. they cannot be drowned. they use swarming tactics sometimes to immobilize an opponent. they are susceptible to bashing weapons. 
they cannot use very heavy armor as it is too heavy. crushing the skull is generally the best tactic (such as maces). their bones are dried and brittle unless maintained correctly. they have no organs to speak of except the brain and sinews that maintain structural integrity. skeletons typically strengthen their joints with straps and leather. 
skeletal archers and rapiers are useful as they do not suffer from muscle fatigue. rapiers are also useful as skeletons are fast and their only real weak spot is the skull. 
Executioner swords are useful against skeletons and zombies. 
=== Trolls ===
Trolls are anthropomorphs whose main attribute is their weakness to sunlight. This is exploited by the Dalmer whose fighting style almost universally 
==== How to fight trolls ====
Most aggressive instances of fighting trolls is if there is a rabies outbreak which can be lethal if uncontained. 
Rubbing their scent hinders their ability to find prey, as they usually avoid each other. 
Hunting them is mostly if they leave their hunting grounds, which is often wooded forests. Troll parks are established by the other races to keep them safely away from population centers, sometimes for entertainment. these parks usually fail to keep them in for long. 
Baiting and collecting blood samples is common to determine which trolls are active. 
To manage them, the Dalmer track them by satellite, implement redundant lines of defense and station armored vehicles and whirlers with mounted spotlights near the parks. 
Weaknesses
Trolls cannot convert vitamin D sunlight into calcium. When exposed, their bodies overreact, gas is forced into the intestines, stomach and veins where they rupture from the pressure. in older trolls, the veins are too constricted so the expansion happens in their bones and in seconds the body calcifies. 
Recommended equipment
UV Flash rifle
Vehicle mounted spotlight
Thermal and night vision goggles
Pachyderm grade rifle
Clothes made of troll fur
Anti armor weapons
Heavy combat armor 
Category:Books
Category:Dalmer Culture
Category:Tactics