Roger: Science: +5 Roll: -1 Total: +4

Roger gathers together the necessary herbs, and ties them up in bundles. Lighting one of these bundles on fire will cause it to generate heaps of insecticide smoke (which will also irritate the eyes and noses of humans, though it's non-lethal to mammals).

This only leaves the problems of (a) getting the bundles in place, (b) lighting them once they are there, and (c) dealing with abrupt and unexpected changes in the direction of the wind.

Felix takes a look around. Now that he knows what he's looking for, he can definitely see Raven's church soldiers evacuating everyone from the outer city and forcing them into the inner city. He takes another look at Sir Sparhawk, contemplating the possibility of a ringer...

Felix: Empathy: +3 Roll: +0 Total: +3
Target: ???

...but no. This man standing in front of Felix is definitely the real Sir Sparhawk. He's got the accent, the doubly-broken nose, the Pandion medallion around his neck... indubitably the real thing.

"Alright, I'll get on it," Felix says and heads out.

As they get out of earshot of Sir Sparhawk he turns to Talen. "I could use some lures to set my traps around. Your guys willing to go around town? Find some shiny stuff and place portions of it in good spots to draw the mercenaries where I need them to go? It seems like anything left behind is going to get lost anyway."

"Hey, yeah," says Talen. "I can definitely arrange that."

"Awesome," Felix bares his teeth in something approximating a grin. "You organize your guys. I'll organize my explosives. Prepare a nice gift basket for the guests, as it were."

Felix gives a quick run down of the types of areas that would be best to set explosives in. Wide open areas. Narrow funnels that can direct energy. Anything at all that could be helpful. Talen is a smart kid, he should be able to get it. Once he's finished explaining and they arrive back at Dolmant's estate he'll leave Talen to do his thing and set about prepping as many explosives as he can set up in a short amount of time.

He'll get Roger to help him whip up some chemical irritants to bulk out the explosives. Canisters of stuff to make it hard to see and breath. Hopefully potent enough to incapacitate combatants for long periods of time. These will be placed outside the initial blast areas to try and wear out and slow down the advancing forces. Cover a wider area.

If the man is willing, Felix would like it if Edward could lend a hand with the prep work. Nothing too big, just holding stuff and handing over tools as needed. Make things go faster.

There are almost no wide-open areas inbetween the two sets of city walls - space inside even the outer walls is clearly at somewhat of a premium.

On the other hand, this means that the place is absolutely stuffed with narrow funnels which can direct energy - usually directing it along the street, exactly where the army can be expected to be marching.

You can try to set things up to take down as much of the army as possible in one big blast near the gates, or set up several dozen smaller (and, thanks to Talen, baited) traps throughout the city. You have enough explosives that you can set them all up as lethal traps if you want, though you could also add in a few non-lethal detonations if you prefer.

Felix will get to work. He'll set up as many as possible into several different kill zones to hit as many as possible but also try and get a few nonlethal ones in that will hopefully maim a greater number of enemy combatants and ruin their combat efficiency. They'll aim at the legs primarily so that, in the event of bug bite, they can't just get up and fight anyway.

Felix: Engineering: +5 Roll: +0 Total: +5

The energy of the explosives is only one part of the ingenious traps that Felix lays out through the outer city; several of the bombs will further collapse buildings across several streets, funnelling more soldiers in the direction of the next bombs.

At least, in theory.

The first explosion happens right on time, just as Martel is leading his army to the main inner gates. Unfortunately, Martel being just about the only person on horseback means that he himself is unaffected by the mostly-leg-height destruction; but the explosion drops two buildings on various parts of the invading army and shakes the ground throughout Chyrellos.

It certainly gets Martel's attention.

The other thing worth noting is that the kinetic barrier doesn't shrink - it starts to, but stops almost instantly, as if it can't be made to shrink further than the outer walls.

Felix, from a presumably hidden position, uses binoculars to survey the destruction caused and the damage done to the enemy. He'll try to tally the number of enemy combatants taken down versus how many are still standing.

There's way too many buildings in the way for anything like an accurate count. However, from the bits of the reaction that he can see, it looks like he got a substantial fraction of one of the two armies.

A substantial fraction, but less than half. Somewhere between, say, ten percent and fifty percent of one of the two armies.

Felix meets with Sir Sparhawk.

"Alright," Felix says. "The barrier doesn't seem to have shrunk to within the outer wall. What are the odds of the mercenaries just storming the walls if I, say, use my rifle from up on this wall here to take potshots at them until they get tired of that?"

Felix also asks Talen a question.

"Anyway you can hook me up with some urban camo? Clothing and colors that blend in with the stone of the wall that make it harder to see me at a distance?"

"I'd hold off on that," suggests Sparhawk. "As long as they're investigating and looting the ruins, they're not attacking us, and our reinforcements are getting closer all the time. If you start shooting at them, then Martel will have a chance of riling them up to take us down before they get to looting the outer city."

Talen's response is shorter. "Sure, guv. What bit o' wall do ya want?"

Close inspection will show that the wall is not exactly a consistent colour all the way round.

"Right," Felix says. "Let's let them take their time, then. Any other measures we could take while we wait? If not I'll go back to the estate and lay low for a while. Work on some new gadgets to help us hold out."

Felix looks at Talen.

"Maybe find me a range? If I'm going to be working up here I'd like to be able to move from spot to spot."

If no one has any suggestions on what to do, Felix will go back to the estate and spend time building things to help defend the city. Explosives and such.

"Not that I can think of," says Sparhawk.

"They haven't conquered the outer city," says Piper.

"Unless we formally contest it I think the point is moot," Felix says."They're out there and we're up here. Not much we can do about that for the moment."

Felix laughs.

"If we wanted to do something really crazy, we could... I dunno, go out there and fight Martel ourselves. Cut off the head of the mercs. They might not stick around if we do. That's pretty risky, though."

Roger will patrol the inner wall (OOG: That's where we are now, right?) to make sure the army doesn't get up to anything suspicious. He will keep a low profile but if he's fired on he'll return fire with his side arm.