Marcella grimaced, toyed with the open part of her mechanic’s jumpsuit, tried to close it at the top of the collar again between thumb and finger like whenever she wanted to have a serious conversation. “I dunno, Leo. She was awful fond of the Judge and Cathedra like a lotta these Gilicians are, and her uncle threw in with ‘em. But she liked you an awful lot too. Maybe she would’a gone to whatever side wasn’t yours,” she half closed her eyes and sighed, “And whatever side I wasn’t on.”

“That would not have lasted,” Giovanno said. “…I would not have let it lie as the man I was before did.”

Marcella stared at his back. Wanted to ask who he would have picked. She said nothing, though, and instead approached and wrapped her arms around his center. “He’ll come back ‘round.”

“I know he will,” Giovanno said, “The war against the Reich did not fell him, this will not either.” Yet, he still felt as though a new rift had come in between them, from this question he could not answer.

-----

The chill of a Vitelian winter was hardly a bitter one, you had heard, but you still felt cooler than you’d ever had as you marched at the head of a column of black coated soldiers. Once your most bitter enemies, you now found this band of Forlorn Imperials your charge and blade both in a new war, one you’d never anticipated fighting back when the battles to be fought were against those you now deigned to command.

You are Palmiro Bonaventura, formerly of the Vitelian Royal Army, now a commander in the Gilician Alliance, a loose meshing of several Gilician organizations who first test in working as a single unified entity was coming with the new year. Disillusioned with the control that certain powers had over your country, you had joined with this regional uprising in an effort not for Gilicia’s sake, necessarily, but for Vitelia’s, as your old mentor Di Zucchampo had told you of the damage that tearing Gilicia from the grasp of a group of power brokers known as the Three Points would do to them- and afterwards, perhaps, Vitelia might finally start to heal from its war that had ended just over two years ago.

It was a circuitous route to the Dawn, to Revolution, but you remembered the prophetic dream, wanted to believe in its resolution, which promised the Dawn would come, though suffering and bloodshed would unavoidably precede it. Naught was said of the course, only that it would be a struggle.

Beside you walked your current aide, past childhood friend, in another lifetime your wife, but in this one merely your companion, Elena. She bore the name of her own husband passed on, Giarno, though out of respect rather than love, as she had refused his touch in characteristic stubbornness. You had not been similarly reserved, but your own romantic partner and mother to your two children, Yena Bonaventura, had been sent away and out of Vitelia, both your homeland and Gilicia both no place for her nor your daughter and son, Vittoria and Lorenzo, to be.

“Commander,” a voice said in the harsh edge of the Imperial tongue as a hand touched your shoulder. A runner from elsewhere in the column. “Major Katona says that we need to slow up. The rookie battalion’s falling behind.”

“They’ll catch up,” you replied, “We don’t have any reason to delay. The Royal Army doesn’t know that they’re waiting for us. If our battalion needs to rest then we’ll pause, but otherwise, we’re all going to the same place anyways. Tell Katona that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Elena might have said that she would have appreciated a respite, but she was focused on something else right now, contemplating the misty treetops that stretched on ahead. A hard march certainly wasn’t what she was used to, but she was a strong and tall farm girl even before she had started doing physical training with you. She was wiry and when her arms were bare, they were corded with muscle quite unlike any lady you’d ever seen- even if she frowned when she compared her bicep to yours and found it rather thin when next to it. In your youths, you had competed physically often and been far more evenly matched. No longer. Time had taken its toll in many ways in the journey to adulthood.

Despite your position as commander of what had been called the Black Battalion, after the color of the coats of the Imperial exiles, you didn’t know the specifics of the coming operation. Only that careful manipulations had occurred to set up an entire division of the Vitelian Royal Army’s Gilician Garrison into a terrible tactical position. One you and other units had to exploit. Certain details had been passed down- most importantly, that your numbers were entirely unexpected, the same with the quality of troops. You would be utterly underestimated, and that would be your greatest advantage in the battle to come.

Your battalion as well as two others, one made up of seasoned soldiers and the other of raw recruits barely trained, were on your way from the north to a place called Mariana’s Hollow, following the stream that would eventually run through the bottom of your destination. It wasn’t a place of much importance, largely undeveloped and sparsely populated, but it was also as far north as the north east rail lines went into the Gilician highlands.

Decisive battles had been lacking, and the Gilician Occupation’s command was apparently hungering for something more bombastic than isolated patrols, raids, and occupation of cities where protests and riots were never simple to quell. So they struck out into the territory of the militant irregulars, hoping to either draw out the Gilician Alliance into a field battle, or to be able to exert enough control over the highlands to root out the revolt wherever it could be dug up. Even though the missives from the Continuation Command didn’t indicate such speculation, you noticed that this striking out of the Vitelian Royal Army was directly towards what Di Zucchampo had described as important mining expedition regions. Undeveloped, but great in potential. Was what the Three Points wanted part of this? Perhaps.

The Gilician Alliance was not so different in its desires from their foes. A set piece battle was what the Continuation Command hungered for, and the North Morning Star, your own faction, wanted a big victory to display as a trophy as well. It had only been some months since tensions had escalated to the point that what was occurring in Gilicia could be called a war, by your measure, but the Gilicians were impatient for a real win, while the Vitelian Royal Army, you anticipated, was looking for a flag to raise so they could get out of all this, regardless of the machinations of the Three Points.

How it would all happen wasn’t clear, but you had an idea of how it would happen. A railway was a route of resupply, so cutting that off was a given. While aid couldn’t come immediately this deep into the territory, reinforcement was a definite possibility, so whatever battle was planned couldn’t become a protracted siege. The Gilician Alliance also had a frankly depressing lack of artillery and equipment heavier than machine guns, so the fighting couldn’t become something like you were experienced with in the Auratus War against the Reich.

Fast, aggressive, climactic, such a fight was what the Black Battalion had been made into under your command. All of their machine guns and what light artillery and mortars they had was traded away for machine pistols and small arms suited for the assault. It wouldn’t be a lie to say that they were better equipped for such a task than the Royal Army’s regulars, something most of the Gilician Alliance couldn’t say for any of their troops, many of them forced to use old rifles stolen from armories or smuggled from where they could get some, if they weren’t weapons that had been deserted with.

In the evening, you stopped at the edge of the forest, and the Black Battalion set up camp. A company of friendly horsemen had been waiting for your arrival, calling themselves Ortico’s Outriders, a collection of rural rangers before they had taken up the Gilican Alliance’s cause, none of them bearing the sabers that would mark Royal Army cavalry. Their captain, the titular Ortico, wore a ring like yours that signified allegiance with the North Morning Star. After a brief meeting, the horsemen rode back out, to bring news of your arrival and the rest of the First Northern Regiment to those already here.

Your tent set up, you met with Katona and the company commanders again, mingled with the men who ate cold jerky and hardtack for supper, before returning to bed down for the night. Elena slept on the other side of the tent, not that there was much room for both of you in it, but she refused to be alone still. The sound of her near helped you sleep, admittedly. It distracted you from the feelings of lonesomeness that liked to creep in and protest your life choices- your choice to leave Yena behind, and send her away.

The 28th of January arrived. Ortico returned early, while the sky was still dark as night, to pick up you and Katona, as well as the other leaders such as Lieutenant Colonel Passero, an equal to you in the First Northern, as well as your overall regimental commander Colonel Di Aldila. Everybody was to briefed over much needed coffee as to what was going to happen- and what the goals of the operation to come would be. Ideally, you wouldn’t have had to do this for another couple of days, but apparently, time was shorter than expected.

At twenty-seven years of age, you knew you were still young compared to the average officer, but it made you feel even more lost amongst the largely middle-aged commanders who were at the command briefing along with you. Though nobody was overly old, either- the eldest might have been the same age as Di Zucchampo, the commander in chief of the Gilician Alliance’s militant forces, the so-called Marshall of Gilicia Onore Di Vallenordo. A whispered inquiry to his history revealed that his impoverished estate had been forced to sell off their lands to wealthier nobility, though much of the profit had been donated to the church when the money had been inherited by Onore- despite his name, this man was not much richer than your family was, though his status undoubtedly helped him reach his current position- as well as effective, if hard edged command over an artillery regiment while on the Gilician front during the war against the Reich, eventually placed in a command over a section of defense that managed to stall and repel the Reich’s last offensive against Vitelia just before a ceasefire was arranged.

Despite having little experience commanding a force of the size that was rumored to have been arrayed in this region, his history seemed to make him a natural choice of appointment. His open devotion to the Judge could especially appease the Cathedra and Vilja Domkarl aligned Saints’ Garden, who while by far the least militant wing of the Gilician Alliance, were undeniably the most popular when it came to the support of Gilicia’s general populace. Their influence meant that the Alliance never wanted for food or supplies or willing volunteers, even if the idealistic priests and their monks turned their nose up at procuring weaponry, even when the local militant Holy Orders did not hesitate to provide the assistance their knights could offer.

Your assessment of Marshall Di Vallenordo, as he greeted everybody and told them the plan and circumstances, was that he was a blunt and capable man, though the depth and power of his voice made even quaint statements sound impactful, so his charisma easily had more in his presence than his words, aided by his height and the breadth of his chest and shoulders, and his elegantly groomed grey beard. The tactical plans he left to a subordinate to explain the details of, possibly the proper mastermind of this, though he had nowhere near the presence of leadership and made so little impression you forgot his name by the time the meeting was over. Though you didn’t forget what was told.

The commander of what was called the Gilician Expedition Division was an impatient man, and had the misfortune of falling into what would turn out to be a trap. Poor intelligence and purposeful lies generated from people allied to the Gilician cause within the Royal Army’s own command structure had led to the Expedition Division being deployed into a situation that it was entirely ignorant of the danger of. They expected little opposition, and had encountered such by design, easily clearing out and routing the regional militias that were considered a necessary sacrifice to stoke the enemy’s poorly conceived confidence. They had anticipated Mariana’s Hollow to be a mere staging point before they moved out, spread over the land and fortified positions. They didn’t expect a force triple their size to have arrived, ready to attack them, before their heavy guns had even arrived- those late due to a mix of manipulations but also mere incompetence.

…At least, it was meant to be a battle with odds of three against one. At the moment, it was more like one and one half against one, most of the ready fighters being of the First Northern Regiment and the First Northern Division they were a part of. The other units were late by at least a day, but the plan tolerated no delays. The battle had to begin, and the reinforcements trusted to arrive sooner rather than too much later.

The people who could wait the least, it turned out, was the First Northern Regiment, and the Black Battalion. The train carrying tons of supplies, of ammunition, an entire regiment’s worth of artillery and the guns, was on its way. It would stop at a village called Tristezza, around fifteen kilometers down the rail line from the main assembly point of the Expedition Division, and while it was halted there, it and the village had to be attacked and seized with all haste. Before the main division could react, before the guns could be sabotaged, and then, the Gilician Alliance’s lack of artillery might be cured. So long as the attacking force could also hold out against any counterattack long enough to extricate the precious materiel.

An odd feeling, to be informed of such a vital duty in that way- though the commander of the Black Battalion was not mentioned nor was the battalion itself rather than the regiment as a whole, you knew you would be assigned this task, and wondered what the other commanders here would have thought of somebody as youthful as you being trusted with something so important. How they might have felt about the attack which this battle’s success hinged upon not being carried out by Vitelians, let alone Gilicians, at all.

Not that this would be the first time in history the ends were well justified by the means.

Orders and maps were distributed in heavy, full envelopes, and everybody was escorted back to their units. As you rode back, Katona commented on what he found a funny irony.

“Back to old business for us, isn’t it? This’ll be a hoot among the captains.”

“Our objective is the guns,” you said, “We are not pirates on the hunt for coins and jewels. I expect that to be remembered.”

“As long as the effort’s well rewarded.”

You frowned and opened a map. Tristezza was a tiny settlement, there being only around forty to fifty people living there in total. Enough families to count on fingers and toes. Little more than a stop on the way north along a railway still under construction when the Gilician Uprising began. Scouting by the Outriders and the Alliance’s own infiltrated intelligence indicated that an understrength company sized garrison currently occupied the town. Plenty to dissuade the attacks of any insurgent force that were more than potshots and harassment. Not nearly enough to resist the attack of any of the Gilician Alliance proper units now here. What of the townsfolk? Imported, apparently. A town of non-Gilicians set up to support a stop on the journey north, motivated by subsidy.

The train had around a company’s worth of guards riding on it, as well as its crews, but it was not an armored train in spite of the value of its cargo. A miscalculation on the part of an enemy not wary enough, they acted as though they had nothing to fear. Were they truly so ignorant? They hadn’t sent out deep reaching patrols, hadn’t done proper scouting, the Gilician Alliance’s own scouts would have noticed if they did. Instead, they were securing only the territory needed to offload, and then setting up to move on. The Judge himself couldn’t have handed a better opportunity down.

A check of your watch, and the briefing, once you returned to the Battalion. Six hours until the train arrived. The wording of the briefing was specific- attacking too early could mean warning away the train in the worst-case scenario, or giving the crews time to sabotage the guns. Unacceptable outcomes. That meant, no matter what, you would have to wait.

Making up the First Northern Regiment around you was the aforementioned other two infantry battalions, but also added to Di Aldila’s command were Ortico’s Outriders, who would be performing reconnaissance and support roles ahead of the operation, when it began. Some of them were already out, on watch and scattered over the countryside and woods, even while you had to sit about.
Upon briefing the captains, the first question was blunt as it was unexpected, from all the captains. As you would be assaulting a settlement, and a train, your permission was asked to put it all to the sack. You hesitated- but they insisted on an answer. Under your command, they sought to do what you had always fought to prevent, even if consulting with Katona told you that the matter would be “orderly” and not an orgy of violence and desolation, especially considering that proper tactical objectives were first and foremost. Even so…

“I’m to understand that the valuables desired are not just trinkets,” you said to the captains.

“Are women and girls exempt?” An officer with a burnt cheek asked, as though it was a matter of whether there was any butter for his bread. “Not all the men will be happy with that, if so, but they will chafe if they can take nothing at all.”

…You did have to remember who you were dealing with. Even though you had been placed in command of the Black Battalion because of your ability to communicate, and the officers did recognize you as being in charge, you had mostly been a taskmaster to them, not a friend, not even attempting to connect with them until very recently. Either they would expect you to do things their way- or you would have to enter the field yourself to ensure your will was followed to a degree.

>Were you a rabble, a mob, or soldiers? There was to be no looting of any kind. They were lucky to not be prosecuted for past crimes, to be frank. Their best behavior was expected as well as earnest efforts.
>It was true, they were expected to attack, to fight, to die. Anything material, you would excuse them taking. Not a finger was to be laid on any people, however.
>What choice did you have? This battle was for Gilicia, the welfare of a village of migrants was no concern compared to keeping the men motivated and fighting. So long as it was still “orderly.”
>Other?

Also-

>Accompany the attack yourself. To ensure your will was done- and that you could be said to have been present.
>Go along, and take Elena with you. Perhaps you needed no bodyguard, but she would not be happy being left behind if you went…
>Remain behind. You were a battalion commander, not a man who aspired to be first over the wall for a crown of leaves. Success was best found from a place of proper observation and communication.
>Other?
(Tactical Planning will be in next update- The map and such will come.)

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Previous Threads-
Prologue Part 1: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2023/5687489/
Prologue Part 2: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2023/5771752/
Prologue Part 3: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2023/5810248/

Twitter for announcements and shitposts is @scheissfunker

Starting the thread with a formatting error I thought I had fixed. What an auspicious start to the year. This should, at the least, be the final "prologue." Fingers crossed.
Anyways. I've already posted this everywhere I expect it to be seen, but considering this is the actual series of threads, there's no real reason not to repost PCQ Christmas Fanservice as usual here. The Year's End is the Vitelian Christmas celebration timing equivalent, after all, so it's relevant in context. Even if it's not even close to Langenachtfest anymore.

>>5879266
>Were you a rabble, a mob, or soldiers? There was to be no looting of any kind. They were lucky to not be prosecuted for past crimes, to be frank. Their best behavior was expected as well as earnest efforts
>Accompany the attack yourself. To ensure your will was done- and that you could be said to have been present.

>>5879266
>It was true, they were expected to attack, to fight, to die. Anything material, you would excuse them taking. Not a finger was to be laid on any people, however.

>Accompany the attack yourself. To ensure your will was done- and that you could be said to have been present.

Happy 2024 and all

>>5879266
>It was true, they were expected to attack, to fight, to die. Anything material, you would excuse them taking. Not a finger was to be laid on any people, however.

>Remain behind. You were a battalion commander, not a man who aspired to be first over the wall for a crown of leaves. Success was best found from a place of proper observation and communication.

Happy New Year everybody. Welcome "Don't get fragged by subordinates Any% Speedrun."

>>5879266
>It was true, they were expected to attack, to fight, to die. Anything material, you would excuse them taking. Not a finger was to be laid on any people, however.
>Accompany the attack yourself. To ensure your will was done- and that you could be said to have been present.

>>5879266
>Other?
Anything and everything is MINE. Do you understand? Bring me the prizes first, I will choose what to keep, and you lot may have the rest.
>Go along, and take Elena with you. Perhaps you needed no bodyguard, but she would not be happy being left behind if you went…

>>5879296
+1

>>5879266
>Were you a rabble, a mob, or soldiers? There was to be no looting of any kind. They were lucky to not be prosecuted for past crimes, to be frank. Their best behavior was expected as well as earnest efforts
>Accompany the attack yourself. To ensure your will was done- and that you could be said to have been present.

>>5879266
>It was true, they were expected to attack, to fight, to die. Anything material, you would excuse them taking. Not a finger was to be laid on any people, however.
>Remain behind. You were a battalion commander, not a man who aspired to be first over the wall for a crown of leaves. Success was best found from a place of proper observation and communication.

>>5879266
>t was true, they were expected to attack, to fight, to die. Anything material, you would excuse them taking. Not a finger was to be laid on any people, however.
>Accompany the attack yourself. To ensure your will was done- and that you could be said to have been present.

>>5879271
>>5879348
WilderWonka.wav

>>5879274
>>5879290
>>5879407
They may have things- and you will be there to be sure nothing more.

>>5879288
>>5879369
The above, but from afar.

>>5879296
>>5879343
Become the warlord.

Calling it in an hour.

No changes.
Be there and be (relatively not really) square it is. Updating.

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If you were to look at it from a perspective of what was deserved and what was not, it wasn’t as if these men could expect a cash cheque and a pension for their service. For many, merely having their survival tolerated, even if plenty would consider that more than enough recompense, was not enough reason to risk life and limb, especially in such a dangerous business as the assault. In countless times of eld, when a castle, city, even a fortified village was overcome and stormed, the battle crazed and long-suffering troops could not be held back from baser instinct by even the best and most well intentioned of commanders. You could not hope to exceed them, as you were to these troops. So you would be forced to tolerate a minimal sacking, so long as not a finger was laid on any surrendered or innocent persons, the only greed shown being for goods. To ensure this, as well, you would march forth with the men and oversee not only the attack but their conduct afterwards. Even if a battalion commander was oft comfortably afforded a position to observe more safely from further away, rather than joining in throwing themselves against the teeth of a spirited defense.

You informed the captains, then informed the troops of such ruling. They were dimly bemused at being moralized to, you got the feeling, but flashes of surprise sparked when you said you would be there amongst them in the attack. Having been exiled by their home, perhaps they had only seen one another as proper participants in their battles, and had no expectation of better treatment, not from you.

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A final inspection, as you went around to various companies, and looked over the best troops, those who would have the hardest task, of breaking and seizing the town of Tristezza itself. They were all equipped with shorter weapons, automatics, many of them, and what seemed like plentiful ammunition but an amount you knew could easily be expended in less time than it took for the blood of a man to run out of his body.

When you went to Elena with the news that you would accompany the attack, she nodded grimly and stood, but you put a hand on her shoulder and set her back down.

“Y’ don’t think I’m gonna stay here,” her voice began to rise heatedly.

“You are not a soldier,” you said, “This is to be real war.”

“Plenty others are gonna have a taste a’ the same,” Elena said defiantly, putting her hand on your wrist and pushing it off her, “I don’t want no special treatment. If not now, then when? What if this is th’ time holdin’ back matters? Did your first battle come only when y’ were nice and ready fer it?”

You pursed your lips. When your first true battle had come and gone, a great many of your friends lay dead, only to ever be seen again when they haunted your dreams and nightmares both. “I would not wish my first battle upon anybody, most certainly not you, Elena.”

“Don’t try an’ trip me up with all th’ bad things that’ve happened t’ you, Bonetto,” Elena growled, “You know that yer worth all th’ pain an’ loss that can be thrown at me, or else I wouldn’t even think t’ come along. I’m not an idjit, blowin’ down th’ same course as th’ wind.”

“This will not be the only battle,” you had to insist, “Please. I am unfamiliar with too much to be able to keep watch over you along with everything else.”

Elena paused. “Swear you’ll let me come next time.”

“I swear it.”

“Swear on yer father’s name.”

“My father’s name,” you touched Elena’s head, “Isn’t precious enough to offer up that way. I don’t know what is, but I’ll give it up should I take back my word.”

That satisfied Elena, but only barely. She pointed an accusing finger. “You come back now,” she said, “An’ you better not have another scar on you.”

-----

The attack was prepared to spring. Despite nominally being cloaked in black, your battalion was not one for casting down function in favor of fashion, and was mostly cloaked in sheets of greys, blues, and whites in preparation for sneaking up, ready to cast them away when the time came that their concealment would give no further aid. The enemy was passive, and did not notice you, nor pay mind to the outriders that had sniffed out their positions and disposition. No fortifications had been prepared save for those that the village naturally offered- they were practically begging to be pounced upon. Yet…

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The train was late.

It had been fifteen minutes, then half an hour since it was supposed to come steaming up. It was misty and cloudy- even though this shrouded any aerial scouts that might discover you, it also meant that a column of smoke that would have announced where the train might be, was invisible.

Frustrated messages sent by horseman from Lieutenant Colonel Passero demanded to know why the fighting hadn’t begun. The first battalion, his troops, were supposed to march forth and set up a blocking position to stop reinforcements from the main enemy contingent north from coming to interrupt this crucial operation, and the command above him wanted to know why he wasn’t moving out.

You didn’t know what to tell him. The train was simply not here, despite all assurances it would be. Was this some grand deception? No. It was impossible. It was likely some consequence of an unforeseen misfortune that the enemy was ignorant was poor fortune for you too.

The company commanders grew anxious. You listened and hear whispered suspicion that the enemy might have seen you by now- worse, that it was a trap. Perhaps even that the artillery had been unloaded, which was why it was not coming, and in just minutes it would begin to pound the Black Battalion with explosive shells as they sat waiting for it like fools.

A decision had to be made. Perhaps you only needed to wait a little longer, to weather this delay just a bit more, but if not…something had to be done.

>Even if the train was late, it was not safe. You would simply chase it down after your full force assaulted and captured Tristezza. Order all your infantrymen to attack.
>You misliked this delay. Take a company of your men to go down the rails and hunt down the train.
>All haste was necessary, and that would mean trusting Katona with the Black Battalion: while you took the outrider reconnaissance southwards. They were not technically under your command, but your mission was to take the train, and you needed their rapidity of movement. Even if a company of light cavalry against equal odds of defenders was poor odds…
>Hold, and wait. The train would come, and stop, and then, only then, would you spring your attack, the nerves of the rest of the Alliance be damned. At most, a platoon of horsemen would check to see how close it was, naught more undue concern than that.
>Other?
Any specific plans can be made, drawn on or described, and elaborated on for the combat to come. You are not limited to merely blowing the whistle and having everybody charge at once for respective targets.

>>5880212
>Hold, and wait. The train would come, and stop, and then, only then, would you spring your attack, the nerves of the rest of the Alliance be damned. At most, a platoon of horsemen would check to see how close it was, naught more undue concern than that.

Send 3rd Platoon's outriders SE to find that train and gallop back ASAP once they spot it.

>>5880212
>Hold, and wait. The train would come, and stop, and then, only then, would you spring your attack, the nerves of the rest of the Alliance be damned. At most, a platoon of horsemen would check to see how close it was, naught more undue concern than that.

Could something have blocked the tracks or derailed the train up the line?

A train is loud, so even if 3-0 can't spot it visually aural identification should be sufficient for a positive identification, and won't need troops to expose themselves, and so are less likely to be spotted. and will settle the troop's nerves once they know things are going to plan.

We could probably have 2-2 relocate East about 1000 ~ 1500m, and wait for the train to pass then cross the rail lines and assault the south eastern garrison from the treeline / road to their south east once we make contact to prevent the train from retreating, and force the central Garrison to split their focus.

3-2 just needs to use their treeline to push the northern garrison out of position.

1-2 & 2-0 can serve as a picket force to pin the central & southern garrison and prevent them from assisting the outlying forces until they are sufficiently surrounded.

>>5880230
You pick the green text option you think is best, or write in your own suggestion to deal with the current problem?

>>5880212
>Hold, and wait. The train would come, and stop, and then, only then, would you spring your attack, the nerves of the rest of the Alliance be damned. At most, a platoon of horsemen would check to see how close it was, naught more undue concern than that.

>>5880212
>>Hold, and wait. The train would come, and stop, and then, only then, would you spring your attack, the nerves of the rest of the Alliance be damned. At most, a platoon of horsemen would check to see how close it was, naught more undue concern than that.

>>5880212
>You misliked this delay. Take a company of your men to go down the rails and hunt down the train.

>>5880212
>Even if the train was late, it was not safe. You would simply chase it down after your full force assaulted and captured Tristezza. Order all your infantrymen to attack.

>>5880212
>Hold, and wait. The train would come, and stop, and then, only then, would you spring your attack, the nerves of the rest of the Alliance be damned. At most, a platoon of horsemen would check to see how close it was, naught more undue concern than that.

>>5880212
>All haste was necessary, and that would mean trusting Katona with the Black Battalion: while you took the outrider reconnaissance southwards. They were not technically under your command, but your mission was to take the train, and you needed their rapidity of movement. Even if a company of light cavalry against equal odds of defenders was poor odds…
We're too used to the trains in Vitellia running on time...

>>5880212
>>Hold, and wait. The train would come, and stop, and then, only then, would you spring your attack, the nerves of the rest of the Alliance be damned. At most, a platoon of horsemen would check to see how close it was, naught more undue concern than that.
Good things come to those who wait.

>>5880223
>>5880225
>>5880267
>>5880296
>>5880581
>>5880681
Hold...hold...

>>5880462
Take the boys down the tracks.

>>5880563
Get it started, immediately.

>>5880637
We Ride.

Writing.

“What’s the plan, Commander?” Katona asked you as you glanced up and down the far-off suggestion of tracks. A train was not a particularly subtle nor sneaky machine. Especially in weather like this, a train would be blowing its horn from far off- it was not sneaking up on you. Nevertheless, you had to have some faith, and not let haste born of panic get the better of you.

“The plan has not changed,” you said, “The train will come. It follows a schedule that doesn’t suit our preference. That’s just how it is. We will not sacrifice a perfect operation so we can grasp at half a success. I will go round and reassure the men. In the meantime, if and only if that train comes, do we begin.”
“Yessir.”

“I’m going to move the second company to a position to set up a southern flank maneuver,” you said, pointing east, “When the train arrives, or when you hear an attack, take that as free reign to strike. I’ll see you in Tristezza.”

With the weather as it was, it would be entirely possible to dash across the train tracks and to the woods on the other side of the village before the train had come to a halt. Cutting off the retreat path might not turn out to be necessary, but as you said, there was no reason for this operation to not go as well as possible, not when you had a force this capable, for all the ill will laid upon it.

The Second Company of the Black Battalion was, by design, in the middle as far as being well equipped went, but none of the companies suffered for lack of anything. It just meant that there were more rifles than handguns and carbines with the second. The Second Company’s captain was a dark-haired quiet man, contemplative and isolated, who responded to the name Von Kalterose, and had several stories spoken about who he was though none of them had been told by him, all rumored reasons being appropriately theatrical for wild rumors be it an inner beast kept in check or a scandal of highborn courts or even a plot at a coup in a protectorate. His reason for punishment in this fashion of exile was unknown however, but the mystery of him at least did not extend to his capability to fight and direct. He had a presence and physique that compelled obedience amongst his subordinates.

“Captain Von Kalterose,” you said when you approached, “Prepare to move the troops eastwards. We wait for the train to pass, and then move south to catch Tristezza in a pincer.”

Von Kalterose nodded silently, and barked to his second in command, and pointed brusquely. His will was yours, and he did not backtalk or object, merely did. A useful man- the other captains were less ready to follow your command without Katona’s backup, though you doubted that him following your commands had anything to do with your personal character. He likely knew as little about you as you did him, maybe less.

File: scene_35_tristezza3.jpg (406 KB, 1000x1000)

406 KB JPG

To the eastern prominence of the woods you went, meeting up with the troop of outriders there- they were amused at you showing up, and replied in the negative when asked if any sign of the train’s approach had been seen or heard. They were mostly humored about the laziness of the garrison of Tristezza; they knew so little about this territory, but sent out no feelers. Whomever had told them such behavior was acceptable, that such laxness was safe, was terribly wrong. What you were about to do to your countrymen would be a dilemma of pride and shame both.

Two hours passed. Furious messages came forth from runners, demanding you follow orders, but you delayed as best you could, until finally, as you were busy reading an ultimatum threatening you to be removed from command, reprimand assured, you heard the whistle, the huff and chuff. Finally, the train was here. You eyed it through the fog as it passed. Little in the way of fortified compartments, certainly not an armored train. A battalion’s worth of heavy cannons and their crew and support, loads of precious ammunition and supplies, piles of cut wood, crates, tarcloth-covered and heaped with snow like they had been left to lie for entirely too long to have been efficiently sent up the chain of logistics.

Hope soared. A slap on the back came from an unknown source, and you took it as a sign of support rather than an assassination attempt as you told Captain Von Kalterose to begin the maneuver when the train was out of sight, told the outriders to go ahead of you and warn ahead if the path was not safe.

You checked your old friend, the only one from the Reich you could call such. It had something wrong with it just the other day, but Katona had fixed it- claimed that, from how you described it working, that the pistol had been broken a while. Funny that. You hadn’t been able to tell until the problem became critical.
The train well past, you marched forward at the head of the company, met an outrider pulling back, who told you that the trees you moved for were clear- no patrols, no booby traps, no ambush, nothing.

…You hadn’t done the Emck in a while, you thought as you motioned for the troops to go on and checked the magazine of your pistol another time. Hopefully you would prevail without good luck being needed…

>Roll 3 sets of 2d100, one for each company. A roll above 40 for the first roll gives a bonus to the all secondary rolls of +5 per success, which is also DC 40. 2nd Company in the 2nd set only needs DC 30s.

>>5880973
Correction, +10 per success.

Rolled 83, 3 = 86 (2d100)

>>5880973
Let's get it!

Rolled 91, 88 = 179 (2d100)

>>5880973

Rolled 95, 64 = 159 (2d100)

>>5880973

>>5880976
>>5880983
>>5881009
Good job 1st Company!
Thank god these were roll overs instead of roll unders or we'd be FUCKED.

The train slowed, and even from this far away, its final whistle as it screeched to a stop could be heard. Time to go. You nodded to the captain, and he pointed, gestured, and runners went all over. No whistles could be heard when the troops started running forward after a final weapons check, heedless of whether you were being left behind. To be with them, you had to keep up. Something you had little trouble doing when you figured out what was happening, though you didn’t try and outpace the white cloaked soldiers. What with you lacking their camouflage.

You heard gunfire from the north, but not from nearby until you were practically on top of the clueless garrison. To one side of you, a black coat threw off his cloak, and his victim only let out a shocked yelp before he was run through with a bayonet and tackled into the snow. Only when the shouts of alarm began to echo did the chattering sound of submachineguns start, the pop of pistols, and the thump of grenades. The Judge had some mercy for you left- as the consequences of your betrayal stayed your hand from any Vitelians, the fighting quite over by the time you passed by any wreckage left by the troops of Second Company. All you saw was the clearing of houses, and the dragging out of cowering civilians as the southern reach of Tristezza was secured. Nowhere left to search and with a chilling lack of prisoners- any wounded seemed to have been bayoneted immediately after being felled- you were met by Captain Von Kalterose, who spoke the first words you’d heard him utter that whole day.

“It is done.” Viteliean- did he know it all along? Or was it merely a phrase he knew?

“Good,” you replied in the Imperial language, “Round up the men, we go north.” The understanding was clear- coming back for loot would come later, and there were no objections.

Not a single casualty had been taken. All that had been lost was ammunition.

Yet also, you thought as you saw the piled dead of uniforms you once shared, now belonging to an enemy, you had lost innocence you thought you already had long had taken away by the war already gone.

-----

Once again, the fighting done by your men outpaced you as you heard all the sounds of battle but only ever saw the aftermath. The train, smoke still pouring from its funnel, was still as black coated men swarmed around and over it; the battle was just about over, and when you reached the final untaken sections of the train, you witnessed naught but the surrender of a foe already vanquished.

First Company had taken the brunt of punishment, Katona reported to you when you met with him again. Forty casualties, nineteen of them mortal. They had a tough time of it when fighting in the heart of the village and over the train until the momentum of the attack from the other companies sent the enemy reeling enough to be pushed through.

The way the Black Battalion fought was brutal and deadly. There were captives, but they were exclusively men who had thrown down their weapons or personnel who were unarmed in the first place. Five civilians had been casualties from the Blackcoats spraying fire through walls, throwing in explosives, and similar things they seemed to regret little. Katona told you it could have been worse.

“We won quickly enough that nothing had to be damaged,” he said with a shrug, “It’s nasty business, but if it was the old times…well. Some people didn’t take prisoners, or leave witnesses.”

“Did you?” you asked coldly.

“I have a heart, Commander. And that heart’s gotten good people killed where a heartless man would have kept them alive.”

A bitter subject. You shut up about it. Still, though…you couldn’t look at these bloodied uniforms and think nothing of it, could you? Hear about unintended deaths caused by people you were responsible for? Was this truly all right, with nothing better that could have been done?

>This was war. Killing and death was the reality of it. No matter the nationality and color of clothing, these people were now your enemies. Plenty of such people would find themselves enemies, if the Dawn was to arrive…
>The civilians were a shame. Victory was not. You had won here, and your troops would carry this day, you already knew. Was this not a cause for happiness? Was a tragedy and further tragedies still not avoided by this quite successful and relatively lightly bloody battle? The Gilician Alliance would celebrate it, and so should you.
>You didn’t want to fight against Vitelia. This victory brought you no joy. What would be thought of you, when friends, family, any who knew and admired you, heard you had brought such a woeful defeat upon your motherland?
>Other?

“The Outriders will handle the prisoners and securing the civilians,” you said, pushing the thoughts aside for now, “Let’s get the wounded cared for, and these guns and cargo secured. Lieutenant Colonel Passero’s going to be in a hell of a fight soon. Once everything’s handled, the men can go and take what they will.”

“Understood, sir.”

Two howitzers had been sabotaged, broken up and jammed with junk, but the other sixteen guns were intact- almost three full batteries of fifteen-centimeter stout barreled howitzers, a sort you seldom saw but heard often, ready to use as soon as they could be taken off the train’s freight cars. To the Gilician Alliance, an incredibly precious acquisition, but you wondered just how long the mountains of shells and powder bags, seemingly endless, would really last. The numerous horses used to drag the guns also had to not only be offloaded, but in time, cared for, fed…

As the prisoners were made to do the heavy lifting under the careful eye of gun toting guards, you made sure your presence could be felt all throughout the Battalion- eyes were on you aplenty, and nobody got up to anything that you had already made clear wouldn’t be tolerated. The civilians were unmolested (beyond hurt they had received without intention in the battle) as the village was ransacked.

…You were left with little to oversee. No prisoners would have anything useful to say that you could think of, not anything you didn’t already know. Runners were already off with news of your victory, and no matter how beleaguered your allies might have been to the north, you were ordered to remain with the artillery unless specifically ordered by Colonel Di Aldila otherwise. Reinforcement duty, if and when needed, was to come from the 3rd Battalion, even if their lack of training and experience made them of questionable use against the Royal Army when they were now well ready for a fight.
So what now…

>Partake in some looting yourself. This village and this train and everybody on it were yours now. Seek your fair take. (Look for anything in particular?)
>You had to keep busy somehow. Throw yourself into tasks meant to be given to others. There were plenty of dead to pile up, thankfully, not too many of your command…
>There was an entire division in the field to the north. Even if only a fraction of it came down, your allies might be in trouble, and a whole battalion wasn’t needed to watch some guns when no reinforcements would be coming from the south anytime soon. Go up to help Passero. (With what portion of your force?)
>Other?

>>5881068
>You didn’t want to fight against Vitelia. This victory brought you no joy. What would be thought of you, when friends, family, any who knew and admired you, heard you had brought such a woeful defeat upon your motherland?
>>5881070
>You had to keep busy somehow. Throw yourself into tasks meant to be given to others. There were plenty of dead to pile up, thankfully, not too many of your command…

>>5881068
>This was war. Killing and death was the reality of it. No matter the nationality and color of clothing, these people were now your enemies. Plenty of such people would find themselves enemies, if the Dawn was to arrive…

>>5881070
>Partake in some looting yourself. This village and this train and everybody on it were yours now. Seek your fair take. (Look for anything in particular?)
Gold, guns, valuables, booze and pretty women

>>5881070
>The civilians were a shame. Victory was not. You had won here, and your troops would carry this day, you already knew. Was this not a cause for happiness? Was a tragedy and further tragedies still not avoided by this quite successful and relatively lightly bloody battle? The Gilician Alliance would celebrate it, and so should you.


>Partake in some looting yourself. This village and this train and everybody on it were yours now. Seek your fair take. (Look for anything in particular?)

Look for any orders or communications, grab a machine pistol or carbine off the dead. Also interrogate the POWs on the reason for the train delay.

>>5881068
>This was war. Killing and death was the reality of it. No matter the nationality and color of clothing, these people were now your enemies. Plenty of such people would find themselves enemies, if the Dawn was to arrive…
>>5881070
>You had to keep busy somehow. Throw yourself into tasks meant to be given to others. There were plenty of dead to pile up, thankfully, not too many of your command…

>>5881070
>You didn’t want to fight against Vitelia. This victory brought you no joy. What would be thought of you, when friends, family, any who knew and admired you, heard you had brought such a woeful defeat upon your motherland?

Keep an account of the dead, and what is taken as spoils. We should at least document things so proper counterclaims can be filed.

>You had to keep busy somehow. Throw yourself into tasks meant to be given to others. There were plenty of dead to pile up, thankfully, not too many of your command…

The faster we get moving the faster the picket forces can be relieved, and the larger distance we put between us and the counter attack.

>>5881068
>You didn’t want to fight against Vitelia. This victory brought you no joy. What would be thought of you, when friends, family, any who knew and admired you, heard you had brought such a woeful defeat upon your motherland?

>>5881070
>You had to keep busy somehow. Throw yourself into tasks meant to be given to others. There were plenty of dead to pile up, thankfully, not too many of your command…

>>5881068
>This was war. Killing and death was the reality of it. No matter the nationality and color of clothing, these people were now your enemies. Plenty of such people would find themselves enemies, if the Dawn was to arrive…

>>5881070
>Partake in some looting yourself. This village and this train and everybody on it were yours now. Seek your fair take. (Look for anything in particular?)

>>5881068
>This was war. Killing and death was the reality of it. No matter the nationality and color of clothing, these people were now your enemies. Plenty of such people would find themselves enemies, if the Dawn was to arrive…

>There was an entire division in the field to the north. Even if only a fraction of it came down, your allies might be in trouble, and a whole battalion wasn’t needed to watch some guns when no reinforcements would be coming from the south anytime soon. Go up to help Passero. (With what portion of your force?)
A quarter of the men.

>>5881068
>You didn’t want to fight against Vitelia. This victory brought you no joy. What would be thought of you, when friends, family, any who knew and admired you, heard you had brought such a woeful defeat upon your motherland?
>Partake in some looting yourself. This village and this train and everybody on it were yours now. Seek your fair take. (Look for anything in particular?)
As anon said, orders or communications, a gun off the dead, interrogate the POWs on the reason for the delay.

>>5881070
supportan also >>5881080

>>5881070
>>5881090
+1

>>5881075
>>5881090
>>5881090
>>5881095
>>5881191
>>5881212
Remember- No Pasta.

>>5881078
>>5881086
>>5881174
>>5881182
Arma Theme.mp3

>>5881080
>>5881203
What a shame.
*Bizarre Lip Smack*

>>5881075
>>5881086
>>5881090
>>5881095
>>5881212
Busy yourself, as your business is done.

>>5881078
>>5881080
>>5881174
>>5881191
>>5881203
Engage in some freebooter behavior. Not like the bodies need it more than you.

>>5881182
Move along north with a quarter.

I might have expected somebody of this political alignment to not be so conflicted on redistribution of wealth.
Anyways, calling it in an hour and a half.

>>5881070
>>5881090
+1

>>5881217
I'll switch to
>>5881078
to break the tie.

>>5881217
>>5881090
+1

>>5881217
>>5881090

>>5881217
>>5881090
Supporting.

>>5881294
Fuck, can't delete this post for some reason. Meant to correct it since it doesn't say anything other than linking then delete this one to make the thread look nicer, sorry QM.

Wow it's been way longer than an hour and a half.

>>5881263
>>5881276
>>5881294
V and B

>>5881267
K and P.

Writing.

The sight of what you had wrought, however indirectly, made you ill to think of the consequences of. Gilician victory? No, nobody that knew you, admired you in any place you ever called home would praise you for this. They would hear of this and any battles you fought and wonder why you had decided to be the scourge upon your motherland. They wouldn’t understand why, and neither did the people who died here. You were sick of this, and it was only the first battle of who could say how many. The Auratus War had felt endless, would this be nearly so much a stay in the icy grip of purgation?

You shouldn’t have felt as though you sinned, but you took no prizes, nothing afforded to the victor, and only went solemnly about business of resolutions and even manual dirty work far below your station, helping move bodies wrapped in sack cloth, tags wrapped around ankles, onto the beds of train cars unloaded of cargo that the Gilician Alliance properly desired. Even when a weapon you might have desired showed up, you moved it to the collection stacks instead of into your own possession.

Idle chatter rather than interrogation brought you the answers to some unimportant questions. The train being so late was a consequence of something of extremely minor chances- the train had been maintained lazily and it broke down on the way here. Such panic was had over something the enemy considered a hassle and an annoyance. If your mood wasn’t so grim you might have laughed about it.

Two hours had passed and the sun was beginning to set when you heard fighting once more, to the northwest. The stray shots of a meeting engagement. Passero’s regulars fighting whatever the Expedition Division had decided to send to investigate. Most of what you had to do had been done already, and the Black Battalion, already half done with fortifying their locations as more laborers from the Northern Division arrived to continue processing of supplies and weapons, took to smoking and eating as they listened to a battle that was far enough away to hear but not close enough to threaten.

It was too late, you thought. The Royal Army didn’t like fighting at night, especially not in terrain like this. A pair of biplane aircraft lazily drifted overhead, and given nothing else to do, your troops shot at them and sent them away, though they had found what they came for. Whatever fight the Royal Army might be planning, they couldn’t be doing it for long. By the time the sun rose again, more of the Gilician Alliance’s troops would be here, and the moment of greatest risk would pass. The commander of the Expediton Division couldn’t have known how tightly the jaws of this trap had closed upon him, the longer he delayed. Even the silence of the cut telegraph cables and the fighting heard in the hills and trees would indicate a raid upon the village and the train rather than the truth of the operation’s scale, which was to surround and destroy the Expeditionary Division itself.

Rolled 11, 84, 16, 88, 20, 74 = 293 (6d100)

If you were in his place at least you’d never have anticipated it. It would be like if you were sent out to hunt Black Coats back in the Emrean Liberation War and you were surrounded and besieged by them. What dark irony, that one of the other things that the captured set to work spoke of was how the last thing they expected to be attacked by, rather than the faded uniforms of army deserters or the greys and browns of the new Gilician forces, was the scorch black of Imperial nightmares.
The fighting continued, into the night rather than dropping away like you expected, which was when an outrider came from the north bearing news…

>Rolls for 1st Northern Division’s 1st Battalion, and for the Expeditionary Division’s attack. Higher is better, Expeditionary’s Attack is weighted with +10.

The sun set, and the fighting went on, until a rider found you helping to haul a crate off of the train.

“The hell are you doing moving boxes?” He demanded, a red-faced young man, possibly a passionate militant, “The first battalion up north is in trouble. Division Headquarters needs you to leave this place to the Outriders and move north.”

“I understand,” you said, “Is the 3rd battalion on their way?”

“They already were, but the first needs all the help they can get. It sounds like there’s a whole regiment coming down on them, if what they’re telling is the truth.”

“Tell Ortico what’s going on,” you pointed to where the Outrider captain had been last, where some horsemen still remained, tending to their mounts. “Then go back to headquarters and tell them I’m on my way.” It’d have been nice if the artillery could be utilized, surely, but the guns had already fallen out of your possession. On the other hand, the enemy didn’t have them either. This would be an old-fashioned sort of fight, if it lasted long enough for you to march the Black Battalion up there…

-----

The battalion was plenty motivated for another fight, but by the time your columns arrived and dispersed, most of the fighting seemed finished. First Battalion hadn’t been dislodged, and Third’s flank, though inexpert, was causing enough disruption that the First hadn’t been overrun by the time your companies fanned out to their defensive positions and threw back the gains that had been made. In the dark, and in the forests, they were far better at the brawling going on than the Royal Army’s troops, which were undoubtedly lacking in veterans.

Casualties were minimal, but an opportunity might have been present. Katona met with you and presented an idea, that even though the First Battalion had been badly mauled in holding their defense, the enemy was in a state of confusion and disarray. An assault would be risky- but if you managed to strike the enemy bad enough, they’d be in no condition to try again.

You thought about it. This part of the ground was sparsely wooded, and thinned out the further along you would be going. In the open, your troops would lack the advantage they had in close quarters, but it was also dark, and their snow cloaks could give them some concealment. You couldn’t count on help from the First Battalion in such a maneuver, though, and the Third’s support would be just that. Even if they were in a state of confusion, marching a battalion into even a reduced regiment sized enemy was quite risky if they caught on to what was happening…

>Hold your positions. There was no reason to commit to any risk, not when the enemy would be at such a disadvantage trying to attack you again.
>Throw your troops forth. The black coats that who were more nightmare fiction than reality to those who joined after the war would show their teeth in this darkness. This would be a tragic day for the Royal Army.
>Leave behind the assault troops that lacked rifle caliber weapons and harass the enemy as they withdrew. It wouldn’t have much effect, but perhaps it would dissuade them from making a second attack tonight.
>Other?

>>5882021
>Throw your troops forth. The black coats that who were more nightmare fiction than reality to those who joined after the war would show their teeth in this darkness. This would be a tragic day for the Royal Army.

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18 KB GIF

>>5882021
>Throw your troops forth. The black coats that who were more nightmare fiction than reality to those who joined after the war would show their teeth in this darkness. This would be a tragic day for the Royal Army.

All in

>>5882021
>Throw your troops forth. The black coats that who were more nightmare fiction than reality to those who joined after the war would show their teeth in this darkness. This would be a tragic day for the Royal Army.
Hate to do it, but gotta finish the plate

>>5882019
>>Throw your troops forth. The black coats that who were more nightmare fiction than reality to those who joined after the war would show their teeth in this darkness. This would be a tragic day for the Royal Army.

>>5882023
>>5882029
>>5882032
>>5882094
Cast the die.

Calling it in an hour. An actual hour, not an hour that's actually a day.

>>5882147
Are the still any Forlorn/penal units in the modern Reich army, or were they purely a wartime instituted measure?

>>5882021
>Throw your troops forth. The black coats that who were more nightmare fiction than reality to those who joined after the war would show their teeth in this darkness. This would be a tragic day for the Royal Army.
In for a penny I guess.

>>5882021
>Throw your troops forth. The black coats that who were more nightmare fiction than reality to those who joined after the war would show their teeth in this darkness. This would be a tragic day for the Royal Army.

>>5882150
>Are the still any Forlorn/penal units in the modern Reich army, or were they purely a wartime instituted measure?
Officially speaking, the Forlorn were not a part of any Imperial command structure, but rather deserters and bandits that were set loose with the claim that none of their actions were accountable to the Reich, and were separate from penal units that were not outright condemnation and exile. Henrik II's Imperial Army does not have punishment units or the like. The same isn't necessarily the case for the Protectorates, but in twenty years hence, nobody wants to be caught making what is seen as the moral mistakes of the last Kaiser's administration.

>>5882162
>>5882173
Two more, no deviation.
Alright then. Writing.

Should have asked for this before, but I had to run errands. I need three sets of 1d100, each one above 50 gets a +10 against the opposed rolls to come.

Rolled 39 (1d100)

>>5882287

>>5882287

Rolled 16 (1d100)

>>5882287

Rolled 67 (1d100)

>>5882287

Rolled 96 (1d100)

>>5882287

>>5882291
>>5882306
>>5882310
>>5882312
Ah well. At least we got one.

Rolled 42, 84, 49 = 175 (3d100)

>>5882291
>>5882306
>>5882310
Well.
Let's see if I need more coffee.

There was no time to waste, if you were to seize this chance. Immediately, you snapped your fingers and told Katona to loose the men; the hounds would have their hunt. Whoops went up, and streaming white and grey cloaks streamed out from the hastily dug holes and piles, leaving their Gilician allies behind, and you to strain to catch up.

Mist and darkness combined to turn the world beyond the trees into a soup where it was impossible to tell apart people at a certain distance, dark contrast on the snow from the moonlight betrayed any who might have tried to hide in plain sight, as they would be forced to when the trees ran out, but the enemy was met before that happened. Apparently, they hadn’t quite been ready to give up quite yet, with how close they still were, but that you were still catching up to the main force and passing by the remnants of fighting told that you had caught them off guard, and were sending them back. Though not without a price. The Royal Army soldiers were recovering- and you caught up soon enough to witness resistance being played out as you were forced to the ground, nicked by rounds that were likely not even aimed at you.

Nearby was a fallen Black Coat who grasped weakly at his Stachelli automatic- you reached over and took it. “Live and I’ll give it back,” you said far more curtly than intended, and you checked it over, pulled magazines from the pouches on the soldier’s leathers. You’d never actually used one of these, only familiarizing yourself with it by happenstance on the march over the past couple of days. You hoped firing it was as easy as it looked…

The magazine was emptied in testing bursts, as you returned fire at an unknown assailant whose rounds cracked over your head, and you put in a fresh stick of rounds before getting up, crouched over, and heading forwards. This was already completely disorganized, and you had lost Katona and sight of any other officer in the rush and forcing down. Ahead- surely allies were there, if bullets kept streaking past you.

Shapes loomed out of the mist, and you took cover behind what turned out to be freshly fallen bodies. Your breath halted, and you peered over them- all were your men, about five of them, and just five to ten meters away were a dozen bodies of Royal Army troops…one moved, then another, pointed their gun at you.

Instinct and training reacted before you thought about it, and you sprayed down one prone threat before diving to the ground and rolling to the side, searching for the other figure. It didn’t take long for them to move- you pulled the trigger in two short holds, five rounds, and a sharp cry, and an agonized groan followed. You finished them off with another few bullets you could have saved- got to your feet all too early when another shape came out from the mist, charging at you with the dull gleam of a bayonet flashing forward. You shot at them- hit them once before the breach held open, the magazine empty.

“Die, Reich Dog!” your assailant still came at you, your shot not placed somewhere that kept them from continuing forward. You drew your close friend, and shot your fellow Vitelian three times in the chest just before he would have run you though. He fell flat on his face just a few paces away, gurgling despondently.

You pointed your pistol about, waiting for the next attacker, trying to think of how many bullets you had left in it, whether you had time to load the last submachinegun magazine you had picked up. Two more shapes appeared, then another. You fired at them, but your shots were hurried and wide. Sparks flew off a helmet that was glanced by your shot, and the return fire caught you in the leg, sending you to the ground, though behind bodies and safe for but a moment. You grit your teeth through the searing pain in your thigh, and took out the Stachelli’s empty magazine- trembled at the wrong time, failed to load a new one, heard the crunch of snow ahead and the shooting of rifles as they tried to either pin you down or blast you through the bodies of your troops. Finally, you set the magazine in, fumbled to close the bolt, but just then, more gunfire came from the side, and shouts of surprise punctuated the threat to your person.

“Hey,” a rasping whisper said in Imperial, “Anybody alive who don't cork themselves with corn?”

“Your commander, soldier,” you rose up, replying in the proper language that wouldn’t get you reflexively shot. “You arrived just in time. Do you know where any of the captains are? Or Major Katona?”

“Von Kalterose is just back there,” The young Reich man said, very young to be a soldier, yet he was a squad leader- he couldn’t have been older than nineteen, which would have made him not even an adult in the war…

“Go and get him, or wait for him to arrive,” you said, “This is a proper mess here.” You paused. “What’s your name, corporal?”

“I’m Vinny.”

“Alright, Vincenzo.”

“You make it sound stupid. Vinny or Vincent.”

“Your commander will have the name you prefer on an award, Vincent,” you brushed off the rough attitude of the stormtrooper as you clenched the wound on your leg. You might have been finished were he not here. You weren’t Leo, you weren’t an invincible champion of the battlefield, even if you were quite formidable.

“Hey,” one of the other troopers said, “The commander got bit. Get a bandage out.”

“I have it,” you said impatiently, “Keep on watch.”

When you met back up with the second company captain, more troops had already passed by, and the fighting went ahead. The last enemies you saw that night had been the ones attacking you- afterwards, despite the setback in the middle of the attack, the Black Battalion had regained their momentum through sheer stubbornness, and overpowered the will of the Royal Army’s southern commitment, sending them running for their lives. Your men chased them, killed them, captured some that had dropped their weapons and failed to flee. You walked past the destruction and carnage again- discarded weapons that would soon belong to the Gilician Alliance. Bodies that now belonged to the earth. Only when you found Katona again, and he recommended you go and get your wound properly treated, did you accept what this was.

Another triumph. A victory for you. A defeat for your home.

-----

The Battle of Tristezza, both the assault and the repelling of the regiment to the north, would prove decisive in the coming days even if your unit saw little action afterwards, the casualties in the night assault having lost you one hundred and forty more men, even disregarding that your wound meant you were in poor shape to run anywhere anyways. Your battalion had mutilated the enemy regiment as they had ran- they had lost a couple hundred in their initial attack, and for every man you had lost they lost three or four in being driven from the field. It was a ruinous defeat for the Expedition Division, especially when the following day saw the rest of their troops engaged by other Gilician Alliance units arriving late.

The Battle of Mariana’s Hollow lasted two more weeks- the Expedition Division, in a trap more perfect than your commanders could have hoped for, acted too hastily and then too skittishly, and isolated themselves too far away from the rest of Vitelia to be rescued, even though probing attacks from the south told of attempts. If the enemy held out longer, perhaps that rescue attempt would have had to be thwarted- but the Expedition Division was hit too hard, surprised too much, and in disarray in land they didn’t know nor intended to fight in, and quickly were out of supplies and under artillery bombardment day and night. They had little choice, the numerous sick and wounded languishing and their commander having shot himself two days before, but to surrender. The initial estimate was of nine thousand prisoners- and the Alliance was in turmoil in the question of how to handle them, but the Vilja Domkarl personally intervened to have them distributed to settlements belonging to the Saints’ Garden. Glad to be rid of them, the prisoners were marched to the interior, though you had your doubts that they would all make it in this winter in their state.

It was far from a defeat that Vitelia would have known in the war against the Reich, or even a particularly costly victory, but rumor had it that the defeat had sent quakes throughout the Royal Army and Vitelia in general. Until now, the conflict in Gilicia was thought to be minor civil disturbances, but an entire division being surrounded and outfought, the Gilician Garrison Command seemingly powerless to help them, showed a sort of weakness that many thought unbelievable, laughable. The Royal Army, unable to cow a regional uprising of rural hicks? When the last enemy they fought was the Kaiser’s armies?

The reality of the situation was more complex of course but the layman saw an extremely negative picture, and surely, given that the loss of the Expedition Division represented a relatively large portion of what had been deemed acceptable to deploy into Gilicia, even the Three Points were seeing the limits of their influence- they were forced to hold back in the center of the province, while the Gilician Alliance’s influence and assets practically exploded, as various foreign benefactors saw fit to increase their secret aid.

You now had some fame as well- some had dubbed you the “Black Knight,” a rather trodden title, you thought, but it made you dread what your former allies would think of your new infamy.
“It don’t make no sense,” Elena said as you let her change your bandages. The leg wound was healing well, but it was still too much time recovering for your tastes. “Y’don’t even wear black.”

“Maybe I should start.”

“Nah. Y’don’t look good in it.”

Your part in the success of this decisive battle did not go unrewarded. An additional two battalion sized elements were placed into your command, and called the “Black Regiment,” your former subordinates found and placed into its structure. Apparently this dread unit had garnered enough fans for such to be justified, and the majority of these new battalions were headstrong young men and boys that needed a lot of training. The type you had hoped you had managed to escape from when you stopped your work as a training officer, but at the very least, they were directly subordinate to you, and had much more respect. Odder reinforcement came from sparse amounts of Black Coats that had been retrieved, captured, or otherwise found, and told of how they could have a place under you amongst their own kind. Within a couple months of that battle, thusly, when your limp was well and gone, you had become a rather powerful figure in the Gilician Uprising.

Yet you felt the same as ever. Unfulfilled. Lonely, save for the moments of light Elena brought just from being an old face.

April arrived, and Spring had driven away the last vestiges of winter in the past weeks. Your regiment was on the march, on its way to what would end up occupying the final major act of your part in the Gilician Uprising. Consequential duties, now that your trainees were considered ready for battle, and the Royal Army had licked its wounds and dared to hope for the future…as well as other peoples.

>You lacked the desire to batter the dignity and pride of your fellow countrymen once more. The unified Gilician Alliance still had business to attend to in the north, and with no love of the Feallinese, you would participate in a larger scale campaign up there than there had been before…
>The Gilician Alliance wanted to bloody the nose of the Royal Army once more- in a way that once again they would not have thought possible. The provincial capital, Fons Lacrimea, was the heart of the Gilician Occupation- and you were to be part of the grand assault to drive the Royal Army screaming from the heart of Gilicia.
>Your commanders had decided that the fighting didn’t need to be contained to Gilicia- a message had to be sent to Vitelia and the Royal Army both, that their armed forces were a failure. So you were striking out in a huge raid- to sack one of the jewels of the Three Points, the villa-city of Luce dei Diamanti.
>Another, very specific request, that you had to call in favors to have considered… (Write in. Be somewhat realistic, you’re not important enough to demand the world.)
Also-
>Do/Handle anything else, commiserate or socialize with somebody in particular?

>>5882586
>The Gilician Alliance wanted to bloody the nose of the Royal Army once more- in a way that once again they would not have thought possible. The provincial capital, Fons Lacrimea, was the heart of the Gilician Occupation- and you were to be part of the grand assault to drive the Royal Army screaming from the heart of Gilicia.
Let's put a fork in this shitshow.

>>5882586
>You lacked the desire to batter the dignity and pride of your fellow countrymen once more. The unified Gilician Alliance still had business to attend to in the north, and with no love of the Feallinese, you would participate in a larger scale campaign up there than there had been before…
If anyone else has good socializing/action ideas I'll probably back those but I can't think of anything that would be smart in this situation.

>>5882586
>>You lacked the desire to batter the dignity and pride of your fellow countrymen once more. The unified Gilician Alliance still had business to attend to in the north, and with no love of the Feallinese, you would participate in a larger scale campaign up there than there had been before…

I don't think sticking the Forlorn anywhere near civic centers is a good idea. the more that die in a hole somewhere never to be found the better.

>>5882586
>>Your commanders had decided that the fighting didn’t need to be contained to Gilicia- a message had to be sent to Vitelia and the Royal Army both, that their armed forces were a failure. So you were striking out in a huge raid- to sack one of the jewels of the Three Points, the villa-city of Luce dei Diamanti.

>>5882586
>>Your commanders had decided that the fighting didn’t need to be contained to Gilicia- a message had to be sent to Vitelia and the Royal Army both, that their armed forces were a failure. So you were striking out in a huge raid- to sack one of the jewels of the Three Points, the villa-city of Luce dei Diamanti.
Striking directly at the three points sounds like a good precursor to the utopian uprising.

>>5882586
>Your commanders had decided that the fighting didn’t need to be contained to Gilicia- a message had to be sent to Vitelia and the Royal Army both, that their armed forces were a failure. So you were striking out in a huge raid- to sack one of the jewels of the Three Points, the villa-city of Luce dei Diamanti.

>>5882586
>You lacked the desire to batter the dignity and pride of your fellow countrymen once more. The unified Gilician Alliance still had business to attend to in the north, and with no love of the Feallinese, you would participate in a larger scale campaign up there than there had been before…

>>5882586
Also:
>Do/Handle anything else, commiserate or socialize with somebody in particular?

Try to get into contact with Yena, at least find out where she's managed to settle down in.

>>5882586
>Your commanders had decided that the fighting didn’t need to be contained to Gilicia- a message had to be sent to Vitelia and the Royal Army both, that their armed forces were a failure. So you were striking out in a huge raid- to sack one of the jewels of the Three Points, the villa-city of Luce dei Diamanti.

>>5882586
>Another, very specific request, that you had to call in favors to have considered… (Write in. Be somewhat realistic, you’re not important enough to demand the world.)
Guard duty for the top brass

>>5882592
Go for the big one.

>>5882594
>>5882606
>>5882712
Head North.

>>5882613
>>5882697
>>5882764
The Smash and Grab. Or Grab and Smash.

>>5882844
The easy holiday.

>>5882745
A very difficult task.

Calling it in an hour and a half.

>>5882639
Also you, for four for the raid.
4 for Fhor four.

>>5882860
Yeah, it's easier to stick a knife in them while their backs are turned. Once they're out of the picture, you can take your rightful place.

Alright, on the raid it is.
Updating.

I abused my sleep schedule too hard and had to collapse and only wake up right before I go to work. Maybe should have saved calling the vote for tomorrow. Oh well.

>>5883073
your sleep schedule and my liver have a lot in common.

>>5883073
Soon?

The Gilician Alliance had expanded its plans and scope of their plans greatly since the unification of command of their disparate factions in the wake of the new year’s battle. There was no shortage of things to do, and somebody with your reputation now could do quite a few things, but there was one thing you didn’t have any taste for, and that was fighting your former comrades in the Royal Army. Especially not when the dreams returned- the old ones with you running free forth with your friends and allies, only this time, when you turned to face them, expecting the nostalgic faces of those no longer able to join you in the future, you saw the Forlorn, and their uniforms were black as the burn they left in their wake, as the unknown fantasy of Zeissenburg instead became Lapizlazulli, helpless in the face of your betrayal.

Instead, the mission you volunteered to take was one where you at least would be striking directly at the enemy you were fighting. Not Vitelia, but the forces that corrupted it. The Gilician Alliance, particularly an ascendent Di Zucchampo, had been emboldened by the successes of the rebellion and its growing strength, and wished to take the fight outside of the Gilician territories. Specifically, to those who masterminded its occupation in the first place, the personal assets belonging to the Three Points.

Said target was a villa-city, a clump of pleasure palaces called Luce dei Diamanti, or simply the Diamond. You’d heard of it vaguely in passing. It was a refuge for the extremely wealthy and influential, and those favored by them, and nobody else. No place of common revelry was this, but a secluded getaway where anything could be requested and no service unknown. Heavily guarded of course, but by mercenaries and the bravos of the famiglie segrete and thus no barrier to a proper armed force. Such as yours, though in truth, two battalions of yours being as new and unblooded as they were meant they were more evenly matched than you would care to admit man for man. They did not have your numbers, though, of twenty-six hundred- nor the sort of weapons you carried.

Even now, the Royal Army underestimated the Gilician Revolt, and assumed wrongly that it took all their strength and focus to keep in the field in Gilicia alone rather than daring to strike out across the great rivers that separated the territory from the rest of Vitelia. Their intelligence, which you had now been informed for sure was purposely soured by sympathizers, assured them of the same weakness that they had been so terribly incorrect in assuming at Maraian’s hollow.

Luce dei Diamanti was only thirty kilometers southeast from the southmost prominence of the Gilician province, far from where most skirmishes or battles took place, but the Royal Army’s hold over the land was not as tight as they might assume, and even a force as large as yours could sneak over if you were careful, the enemy lax enough, and your crossing competent. It would be far from easy, but the Gilician Alliance was brimming with confidence and thought the sting of the blow would be well worth the risk.

Yourself, you wondered if they were already looking for a way to be rid of the Black Battalion before the headache of dealing with them in the time after.

In the time they’d been with them, the second and third battalions of the Black Regiment, each commanded by your former officer subordinates Di Portaltramanto and Di Nero, had gotten to know the original Black Battalion and had rather concerningly found themselves infatuated with particular elements of it. The old uniforms sternly maintained? Being cloaked in such color had an aesthetic appeal, you supposed. The specialist weapons? They lacked them, for now, given that the Gilician Alliance had only freshly run into decent sources of weapons in general and could not so freely give out what everybody wanted, but they desired the automatics nevertheless.

No, what they wanted was something baser. The new troops were all young men, brash and brimming with hot blood, and they saw the Black Battalion’s worn and scarred men with their loot, their freely traded jewels and baubles, their women, and they wanted such things for themselves. It was hard to deny that they felt the same sort of thing you had felt when they were your age, that many of the driven Young Futurists had felt, that primal thirst that generations of history had steadily stamped down but had failed to eradicate from human psyche.

Given that your mission was to raze and ransack a hoard of riches accompanied by many a fair woman, at least, if the rumors of debauchery were even half true, it made you concerned as to how you might preserve whatever integrity the Black Regiment might have. For all the quandary about what the original Battalion had, they had kept their hands off the civilians as you had mandated before, and why wouldn’t they, when they already had plenty of girls, but the other battalions had naught- and awaited the time when they would. While a few of your officers shared your sympathies, particularly Di Portaltramanto with his tendency towards chivalry, plenty more had already seen plenty of thankless fighting for the revolt, and openly spoke of how this pile of treasure would be more than just reward, finally…and they would be harder to dissuade than the youths who would be doing the majority of the fighting, and giving in to their passions without thought for deeper justification.

>Why contain their drive? You weren’t going to do some good-hearted charity work, you were making a raid to destroy, loot, and plunder. Let them put their all into their dirty work. It would be impossible to control what happened after chaos of combat had come anyways, with this amount of people.
>There were standards to maintain. As before, not a finger was to be laid on the people. Any looting done of flesh and blood would see consequences upon the perpetrators- even if this would earn you plenty of resentment. You were their commander, not their enabling friend.
>Preventing the worst-case scenario was for the best, even if it harmed your chances of victory. Only units that could be trusted to keep themselves in check would be taken along- the others would only be fit for security and reserve rather than fighting and sacking.
>Other?

When you asked Elena about the subject, she mostly agreed with you- save for one thing.

“What’re you gonna say when they ask why you get a girl but they don’t?” she asked, as the unit was camped in a town in the march south. Both of you had gone to visit, just to see.

“By now, everybody that needs to understand that, does,” you said, “Besides, what am I to do? Shear your head and cover you in a cloak and try my best to claim you’re a man? I didn’t happen into marriage by abducting a woman in battle. These boys need the discipline of the old Royal Army. A few months on Monte Nocca would get their blood into their muscles and brains instead of their groins.”

Elena leaned against a wall and shook her head. “You lot always have blood down there when y’ shouldn’t. Y’ can’t stop that. But you need to keep them believing you’re in charge, and that means they have t’ want to keep under yer thumb.”

“Surely they can find a woman somewhere else. Whether they return to them or they just wait a bit to find one that won’t resent them for what they’ve done.”

“Might sound funny t’ you, but the girls the black coats got ain’t all that bitter ‘bout it.”

“Were you in their situation, wouldn’t you be resigned to it?”

Elena shrugged. “They ain’t leavin’. I asked plenty a’ times what keeps ‘em, and it’s not that they’re forced t’ stay.” She glanced back to the camp. “Fer the better they think we’re what we’re not, tho’. The Imperials don’t care, but I don’t think most Gilicians would think much a’ you for your taste.”

It was true. Hill Vitelians generally had a distaste for mountainfolk, where you were from, but Gilicians outright smoldered at the thought, the mention of them, like they were little different from Vyemani in overall unpleasantness even if the nature of such had little similarity. It was why she couldn’t be here- and that she couldn’t be here meant you had gone without the small joys that had kept you going in a worse war. No letters. No gifts from afar. No news about her, or your children. You had been utterly isolated, and the pain of such had been shoved into the background, but wore on you no matter how far you tried to put it from yourself.

“Sorry,” Elena said lowly, “Didn’t think about whether y’ wanted a reminder.”

“It wouldn’t be as bad if we could send letters like we used to,” you said, “But even if I could sneak letters back and forth, I don’t even know where she is, or where she’s gone. It’s not like I can leave and track her down now.” Or, perhaps, ever. Was Vitelia just going to let you back in so you could go to Monte Nocca and ask her people where she went so you could follow the trail? Surely not.
Elena crossed her arms and looked at the ground, tapping her fingers against her bicep. “…I could do it. Find her. Not bring her back here, that’d be dumb, but then y’ would know where she’s gone.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“Bonetto,” Elena said sharply, “Yeah, y’can.”

“Would you be alright traveling by yourself?” It was a question you already knew her response to, and she rolled her eyes at you.

“If I can’t walk on the roads in the day,” She pulled her lantern hairpin out of ponytail and toyed with it, “then why the hell would I be alright with goin’ into a gunfight?”

“Even so. Only if you want to.”

Elena opened her mouth, but her brow relaxed and she closed her lips tightly, and her eyes. “I won’t lie t’ ya, Bonetto. I want t’ stay here with you. It’s made up for a lotta lost time. An’…part a’ me wants t’ keep y’ here for good. I can’t help thinkin’ it even if I don’t do nothin’ about it. But I hate seein’ y’ so down all th’ time. I want y’ to be happy, and if doin’ this does that, then it’s worth it all.”

>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena.
>Elena staying here with you would make you happier.
>Other?

>>5883723
>>There were standards to maintain. As before, not a finger was to be laid on the people. Any looting done of flesh and blood would see consequences upon the perpetrators- even if this would earn you plenty of resentment. You were their commander, not their enabling friend.

>>5883725
>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena.

>>5883725
>>There were standards to maintain. As before, not a finger was to be laid on the people. Any looting done of flesh and blood would see consequences upon the perpetrators- even if this would earn you plenty of resentment. You were their commander, not their enabling friend.

Gold, jewels, expensive artwork, plenty of stuff there that will make them rich as a Paellan merchant prince. Get the Saint's Garden to do some fiery sermons towards the new recruits if needed about serious sins and whatnot if needed.

>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena.

>>5883723
>Preventing the worst-case scenario was for the best, even if it harmed your chances of victory. Only units that could be trusted to keep themselves in check would be taken along- the others would only be fit for security and reserve rather than fighting and sacking.
>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena.

>>5883723
>Preventing the worst-case scenario was for the best, even if it harmed your chances of victory. Only units that could be trusted to keep themselves in check would be taken along- the others would only be fit for security and reserve rather than fighting and sacking.
>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena.
Gotta find the wife. The fact we don't know where she's at isn't good.
I miss our tanks.

>>5883723
>There were standards to maintain. As before, not a finger was to be laid on the people. Any looting done of flesh and blood would see consequences upon the perpetrators- even if this would earn you plenty of resentment. You were their commander, not their enabling friend.
Let's not create Stalin.
>>5883725
>Elena staying here with you would make you happier.
This feels like an unnecessary risk to everyone involved.

>>5883723
>Why contain their drive? You weren’t going to do some good-hearted charity work, you were making a raid to destroy, loot, and plunder. Let them put their all into their dirty work. It would be impossible to control what happened after chaos of combat had come anyways, with this amount of people.

>>5883725
>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena.

>>5883723
>There were standards to maintain. As before, not a finger was to be laid on the people. Any looting done of flesh and blood would see consequences upon the perpetrators- even if this would earn you plenty of resentment. You were their commander, not their enabling friend.


>>5883725
>Elena staying here with you would make you happier.

Bonetto likes to stir the pot.

>>5883723
>There were standards to maintain. As before, not a finger was to be laid on the people. Any looting done of flesh and blood would see consequences upon the perpetrators- even if this would earn you plenty of resentment. You were their commander, not their enabling friend.
>>5883725
>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena.
Hey, nice to see this back tanq. Always a pleasure to read these quests.

>>5883723
>Other?
Permit violation of the rich, but not the poor. Remind the men who we're fighting for and against.

>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena

>>5883735
>>5883741
>>5883748
>>5883868
>>5883891
The standards are as before- only things that don't move.

>>5883742
>>5883746
Be selective- prevention is the best cure.

>>5883773
>>5883925
If their wallets are fat then they were asking for it.

>>5883735
>>5883741
>>5883742
>>5883746
>>5883773
>>5883891
>>5883925
Find the green.

>>5883748
>>5883868
Keep the blonde.

I'm more tired than I should be, I'll call it after I take a nap or something.

>>5883723
>Why contain their drive? You weren’t going to do some good-hearted charity work, you were making a raid to destroy, loot, and plunder. Let them put their all into their dirty work. It would be impossible to control what happened after chaos of combat had come anyways, with this amount of people.

>>5883725
>Elena staying here with you would make you happier.

So I woke up from my nap and my internet was down for the entire evening. It's back up now though, so I can at least update more than once today.

>>5884413
One more for going raw and blonde.

Updating.

>>5883725
>Why contain their drive? You weren’t going to do some good-hearted charity work, you were making a raid to destroy, loot, and plunder. Let them put their all into their dirty work. It would be impossible to control what happened after chaos of combat had come anyways, with this amount of people.

>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena.

>>5883723
>There were standards to maintain. As before, not a finger was to be laid on the people. Any looting done of flesh and blood would see consequences upon the perpetrators- even if this would earn you plenty of resentment. You were their commander, not their enabling friend.
>>5883725
>You’d be happy if she did this favor for you, and tracked down Yena.

File: scene_36_Elena2.jpg (580 KB, 896x1100)

580 KB JPG

“It would make me very happy,” you said, “If you did that sort of favor for me. I don’t know how I’d repay you.”

Elena let out a long sigh and smiled ever so slightly. “Don’t worry about it,” she murmured, “I wanna do it. I don’t need any sorta pay or whatever. Just don’t get thrown in a dungeon or a grave and waste my time doin’ this.”

“I can guarantee that.” For once, you doubted that you would be in a place of particular extreme danger. The last battle had been a close call- but now, you truly wouldn’t have any reason to be anywhere near fighting. There was just too much to handle and coordinate to indulge that anymore. “Whatever you need, I’ll have the quartermaster get ready for you.”

“Sure.” Elena said with a curt nod, her eyes still closed, “You said we’re going south back over the border, right? I can slip away back there and not get noticed ‘til I’m far enough away that nobody thinks different.” She proffered the lantern pin, and you took it. Without such a mark, she would be little different from a normal hill woman, albeit with a rather... should you say, unique look? Not in a suspect way, though, perhaps a bit rough and tumble rather than the farm girl she really was. “…Actually, Bonetto? There was one thing y’ could do,” she pointed to the side, “Buy me more a’ this place’s coffee, a big ol’ can a’ it. I don’t wanna get on my knees an’ beg so I can get a decent cup.”

“I feel like a cup of it myself,” you beckoned to her, “Let’s go.”

The inn’s owners were paid for their stock of precious grounds- they had come into possession of military surplus somehow, and few people passed through who also wanted to pay the price demanded. It was at least real coffee- and real money.

“Ain’t it funny,” Elena said, pointing to your wallet in your breast pocket, “How they don’t bat an eye at how many different coins an’ bills are in there?”

“I guess they won’t complain as long as things stay in a place where they can pay somebody else with it.” The Gilician Alliance had no banks, of course, no mints, no gold reserves, but they had a bizarre collection of a surprising reserve of various sorts of money that they could reliably pay their people with. Even if debate was sometimes lively as far as just how much Reichsmarks were worth in local currency. “The men will have more than they know what to do with soon anyways.”

“That’s the plan, then?” Elena asked, “Handle it like last time, whatever isn’t nailed down is free game, anything with legs isn’t?”

“Greed can be sated, but not immoral lust,” you confirmed.

“Not all a’ them want riches, y’know.”

“They don’t know what they want.”

Elena snickered at that. “Soundin’ like an old man. That what happens when y’ have kids?”

“Maybe so.” You stared into the black depths of your coffee and wondered if you could see any messages in the foam rising to the top. “Some people would consider me lost just from this command, but I won’t let that assumption define me, nor them. I made mistakes when I was in a place like theirs. Not the kind that they want to make just for the sake of it.”

“I think they’ll make up whatever they want after this anyways,” Elena said, “Not sayin’ y’ shouldn’t do your best. Just don’t get killed for it.”

“Again. I don’t intend to.”

Elena took a big gulp of her coffee, then set it down with a scrunching of her face. “You drank this stuff for how long?”

“There wasn’t anything else.”

“Reminds me,” Elena picked up the cup again in spite of her critique of its taste, “You want me to tell her anything when I find her? Maybe you should write a letter, or somethin’.”

You should. “What do you think I should say?”

Elena squinted at you. “She’s your wife. I dunno. But I think, if I were in her place, I’d want y’ to say that you’re sorry.”

A fair suggestion.

>?

-----

The day, or rather, the night, came. The most challenging part would be the crossing, then the march at a quick enough pace to surprise the target of your attack before they knew what was happening- and then, the response to such a surprise assault couldn’t be quick, though you anticipated having to either evade or hold out until it got dark again so you could cross back again without having an enemy take advantage of the vulnerability during such a maneuver, especially by largely inexperienced fighters. Second and Third battalions at least knew how to march, how to use their hand-me-down weapons (most of the best captures went to the experienced units rather than the newbies), and they had the athleticism to not collapse after a good couple hours in full kit, though in your opinion they still would have been wiped out by a march on Monte Nocca. There was no helping it now though, these were the troops you had, and the mission had to be carried out.

The first thing of course was assembling the officers and, along with briefing them on the plan, reminding them to keep their men accountable with the rules you had laid out regarding the pillaging to take place. If they allowed anything you had forbidden to take place, there would be punishment in accordance with the standard for military law- which in the Royal Army’s case had been imprisonment and seizure of pay when it came to abuse of civilians, though technically speaking, the rules were specifically for Vitelian citizens. It wasn’t something you bothered to elaborate on- all present knew what was meant, even if you saw some of the young firebrands from the new battalions curse under their breath and mutter complaints to one another. Too bad. If they weren’t satisfied with what was already bandit’s robbery, then they weren’t done with becoming humans, let alone soldiers. The Black Battalion, for all its infamy, had not disobeyed your orders when they had eyes upon them, after all.

The actual fighting and sacking wasn’t seen as a factor to plan for a struggle for. The same intelligence that had led to amazing results at Mariana’s Hollow was in play here, and not only did this enemy not expect an attack from a force your size, they didn’t expect to be attacked by a Gilician armed force at all, nor were they remotely equipped to fend off such an attack, not when you were planning to be attacking with all of your forces, sweeping forward and overwhelming any resistance with swift brute force. No art was necessary there. No, the difficult part was the movement and coordination, especially in the dark, the timing of things.

Boats and pontoons had been made ready a week ahead of time for this operation- but it would all have to be set up at nightfall. The master stroke of this operation was that it would be completely unanticipated, and a sudden bridge for troop movement, especially one long enough to cross the river that made up Gilicia’s southern border (fifty five meters at the crossing point) would be readily noticed, and the warning might be enough to cause problems in the time it would take you to make the long march. The march itself would also have to be hurried, and woven as best you could around places you might encounter people. Luce dei Diamanti was isolated by design, but its demands meant traffic went in and out constantly, and a night maneuver had difficulties in the doing even when there wasn’t anything getting in the way like the need to not get caught too early.

A simple operation all in all, going someplace and destroying it and coming back, but your command decisions largely were ones of risk taking and confidence in your men. The Black Battalion could lead the point easily enough, but even following on in the dark of night was harder than one might assume. So an easy way to better the chances of minimizing disruption on the march was simply to wait until it was lighter, even if that meant likely spoiling the chances of perfect surprise. After all, you were far further south than you were thought to possibly be anyways- what could be brought to a full regiment that could stop it? A question that friendly infiltration and spying, unfortunately, couldn’t account for. Their guarantees were on surprise and flight, not on marching down boldly and confidently and daring Vitelia to do their worst.

>Night disruptions were a small risk all things considered, with this prize. March so that you attack while the sky is still dark- any pieces that needed picking up could be done so when you withdrew.
>The crossing could be done at night- but the battle was the most climactic piece and could not afford the confusion of night. Use the extra time of early morning to make the crossing and march as clean as possible, and attack at first light.
>Minimize risk, considering how much there was with how many subpar troops you had. Crossing rivers could be dangerous, and you’d make sure both it and the march and attack both were as safe as possible by doing it in early morning light. After all, if anything decided to contest you, who would they be that you couldn’t crush them with the weight of your full force?
>Other things to prepare/brief/advise/whatever?

>>5884811
>?
>Write a letter to Yena apologizing for not bringing her along.
I think this is what is being asked for here? Sorry if I'm reading too much into this.

>>5884812
>Night disruptions were a small risk all things considered, with this prize. March so that you attack while the sky is still dark- any pieces that needed picking up could be done so when you withdrew.

>>5884811
>Write a letter to Yena promising were doing great and that as long as she is doing good, we're definitely doing good.
>Attach a photo? Maybe not of us but Idk a cool landscape?

>>5884813
>Night disruptions were a small risk all things considered, with this prize. March so that you attack while the sky is still dark- any pieces that needed picking up could be done so when you withdrew.
Black is worse camouflage at night then expected but try not to stand in the light much. Stick to shadow and black stuff I suppose but don't rely on them never seeing you. Strike first and win.

>>5884811
>>5884813
>?
>Tell her that things are going...well, which is deeply conflicting. Tell her we love her and continue to miss her every day we spend away. Tell her that we're sorry things had to be this way and may be this way for a while longer.
>Night disruptions were a small risk all things considered, with this prize. March so that you attack while the sky is still dark- any pieces that needed picking up could be done so when you withdrew.

>>5884811
>Write a letter. Take a photo with Elena.
>>5884813
>Night disruptions were a small risk all things considered, with this prize. March so that you attack while the sky is still dark- any pieces that needed picking up could be done so when you withdrew.
Let's take the only good page from George Washington's playbook.

>>5884811
>Apologize for being apart for so long, tell her we're doing this for a better tomorrow, ask for news of her and our children. DO NOT take a photo with Elena.

>>5884813
>Night disruptions were a small risk all things considered, with this prize. March so that you attack while the sky is still dark- any pieces that needed picking up could be done so when you withdrew.

File: Untitled.png (2.77 MB, 1362x890)

2.77 MB PNG

>>5884813
Supporting >>5884837

>>5884811
>?
Be prepared to have another child on my return. Attach a photo with Elena and the concubines.

>Other things to prepare/brief/advise/whatever?
Find the best route in the morning, sleep during the day, and prepare to cross, march, and attack at dusk.

>>5884813
>Night disruptions were a small risk all things considered, with this prize. March so that you attack while the sky is still dark- any pieces that needed picking up could be done so when you withdrew.

It's a pleasure palace, bets are that the actual place is going to be lit up accordingly even after dark.

>>5884910
Also:
>Write a letter, apologies for not being there for her and the kids, promise to rush over soonish once this rebellion is won, yadda yadda. No photos.

>>5884811
>Write a letter to Yena promising were doing great and that as long as she is doing good, we're definitely doing good.

>>5884813
>The crossing could be done at night- but the battle was the most climactic piece and could not afford the confusion of night. Use the extra time of early morning to make the crossing and march as clean as possible, and attack at first light.

>>5884813
>>The crossing could be done at night- but the battle was the most climactic piece and could not afford the confusion of night. Use the extra time of early morning to make the crossing and march as clean as possible, and attack at first light.

>>5884821
>>5884835
>>5884837
>>5884846
>>5884855
>>5884910
Doing it in the dark.

>>5884936
>>5884943
Wait for first light for the first shot.

Letter contents are cumulative, I think. Well, except for the nature of photographs included.

Calling it in an hour.

You know, it's rally fascinating that you can try and lie down for an hour to take a nap but all that happens is that instead of getting any sleep your back hurts.

>>5884846
>>5884881
Photo

>>5884855
>>5884861
>>5884925
No Photo.

Writing.

>>5885035
Sounds like you need a better mattress, that or your posture is messed up.

When the planning was finalized the day before, it was decided that the most decisive parts of this raid would occur before the sun even rose. The advantage for the risk was too much to consider otherwise. Disruptions caused by the darkness wouldn’t amount to any catastrophes, and considering the amount of force you had, catching whatever meager foe was at this complex of palaces and manors completely off guard made absolute victory and equally absolute certainty.

Even so, whatever preparations could be made, you tried to do in order to minimize inevitable problems. The troops were made to rest while they could and nap early in the evening, whatever maps could be had were studied, copied, marked at least for important landmarks to navigate away from.
There was also the matter of morality. The first battalion, made up of Imperials proper, were not followers of the Cathedra. The other two were however and had representatives of the Saints Garden attached to them as chaplains, a total of four in all. It was no time for a mass ministering, but you did notice some idiosyncrasies with them and what they talked about with the young men. Namely that they spoke a lot of the Nameless Third- namely, the new troops of second and third battalion seemed to have propagated some word of a chronicle written by him that espoused certain practices as being…acceptable. Necessary, perhaps.

“Bunk, of course,” one of the Chaplains said irritably, “The Third was illiterate and left behind no writings, only parts of what he said or believed were passed down by Saint Saulius and Saint Svajone in their own chronicles, and accounts contemporary.”

“And what does this supposed chronicle say?” you asked. Apocrypha were not unknown, but they were usually the domain of wayward easterners who were broken from the Cathedra by Alexander, and had chosen to remain apart even after his rule had left their lands.

“It is a thing of rumors and speculation even amongst them, but…how to put this delicately, Commander, what would you say is moral application of suffering? Sin for better cause?” He didn’t actually allow you to answer. “The Executioner is cleansed of sin because he does a duty for the sake of smiting the forsaken. If in taking up his blade, or his rope, however, he revels in the pain and suffering of the condemned, he corrupts his own soul. This supposed chronicle of the Unspoken Third would present an alternative theory that goes against many a Saint’s words. That to revel and indulge in wreaking wrath upon the deserving is no corruption of the spirit. It is reminiscent of an old divergence called the Cult of the Executioner, who venerate an entity of Death, who serves the Judge. Such thinking is dangerous, considering the den of debauchery that you are heading to. See that the men’s souls are not corrupted in their belief that they do virtue through self-indulgent transgressions.”

The theology lesson wasn’t needed, but you thanked the chaplain for the warning anyways.

The final thing to get done was the letter to Yena you’d be sending off, hopefully speedily, with Elena when she went to track your wife and children down. It was not overly long- an apology for your separation and the length of it, an assurance that it was all for good, that all was going well for you…even if you didn’t want to speak of how it disturbed you, in a way. Soon enough, you wrote, your duty would be done and you would hurry to place her at your side again. After all, you wanted more children, to make up for your absence. It would have been by your measure just enough time that Lorenzo would be weaned…

The sky darkened, and the pontoon bridges went up, accompanying boats hauled out from the woods and set adrift to begin ferrying troops not confident in the shaky temporary bridge. It was a slow and ponderous operation, with much signaling with hooded lanterns and several accidents causing men to near be swept away with the river, but the few Sea Vitelian officers that had come to the movement with you last year managed to be an unexpected asset here. Gilicians were not an aquatic sort, but there was no such thing as a Sea Vitelian who didn’t know how to swim.
No time could be afforded to waiting to have the regiment completely assembled from one shore to the other. Instead, as soon as each company had completed their crossing, they immediately hurried off at a quick march. They would be the ones who forged a trail if one had to be, and as they had the most vital job, all of the first away were of the Black Battalion. You joined with the very last element to cross, along with Elena, and moved off- saying your farewells to your childhood friend as she went in the other direction from you.

You embraced one another, wished each other luck. Perhaps it was good that she wouldn’t have to witness what might come about- good fortune had reared its head, and you’d never been forced to place Elena in danger of coming under attack from an enemy, even if she had been prepared for it.

She vanished into the night, and you watched her until she faded into the dark- and hoped that next you saw her, would also be the day of your reuniting with your family.

-----

>Roll 3 sets of 3d100, one for each of your battalions, first, second, and third respectively, to determine success in night navigation. DC for the first is roll over 50, and for the latter ones, 30, but each success by the first set of three improves the roll of all others by 10.
Won't be finishing the update til I get back from work, so roll off.

Rolled 3, 99, 5 = 107 (3d100)

>>5885103

Rolled 64, 93, 21 = 178 (3d100)

>>5885103

Rolled 49, 89, 93 = 231 (3d100)

>>5885103

In the dark, you could scarcely account for your own group, let alone that of all the others, but by the time you were moving it was impossible to be waylaid- groups had long reached the planned assembly point, and you were practically led by hand to what appeared to be a well cultivated patch of practically constructed forest, filled with sculptures, shrines and structures that had been given the appearance of equivalents lost to antiquity, that gleamed white in the moonlight. They were far more noble looking works of art than befit their patron’s character, surely. Attendants to these structures and idyllic woods had already been seized and made prisoner, groundskeepers and mischievous youths who had sought to not be found, and thus had none expecting a swift return. You might as well have been alone here, albeit assembled in numbers that no aeroplane would have failed to spot- though you wondered if, should any of the kites and balloons now on the ground and roofs go up, if they would see.

“What’s the status of the battalions?” You asked the assembled regiment commanders. It was still plenty dark, and visible about a kilometer or two away were the bright lights of Luce dei Diamanti- far from asleep, you could hear the noise and bustle of partying even from here. Even the outskirts that housed the labor’s housing and the storage yards, the open-air arenas right now unused and the gardens and barns, were lit like a Year’s End Festival by what was happening in the villa and manors that formed the elevated core of the settlement. You wouldn’t have been surprised if fireworks began to shoot up- perhaps that was why none had taken balloons up into the night.

“First Company and Third Company managed to bungle it up,” Katona cursed, “But Second Company made up for them. First and Third, I’ve heard from their stragglers, had to move to evade some travelers and such and now they’re all over the place.” Second Company, with the familiar captain Kalterose. He ever failed to disappoint.

A bad setback, but not the worst. “Di Nero, Di Portaltramanto?”

“Second Battalion is mostly here,” Di Portaltramanto said, “Third Company followed the wrong, mislaid guides, I presume, or second guessed the road being taken. In any case, they are now here to do work most worthy, I hope, and learn of blood and battle in a victory they can take pride in and learn fearlessness from.”

“Perhaps they should be less concerned with pride and worthiness than winning,” Di Nero mused. “Third Battalion is in full attendance. The first company followed the second of the first battalion, and the rest followed suit. We have two full battalions. I recommend we attack immediately. I know the type employed here. We can take them.”

“Have you come to this dreadful place, Di Nero?” Di Portaltramanto asked suddenly.

File: scene_37_LucedeiDiamanti.jpg (221 KB, 1600x1143)

221 KB JPG

“Those of the blackened name are not permitted,” Di Nero said, “But the Secret Families work the same in all places. They aren’t prepared for the sort of force we bring to bear.” He flashed a glance back. “Have you any knowledge of this place?”

“I mislike your implication, sirrah,” Di Portaltramanto said with a bite of insulted anger, “But, yes, my family knows well this place. And I have heard plenty of the depths this den of vice might vanish into the earth should it break natural laws against such a descent.”

“Then there’s no reason to hesitate in bringing all to bear,” Di Nero said confidently. “Commander. I volunteer to lead an attack straight into this town. The other units can move around the flanks and squeeze out any opposition like crushing the pit from an overripe plum.”

“I believe I would be a better fit for a central effort,” Di Portaltramanto spoke up, “Four companies are better able to encircle this place than three, and we do want to trap everybody within. Who knows what important figures reside here now that are ignorant that they may be seized, and held hostage for all manner of ransom?”

“For my part,” Katona said, “If this is to be a proper raid, we could use force, but they still don’t know we’re here. A single company is subtle enough to find a route right into this place, where we could suddenly attack right in their faces with what we have here. Sometimes it’s better to use a needle than a hammer, you know. We’re the best equipped of the lot, and a company of stormtroopers in the right place is worth ten men in another.”

The unspoken alternative of course was to go about and round up your regiment in full, but that would be losing valuable time- and potentially squandering your chance to exploit the darkness before it faded into morning. It was half past three o’clock in the morning- and the sun would be coming quickly once five took the place of four or three…

>A. Brute Force. Di Nero’s hammer crushes the front while the other elements attack the flanks.
>B. Encirclement. Di Portaltramanto’s attacking force pressures the enemy while the other units cut off the routes of escape.
>C. Finesse. Katona and Von Kalterose’s stormtroopers infiltrate Luce dei Diamanti- and the rest of the present forces exploit that breach to burst apart in the depths of the objective.
>Other?

>>5885546
>>C. Finesse. Katona and Von Kalterose’s stormtroopers infiltrate Luce dei Diamanti- and the rest of the present forces exploit that breach to burst apart in the depths of the objective.

>>5885546
>A. Brute Force. Di Nero’s hammer crushes the front while the other elements attack the flanks.

>>5885546
>C. Finesse. Katona and Von Kalterose’s stormtroopers infiltrate Luce dei Diamanti- and the rest of the present forces exploit that breach to burst apart in the depths of the objective.
Infiltrate their pleasure palace and burst in their depths, or something

>>5885546
>C. Finesse. Katona and Von Kalterose’s stormtroopers infiltrate Luce dei Diamanti- and the rest of the present forces exploit that breach to burst apart in the depths of the objective.

>>5885546
>>B. Encirclement. Di Portaltramanto’s attacking force pressures the enemy while the other units cut off the routes of escape.

>>5885546
>B. Encirclement. Di Portaltramanto’s attacking force pressures the enemy while the other units cut off the routes of escape.

>>5885546
>B. Encirclement. Di Portaltramanto’s attacking force pressures the enemy while the other units cut off the routes of escape.

>>5885546
>B. Encirclement. Di Portaltramanto’s attacking force pressures the enemy while the other units cut off the routes of escape.
Ah a fellow Hearts of Iron IV player eh?

>>5885546
>B. Encirclement. Di Portaltramanto’s attacking force pressures the enemy while the other units cut off the routes of escape.

>>5885546
>B. Encirclement. Di Portaltramanto’s attacking force pressures the enemy while the other units cut off the routes of escape.

What are the chances we run across our favourite di Portaltramanto here?

>>5885546
>>C. Finesse. Katona and Von Kalterose’s stormtroopers infiltrate Luce dei Diamanti- and the rest of the present forces exploit that breach to burst apart in the depths of the objective.
Our stormtroopers couldn't be better suited to this task. They'll have no idea what hit them.

Also I would argue against encirclement because their troops likely have very little motivation to fight and will probably break and run if given the chance, but the one thing that would drive them to bravery would be if they're forced to fight for their lives because we gave them no alternative. That's why Sun Tzu says to always leave your enemy an escape route.

Alright, my internet was down most of today, may as well get this done.

>>5885547
>>5885554
>>5885557
>>5885834
The finesse of a pile of stormtroopers.

>>5885549
Smash.

>>5885563
>>5885575
>>5885638
>>5885646
>>5885698
>>5885804
No Escape.

I'd leave it for a bit to call but there's already been enough unintended delays as is. Writing.

“You have the lead, Maggiore Di Portaltramanto,” you nodded to the now beaming officer while Di Nero scowled, but did not object. “Di Nero, divide around the flanks. Katona, send Von Kalterose to secure the other side of this place to intercept anybody fleeing who’s important. Don’t trap anybody who’s just a worker. We aren’t wasting time on small fry with a maneuver this daring. I want you yourself to start rounding up our stray troops, especially the Black Battalion’s. If the fighting takes a more difficult turn we’ll need them.” You looked back to Di Portaltramanto. “What are the chances your cousin is here, by the way?”

“I should hope he is not, and I doubt he is,” Di Portaltramanto said, “Not because his moral character is inappropriate for it, but rather, his pride. He would seek to exceed this place.”

“I do him a favor tonight then,” you said, “May I never do him another. Move out, and keep your boys under control. There’s loot enough here to take without drinking blood.”

-----

What a curious setting for a first battle this would be, you thought nostalgically as you waited at the edge of the woods and watched from your regimental field post as the men marched forward in an unsubtle line, the time of attack having ticked over on all the pocket watches. For you and your friends, before all had vanished into history save for Leo, it had been Castello Malvagio. For your tankers that had come with you, it had been one of many conflicts that couldn’t be named for their frequency and the blur they merged into in the battles of no man’s land. The men of the Black Regiment, two thirds or so of them, would be blooded as part of a party crashing of all things.

“Major Katona?” you asked the first battalion commander idly, as he observed with you, having dispatched whatever runners he could to round up his scattered companies. “What was your first battle?”

“It wasn’t against Vitelians,” Katona said, “It was in the century before this one. I was a fresh faced Dhegyar boy, seasoned off our games of battle amongst our clans in the Dhegyar Protectorate, ready for the real thing after training. It was up in Felbach, north of Fealinn, and we were told that we were going to strike down a group of terrorist militia, that had shot one of the protectorate governor’s sons. There were militia alright, but plenty more too. The orders were to burn it all. At the end of it, I never wanted to be part of anything like that again, and that’s how I got here, in the end.”

“Do you have reservations about this operation, then?” You asked.

“I’ve been part of worse since,” Katona said, shaking his head, “At least I didn’t do what I was told without thinkin’. I won’t try and put it all in pretty nightwear, make an excuse that they deserve it. Sooner it’s over the better, and we can pretend it never happened on a few acres of hills and forests in the middle of nowhere instead of being banished to war without end.”

“That attitude seems an uncommon sort for your lot,” you said.

“Dhegyar or Forlorn?”

“Both.”

“Plenty of them won’t think of settling down, it’s true.” Katona said, then pointed. “Look, it’s starting.”

Even if your troops were new recruits, they had rifles, and training enough with even the poor single-shot reserve pieces older than they were to be able to attack. The bands did not quiet- and the skies above began to brighten with the flame of fireworks for a celebration unknown, and uncaring of what had just begun. If you weren’t looking at it, you wouldn’t have known there was a battle at all. The attack was so large and coming from so many directions though that even the blind would not be ignorant for long.

“It’s already over,” Katona declared only fifteen minutes after the first shot, “Those are street toughs and hired help who fight people like themselves. They’d never get into anything like this if they could help it. See there by that tower. They’re running for their lives.”

They could run, but there would be no place to escape to. The envelopment had ensured that, and there was no way they might slip out in the wear they had, for all your troops did wear uniforms, if humble ones. Black shrouds over grey shirts and trousers, and square caps. Were it not for their equipment your people might be mistaken for field hands.

The music had finally stopped, as had the fireworks, and you could hear how the fighting continued even if organized resistance had collapsed immediately. Holdouts and renewed motivations of unknown stripe, perhaps the wealthy degenerates realizing what their fate might be, or assuming it was worse. Another hour and a half passed before the shooting seemed to fade, but not stop, and the sky was growing lighter with the sun’s awakening as smoke began to spout into the sky, fires starting and spreading as the pillaging threw itself into full gear.

When you looked at what was happening, though, you didn’t see anything that could be called orderly. The unarmed were being chased around by little bands, troops were carrying out riches broken up and laid in piles, draped in their captured booty and indulging in the food and liquor they had freshly captured. Serving staff and socialites both were being hauled over shoulders or dragged by their wrists and ankles. Trails of chaos snaked about between the buildings like ants, and still there was shooting.

By now, the two missing companies of the Black Battalion had returned- as had Di Portaltramanto’s third company, its own commander incensed to have missed what he saw as the best part of the fighting and best take of the plunder.

It was time for you to command them, as what was going on in Diamanti was assuredly not under your control.

>Let them loose. There was still more to sack, and time to do it. Surely, they had been waiting for such.
>Hold them back- in case something happened that you needed to respond to. Not to worry. All loot would be fairly distributed for their service.
>Take command with Katona and move into town. You had to restore order, for it had surely been lost.
>Other?

>>5886133
>Take command with Katona and move into town. You had to restore order, for it had surely been lost.

>>5886133
>>Take command with Katona and move into town. You had to restore order, for it had surely been lost.

>>5886133
>Take command with Katona and move into town. You had to restore order, for it had surely been lost.

And this, comrades, is why the Revolution has Commissars.

>>5886133
>Take command with Katona and move into town. You had to restore order, for it had surely been lost.

>>5886133
>>Take command with Katona and move into town. You had to restore order, for it had surely been lost.

>>5886133
>Let them loose. There was still more to sack, and time to do it. Surely, they had been waiting for such.

>>5886133
>Let them loose. There was still more to sack, and time to do it. Surely, they had been waiting for such.

>>5886133
>Take command with Katona and move into town. You had to restore order, for it had surely been lost.

>>5886134
>>5886136
>>5886160
>>5886175
>>5886199
>>5886436
However it started, you're ending it.

>>5886224
>>5886413
Bob Page.

Calling it in an hour.

“Major Katona,” you said to the Dhegyar officer, “Assemble your men and make ready to go in and link up with Von Kalterose. We need to restore order. I’ll take Di Portaltramanto’s company and find the others. We’re here to loot the place, not to kill and rape everything inside.” Even if some of the higher ups wouldn’t be displeased at such news at all.

“Understood, Commander,” Katona said, “Through any means necessary?”

“Only if they’re so foolish as to require it. Go.”

The two Black Coat companies marched off- you doubted that the worst of the chaos was perpetrated by the demonstrably disciplined Second Company. Instead, your own sponsored officers had lost control of their units. You couldn’t think to scold them too harshly for such. It was their first time handling units near as large, and if their subordinate leaders were anything like the piece of work you had to deal with in convincing of his mission, then there would need to be a lot of education on how things worked after you were out of here.

The captain of Di Portaltramanto’s third company was young and brash like many of his own people, and readily assumed you were leading them in to partake in the new brand of festivities taking place. He was so shocked at your correction that he near outright refused orders, until your implied threat of taking such insubordination more seriously got him and the rest moving. You might not have been the best liked commander, but your methods made sure nobody tried to test the limits of any sense of kindness. The rest had to be reminded that they were not out of your reach or sight here.

You marched at the head of the company column, but couldn’t do anything yet to stop the rampages when you saw them besides shouting orders for squads to stop, though without your oversight you couldn’t be sure they’d join in. You were just one man- you had to find your people and get them on the job.

Di Portaltramanto you found despondent with a single platoon circling a clump of several dozen panicked civilians, many of them dressed in fancy wear- or fancy wear of a sort that might as well be undressed. You walked right up to the young officer and saluted, which he returned with his own shaky copy.
“Commander,” he said, “I can keep these hostages safe, but my captains and lieutenants have scattered, leaving me with naught but my staff.”

“I’ve brought a company,” you said, “Take command of them and round up your people. Make sure to note anybody who needs disciplinary action taken regarding their behavior. Now move.”

“What of you, Commander?” Di Portaltramanto asked hurriedly, moving beside you.

“That’s not your problem” you said, “Worry about reconstituting your battalion. We don’t have time for this kind of disorder.”

Next, you pulled aside a team of Black Coats that had broken off from Katona’s contingent and had them escort you to where Di Nero had set up a point for assembling the captured property and people. At the foot of one of the great halls, he was prowling about, looking unconcerned though he had only somewhat more people than his fellow battalion commander had- he had returned from elsewhere relatively recently, you’d heard.

“Maggiore Di Nero!” you called to him, “Your battalion is out of control. Reestablish authority and bring them to heel.”

“Immediately, Signore,” the raven haired man said to you, “Though they are not as loosed as you may believe. A certain chaos is unavoidable when searching through every nook and cranny.”

“That chaos is to stop. Whatever reward there is for it is not worth the cost.”

“We disagree on that point.”

“You have your orders, Di Nero.”

Di Nero narrowed his eyes and considered his response, before softly arriving at it. “…I suppose I do.” With that, he departed without a salute and went to directing his staff and whomever else was present.

Things began to calm down, but it was hard going. You saw infighting break out over the more righteous and those who were either drunk on liquor or on the madness of the sack, or both. Fights over loot that hadn’t been claimed yet, women who were nobody’s, by your word, but it would be insisted on from what you saw until you went in directly, your pistol drawn.

Finally, things were quieting down, though the fires had spread and intensified. It was time to leave- though a new round of shooting began from the east. Katona told you more in a hurry.

“A cavalry unit,” he said, relaying from a runner, “Probably no more than a company or two, but they’re harassing our people on the edge of town, and they’ll probably chase us, too.”

Damn them. Even if they couldn’t hope to defeat your unit, they could delay and pick at you. An unanticipated wrinkle- though the best minor officers were never anticipated, were they? “We’re already on our way out. Get everybody moving. I’ll figure out what to do about these horsemen.” They were unlikely to have reinforcements coming, not soon, at least. Enough men to pose a challenge weren’t even anticipated to be able to arrive within the day. Though could you just ignore them?

Especially when many of the men moving out would be weighed down by their plunder and escorting prisoners captured and deemed valuable- including some that, you were told, were not captured prisoners but newly rebellious servants and trafficked exploited, who saw fit to join and aid the cause. Even if near all of these “volunteers” seemed to be women, all rather attractive, as was the wont of those who had employed them here.

>An early opportunity for punishment showed itself. Demand “volunteers” to take up the duty of skirmishing with the enemy dragoons. They’d be your rearguard.
>Assemble a force of your best soldiers to try and catch and destroy your pursuers- even if that was easier said than done. Better a delay there than letting them have any more chance to disrupt your operation.
>Get the troops marching. All that mattered was that you were leaving. Dealing with any pursuers would be a problem left up to whomever they were making problems for- on the march.
>Other?
Also-
>Harshly punish those who had defied your directives- the death penalty was to be avoided, but none would be spared imprisonment, disenfranchisement, the lash.
>Make an example of the worst offenders, but let off the others. Best not to test loyalty by coming down too hard on what most saw as an opportunity to do what they wished.
>Avoid corporal or long-term punishment. The reward and punishment would be the loot seized. Anybody who took more than their fair share, as it were, simply gave up their share of gold. They ought to thank you for being so lenient, considering.
>Other?

>>5886509
>Assemble a force of your best soldiers to try and catch and destroy your pursuers- even if that was easier said than done. Better a delay there than letting them have any more chance to disrupt your operation.
>Harshly punish those who had defied your directives- the death penalty was to be avoided, but none would be spared imprisonment, disenfranchisement, the lash.

>>5886509
>An early opportunity for punishment showed itself. Demand “volunteers” to take up the duty of skirmishing with the enemy dragoons. They’d be your rearguard.
>Other? Send the very worst of the offenders in under-equipped.

>>5886509
Supporting this >>5886513 devilish idea

>>5886509
>An early opportunity for punishment showed itself. Demand “volunteers” to take up the duty of skirmishing with the enemy dragoons. They’d be your rearguard.

>Make an example of the worst offenders, but let off the others. Best not to test loyalty by coming down too hard on what most saw as an opportunity to do what they wished.

Let blocking force duty serve as the main punishment for most of them.

>>5886512
Hit them before they hit you.

>>5886513
>>5886514
>>5886528
Dispense early consequences.

>>5886512
A harsh punishment to be dealt out.

>>5886513
>>5886514
Make the fighting hard for those who need it hardest.

>>5886528
Don't come down hard on everybody.

Calling it in...I don't know, three hours seems fine.

Everybody sick of Gilicia, don't worry it's gonna end soon and we can move on, it's last longer than I thought, but then there was the possibility of this arc not happening at all either.

>>5886509
>>5886528
+1

>>5886509
>Get the troops marching. All that mattered was that you were leaving. Dealing with any pursuers would be a problem left up to whomever they were making problems for- on the march.
>Avoid corporal or long-term punishment. The reward and punishment would be the loot seized. Anybody who took more than their fair share, as it were, simply gave up their share of gold. They ought to thank you for being so lenient, considering.

>>5886583
Another for voluntolding and making examples.

>>5886591
Get everybody going and split up the wealth.

Writing.

>>5886509
>Assemble a force of your best soldiers to try and catch and destroy your pursuers- even if that was easier said than done. Better a delay there than letting them have any more chance to disrupt your operation.

>Avoid corporal or long-term punishment. The reward and punishment would be the loot seized. Anybody who took more than their fair share, as it were, simply gave up their share of gold. They ought to thank you for being so lenient, considering.

Your battalion commanders were assembled once more- and you told them of what was to happen.

“Whatever valuable that isn’t nailed down or on fire, we’re leaving with now,” you said, “A local cavalry contingent is harassing our western forces, and we aren’t staying to entertain what comes after. We aren’t going to let them do what they wish though, either. All of you, go through and round up your drunks, your murderers and your rapists. They’ve volunteered to serve as screens against the horsemen. Two companies worth if that many have offended. Send them out immediately, the rest need the supplies more than they do.” Vindictiveness had crept into your voice, and all your subordinates knew it, as they did not object. You had the moral high ground here. “Any who come back can expect more, but the harder they fight, the more lenient I will be in regards to proper rebuke for their embarrassment of myself and their unit. Find the guilty and make them service proper sacrifice for their weights in stolen flesh. Have us all ready for our parts within the hour, the sun’s already up. Move.”

A line of salutes, and relaying of your commands as you went to survey the prizes taken and the prisoners seized. The guilty had been crafty enough to hide their evidence away from the now quiet paths between buildings, they had not recreated Sella Castella for you, but you knew what would greet you if you searched for it. No need to behold what you were already doling out punishment for.

The rearguard were left to their fight, screening the regiment’s retreat as a train of baubles and boxes and handcarts formed long snaking rivers back towards the river, not one man holding a rifle in hand, save for those who pointed them at prisoners now also made to carry a share for their captors. Some, as described by Di Nero, seemed more sympathetic to you and needed no such motivation. New recruits that your men were already trying to get friendly with. Did they see you as liberators? You wondered if they had the spite or lack of sense to do so, or could believe such when you had the hidden monsters of the regiment sent to keep the fight from spoiling this parade.

The day dragged on, and the skirmishing continued, increased as reinforcements came from other directions, though none of them enough to overwhelm you. Booty caches were set up as troops had to be further detached to deal with enemy probes and flanks, and the initial rearguard, denied supply initially, finally had to be given ammunition when they realized just why they had been “volunteered,” and begged or mercy. It wasn’t as though they would get better treatment from the enemy if they tried to desert to escape their punishment.

Aircraft arrived in the middle of the day, and some tried to make strafing runs but even without machine guns the amount of rifle fire prevented any from daring to draw closer. The troops began to tire, casualties mounted, and while supplies and wounded and killed were still of plenty acceptable rates considering the causes, the troops were rapidly growing exhausted of waiting for the sunset to escape. Many wanted to leave now, damn the consequences of trying to set up the pontoons and boats during daylight.

Yet they managed to hold, and when night fell you took everything and crossed over once again. There was no reason you couldn’t report this as a success to the Gilician Alliance command.

-----

Indeed it was a success, you were told within a few days. The Vitelian high society was in a complete state of consternation. Several of your captives were heirs, celebrities, and precious hostages indeed, while the amount of gold and jewels and goods stolen away made many of your men much richer within the day. As well as yourself- as some goods were donated to you as a courtesy.

The sins of the surviving rearguard were judged by regimental tribunal. They had suffered the most casualties, but their ordeal was not to end yet. They and the others were encouraged to tell the truth and isolate the worst people, who had defied orders to keep death and defilement to a minimum. In the end, only a few people ended up being given lashings, fines and imprisonment. Most of the worst was instead heaped upon the dead. So be it. If the enemy sorted out your worst for you, then no tears would be shed. They had the chance to die in service rather than be killed by their own comrades in executions.

After what would be called the Sack of Diamanti, the war in Gilicia took a drastic shift. Many Vitelian units slated to add their ranks to the occupation and to fighting the Gilician Alliance’s rural possessions instead were wasted in territorial defense. A vain mistake. When the summer came, the garrison of Fons Lacrimea was isolated and depleted enough by redeployments that when the great battle came to force them out of the provincial capital, they were driven forth and out within a month, and the remainder of the war, the Vitelian Royal Army ceased operations completely in the south.

The Black Regiment didn’t see the most glorious parts of these battles, but it saw plenty of service. It became a renowned, and infamous unit. Bonetto’s Black Coats, they called your unit. The Black Knight of Gilicia, the Ravager of Diamond. It was an image you cared incredibly little for- especially when none of the original Imperial battalion called you it anyways.

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A whole year went by, full of steady low scale combat after so much energy was expended in retaking Fons Lacrimea and later putting Duefiume Ponte to siege. A third winter in Gilicia, another Year’s End away from friends and family. Another tally added to your age. Twenty-Nine years old. Almost thirty. Yena would be twenty-six this year. Vittoria would be four years old, soon, and Lorenzo two. It was the tenth of April when the news finally came that would bring this stage of your life to an end- a ceasefire finally declared.

In the terms of peace, several things would happen. The borders of the Gilician Province were released to the new independent sovereignty of Gilicia- Di Zucchampo’s idea that it would be reincorporated with greater autonomy turned out to be wrong, as hardliners towards national independence had subsumed the old guard in the wake of martial successes. The prisoners taken over the years would finally be returned home, most notably the thousands from Mariana’s Hollow. This peace was brokered by the Vilja Domkarl, whom as one of the final parts of negotiations, finally agreed to take up his office in the Holy City, ending his self-imposed exile. Complete amnesty was made to all militants and rebels of all sorts, and Gilicians in general…with exceptions.

There was a list of certain people of interest which, for reasons not made public, were under no circumstances to be allowed into Vitelia. You only found out later, when you dared to think that it would finally be time to go home, only to be delivered a sealed envelope informing you of your new circumstances. You had managed to make some people in very influential places very, very angry. For this reason, it had been agreed behind closed doors, you were one of a rather small group of people who remained a criminal in the eyes of the Kingdom of Vitelia.

Gilicia did not betray you, but you had not thought you would stay here long after all was said and done. Yet Vitelia treated you like one of the Imperials that had been your command. You were an exile, stripped of citizenship and marked for arrest should you ever return to the country of your birth.

The bright spot was, a year after she had parted ways from you, the twentieth of April, Elena sent you the good news you had been waiting for ever since. She had finally, finally found Yena and your children. They had taken a circuitous route, and Elena had to win the trust of multiple mountainfolk communities for them to tell her each leg of the trail, but she had tracked your wife to a Nief’yem settlement far to the northeast in Trelan, too far, it was thought, for any vengeful Vitelians to bother pursuing her to even if they learned where she was.

You stared at the letter, that had also been sent with a letter from Yena as well- which repeated itself and was messily written. I want to be angry with you, it said, but I cannot bring myself to do so. I have been lonely too long to want for anything but to be by your side. She was healthy, safe, as were the children. Vittoria had grown enough, learned enough to always be asking where you were, and when you were coming back. Judge Above. When you left her she had only been speaking her first words.

There was no doubt about it. It was time to bring the family back together again- Elena would bring them to wherever you told her to, and since you were no longer welcome in Vitelia…that meant you had to consider where you wanted to live now, where to begin anew. An important consideration to say the least. It would be where you would be raising your family for the foreseeable future…

Near anywhere would be a completely new start, relatively, but if you ventured to Trelan, saving everybody any trip whatsoever and heading there yourself, Yena would at least already be established. Living amongst mountainfolk in a mountainfolk dominated nation would be a change, but perhaps you needed the peace of the peaks in your life. You’d rather your children grow up Vitelian, but Trelani at least spoke both the tongue of the mountains as well as Vitelian.

It was also possible to stay where you were in Gilicia. Some sacrifices would have to be made in exchange though. For example, Yena would have to be disguised, as would Lorenzo and any other green haired progeny you had. One of Gilicia’s first acts in its new declared laws was to permanently exile any Mountainfolk and Vyemani who remained in the land, which was not many anyways, but such represented a threat even to somebody such as you who so contributed to its independence. Would Yena be happy with living a life where she was made to keep herself secret? Maybe not, but continuing life in Gilicia was at least stable. Said contributions meant you had opportunities to take here, to make up for having fallen off the ladder in the Vitelian Royal Army. A far easier thing than completely starting from scratch anywhere else, though Gilicia’s culture was one of quite a religious bent, and that would undoubtedly influence your children growing up there.

Then, there was an idle offer made by some of your black coat comrades. They weren’t going to stay in Gilicia- they were going to depart, to the one place they could continue their fighting and transient lives the way they had grown accustomed to, and didn’t want to change over for peace. Sosaldt, the wastelands to the west that had been a cauldron of anarchy since the days of the first Kaiser. Warriors and mercenaries were always in demand, and could always find their way to wealth and fame, even if it was to be amongst rogues and thieves. Sometimes, mercenary lords could even find their way into the favor of great nations again. A place where anybody could dig their way up from any hole, even if they were diving into a deep one to go to Sosaldt in the first place. If you accompanied the Black Coats, though, they were happy to call you their leader once more, and you wouldn’t be going naked and unarmed, but as proper well-armed mercenaries from the start. Maybe not the most stable option- but it was what you knew and knew well, and would present opportunity you might not have otherwise.

Besides that, the world was a huge place, and while Vitelia had branded you a war criminal, no other place had. If you set your mind to it, you could go anywhere on the continent…

>Go to Trelan. It wasn’t so bad there, you heard- and a quiet life in the mountains might be a good return to a rural life long missed, even if your children would be raised like Mountainfolk.
>Remain in Gilicia. Even if you didn’t fit in with its culture or the general sentiments of its people, it was a niche you carved out a place for yourself in. Besides, you’d like seeing Yena in another hair color, anyways.
>Venture to Sosaldt. A dangerous wasteland might not be what most think of as a suitable place to raise a family, but so long as you remained strong and employed by powerful patrons, how deadly could it be? And how great the rewards for your hard fought experience?
>Another place? (Must be on the continent, nobody sane is going overseas)
Also-
>Plan anything for your reunion?

>>5886940
>Go to Trelan. It wasn’t so bad there, you heard- and a quiet life in the mountains might be a good return to a rural life long missed, even if your children would be raised like Mountainfolk.
Yeah, this whole misadventure was a mistake.

>>5886940
>Go to Trelan. It wasn’t so bad there, you heard- and a quiet life in the mountains might be a good return to a rural life long missed, even if your children would be raised like Mountainfolk.

Close enough to Vitelia that we can keep abreast of domestic developments, plus at least they speak the language.

>>5886940
>Venture to Sosaldt. A dangerous wasteland might not be what most think of as a suitable place to raise a family, but so long as you remained strong and employed by powerful patrons, how deadly could it be? And how great the rewards for your hard fought experience?

>>5886940
How long is the time skip for this part? Until Bonetto returns to Vitelia?
Kind of relevant when considering choices on where to go.

>>5886951
>How long is the time skip for this part? Until Bonetto returns to Vitelia?
I wouldn't say any skip would be straight from this vote to Vitelia, but yes, barring some rather large decision while in this next arc, it's where you'll be staying for at least a decade and a half or so.

>>5886940

>Go to Trelan. It wasn’t so bad there, you heard- and a quiet life in the mountains might be a good return to a rural life long missed, even if your children would be raised like Mountainfolk.

We did tell Chiara we wanted to go back to farming for a bit.

>>5886940
>Venture to Sosaldt. A dangerous wasteland might not be what most think of as a suitable place to raise a family, but so long as you remained strong and employed by powerful patrons, how deadly could it be? And how great the rewards for your hard fought experience?
My rational brain says Trelan, but my sovl.. It yearns for the dust and it's grimey charms

>>5886940
>Venture to Sosaldt. A dangerous wasteland might not be what most think of as a suitable place to raise a family, but so long as you remained strong and employed by powerful patrons, how deadly could it be? And how great the rewards for your hard fought experience?

>>5886940
>Go to Trelan. It wasn’t so bad there, you heard- and a quiet life in the mountains might be a good return to a rural life long missed, even if your children would be raised like Mountainfolk.

>>5886940
>Go to Trelan. It wasn’t so bad there, you heard- and a quiet life in the mountains might be a good return to a rural life long missed, even if your children would be raised like Mountainfolk.
Though i'd love to see Yena's alt-hair color sprite it ain't worth surpestision of the idiot. Fuck Sosaldt, all my homies hate Sosaldt.
>The Black coats can send us a letter or something. We have other stuff to take care of and they'll probably be ok without us ||They won't||
and plan something...
>The best apology we could make knowing Yena and idk read up on child rearing. We have a lot of work ahead of us.

>>5886940
>Go to Trelan. It wasn’t so bad there, you heard- and a quiet life in the mountains might be a good return to a rural life long missed, even if your children would be raised like Mountainfolk.

>>5886940
>Go to Trelan. It wasn’t so bad there, you heard- and a quiet life in the mountains might be a good return to a rural life long missed, even if your children would be raised like Mountainfolk.

Happy wife, happy life. This revolutionary things hardly seems worth it…rwptdg

>>5886940
>Another place? (Must be on the continent, nobody sane is going overseas)
Naukland

>Plan anything for your reunion?
Giving your wife the D.

>>5886940
>Remain in Gilicia. Even if you didn’t fit in with its culture or the general sentiments of its people, it was a niche you carved out a place for yourself in. Besides, you’d like seeing Yena in another hair color, anyways.

>>5886940
>Remain in Gilicia. Even if you didn’t fit in with its culture or the general sentiments of its people, it was a niche you carved out a place for yourself in. Besides, you’d like seeing Yena in another hair color, anyways.
I don't particularly like the place but a different haired Yena sounds interesting.

>>5886941
>>5886944
>>5886984
>>5887057
>>5887072
>>5887160
>>5887197
East, to greener pastures. And greener people in general.

>>5886945
>>5887009
>>5887041
To the wastes.

>>5887210
Go north.

>>5887219
>>5887236
Stay in the hills.

Calling it in two hours.

>>5886940
>>Venture to Sosaldt. A dangerous wasteland might not be what most think of as a suitable place to raise a family, but so long as you remained strong and employed by powerful patrons, how deadly could it be? And how great the rewards for your hard fought experience?
Going to Trelan and living a quiet life among mountainfolk won't put us any closer to the revolution. We need to become more powerful. Sure Sosaldt will be hard on our family but so is everything else we've done so far. This is just one more necessary sacrifice for the greater cause.

>>5887369
One more for the wastes.

To Trelan you go then. Writing. Though I'm not sure if it's to see new shores or to settle down or both.

>>5887440

Side note- did our (Vitelian) subordinates and the Comte receive pardons, or are they also on the blacklist?

>>5887450
Your own did- Di Zucchampo did not. Mostly a matter of name recognition when it came to such. Nobody had a seething hatred of the turning of Luigi, for example.

Gilicia owed you a few favors for your service, and you cashed them in. With little more than a haversack full of your clothing and personal possessions and an envelope stuffed with money, you left the new country behind with the courtesy of farewells to your comrades, but staying no longer than that. The Gilician Alliance officials, now forming the fledgling government, had arranged to send you through Holherezh, to Trelan, the northwest neighbor itself showing some gratitude for the continued distraction against Fealinn, who was prosecuting its own border conflict.
From one backwater state to another then to Trelan, though what you knew of Trelan implied it wasn’t a bad place, just a rather unimportant one, tucked up in a cradle of mountains on the edge of the world. An inoffensive democratic republic from the days of the First and Seconds Empires, much like Kallec and Paelli. For now, it was content to remain in the bowl the mountains around it formed, though you had heard it economically supported Kallec, a notoriously militant state.

A journey over the mountains that made up Gilicia’s northern border would have taken days, but a courier aircraft was set aside for your use. You watched the mountains slowly pass by below, mystified by just how giant they were even from high above. Part of you wanted to walk across them anyways, to return to Monte Nocca, in a way, but you had little doubt that you’d get your share of mountain habitation soon anyways.

You landed in Holherezh, not on an airstrip, but merely a cleared patch of meadow near a patrol base. Holherezhans were an unfriendly and prickly sort by nature, naturally combative plains people, many whose way of life hadn’t much changed since the days of old Vitelia when it encompassed them. So there was no railway to get on, but a carriage presented out of courtesy, which would take the trip to the Trelani border and no further.

An uneventful trip, as you kept to yourself just as your guides would like you to, and indulged yourself in your own writings. Without a proper library and study you could only do so much, but it had been a long time since you had been left to focus solely upon your idea of Utopianism. These days, such thought felt further away than every, though. Like you were giving the subject thought out of obligation rather than motivation.

A couple days later, marked more by revelations that Holherehan cuisine was a mix between bland and unreasonably hot rather than any ideological sparks, the river border that separated Trelan from Holherezh was arrived at, and yourself deposited at a small town. There was no bridge, though there was a ferry, a sign of how few people regularly crossed from one side to the other. Despite being right on the border, you still saw no green-hairs, merely the dusty browns and black heads of northerners of a different sort than Hill Vitelians. Pohja, you had heard the ethnicity called, an ancient people of vague and unclear origin on this continent rather than being Nauk descended like most of the north, though Pohjanask was a rather buried idea last you’d been near a discussion involving these northwest territories. The buildings were like in Holherezh as well, squat and wide with long sloping roofs, apparently built that way to let the winds roll over them. It did howl rather loud sometimes on your way here- was it a practical design, or superstition since a Great Gale raged just over the sea from Holherezh?

You didn’t stay long enough in the town to even learn its name well enough to remember it. Only long enough to try and pay a boatman to take you over- but he did it for free, only wanting to know why a “straw head” would be here crossing a river.

“I’m going to find my wife so I can live with her and my children again,” you said.

The conversation continued in the boat, a small thing fit for only three or four people, with a motor, but it went unused. “Your wife and kids, eh?” The middle-aged bearded boatman asked, his Vitelian harsh and tinged with accent of something you hadn’t heard before. “You marry a mosshead, if she’s livin’ in Trelan?”

“We were both born in Vitelia,” you said as the boat swayed in a lazy current, “But yes, she is one of the Mountainfolk.”

“Y’know the name they prefer?”

“Nief’yem, yes.”

“That’s what they want t’ be called in Trelan. Little advice.”

“I see.”

The boat went slightly off course, and the boatman let a oar stay to turn his craft slightly. “It’s a long way to Vitelia from here, unless y’ grow wings and fly.”

“I did take an aircraft over the mountains.”

“Did you/ You must be important.”

“Not really. I just did a lot of people a favor.”

The boatman gave you a humored grin. “Ain’t you wrapped up in mysteries. You really planning to stay there? Trelan’s not Vitelia.”

You breathed in and let out a great sigh. “No, it isn’t. But I can’t go back. I have enemies that banished me specifically from there. I’ll consider it a polite way of them saying if I tried to go back they’d kill me.”

“If every straw head that comes up here’s this interesting, I’ll not have any pennies for bread.”

“I’m not destitute,” you said, “If you want your pennies I have them.”

“Heh,” the bearded man shook his head, “Naw, the Judge hates a man who offers charity then takes it back, y’know.”

There simply wasn’t enough time for you to tell your story in anything but greatly abbreviated form, but the boatman seemed happy enough when he let you off and you wished each other good fortune before you went on your way.

On the other side of the river, you stocked up on necessary goods and learned a little more of the town by happenstance. Apparently, it wasn’t uncommon for barges to go up and down this river. While much of rural Holherezh didn’t offer much, the river formed the joint of three nations, and no matter how they felt about one another such was an inevitable meeting place. You asked where to find a rail line to the country’s heart, since you had to get to its central mountains. Two days of walking on foot, apparently, though there were villages along the way, and then there would be one small rail line, then another that went to Trelan’s capital of Pietranello. You really were out in the sticks, but there was nothing to do about it but soldier on. The rolling foothills were hardly a hard march, and in the spring, you couldn’t complain about the climate, not the view of the mountains wherever you looked. Only that you had to walk this lonely road by yourself.

-----

Perhaps you were spoiled by the modernity of Lapizlazulli and the efforts of King Lucius the Fourth to modernize Vitelia’s infrastructure, but traveling through Trelan, even once you reached the rails, felt like taking steps back through time. Not in a way that was dirty, though. The people had a dignity to them, like they knew what was coming and were merely waiting patiently for it. Even Pietranello, when you laid eyes on it, was more impressive for its site than for the city itself, as it didn’t compare to Donom Dei or Lapizalazulli in sheer size and density. Somebody had big plans for it, though- your train had to stop at the outskirts because too much traffic was going in to accommodate a little passenger train, and even from afar you could see much scaffolding and construction engines that might be more modern than the thing you rode in on.

Pietranello wasn’t your destination, though. It would have to be a city your family would travel to on occasion, since it did pique curiosity, a relief that there was something you could call an actual city in this country. Where you were actually going was a mountain town called Khuf Shumym, though you doubted anybody could tell you exactly where it was until you got close- in an adjacent mountain bowl where another city called Pietrecirchio lay. The same city twice over, were it not that one was the capital, though they were closely linked enough that a highway with passenger trolleys connected them both. It was on one of these trams that you struck up a conversation with the locals, who spoke in a mix of heavily accented Vitelian and Mountainfolk tongue- it was here that people actually looked how you’d expect, as near a third wore an emerald hue of green upon their heads.

“You there,” a young man addressed you, “You new in town?” Your blonde hair made you stick out amongst the group where you were the only shade lighter than the greens.

“I am,” you said. “On my way to the mountains. My wife and children are there.”

“They from here?” Another young man, with muddy brown hair asked. Neither of the boys could have been above twenty.

“She is a Nief’yem,” you gave a half-answer.

“Lucky. Are you going to become a citizen?”

“I suppose I’d have to,” you said.

“The government’s put through an act a year ago,” the first youth said, “They want people to start having big families. They’ll subsidize it, but they only want immigrants of Nief’yem heritage. If your wife’s a Nief’yem, then you should get in on that deal.”

Nice of the local authorities to give their blessing on something you were planning on doing anyways. You’d suggest that the young men get on it too, but you weren’t sure if they were too young for you to speak so brazenly, even if they did such to you. “The government has big plans in store then? If they wanted more people, perhaps they should extend the same offer to other immigrants?”

“And bring in more mesh? Nah, nobody wants that.”

“Mesh?” You asked.

“Mesharet,” the green hair boy specified, “The kind of people that live in Holherezh, and that hang around the lowlands here. Already enough of them, and imagine, what if a bunch of Paellans thought they could come up here? Nasty squinties jamming up the streets, I don’t want to think about it.”

“That’s right,” the brown hair boy said, “A bunch of nice people, nice girls, came around because of what happened in Gilicia. Let’s have more of that, not Dhegyar half-horses and yellow men blowing in on the Iceforth.”

“The Kalleans can keep their girls that stink of the stables. Maybe they’d like a donkey faced guy like Nate?”

You didn’t join in on the new game they were playing, but you were well educated on certain opinions and moods. You were from too far away, too different to be more than a curiosity, and the Trelani were happy to keep everybody unlike them far away. What you might have expected from mountainfolk really, though if these boys were any indication, the mountainfolk that lived in cities like this were a far cry from the more mystical traditional ones like you were married to, and even Yena had said that her clan and town weren’t even particularly old fashioned. Was Trelan rushing so fast into the future that it was leaving all else behind? Maybe your expectations of what your new home would be like were off…

Surprisingly, once you asked at the city hall in Pietrecirchio about it, you learned that Khuf Shumym wasn’t very far at all, relatively. A day’s march through the mountains, but the trip was abbreviated by a new pulley lift that attempted to link the townships of the mountains back to the center of the country. What an uncharacteristic innovation- but you were happy to take advantage of it, and after getting the route of what villages and paths to take, you went straight to the cable car, which was busier than you expected with full loads going up near on the hour.

Once again, your appearance was a subject of conversation, though when you told of why you were here, a local noticed something more.

“Say,” an elder man whose hair was flecked with grey said, overhearing the talk you were engaged in, “There was another blonde, a girl, who came up this way some time back. Said she was looking for a Nief’yem with a blonde daughter.”

“I sent a friend to look for my wife and daughter,” you said, “I doubt anybody else came this way looking for anything similar, but her name is Elena.” Just in case.

The man nodded. “Elena was her name, yes. But what takes you all up here?”

You were going to get quite good at telling this story, weren’t you? Though perhaps you could cut out certain details…maybe embellish some others.

>Make the story you repeat that of a humble traveler. Of course your wife came here, she was Nief’yem, and what was a husband to do but follow? You were an explorer, a sightseer, and everything that came before could remain romantic mystery.
>The vague truth that you were a soldier, a mercenary and freedom fighter, though without saying for who. After all, it was what you knew, and Trelan was no different from any other place from having a military that you might find a place being employed in aiding.
>What did you have to hide? If there was any limits to the tale of your past, it was how long it would take to tell. If you were going to live here, then there was no reason to have any doubts to who you were.
>Other?

>>5887841

>The vague truth that you were a soldier, a mercenary and freedom fighter, though without saying for who. After all, it was what you knew, and Trelan was no different from any other place from having a military that you might find a place being employed in aiding.

Wonder how the Trelani? Trelanese? military shapes up. Likely not that impressive but hey it's honest work and a proper state at least.

Also I'm presuming mountainfolk are the largest ethnic group in Trelan, but do they form a majority of the population, or just a plurality?

>>5887841
>Make the story you repeat that of a humble traveler. Of course your wife came here, she was Nief’yem, and what was a husband to do but follow? You were an explorer, a sightseer, and everything that came before could remain romantic mystery.
If and when we want to be employed by the army, we can tell them.

>>5887841
>The vague truth that you were a soldier, a mercenary and freedom fighter, though without saying for who. After all, it was what you knew, and Trelan was no different from any other place from having a military that you might find a place being employed in aiding.

>>5887841
>The vague truth that you were a soldier, a mercenary and freedom fighter, though without saying for who. After all, it was what you knew, and Trelan was no different from any other place from having a military that you might find a place being employed in aiding

>>5887841
>What did you have to hide? If there was any limits to the tale of your past, it was how long it would take to tell. If you were going to live here, then there was no reason to have any doubts to who you were.

>>5887859
>Also I'm presuming mountainfolk are the largest ethnic group in Trelan, but do they form a majority of the population, or just a plurality?
They're a rather slim majority- just a hair over three fiffths proportion of the population, but mind you, the way Nief'yem bloodline rules work a large portion of that, purists would consider half or quarter. So they haven't actually been a majority for all that long.

>>5887841
>>What did you have to hide? If there was any limits to the tale of your past, it was how long it would take to tell. If you were going to live here, then there was no reason to have any doubts to who you were.

>>5887992
Gotcha, better get to work on making that baseball team for Yena then.

(Come to think of it, what sports are popular on Vinstraga? Is there any kind of Olympics equivalent?)

>>5887859
>>5887935
>>5887971
Ronin sounds cooler than vagabondo.

>>5887867
A simple fellow traveler.

>>5887983
>>5887994
All you have is on the table as is.

Calling it in a couple hours.

>>5888021
>Come to think of it, what sports are popular on Vinstraga? Is there any kind of Olympics equivalent?
The globe isn't interconnected enough to have something like the Olympics, though there are regional contests, when things aren't in a hot state. As far as team sports go, in Vitelia, Sea Vitelians and people on the coasts in general like Dive Ball, which could be called contact sport Water Polo but you can only travel with the ball underwater. Sea Vitelians would be fascinated by certain fantastical concepts of spherical floating water arenas that are played by materialized tulpas. Football might not exactly be a shocking twist, but there's a universality to kicking a ball with certain restrictions- though unusually, the wrinkle about not being allowed to pick up the ball is theorized to come from Dive Ball's restriction on throwing the ball through the air. Considering that a football/handball is leather and a Dive Ball is traditionally a two-fists sized sphere of solid lead, this is either quite a logical stretch or an overzealous precaution against the sort of injuries a small cannonball might give.

>>5887841
>>5887935
Changing my vote to
>>What did you have to hide? If there was any limits to the tale of your past, it was how long it would take to tell. If you were going to live here, then there was no reason to have any doubts to who you were.

>>5887841
>The vague truth that you were a soldier, a mercenary and freedom fighter, though without saying for who. After all, it was what you knew, and Trelan was no different from any other place from having a military that you might find a place being employed in aiding.

>>5888127
No hide.

>>5888239
I trooper.

Updating.

>>5888253
Wait what option actually won, since it's still tied?

File: limbo.jpg (41 KB, 600x800)

41 KB JPG

>>5888888
Oh.
Uh, huh.
You know what, whoever breaks it next, we'll go that way instead of a coin flip, or I'll flip in an hour. I didn't actually notice how it went.

>>5887841
>The vague truth that you were a soldier, a mercenary and freedom fighter, though without saying for who. After all, it was what you knew, and Trelan was no different from any other place from having a military that you might find a place being employed in aiding.

>>5888888 (nice quads)
>>5889019
Now it's tied because of >>5889022
But it wasn't before, since I changed my vote.

>>5887859
>>5887971
>>5888239
>>5889022
Vague truth

>>5887983
>>5887994
>>5888127
Full truth.

>>5887867
Simple traveler.

>>5889031
My mistake, I tallied it wrong.

Soon?

>>5889982
Yeah, yesterday I just couldn't get it out, I'm just piecing together what I've got now.
Probably not soon, but it's coming.

Okay, now it'll be soon.
I've just been half dead for most of the past two days so I couldn't do anything that required creative thought whatsoever, it seems.

You considered telling everything- but decided that the whole truth was unnecessary to identify the new Bonetto here. It could come out for those who could be trusted with such a story, not the entire world. Somehow, you thought that Gilician sympathies weren’t particularly reputable here, even a whole country and mountain range away from the Vitelian breakaway.

A sense of mystery was cultivated amongst those you spoke with in the cable car. You in turn didn’t find out much about them, but from how they looked and what other things were brought on, you surmised that plenty of the people going up and down were doing work in the mountains themselves, perhaps integrating the communities more deeply, maybe improving roads, or perhaps probing for minerals to find. Whatever their reasons for going back and forth, the reputation for mountainfolk villages to keep isolated from the affairs of the outside didn’t seem so strong here.

Where you were going was a town called Travaglio, and even though it was built in the squat styles of old, it was new. The buildings were all grey and white striped stone from near and were one with the peak they were built from and upon with roofs of dark thatch. Fences that trailed the edges of the cliffs streamed with dry flowers and colored paper, and the wind was sweet from them, its song whistling where the sound of the cable car’s machinery did not grind. A place for several hundred people at least, roads arranged like steps with stairs and steep ramps going between them. Something large was being constructed in a canyon cut into the stone on one side of Travaglio, but you were in no mind or motivation to linger and explore, so you carried on after learning the way and buying a loaf of dark bread and a lump of pork lard.

The surprises continued as you arrived at the cable car station and saw a dispatch for cargo bicycles, for moving things as far as the other side of the range, for a deposit. When you continued on the paths beyond the quite well appointed and far from austere town, they had been carved and furnished anew to be far less winding and thin than you expected. Serious work was being done up here, and it raised hopes that the new surroundings you’d find yourself in wouldn’t be lesser than those you had grown up in. Signs constantly advised along the way, however, to not take certain paths in foggy conditions due to wildlife activity. Modernity couldn’t conquer everywhere yet.

By the time you reached Khuf Shumym, the sun was going down and the sky was reddish orange, the mountains dyed with a deepening purple. Here, you’d find your family, or at the very least Elena who might guide you further. It resembled Travaglio outwardly in style, though the wear upon the stones told of the town’s antiquity, and as it resided in the saddle of two peaks, there were no cliffs to be seen and to fear tumbling from.

Thankfully, the search didn’t take long- you saw the object of your search almost as soon as you passed the sign that marked the entrance to the town.

Right by the old wooden gates to the village, little blonde girl was playing with a beetle on a string, dazzled by how it flew in a circle above her. It would have been an ordinary sight for a near four-year-old girl if you knew who it was just by how there wouldn’t be a single other blonde human in this place.

She noticed you approach, and her mouth opened wide when her gaze reached your head. “Ah you my daddy?” She asked in a loud, discordant demand.

You were halted by that obvious question- when you left her, she couldn’t string words together, but did she still remember who you were?

She didn’t wait for your answer as she forgot all about the beetle and let it go, trailing a string as it flew away. “Mommy! Mommy!” She cried as she ran across the dirt path in a stumbling child’s trot, “Daddy’s hee, Daddy’s hee!”

File: scene_38_reunionintrelan.jpg (375 KB, 750x1000)

375 KB JPG

You followed her at a fast walk- of course she wouldn’t be left out of watch, and indeed, over near a signpost and stone shrine lamp, you saw her. Finally, after a lonesome two years, you had your Yena again, holding Lorenzo against her shoulder. Her hair had grown even longer, and was held up in two braids, but when you called out to her, she stared blankly, like she wasn’t sure if you were real.

“He’s heee, he’s hee!” Vittoria continued shrieking and laughing as she tugged on her mother’s skirt and pointed, “Daddy’s hee!” She then charged straight at you, and you barely knelt down in time before she jumped for you and you caught her and brought her to your chest, holding her in the crook of one arm as you went towards Yena.

“You’ve gotten big, haven’t you?” You poked Vittoria’s cheek.

“I’m big, I’m big!”

Yena said nothing, but looked downcast as you tilted her chin up with a finger and kissed her on her lips. There was a moment of silence, as you let her go and brushed your nose against hers, put your arm around her.

“Why mommy sad?” Vittoria asked that rather impolitely, but she wasn’t even quite four yet.

“I’m sorry, dearest,” you said to Yena, “I truly am. But I didn’t know what I was getting into. What I’d be giving up. What I’d have to make you do. But I’m here now.”

Yena still said nothing for a few moments. “Palmiro…” she said quietly, “I’m happy to see you again, but I’m angry, too. Confused. Relieved. It’s all so much. Be patient with me, please.” Her voice was strained and stilted, uncertain right to its vowels.

“You’ve been patient enough with me,” you said, “Where do you live? You should sit down.”

“This way,” Yena turned, “Vittoria, do you know the way home?”

“Yeah I do!”

“Point the way for daddy, then, sweetheart,” you said to her.

The place was what one could expect for the charity of a town for a mother of two. Yes, Yena had been sent off with the sum total of your finances, but you also knew she was extremely frugal when given the choice, not that you were going to pester her yet on the state of finances. A simple hut with three rooms, two interconnected. An extremely humble abode made for only one person at best, but a roof over the head and a brick oven in its center nevertheless. A cradle and a small, squat bed were in the main room- the bedroom itself was quite small, only accommodating a wall sconce with a candle, a small table and dresser, and a bedroll. Apparently this wasn’t actually the poorest situation to be in, as children usually slept around and minded the oven in the main room- the eldest child being the hearth watcher.

Suffice it to say, you could improve on this living situation quite a bit, and you told Yena as much of your intent. She didn’t respond with more than “Mm.”

After a minute of looking around, Yena coughed, and said, “…You must be hungry. Wait here with the children, I’ll get something.”

“We can go together,” You offered, but Yena held her hand up.

“It won’t be long.”

She took Lorenzo with her, and left Vittoria with you, who immediately bombarded you with questions she couldn’t possibly understand the answers to, so you got practice in the sort of vague answers that satisfied very small children. Where were you? Far away. Why were you far away? Work. What do you do for work?

Well, that one could wait. You told her that your work was fighting, and she said that Elder Tzono said that fighting was bad.

Yena came back with a string of foodstuff, roasted legs from some bird, and various vegetables like long onions and roots that had been blackened and caramelized in the same stuff as the meat. The whole spread was laid out on wooden dishes on top of the oven in the center of the house- then all of that transferred to a sheet on the floor, which was where you would dine in lieu of a table.

“What is this?” you asked as she handed you one of the legs off the central wood platter.

“Rock Pheasant,” Yena said flatly, “I gave another family the glaze and marinade. I don’t feel like doing cooking tonight.” An absolute irregularity. Back in Lapizlazulli she had to be convinced not to cook sometimes.

“I want buttah bisky,” Vittoria chirped.

“No butter biscuits until you eat your turnips,” Yena said in well-practiced sternness.

“Tuhnips ah gwoss,” Vittoria whined. “Lowo don’t eat tuhnips.”

You didn’t see the problem- you ate everything greedily- and Vittoria might have been a bit craftier than you thought as Yena scolded her.
“Palmiro, don’t eat Vittoria’s turnips for her.”

You looked down to your plate and noticed that the little scamp had piled hers right next to yours, and her portion was gone- definitely not because she had eaten them.