A Plain Letter to Lieutenant Colmes

[Zickery]

A mundane and plain letter finds its way to the office of the Lieutenant. Enchantments unravel the moment it's opened exposing golden embellishment and long sprawling text. It reeks of copper and mesquite:
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Lieutenant Rennik Colmes,

You have my apologies for the delay in providing this requested assessment. Written Common is not well settled in my skillset. I traditionally prepare these in Gnomish; translating this to your language took me no small amount of effort. With the (limited) information on your foe presented and the scarce details on the scenario I have compiled these with some assumptions made. These assumptions are the following:

1.) You will be fighting these foes both from the ground and the air and will need weapons suitable for both theaters.
2.) These dragons are fast enough to evade cannon-fire and bolts launched from arbalests.
3.) Traditional munitions that make contact will not readily penetrate their scales.
4.) They will be relatively immune to traditional forms of weaponized fire.
5.) You are in need of weapons that can operate for a prolonged period of time independent from major logistical concerns.
6.)You are operating on a budget.

You will find attached to this letter detailed schematics of these designs and their operation. The majority of thesupplies to construct these should be cheaply obtainable. I am available to produce these personally if so required. Operation is in most cases self-explanatory. Where operation is not self-explanatory I am available to provide education and lessons to the soldiers assigned to their operation. In this letter you will find brief summaries for ease of reading.

Options:
a.) Dazzler Arrays
You are familiar with the fact that staring into the sun damages your sight. You are familiar with the fact that it will eventually blind you if you continue to do so. Assess the following: how effective will a dragon be navigating the skies if it (and any riders) find their vision compromised? The Dazzler Array (see attached documentation) is a series of lenses and mirrored surfaces that reflects and focuses sunlight. It may be adjusted to produce multiple discrete beams. Multiple Dazzlers in array (hence the name) will effectively render it impossible to look directly at the ground below.  Prolonged observation may cause blindness and pain. Illuminating reagents or magical enchantment can be optionally added to enable night time operation or more potent effect. These may be easily swiveled to directly track and aim at a given position. Additional enchantment may be used to give them the capacity to 'track' and always illuminate a given target. Production and procurement of the materials necessary can be easily outsourced to the Glaziers or Alchemist's Guild.

b.) Stellar Accumulators
Weaponized application of traditional methods of incarnating magic. An apparatus (with hand-crafted customized enchantment) can pull starlight directly from the sky in weaponized magical beams. These penetrate flesh and scale exceptionally well and will presumably penetrate through a dragon.  These devices are essentially pulling power from the stars to power themselves to repeat the process. Anything that gets in the way is typically wholly pierced. Some energy is always lost in this process.  A key benefit of this weapon is that the projectile will come from the direction you are shooting it in. Complement these with assaults from traditional arbalests to assail your opponents from multiple directions limiting opportunities for evasion. They will require an initial source of fuel to begin initial operation and to supplement any unexpected drains. Baublium or other cheap magical fuels will serve. The actual materials in the creation of these is cheap, but the enchanting process is tedious. Production can be outsourced to the Astronomers, the Alchemist's Guild, or potentially the Sisterhood.

c.) Seeking Projectiles
It is feasible (but expensive) to produce ammunition that will guide itself as it travels to where your target will be using a mixture of evocation and divination magics.  These munitions do not directly 'home in' on the target but instead the future location where they will inevitably meet.  The specific use of these is to target locations that a dragon's scales do not cover (such as its eyes and mouth) and guarantee that mundane weapons find a location they can penetrate. These are complicated to produce. The enchantments require expensive reagents for batch production. They are relatively easy to use and require little adaptation or custom craftsmanship beyond this enchanting process. Any sufficiently talented order of arcanists can produce them according to my attached instructions provided they have the talent.

d.) Hexed Grapeshot
Grapeshot can be appropriately hexed to transmute curses on contact shortly after a triggering event (such as the necessary force to launch it from a cannon.) The principle is simple: fill the sky with enough shrapnel that at least some projectiles will make contact no matter how furiously a dragon might dodge. Not every hex will 'stick' on contact, and the shrapnel is unlikely to penetrate dragonscale, but enough curses and everything will die. An added benefit of this is that the shrapnel will litter the ground and remain 'active' for quite some time. You may use this against dragons in flight over an approaching army to weaken your opposition in all its forms. This is relatively cheap to produce. The bulk enchantments necessary are relatively inexpensive. It will however require specialist hands for production.

In addition I have formulated new uses for existing weaponry and munitions for this conflict. These are best discussed in person. Each design can be clarified and elaborated on further. If any of these initial assumptions are incorrect I have additional designs and methods available that may be potentially more lethal.

Yomar Kamarya, AG-KA-EM
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Flipped over after reading causes the back of the letter to shift and distort exposing previously concealed exotic schematics. They are pockmarked with Gnomish measurements and annotations hastily scrawled over with Common analogues.