Sometimes, you can't rely on magic.
You may want to equip lots of mundanes.
You may fear magic resistance.
And sometimes, no magic means no trace back to you.
For all of these, House Tremere employ skilled workers, Mundane Alchemists and Natural Magicians.
In a way, the Tremere have built a whole militaro-industrial complex for their purposes, or as much as is possible in Mythic Europe anyway.
Offense
Arms and Armor
House Tremere has had enough time and wealth to equip all its grogs with Superior equipment (See Arts and Academe p68).
This translates as 2 kind of items:
- Superior short swords and bows with +1 to attack
- Superior armor (usually Metal Scale) with +1 to defence.
Typically, items that may be lost, such as throwing weapons, are not mass-produced, although the house keep some of these, especially for its Mage Killers
Ballistae
Tremere fortresses and armies make ample use of ballistae. They can injure tough monsters that are otherwise immune to magical attacks, if not kill an enemy magus.
In order to face a wide variety of wards and magical defences, shafts and arrowheads have been crafted or conjured, although these precious munitions are kept separately, to be only used in dire emergencies. Just like with weird blades, expect any combination of wood, steel, stone, bone (whether animal or human), diamond or other precious stones.
But that is not all. Special, hollow, arrowheads have been created, that can carry any kind of alchemical reagent (see A&A p75)
Weird Blades
Primarily destined to Mage Killers, these blades are produced out of non-standard materials, in order to bypass defensive wards. The process is standardized enough that the house can issue these to several cadres of its soldiers if needed. However, it won't do so save in an emergency, preferring to keep the existence of non-conventional blades a secret ace.
Crafting these blades rests on 2 different processes.
First, if required, raw material is poured into an enchanted pit, that renders them temporarily fluid enough to be squeezed into several molds, before being "fixed" with an alchemical decoction, which ensures the blade's durability while still keeping it mundane. Since the molds can be traded at will, this process allows the house to craft spearheads, blades, arrowheads… out of a wide range of materials, although ranged ammunition is only used in emergencies.
These weapons have the same statistics as their steel equivalent, they are just composed of different matter:
- Bone Blades: Build out of animal or human bones. The alchemical reagent is difficult to create, so there are few blades using this materials. As a cheap alternative, clubs out of animal bones have been stored.
- Diamond Blades: Although the creation of wealth is ill-advised due to its inflationary effects, nothing prohibits using precious gems as a material. Having created huge slumps of diamond through Ritual Magic, the house now use these to craft weapons.
- Glass Daggers: These are even harder to create than bone blades, and are thus in limited quantity, only available to mage killers.
- Silvery Blades: No need for magic melding here, normal silver may be forged. To be able to bypass Steel Wards, though, the blades must be pure silver, which means reagents still need to be used to reinforce them. These are more often used than any other blades, being both the easiest to create and useful against a wide range of threats, from werewolves to some faeries. As such, they are sometimes even issued to simple soldiers.
- Stone Blades: While not as widely created as their silvery equivalent, these are easily mass-produced. Clubs are also crafted, as a cheap alternative.
- Water Blades: On the plus side, they don't need a magic mold. The downside, though, is the requirement for a very complex reagent, that will change the water into some kind of crystalline substance, which makes them some of the rarest weapons.
- Wooden Blades: Similar to Stone Blades.
Defense
Faerie Defense Pack
Fear you'll face an unknown Fae, or several different ones? Not wanting or able to rely on a ward? The Faerie Defense Pack is a last-ditch defense. It contains numerous items that act as Sovereign Wards against a variety of fae. Think religious symbols, salt, Cold Iron, horseshoes and other folk charms…
A Faerie Defense Pack is effectively free, but its effectiveness can vary widely.
