Chiara sighed, and sipped rom her espresso, piled high with whipped cream and a syrup laden cherry. “I wonder. I’m envious of that, too. Marriage. Twins. But I know not if I would have traded that away for what I sought originally.”

You had not touched your own serving of drink. “Either would be more what you deserved than what happened to you.”

“Deserve?” Chiara echoed, “The Saints tell us we all get what we deserve, in the end. Maybe I was saved from sin, in a way. I left behind my conflict, my squabbles, everything went to the people I loved. Beyond, I await a kind judgment. You all have much more to worry about than I.”

Suddenly, you became aware of a chill to your other side. A strange coldness from the left snapped your head to see what happened, and a figure in a dark cloak like that of Gilician irregulars was beside you. Under its hood was a face like an iron mask, still and cool. When the phantom looked at you, its mouth did not move from its rigid set mask. Instead, it seemed as though a chorus of voices came from above, from beyond the material.

”If only your faith and goodness were greater, then you would not have suffered so justly.

“Who…” You got up from your seat and left in a panic, but when you regained your senses and looked back, both Chiara and the hooded creature had been replaced by other shades.

Unnerved but still eager to spend time in this mystical café, you went to the second floor and found a dear lost one looking over the glittering seas.

“Cesare,” you announced yourself to him and spread your arms for an embrace, which was readily accepted in turn. He wore the same garb as most of your friends who had been in the army, the familiar old dark green and red trim. “But you are not dead, I hope.”

“I hope so too,” Cesare said, “After all, you aren’t, are you?”

“I’ve done my best not to be.”

A moment of silence as you let one another go and looked over the sea.

“Not as lovely as home, is it?” Cesare asked, “Though I can see where the talk of Emrean haughtiness comes from. Perhaps we lack enough of it ourselves.”

“I’m sorry, you know,” you said, “That I couldn’t save you. Especially when you never seemed the type for…the war. But you came along anyways.”

“I fought anyways, didn’t I?” Cesare replied, “What was that you told your daughter? Sometimes, people need to be hit, and there’s no other way to deal with the problem? Sometimes, there isn’t a choice but to fight. Not if you want something more than somebody else doesn’t want it. Whether or not it’s in your nature, Bonetto. If you give up just because you have a limp…well, I haven’t yet, don’t you think?

You opened your mouth to voice agreement, when suddenly, a hand gripped your shoulder and whirled you about. A terrifying, figure whose face was wrapped in tattered red stared at you with wrathful eyes, broad shouldered and towering. This phantom shouted, it raged in a furious cry above all other noise, though none seemed to hear but yourself.

”Purge from yourself your feeble fear of blood, and the future can finally be grasped!”

It shoved you backwards, and as you bent back over the railing, you assumed a posture to fight, but when you sprang back up, it was, like the other strange figure from before, gone. Vanished into the air, as was Cesare.

Well and truly perturbed, you went downstairs, where you found Yena, garbed in her sundress and a light coat, smiling broadly, though your children were not here with her.

“Dearest,” you wrapped your arms around her, “What are you doing here? This isn’t a place for you…you are beside me in my bed, at my side for truth and not in imagining.”

“Where did I shy away from being with your friends?” She asked, “They were my friends too.” This Yena was a construct. A convincing fabrication, but false nevertheless, made by your mind like every other reassurance and comforting sight and sound here. “I have lost as much as you, but gained so much as well. As much as you have.”

“I have few blessings the like of you,” you said to her, tracing a hand across her shoulders, her neck.

“Then why come here and think I don’t belong?” Yena asked, her mood turning dim, and you drew back to see her frowning. “It’s hard, Palmiro. To always have to follow and never know where you venture until you stop.”

You searched for what to say in response, but a figure faded from smoke in front of you, beyond your wife. It was masked like an actor of an old theatre- or rather, an approximation of one, gold and silver and still of face, draped in robes of swirling black and white. From this phantom came a voice like a whisper, that should not have been heard in the noise but was perfectly clear anyways, like the drip of rain off a stone into a clear pool.

”Imagine if you were more free of spirit…you would not be so lost.”

Yena vanished from your arms, as did the phantom- and the scene you now found yourself in was one of faceless strangers. There was nothing to do now but leave…and hope for the waking world.

Your wife was once again material when you awoke, of course, held tightly against you. Vague advice from those formless shades. Why they appeared so in a dream where everything felt so clear and real otherwise, you could not say.

-----

The world had changed much as of late, in the year of 1920. The turn of a new decade, and with it, a world not yet satisfied with the turmoil it had already endured.

There was much to speak of. Much to recognize in proper order. But on June the Eleventh of the previous year, 1919, a very important event occurred to close out the eventful decade. The result of mischief on the beach, earlier than you intended to resume the growth of your family…but hardly unwelcome.

>Roll 3 sets of 1d100. Again, if any are 100, roll another set.

Rolled 60 (1d100)

>>5944966
>Finale
Bold move, cotton.

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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/
Prologue Part 4: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2024/5879252/

Twitter for announcements and shitposts is @scheissfunker

Easy one to get out of the way first. Unsure if you want to name the new spawn yet or leave it to your wife again; I guess we'll see depending on how the rolls go.

Speaking of your wife- the back aspect of the Atom Suit, Small- or, I suppose in Emrean, the rather repetitive "L'Atome Petit."

Rolled 78 (1d100)

>>5944966
Prologue? Oh no.

Rolled 55 (1d100)

>>5944966
Let's go for another nat 100!

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Rolled 64 (1d100)

>>5944966
>Finale
Ok yeah sure for real. snrk

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>>5944967
>>5944972
>>5944973
Alas, no hundreds.
Yena is thirty one years old in 1919. Tick Tock.
Mosshead Daughter

>>5944974
If nothing else I will find a way to make more numbers before one.

This was way too late for Valentines Day, but it was at least a request, was it not?

>>5944976
>Mosshead Daughter
Can you give us a quick list of all Palmiro and Yena's kids and their ages right about now? There's a lot to keep track of now.

File: yatfull.gif (2.05 MB, 500x500)

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>>5944981
Sure.
Vittoria Antonia Bonaventura - g. Saint Emelida
Birthday- May 18, 1910
Lorenzo Cesare Bonaventura- g. Saint Augustus
Birthday- June 4, 1912
Luigi Stefano Bonaventura- g. Saint Morginn
Birthday- May 10, 1915
Ydela Yena Bonaventura- g. Saint Nevosa
Birthday- July 18, 1917
Yet to be Named- June 11, 1919

As it will be August 1st of 1920 coming up in this update and vote, Vittoria will be ten years old, Lorenzo will be eight, Luigi will be five, and Ydela will be three.

Picture unrelated but posting it for those who haven't seen it where it'd have been posted before.

>>5944997
Is Vittoria still Palmiro's only blonde child?

>>5945001
Ydela is blonde, though not in a normal, healthy way. Far whiter and paler than you or Vittoria's straw hue.

>>5944997
When do they get conscripted

>>5944997
How old are Leo's twins again?

I have no more spare pictures.
>>5945005
>When do they get conscripted?
Don't worry about that.
>>5945015
>How old are Leo's twins again?
They were born on November 12 of 1913, so, six going on seven.

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Another daughter- a green haired girl, the picture of her mother. A first for you and Yena, as all your other children seemed to be split evenly between any resemblance to you as far as mirror images went. If this little girl was named Yena, then matters would be truly confusing…but thankfully, Ydela already carried that mantle, ignorant of its importance being just less than two years of age at the time.

>Name her yourself?
>Let Yena at this name, once again.
>Other?

Forward, though, to the turn of the decade. August of Nineteen and Twenty.

Little mind was paid to what happened beyond the Reich, but Emre and Naukland had decided to officially seal their alliance with the resolution of long-disputed territorial rights. A strip of land between two rivers right on the border of the two nations, occupied by Naukland since the rise of Alexander and beyond, was finally returned to the Emreans. A gesture not only of goodwill but also a recognition of the Liberation’s success. The specter of Alexander no longer haunted the north.
The Grossreich failed to crumble as all had anticipated with bated breath, but the Crown Prince Henrik was only thirteen years old, and the Regency Council refused to place him on the throne yet. Still far more focused with keeping what was left of the Reich together, this year, the Reich had officially withdrawn from the shared occupation meant to transition the Gepte, the Auratus, towards a future division never quite decided. Instead, the territory was given over to Vitelia- only to immediately enter a new form of dispute as Fealinn occupied the northern reaches, and Halmeggia occupied the southern portions near its borders. There was little satisfaction to be gained from this state of affairs- and the nation looked all the more impotent for being defied by two smaller countries rather than the weakened yet still mighty Grossreich.

To Vitelia’s other flank, further defiance of its place as the dominant power of the west had already taken place. Kallec had felt bold and provocative, and had forcefully occupied the peninsula that made up the border region between Paelli and Vitelia. While not a direct aggression upon Vitelia itself and no proper declaration of war, they imposed themselves upon the land and its people, and had squatted there for a year now without any major action being made to force them out, beyond threats that had failed to manifest into consequences. King Lucius and his counsel were simply too averse to risk. Made sick with the wasting disease of failure in faith of the self- faith in the nation and its people.

Normally, the state of your home would be the thing of greatest concern, but not presently. You were still exiled, as Leo told you, enemies still lurked in wait for the chance to seize you should you ever return, and he was still not in a position where he could protect you. Instead, what you heard the most about was the seemingly insignificant conflict that had become known by the innocuous name of the Westwind War. The back-and-forth border skirmishes between Fealinn and Holherezh, between Wezkatinbach and Felbach, as well as between the two larger Pohja nations themselves, had been inconclusive for years following the end of the Emrean War that had prompted such squabbling.

The Pohja countries had done their best to seize what territory they could, and had initially been successful, but the vast swathes they had grabbed were not simply allowed to be absconded with once Fealinn and Felbach had stabilized after their initial messy separation from the Reich. Bolstered by the support of their much larger and more powerful, though just as recently liberated northern neighbor, Felbach had defeated Wezkatinbach and pushed its borders west to the natural boundary of a river, and had struck fear into the western coast’s countries as Wezkatinbach and Holherezh ceased their territorial war, agreed upon an even border, and teamed up to try and fight off the Fealinnease offensive that had pressed to the gates of the Holherezhi capital, the source of their own support broader and not as well known, but effective nevertheless.

The state of affairs in the north was at a crossroads thusly. Who would hold power in the region now, if the Reich no longer could try to claim the west? Many spoke in hushed tones about the possibility of the protectorate successors reigning anew. Perhaps, in more uneasy talk, the Pohja would set aside their differences and unite, as there had been talk before of the possibility of. Yet there was another option. A much prouder and bolder option.

Having freshly made their army anew, a large portion of the Trelan Republic’s government was quite eager to find a use for it. Border skirmishes against irregulars served little purpose in the grander scheme, and while before it was the most that could be sensibly achieved, recent events had drawn many to think more was possible. Particularly, the Union party, which was both the largest represented part- though its opposition, the Welfare Party, headed a coalition that meant the Lands Assembly was not dominated readily by the largest representation.

The Twentieth Century Commission had been formed on compromise and collaboration both, but the Union Party had been gaining in the recent elections, and with the Welfare Party finding it more difficult to block legislation it opposed, with a larger share of wayward parties needed to sway things their way, your line of business had been quite lucrative. With the recent tumult especially, the minor parties had been swaying further towards hawkishness. The military these days could get whatever it wanted.

With such investment came expectations, and the time had come to show just what the fruits of the labor could be. Holherezh might be in dire straits, but it was expected they would try for Trelan at some point, and if not, then somebody else would take advantage of extended inaction. At least, such was what Union Party loudmouths proclaimed to all who would listen. A truer motivation was that, if this Twentieth Century Army could go toe to toe with the Kalleans, surely the northwest of the continent could finally be brought to heel, considering their recent squabbling, wasteful fighting, and especially the lack of Reich funding for Wezkatinbach as of late. A chance to finally settle land disputes once and for all- perhaps, in this new world where the Reich was on the decline, a chance to carve out power…there wasn’t any interest in occupying territory, too many Pohja already, as some said, but putting at least the most tenacious neighbor to heel, and perhaps extracting some of their Nief’yem from their mountains, would be worth the price of an easy war for sure.

There was an important matter too that the Twentieth Century Commission recognized even before all the recent commotion. That, without a real conflict, even the most well developed and equipped army was immature, and unready in a way that was hard to tell the depth of without a test of its capabilities. Not an army to be caught off guard with- it had to fight at some point, and a controlled environment against a less threatening opponent was the ideal place to be bled.

For your part, you had suddenly become quite popular with politicians you had never cared to get to know. Your word was greatly respected on the Twentieth Century Commission, and if you thought a war was not wise…then there might very well be no war, with your sway. It meant that more people than you expected had decided to try and cozy up, to offer gifts, opportunities, to drop sly hints and invitations about. The intent was ever clear. The Union Party and their affiliates were quite interested in your opinion being towards war, whilst their opposition, their power growing lesser and lesser, were rather direct in trying to set you against such a thing. It was a curious situation to be a lynchpin in, truly. The Unionists were in a place where the Lands Assembly could decide upon a declaration of war, a three fourths majority, but they could not guarantee it themselves. The smaller parties were still susceptible to a lack of confidence presented by the armed forces and its advisement.

It certainly reinforced your opinions of what needed to be done for the Dawn, someday. Democracy had its vulnerabilities- its division and indecisiveness.

No decisions had been made or promised yet, of course. Nothing major had been accepted, no small gifts or favors taken without grace. After all, Vittoria had had to be transferred to a new school again, and Lorenzo wanted to go to his elder sister’s new school with her, the situation much better accounted for when a Welfare Party member whose pet project was education and integration of foreigners could give proper recommendations over wine and hors d’oeuvres.
It wasn’t that matters were openly corrupt. No outright bribery attempts had been made, but the waters were being tested, and who knew? If things got close enough, maybe something so daring would be seen as a necessity. Bribery of officials was hardly unknown in more relevant parts of the world, certainly not unknown in Vitelia, where wheels were often greased with the vast silver reserves of nobility, as well as titles and estates at times.

It made you think of if you should take advantage…

>Why not take full advantage if the time came? Money and gifts didn’t need to be accepted for your greed, after all. The Vitelian Future Leagues were ever hungry for donations…
>Perhaps it was best to keep things subtle. To shift favor towards your own direct benefactors, the military. The Republican Army could only do better the more was heaped upon it, after all.
>Keep yourself pure. There was a principle to this matter, after all, and was even the smallest corruption not indicative of immorality, no matter what any politician claimed otherwise?
>Other?

The talk of war on the horizon, the news of conflicts all about, made Yena wary and despondent however. She would grow visibly nervous and uncomfortable whenever the subject came up, and recently, she had made a declaration.

“Palmiro,” she urged you once as you were both getting ready for bed, “I am afraid. If war comes to this place…”

“The Holherezhi weren’t strong enough to threaten this deeply into the country even before what’s going on now,” you comforted her with confidence, “We are in no danger.”

“That’s not…” Yena hesitated, bit her lip. “If there is a war, they will surely want you to help them. To fight in their war, to lead them. I don’t want you to do that. I want you to be with us, with the family…”

“I’d hardly be a low-ranking soldier in the trenches in that case, Yena.” In fact, given your experience, you doubted you’d see battle personally at all at the level you anticipated.

Yena shook her head. “I don’t care. I don’t want you to be stolen again by war, Palmiro. I don’t want the children and I to be without their father, without my husband, for who knows how long. No battles, no leaving without warning, no…” She took a breath to settle herself. “Promise me, Palmiro…”

>That wasn’t something you could promise. It might be incredibly important to take such an opportunity- doing so had meant you could live in relative wealth now, she had to realize…
>A promise you could keep. You had little interest in sacrificing your time with your family for a country you cared little about staying forever in. You could do what you were already doing, and keep at that.
>Other?

>>5945024
>>Name her yourself?
Yes. But what I do not know. Perhaps Chiara? That sounds like a nice name.

>>5945028
>Keep yourself pure. There was a principle to this matter, after all, and was even the smallest corruption not indicative of immorality, no matter what any politician claimed otherwise?

>>5945030
>That wasn’t something you could promise. It might be incredibly important to take such an opportunity- doing so had meant you could live in relative wealth now, she had to realize…
I forget if there was any conflict in this area.

>>5945030
>Name her Chiara
>Perhaps it was best to keep things subtle. To shift favor towards your own direct benefactors, the military. The Republican Army could only do better the more was heaped upon it, after all.
>That wasn’t something you could promise. It might be incredibly important to take such an opportunity- doing so had meant you could live in relative wealth now, she had to realize…

>>5945024
>Name her yourself?
Yecilia

>>5945028
>Keep yourself pure. There was a principle to this matter, after all, and was even the smallest corruption not indicative of immorality, no matter what any politician claimed otherwise?

>>5945030
>A promise you could keep. You had little interest in sacrificing your time with your family for a country you cared little about staying forever in. You could do what you were already doing, and keep at that.

Keep Pure and Keep Palmiro's ass with his family.
We'll eventually be off to war again, but there is a time and place to break Yena's heart by going off again.
This is not that time or place.

>>5945028
>Name
Chiara, Yena can decide the middle name

>Keep yourself pure. There was a principle to this matter, after all, and was even the smallest corruption not indicative of immorality, no matter what any politician claimed otherwise?

>Other
See if we can swing for a role that leaves us in the capital. Maybe a liason between the general staff and politicians or another training school post, I dunno. Probably won't be an operational command but that's alright.

>>5945024
>Let Yena at this name, once again.

>>5945028
>Perhaps it was best to keep things subtle. To shift favor towards your own direct benefactors, the military. The Republican Army could only do better the more was heaped upon it, after all.

>>5945030
>That wasn’t something you could promise. It might be incredibly important to take such an opportunity- doing so had meant you could live in relative wealth now, she had to realize…

>>5945024
>Let Yena at this name, once again.
>>5945028
>Keep yourself pure. There was a principle to this matter, after all, and was even the smallest corruption not indicative of immorality, no matter what any politician claimed otherwise?
>>5945030
>A promise you could keep. You had little interest in sacrificing your time with your family for a country you cared little about staying forever in. You could do what you were already doing, and keep at that.
We promised to always put them first

>>5945030
>>5945044
+1

>>5945030
>A promise you could keep. You had little interest in sacrificing your time with your family for a country you cared little about staying forever in. You could do what you were already doing, and keep at that.
I heard good things about this quest

>>5945028
>Name her yourself?
>Yre
>Perhaps it was best to keep things subtle. To shift favor towards your own direct benefactors, the military. The Republican Army could only do better the more was heaped upon it, after all.
Red Napoleon. Funny.
>That wasn’t something you could promise. It might be incredibly important to take such an opportunity- doing so had meant you could live in relative wealth now, she had to realize…
Mossheads can't understand the bigger picture. Sad!

>>5945030
Supportan >>5945071

>>5945030
>Chiara Yre
>Perhaps it was best to keep things subtle. To shift favor towards your own direct benefactors, the military. The Republican Army could only do better the more was heaped upon it, after all.
>That wasn’t something you could promise. It might be incredibly important to take such an opportunity- doing so had meant you could live in relative wealth now, she had to realize…
We shall keep our promise of putting them first by gaining more wealth and opportunities for them.

>>5945154
Wait, seems like I already voted. Disregard this vote.

>>5945154
Actually I'll change my vote to support
>Let Yena at this name, once again.
>Keep yourself pure. There was a principle to this matter, after all, and was even the smallest corruption not indicative of immorality, no matter what any politician claimed otherwise?
>A promise you could keep. You had little interest in sacrificing your time with your family for a country you cared little about staying forever in. You could do what you were already doing, and keep at that

>>5945030
>Chiara
>Keep yourself pure. There was a principle to this matter, after all, and was even the smallest corruption not indicative of immorality, no matter what any politician claimed otherwise?
>That wasn’t something you could promise. It might be incredibly important to take such an opportunity- doing so had meant you could live in relative wealth now, she had to realize…


"I don't make promises cause it's meant to be broken"-Lotus Juice

>>5945026
>A chance to finally settle land disputes once and for all- perhaps, in this new world where the Reich was on the decline, a chance to carve out power…there wasn’t any interest in occupying territory, too many Pohja already, as some said, but putting at least the most tenacious neighbor to heel, and perhaps extracting some of their Nief’yem from their mountains, would be worth the price of an easy war for sure.

Greco-Turkish esque population swap incoming?

>>5945037
>>5945044
>>5945077
>>5945174
Leo can't be the only one with a new Chiara.

>>5945042
Yecilia

>>5945046
>>5945071
>>5945150
>>5945158
Throw it at the woman.

>>5945140
Yre.

I should say that mountainfolk with Y names have them pronounced like a long E at the start into a y end.

>>5945037
>>5945042
>>5945044
>>5945071
>>5945077
>>5945158
>>5945174
>>5945158
No swaying for goodies.

>>5945046
>>5945140
More metal for the mil mill.

>>5945037
>>5945046
>>5945140
>>5945174
There are considerations you must not be barred from.

>>5945042
>>5945071
>>5945105
>>5945150
>>5945158
Anything for the green.

>>5945044
>>5945077
Try for close business.

Calling it in an hour.

>>5945105
>I heard good things about this quest
Oh no.

>>5945233
>Greco-Turkish esque population swap incoming?
That remains to be seen.
Being beyond what the other side of the mountains cares about means history isn't as set in stone...

>>5945273
How's the Archduchy doing during the period of the prologue? A quiet couple of decades before the 'interesting' times occuring in the present day?

No changes then, writing.

>>5945289
>How's the Archduchy doing during the period of the prologue? A quiet couple of decades before the 'interesting' times occuring in the present day?
They're having plenty of interesting times, but outside of Sosalia they're not seen as more than a regional power, though indisputably the rising one. The Archduchy has been busy biting chunks out of its neighbors and seizing on opportunistic small grabs, the region being as ever a fluctuation of smaller wars. Since 1910 or example Strossvald has seized a large chunk of Netillian claimed territory, and there's more yet to happen before the east reaches the "modern" state of affairs. Notably though, it'd only be recently that Strossvald finally puts an end to the unrest and rebellion in the territory of Altoss, its southeast end beyond its interior mountains, which would have been consuming a lot of focus for quite a while.

A large part of you would rather not have had to promise such a thing. A chance to advance yourself was hard to pass up, when you had been unable to advance your old cause in your long exile, but you were swayed nevertheless. “Alright,” you acquiesced, “I promise I won’t be a part of the army, involved in war. At best I’ll see if I can reserve any participation to where I’m close to home. Is that alright?”

Yena’s mouth was a tight line, and she sighed. “As long as you are close.” A wail came from upstairs, and Yena turned her head. “Ah, Chiara must be hungry…”

Your newest daughter, named after the long deceased mutual friend. Leo and Marcella had also named their daughter after her, but when you had idly suggested it, Yena had liked it well enough. Her honored name was also left to Yena, who decided on Cycilia. You had wondered if it might be Yecilia, considering. Her patron, finally, was Chiara’s own favorite- Saint Emelida, the same that Vittoria was given over to the watch of.

Though the difference in your three daughter’s hair color had led to some angst from your eldest. A new term you’d learned over the years as Vittoria had grown was bir’das, the mountain blood word for a cowl, or a cloak. Yena was unfamiliar with it, to your surprise, and it was apparently a slang term for a female Nief’yem who did not outwardly resemble her bloodline- in other words, Vittoria. The particulars of Nief’yem blood law meant that she should have been considered fully and purely mountainfolk, but there was evidently disagreement on this judgment when it came time to properly observe it. At least, amongst certain children. It wasn’t so much a controversy when it came to males, as male children of “foreigners” were only considered half no matter their appearance, and it meant Vittoria had for a long time been the sole recipient of such disdain for her. An excuse, really, since she was taller and stronger than even boys her age (ten years), perhaps in time fairer, when she grew into womanhood.

It was no surprise that she had no female friends, therefore, and you doubted that her younger sister Ydela would be treated better as she went through schooling, as she would be starting next year.

Thank goodness she might do better at the new school though, you thought, even if your children did have to take a trolley a long way to get there. Maybe an automobile would be a good investment?

Such a thing had already been offered as a gift by a Union Party schmoozer, but you had turned down any and all offers of compensation of such a grand scale, even when they were deflected to merely be additional funding or considerations for the Twentieth Century Commission. It was hardly hungry for work these days anyways, as your pet project had expanded from one to two regiments now, and the Armor Arditi had swelled in number alongside.

The population expansion programs of the past were beginning to bear fruit, but the Welfare Party and its allies openly protested the funneling of this new manpower into something like the armed forces instead of growing an economy besides the war one.

Yena had brought Chiara down and you helped her go to the kitchen to prepare some soft food- a year old, she was weaned already, and thankfully shared the tastes of Ydela from before when it came to sweet mashed roots. It also meant that Yena would be insisting on getting pregnant once more, of course. Five children were already a lot to deal with, but you had kept your word on Yena being the decider of when enough was enough…at least your older children could do proper chores now. It had, ironically, gotten easier over time.

“Did I tell you?” Yena asked you as you made food for Chiara, “Elena will be bringing her son when she comes to visit.”

“I didn’t hear,” you said, “It’ll be good to see him…” Elena was still unmarried, but her son was not her own- she had adopted him, you had heard. Though Elena was thirty-five years old now, like you would be soon. Had she given up on finding a husband? Wars and economic hardship had certainly reduced the number of available bachelors in Vitelia…Trelan was far hungrier for foreign women than for foreign men, but at the same time, would she be so desperate as that? “Has Marcella told you any…womanly secrets?”

“Hm?” Yena blinked at you, then giggled, “No, Palmiro, she isn’t pregnant. She still has her two.”

Funny to think that you had more children than two families (of a sort) combined. Marcella, Leo, and Elena would be coming to visit next week, and that’d be good for your children as well as you. Elena’s adopted son was as old as Luigi, and only a bit more than a year younger than Marcella and Leo’s kids, so they’d surely have a good time befriending each other…Vittoria wanted to see her Padrino most of all, and Lorenzo tagged alongside his big sister, so everybody was looking to be satisfied with the coming events.

Everybody, perhaps, except for the languishing cause of Futurism.

-----

The days before the visit, a flurry of activity had consumed the Twentieth Century Commission, a new report being demanded by the Republic government concerning the Republic Armed Forces’ readiness and their strength relative to the various degrees of most likely opposition. All around the country there were inspections, exercises and drills, and your own workplace was utterly swamped with reports and analysis that had to be done, conclusions to draft, and what things could be addressed in the short term and what would have to be accepted to be delayed for the long term. Intelligence reports ranging from dubious to the absurd to leaked intelligence from abroad that gave wildly varying estimates of strength all around the northwest, reports and rumors of battles that had gone on and why they had ended up the way they did.

It was a time as exciting as it was exhausting, and even more eyes were on you now. All were headily anticipating what the judgment of the top minds and characters of the commission would be…whether the war that the Union Party proclaimed as so certain, and so rational, was backed up by the word of the experts and those who would be fighting it. The politicians dared not announce a decision ahead of time, but pressure came from all sides regarding every single doubt that could be levelled, every boon that could be imagined, and what the best and most proper course of action would undoubtedly be the one taken.

The actual situation was foggy and complicated, and all the gushing news about guaranteed success gave you uneasy memories of the talk in Vitelia before the Auratus War and its failure. You could talk over the details with Leo when he came around, but besides the general uncertain air around the validity of various strokes of optimism, it was without debate true that the Republic of Trelan could trounce Holherezh while they were being so badly beaten up by Fealinn, and perhaps, Wezkatinbach too, as Ohtiz was out of the way, and not guaranteed to aid their Pohja neighbors, as they preferred to keep to themselves in their mountain-cradled squat peninsula.

How would the other parties react, however? Would Fealinn and Felbach intervene? Would it be worth the investment? Could the Army of the Republic maintain momentum through territory that would have to be occupied, at least to the point where supplies could pass through? That was less certain. The most that could be said was, when a large-scale battle came, Trelan’s army quality was quite a bit ahead of its competition, and not ground down by the conflicts still going on.

The hope was for a fast and easy bulldozing, and indeed, the fortifications facing Trelan were minimal at best, the garrisons limited to the same irregulars who would normally entertain themselves with infiltrations and harassments, though those had decreased in scale since the TCC’s reforms and procurements had taken effect. Meanwhile, the once intimidating irregulars had managed to change only but a little, as the focus of Pohja ambitions had turned to their east.

It wasn’t that the hawks were wrong to sense easy victory. Just that their ambitions might grow too great. It was all a headache, really, and you were quite looking forward to not being around Trelani for a bit, at home, with old friends.

-----

August the eleventh of nineteen twenty in Pietrecirchio. This afternoon, your friends, practically extended family at this point, would be coming in. Through Paelli rather than your route, considering recent times, but a railway going north up from Kallec’s southern reaches now linked up to Trelan, so travel was far easier than it had been before, even though aircraft had grown more sophisticated quickly, and less expensive as well.

Today was the first day of a special holiday festival in Trelan, one that took place every couple of years in the lower end of summer, but which had been deemed to be worthy of particular elevation as of late. The Gran Idolo Emck, rooted in the same quaint ritual that Yena always insisted you upkeep, but scaled to the level of the offering of a city. A great sculpture of flower petals and papers scribed with wishes formed the shape of the typical offering flower. The gathering of wishes would end on the third night, and on the fourth day of the festival the Emck Flower would be painted over with scented oils, and set alight to slowly smolder throughout the fifth day. It was apparently inspired by a tradition amongst the Pohja, the Festival of Idols…which while it sounded like some witchcraft heresy from the days of eld, was far from an act of worship. Instead, the images and forms of devils and trespasses alike were formed and then destroyed in a fit of violence and self-purification. This form of it was far less barbaric of an expression, most mountainfolk agreed, even if they were loath to admit where the Gran Idolo Emck evolved from, especially these days.

It did counteract the general confliction regarding war, especially with conscription notices going out to bolster the numbers of reservists. Pohja and Nief’yem alike could be found mingling in the city, and the festival’s infectious goodwill made few willing to think about wars or ethnic tensions. A ploy by the Welfare Party’s coalition, you had heard from a looser lipped representative over lunch once. So they were even bringing holidays into this political game, were they…

The last preparations were made in the house only an hour before the lot of your friends were due to arrive at the Pietrecirchio Gran Centro. It had seemed like a plenty big house when you had bought it, but now, you had two more children, and would be having three people over, with three more children. All of a sudden, it seemed not quite enough. Already the children were sharing rooms, and as Vittoria got older, Yena warned, she would want to insist on her own space. You had the money to sell this house and buy a new one, but…still.

You arrived at the Gran Centro from the city trolley only a minute before the train arrived- itself late. There had rarely been an excuse for you to come here, but it was of a style a self-respecting Vitelian could appreciate, replete with pillars and white stone and bronze like a Second Empire palace, with floral romantic curves to everything in the concourse, though no other part of the station was so garishly decorated, and the white stone became blocky and grey again where the soot of train smoke stank. Coming off the train cars, Marcella, Elena, and especially Leo stuck out like a sore thumb. Judging from how quickly Leo’s searching eyes landed upon you and brightened, you stuck out too.

“Paaadiiii!” Vittoria called out when she thought Leo could hear her, and she ran down the stairs to get to her godfather first, whereupon he seized her about the waist and lifted her high into the air.

“You’ve grown so gigantic, Vittoria!” he said approvingly as he set her on an immense shoulder and brought her over to you- both of you embraced with one arm each. “Bonetto, it’s been too long. Only a few years, but I remember far back enough when that felt like an eternity.”

“It still does, Leo,” you said morosely as the women caught up with you, trailing the rest of the children. Yena was covered with enough to look like she was a tree with a flock of squirrels around it, compared to the plenty motile children belonging to your visitors. Despite being only six and a half or so, Leo’s twins looked as appropriately large for their age as their father, though they were not so dark as he, and had ruddy hair like their mother. Marcella, for her part, still had her hair kept short and scruffy, and besides a new pair of spectacles on her nose she hadn’t aged too much…neither had her fashion, which she knew well drew eyes as her blouse sloped down to a deep canyon that was impossible not to let the eyes fall into at least once, for most.

Not you, though. You next greeted Elena, who had stepped forward with her arms stretched out and her hips forward, expectant.

“Hey, Bonetto,” she said wearily with a closed smile.

You reached out and took her, held her against you, patted her on the back.

“It’s good to see you, Elena,” you said to her, and then you stepped back and knelt down to look at the boy by her side. “And who are you? I didn’t know about you until recently.”

Elena tapped her boy’s shoulder. “Go on, then, introduce y’self.” He was a healthy-looking youngster, around Luigi’s age, five, with straw hair like a typical Hill Vitelian and a speckling of freckles.

He eyed you up. The boy had some confidence. “My name’s Beni.”

“Benito Giarno,” Elena finished for him, “Dang, Bonetto, I knew y’were havin’ a lot, but…yeesh. More’n double last I saw.”

Ah, right. You went back and took Luigi’s small hand and brought him forward. “This is Auntie Elena, Lui,” you told your second son, “And this is Beni, your cousin.” Well, not by blood, but still, if Elena was to be auntie, that meant certain relations extended.

“Hi!” he said excitedly, “I’m Luigi! My big sis is the marble queen!” …Well, that had been a secret, apparently, from how his eldest sister heard that outburst and started muttering to herself. “Do you like marbles? I’ll play with you!”

“Save the marbles for later,” you canceled Luigi’s haphazardly planned game, “You have other people to meet. Go and get mommy, Luigi. Lolo! Come over here, not by your sister…”

Beni had gone with Luigi towards the family’s green crowned matriarch, leaving Elena to watch Lorenzo come over uncertainly, and she knelt down with her hands on her knees.

“Ain’t you a sweetie,” she cooed at your son, “Last I saw y’, y’didn’t even talk. Now yer…eight, right? You still quiet, Lolo?”

Lorenzo shook his head. “I don’t have to be loud. Saint Augustus said once that a quiet voice can be heard around the world if it’s spoken by the right man.”

Elena reached her hand out and pet your son’s head. “Raisin’ a little scholar, huh, Bonetto?”

“He’s quite fond of books,” you said with some pride, “He reads several levels above where he should, and I think he knows the local tongue better than I do. I’m going to start teaching him New Nauk if he gets top grades in school this year.”

Elena sighed, “Gonna send yer kids off t’ a good school, then? Old Pietro’d throw a fit, knowin’ his stock’s gone forever from the farm…”

You frowned at the mention of your family. Your father. “I’ve not been visited by anybody from home except you, Elena. He can think what he likes.”

Going to the festival for the night was a given, of course, but first, everybody would take a rest at the house and have a light supper and coffee. The children loudly yipped with the trolley as they rode on it. Apparently, such things weren’t well experienced where they had lived. You could have sworn there were trolleys in Donom Dei, in Lapizlazulli, but when you asked Leo about them, he morosely shook his head and said that they had gone out of business for lack of support. What a shame…but they could be revived once again, surely.

“I can ride the trolley by myself,” Vittoria bragged, “Me and Lolo are going to take it to school when we start going again.”

“Really?” Marcella gave you and Yena a skeptical look, “That doesn’t sound safe.”

“Pietrecirchio is a safe city,” Yena said with a smile, “There’s plenty of guards about, and the trolleys don’t go anywhere unsavory. Plenty of children ride on them. As long as they’re back before sunset…” she glanced at Vittoria, “Right, Vittoria? Not like those times?”

Vittoria put out an annoyed pout and crossed her arms. “I’d never be late if I had a pocket watch.”

“Or if you looked at the clock tower,” you said to her.

“Oh, don’t be such fusses,” Marcella said, “If it’s really safe, then I was out plenty after dark when I was young, and look how I turned out!”

Vittoria stared, then whispered to you, “Mommy doesn’t have things like that, so does that mean…”

“No,” you cut her off. Not that now. That would be a conversation to have with her mother, anyways. It would be about time soon.

“So you play marbles, huh?” Marcella asked.

Vittoria’s cheeks flushed. “I’m too old for marbles.”

“No you’re not,” Marcella said flatly. “What, you think you want to play Sweep? Poker?”

“Are those adult games?” Vittoria asked, “I want to learn those.”

“Ask your Padrino,” you said, “Leo played a lot of card games when he was in the Arditi.”

“Still does, y’know,” Marcella said, poking Leo beside her, “Wouldn’t think such a bruiser would be a card shark, huh?”

It wasn’t a long ride to your house, and as soon as you arrived and all the bags were set down, the younger children started making a ruckus all about the place. You and Leo were thus conscripted to watch over the kids (save for Chiara of course)(Your Chiara, not theirs) and watch them as they played on the street with the variety of toys you’d all accumulated, even though Vittoria and Lorenzo were more interested in being taught cards by Leo. As they first tried out a game against one another, Leo stretched his back and went over by you. “Precocious kids you have, Bonetto.”

“If only they were so open with their father,” you sighed, “What were the ladies talking about that they wanted to keep secret?”

“Guess.”

You lowered your voice so the children wouldn’t pick it up with their curious ears. “Sex?”

“Yeah,” Leo said, lowering his voice to, “You know, Bonetto, there’s this neat thing you can do called pulling out, it’s pretty easy, you just do what you were doing, but backwards…”

“I know that,” you punched Leo’s arm, “Judge Above. Blame Yena.”

“Just saying, you’ve got a lot of kids. Must take up a lot of time.”

You shrugged. “I hire help when I need it. Yena’s happy to do housework, and I’m happy to help her. Vittoria and Lorenzo do chores and it’s easier now.”

“Is it just Yena who wants so many kids?” Leo asked, “Doesn’t seem like you’re saying no to more.”

You turned the question on Leo. “Doesn’t Marcella want more?”

“Not right now,” Leo said, “I can’t blame her, I’m away too much. I can actually stick around on trips like these, for once, and I don’t want to stress her out more than I already do. I don’t know what El’s thinking, though. Adopted a kid, no husband. She works delivery and courier service, Bonetto, not exactly high paying. A lot of going around place to place.”

“She seems alright,” you said.

“But I was saying before,” Leo said, “I think a lot, you know, about what might have happened, how things could be different. Those tanks weren’t so big. Hit in a different place, maybe the other crew is gone. Maybe both. Do you think the same sorts of things, Bonetto? If things were…different?”

You bit the corner of your lip in regretful memory. “I’ve thought plenty about that, but I don’t like to.”

“Not about the failures, Bonetto, just how you’d live after,” Leo said, “You’re here because Yena moved here. She’s here because you sent her off after you did all that stuff in Gilicia. Let’s say things were done over a different way. Say that…I don’t know, say that Yena was smitten with me instead of you, like you originally thought she was way back when. What’s different? Where do you see yourself having gone, where’d you be right now? Because, funny as hell, I don’t think I’d be in too different a place, come the present day…”

>?

You told your story, of how your life would have gone. Perhaps who you’d have married instead, what would happen, but you weren’t quite done when you were suddenly interrupted by Marcella coming out.

“Hey, Leo,” she said, “You've gotta ome and see this. Bonetto, you can stay out by your onesies a bit, right?”

“Sure.” As they both went into the house and you wondered what it might be about, you watched Leo’s twins, as well as Luigi and Ydela and Benito, all chase a bunch of hide bound balls about in some children’s game about hoarding them all to oneself. Very difficult to accomplish, but the point was to run around playing keep away. You’d played that yourself, once.

“What?” Vittoria complained from her card game, “Oh, come on. Shit.”

“Vi,” you snapped, “Don’t say bad words.”

“Sorry, Papa,” Vittoria said sullenly, “How come Lolo keeps winning this, Papa?”

“Let me see,” you knelt down and looked at the cards, “Lolo, how about you tell your big sister?”

“Vi’s in a hurry to play her cards,” Lorenzo said plainly, “She plays too fast and her hands aren’t as good.”

“There you go,” you said, rubbing Vittoria’s head, “Be more patient and you’ll win.” She was the Marble Queen, it wasn’t like she was a fool when it came to games.

Leo came out of your house and shut the door behind him, gestured to you.

“Yeah?” you said, sidling up beside him. “What did they want?”

“Your wife was showing the girls that swimming suit you got her in Emre,” Leo said, “…Really something, isn’t it.”

“It is,” you agreed, “There’s a more modest kind.”

“How much more? It’s hard not to be.”

“The back covers the buttocks more,” you said, “That’s about all. The top looks different, I suppose.”

“Emreans,” Leo said with a chuckle, “Never wanting to be outdone no matter what it is. Don’t mind me saying, Bonetto, after she’s had five kids, I’m surprised. Yena’s body is dynamite. I’d have never guessed.”

That made you laugh in agreement. “Yena spends plenty of time maintaining her beauty. Her efforts haven’t gone for naught. But let’s be fair now, imagine Marcella in that suit.”

Leo snorted. “I don’t think it’d hold her, Bonetto. That sort of suit…Chiara had the right body for it.” He paused and reflected. “Not that she’d ever wear it.”

“Certainly not.” Though you couldn’t be so sure. Chiara had been prone to certain brashness at times, after all, in spite of herself. “Maybe in a sauna.”

“Bonetto, come on.”

“I’m only saying,” you said, “Mountainfolk here don’t wear clothing to their springs. Maybe they’d appreciate something that’s barely there, like in a sauna.”

“Maybe so.” Leo allowed.

You watched the children change games from ball to war to monsters, while your older daughter and son were put through the paces of various card games by Leo, until finally, the ladies came out and offered to give you a break.

“Yeah,” Leo accepted for you, “Hey, Bonetto. Show me around the neighborhood a bit, I feel like taking a walk.”

Hm. “Alright,” you said, having known him too long to not know that he didn’t want a tour, but rather, time away, without prying listeners. “I know a coffee shop. We’ll be right back, Yena. Come get us if you need us sooner than that.”

You went down the stone brick streets, looking up to the sun as the shadows lengthened. Scraps of powdery flowers floated through the air from the elevated platform where the festival’s centerpiece was still being assembled, and normal Emck was still being undertaken, a ritual between affectionate youths in this time like a second, longer Vardigsday. You told Leo about it, and he asked if Vittoria was hiding somebody from you. No, you answered, as your eldest daughter didn’t like mountainfolk customs much, and instead, did the socially acceptable alternative and did Emck with Lorenzo should it be demanded of her.

You led Leo to a quieter street, with no trolley rails, a bit of a slower way to the café. “So, Leo,” you said, stopping your steps, “What did you want to talk about?”

“Bonetto,” Leo said, “After all this time. Ten years about, I finally found him. It took too damn long, but finally, I’m sure of it, Bonetto. I know where Cesare is. He’s alive.”

You just about fell over in shock and relief mixed together in a torrent of emotion. “What?” There wasn’t anything else to say but demands. “Where?”

“Fealinn, in the prisoner of war camps they’re still keeping.” Leo said, “They don’t normally let anybody who I hired near, but with the Gilicians moving up through their south, they had to move some camps. That’s when a couple of my guys managed to see for themselves, to hear about them while trailing them. They moved him and the others to a new camp, over near their western border. Have them doing new work, war things I’d bet. But that’s not the point. That close, on the border…of course, Vitelia can’t and won’t do anything these days. But if Trelan decides to move through and take out everything in the way…”

“Leo, I,” you hesitated, “I know what you’re saying, but I don’t have that power.”

“You do,” Leo said in defiance, “I’ve had people asking around all over, trying to figure out how I can do this. Cesare’s right there, Bonetto. He’s been waiting. He’s been surviving. We have to get him. All you need to do is give the Trelani a reason. Let them do what they want to do anyways. Then, we can get people in close enough. My own group. We can get him out, Bonetto. But we need your help. When we get the opening, we’ll have a place for you to join in, too. It’ll be like the best of our old times. For a good cause. For the Future.”

You had to pause, and think, not answer before you could think. He was right, though. You could do it. You did have that influence, despite not even being forty yet. It wasn’t just about whether you should rescue one of your dearest friends or not, though. It wasn’t a question of whether or not to defy what you thought had been fate’s bad hand to you all and to take back what had been stolen from you. War for the goals of a small few. If you leaned your weight towards war, and that was the tipping point, how many people would suffer and die for your own desires, that had little to do with their own wants and needs? That would make you little better than the greedy schemers who had pushed Vitelia into its own disastrous war, and had managed to make it out with everything intact, perhaps even wealthier than before, in exchange for blood, pain, orphans and widows.

This was no decision to make with a callous or hasty mind. Trelan may not have been your country, but it had welcomed you into it, its people were still human…and even if you were to help, you had promised Yena you wouldn’t put yourself into a war, and only weaseling out of the maze of your own words would work as any justification for going along.

>There would be a war anyways. No fault in pushing it along. But you couldn’t help beyond that.
>This was different. This was Cesare. You had to do everything you could to help- then be among the first to see him again, yourself…
>It wasn’t right to do this out of personal interest, no matter how precious. You wouldn’t be the one to make thousands of young men deal with the same things you had to. You would be pressing against war- sorry, Leo.
>Other?

>>5945649
>Elena probably wouldn't be a spinster. Even if the feeling had been buried with separation, they were still there, smoldering. Geilicia probably would have still happened for better or worse but the following exile probably would have been spent somewhere else as the move here was done to make Yena more comfortable. Not sure how Elena's own proclivities and the environment would effect how many kids Palmiro and her would have, but that's a consideration.

>Other (Is there any way this could be made into a solo operation? Clandestine in nature. Throwing a whole country into war was one thing, but greasing the right palms to get a small strike force to go in and out while more dangerous was worth if it meant Cesare could be brought home without the deaths of thousands of young men like him on our hands)

>>5945652
>>This was different. This was Cesare. You had to do everything you could to help- then be among the first to see him again, yourself…
We shouldn't have made that promise. Now she'll use it against us when we inevitably go to war for Utopianism.

>>5945652
>?
I don't think much about the hypotheticals, they can't really change the reality of today. Judge knows Chiara and our university friends appear well enough in my dreams already

>This was different. This was Cesare. You had to do everything you could to help- then be among the first to see him again, yourself…

Being stuck there for over a decade, damn. These guys deserve to smacked down by the Reich again

>>5945652
>>This was different. This was Cesare. You had to do everything you could to help- then be among the first to see him again, yourself…

This is why don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it.

>>5945652
>>There would be a war anyways. No fault in pushing it along. But you couldn’t help beyond that.

>>5945671
An attempt at subtlety.

The answer is that it is possible to try, but also, Trelan and Fealinn are neutral towards one another and Trelan has you as an intermediary for any independent actions (which this would still be even then), while Holherezh is currently having the stuffing beaten out of it and isn't a place of charity at the best of times. Theoretically possible. Even more risky.

>>5945709
>>5945712
>>5945861
Bring about war, and commit yourself to it.

>>5945889
Stay at home. Let there be war.

I'll call the vote when I get home from work.

>>5945652
>This was different. This was Cesare. You had to do everything you could to help- then be among the first to see him again, yourself…
No clue what to do for the first one.

>>5946019
Could we contact di Zucchampo and the Gilicians/Continuation Command, maybe they can launch a new offensive in the south as well? The more chaos and distraction the better.

>>5945652
>There would be a war anyways. No fault in pushing it along. But you couldn’t help beyond that.
I really don't want to go galvanizing around while we have a shit ton of kids and a wife. We will help however we can, but we must stay with the family, because one day, we will truly leave to fight for Utopianism...

>>5945671
Oh, and supporting that we would've probably ended up with Elena.

>>5946019
Is Beni from Bonetto's home village or something, or is he just a random war orphan Elena adopted?

I shouldn't say I'll resolve things when I close at midnight.

>>5946203
Go for the salad.

>>5946368
Hold back for one thing.

Writing.

>>5946258
>Could we contact di Zucchampo and the Gilicians/Continuation Command, maybe they can launch a new offensive in the south as well? The more chaos and distraction the better.
You can try that, sure, though di Zucchampo (and your) faction weren't the ones at the top when it all ended.

>>5946387
>Is Beni from Bonetto's home village or something, or is he just a random war orphan Elena adopted?
It's been too long for him to be a war orphan, considering he's Luigi's age (the kid, not the namesake), and he's not from their home village, no. Though fair haired hill Vitelians are hardly uncommon.

>>5946583
Right, right, my brain kind of derped there.

Sorry about the delay, I was just not in any mood to cook for the whole day. It'll be out tonight though.

There’d be war one way or the other, you’d already decided now, and if the Trelani wanted one they’d get it. Let them see for themselves how much they liked it. This was motivation atop, though, for you to tip your hand. A chance to not stew in impotence as the part of the world you cared most for passed right on by, leaving you stranded where you were. A chance to repay debts long left, unable to be repaid in any way. A chance to make failures past right once more. You had to help wholeheartedly.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help,” you said, “Tell me when it’s time, too. I want to be one of the first to see him again.”

Leo’s tension went out of his shoulders. “Great. That’s great, Bonetto. That gives me a lot more confidence.” He put a hand on your shoulder and pushed you gently along as he walked beside, “The plan’s still half baked, to be honest, but we’ve got a lot more going for us with your help…”

”Yes, that’s it,” a mirthful sneer said from nowhere, ”Do whatever it takes. Whoever bleeds does it because they must. Whatever burns was an obstacle. Let nothing stand before the might of furious purpose…”

“Hm?” You blinked and glanced at Leo, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Leo frowned at you.

“Nothing,” you shook your head. Devil’s trickery. “Let’s go to that coffee house, then. It’s not as good as the cliff’s best cups, but there’s something unique to it, still.”

The Stone Tables, where you went, wasn’t always a coffee house. It had been the meeting place for a clan of Pohja tribesmen once, who had gone to the place’s carved boulders for feasting and weddings. They were still around, after a fashion, but their younger and less martial descendants had elected to turn the place into something that followed newer trends. It might have been the place Trelani youth like you might have gone to, if the Republic’s rise had not significantly chilled Revolutionary fervor. For now, the flat-top cut boulders hosted calm parties, and no chieftains celebrating conquest or dreamers plotting the future.

You and Leo leaned on one that had been levelled off into a wall, forming a shelf of sorts, with your pot and cups. “Finish what you were telling me earlier,” Leo said, “About how you thought things would go. You were saying you’d have shacked up with Elena, and everything else’d be about the same?”

“More or less,” you said, swirling about the herb bundle which mountainfolk inexplicably shoved in their coffee like a stirring stick. “For better or worse. I probably wouldn’t be here, since I’d have to consider her feelings on the matter for where to live, but she’d have followed me, so maybe, I’d be in Gilicia right now. I’d probably be there for the same reason. Maybe less children.” Though farming families back at home tended to have a bunch solely to run operations, albeit spaced further apart. You had three siblings yourself, though Elena only had one. Though she also had a bunch of cousins.

“Funny,” Leo said, “I don’t think that’s how it’d be at all.” He turned his cup over his mouth to get the last drops from it.

“Okay.”

“Really, Bonetto,” Leo gestured to you with his cup as he took hold of the copper pot with his other hand to pour himself another coffee, “For the whole war, right until the very end, you were hanging around Chiara. You were in her unit. You don’t think you wouldn’t have the slightest bit of fondness? She thought pretty highly of you, y’know.”

“…” You squinted at Leo, “I suppose it’s hard to think of it that way, what with…you know.”

“Funny thing about that,” Leo said, “Marcella told me, way afterwards. Chiara made her move because your lady told her to. The girls talked to each other a lot more than you might think.”

“Made her move?” You didn’t quite get it at first. “Ah.”

“What, Bonetto,” Leo said, “You don’t appreciate brown girls? They’re Vitelian too.”

“What’s done is done,” you said, ignoring the question of preferences. “I’d like to keep focused on the future now, instead of thinking about what could have been.” They already haunted your dreams enough. At least the shades had become friendlier and more peaceful now.

“…Yeah,” Leo said solemnly, “I agree. Especially, since we’ve got something, we can finally make right. Speaking of, since you’re on board, I’ll tell you what we’ve got together right now. It hasn’t been all that long since the guys I’ve got snooping around found out…”

“Who are they, anyways?” You asked, “Future League people?”

“Sort of, but not really. Old buddies from the war. People who are sick of how long it’s taken some of us to come back home. Makes some strange allies. Some people were on the Gilician side of things.”

“If Gilicians are involved I can try and see what favors I can ask,” you offered, “People still remember me, I’d hope.”

“A lot of people remember the Black Knight, Bonetto,” Leo said to you with a knowing smirk.

“I never claimed that name,” you said with a point, “But if it benefits us, then I’ll suffer it.”

Leo reached a hand out- you passed a portion of honey. A mountainfolk favorite, though it wasn’t cheap, and a small jar of it was about as costly as the pot of coffee you bought. “That name might be more useful than you think, considering the people we’ll have to take along for this. The camp garrison isn’t feeble. We won’t be able to take them on with sheer numbers, not the way we’ll have to do it.”

“No Futurist mob to storm the gates, then,” you said, your mental image of what was to come shifting.

“The Northwest War’s drawn a lot of mercenaries to it already,” Leo said, “I’m not trying to cause an international incident here. If we can pass off as a mercenary raid, though, everybody can wash their hands of it once we’re gone. Holherezh would have tried to keep us, I’d bet, but if Trelan’s on the border, well, you can make us vanish, I’m sure.”

“I’m not a worker of miracles, but a lot of people are looking for a reason to owe me, lately.”

“It’ll work,” Leo said, “There’s skilled people with the Future Leagues, for sure, but a lot of them are plenty busy already, and not too up for going on an expedition over the mountains. That’s fine. A bunch of Vitelians storming a Vitelian prisoner of war camp could be blamed too easily on Vitelia, and there’s plenty of powers that would like to use the Future Leagues as a scapegoat, with how popular we are.”

“So who does that leave you with?” You asked, “If the mercenaries are already flocking north.”

“There’s other places to find them, but we want bravos, Bonetto. Adventurers. People who aren’t necessarily in it for the money. People who’ve got skill, so that we only need a couple hundred of people and a prison break for this to work well. I’m already poking around, I sent a few guys on business trips, far away as the other side of Vinstraga. If you know anybody, or if anybody owes you one, bring them in. We’ll need everything we can get.”

You could think of some people. Not necessarily that owed you, but who couldn’t lack eagerness to fight together with you again. “We won’t be storming a Fealinnese work camp with nothing but our bare hands, will we?”

“I won’t lie, Bonetto, we don’t have a lot of spare capital. Even if we pooled together what we’ve individually got, I don’t think we can make our own private army from scratch, Bonetto. It’s why we’ll have to be a bit clever. But a lot of people inclined for this will be able to bring their own gear anyways.”

Much as you would have liked to think about showing the Fealinnese the wrath a singular tank platoon could wreak, while you could probably buy a bunch of heroes weapons, a singular tank would cost…quite a bit. Those who sold them tended to be unexcited about making individual sales to eccentrics, as well. That and they were still weapons new enough that nobody wanted to be rid of them that badly. As Leo said, you would have to resort to cleverness. Or perhaps cleverness in procurement, if you were to give this your all.

“How long are you planning to prepare?” You asked, “The way things are now, I doubt that the Lands Assembly will want to put off action. If it comes down to dividing up territory, the way they see it, if there’s going to be a change like that, they want to capture as much as they can, instead of having Fealinn suddenly on their borders, looking for the next place to expand.”

“I’ll need a few months at least,” Leo said, “How much do you know about the Fealinnese Army?”

You did have some knowledge on that, actually, even if you weren’t an expert. “They’re not to be underestimated. The Gilician Continuation Command, back during the Gilician Conflict, were making successful attacks against them, but they were less successful over time. The better it got for us down south, the better prepared the Fealinnese seemed to get. These days, they’re probably as good as they were back when they were a Protectorate of the Reich. Their army still looks the part.”

“That lines up with what I know.” Leo nodded, “That they’re not to be underestimated. The people who led their independence movement were all generals and officers from their lands, and they’re ambitious as hell. They’re occupying part of the Auratus, I’m sure you’ve heard, while they’re still fighting the Gilicians and the Holherezhi both. Though from what I’ve heard they’re just playing the long game south. Trading ground for time. With how they’re rolling west, it might be a good gamble they’re taking. They’re doing really well for themselves.”

“What I’ve heard is that they have benefactors from people in the Reich,” you said, “Felbach is the Emrean Republic’s pet, so they get the majority of their help. Fealinn’s buildup is more pastiche, but it’s true, they’re more than talk, recently.” Though they were also matching themselves against countries their size. Vitelia, for example, you could anticipate defeating them if the matter of Auratus came to blows, as some fully expected it should, considering the slap in the face it was.

“We’ll have our work cut out for us.” Leo said, examining his cup’s contents while judging what was left in the pot with a testing lift. “But even if Holherezh doesn’t last a week and we come in when there’s no war any longer, just being able to get right to the border will be enough. I’ve had to fight with worse odds before.” As he was here, and had never suffered a major wound, it was unsaid that he had managed to win nevertheless. “I’ll find somebody to keep us in touch in the meantime, Bonetto. This isn’t something we can just plan over plain mail services.”

“We have a courier, don’t we? One that doesn’t extort the likes of us.”

Leo realized, and snapped his fingers. “You’re right, Bonetto, we do. Speaking of, our families are probably waiting for us, now. Let’s chug the rest of this and get back to them. They’re looking forward to a festival.”

“Let’s not scald ourselves so badly that we’ll need a cooling beer too early,” you said.

“Or whatever the hell the mossheads drink around here, eh?” Leo held his cup out for yours to clink against, “For the Future.”

Though admittedly, indeed, what you were thinking of now was less the festival of the near, and more what was to come beyond.

Namely, just what you should spend your energies on trying to get in the time available. Could you try to bring everybody you had come to know together for this? Maybe, but you were going to be a very busy man in the times to come, and you couldn’t afford to spread yourself too thinly…

>Find and appeal to the members of your old platoon, to your oldest comrades. They were wealthier in general, and perhaps your assets pooled could give the greatest value…though they were admittedly fewest in number, and also quite Vitelian.
>Perhaps the Black Coats might be interested in a good cause. You were the Black Knight for a reason, after all, and perhaps they were still loyal to an old name and face, that had a part in keeping them in a world that had forsaken them…
>Seek new friends and allies amongst the units and institutions you’ve cultivated closer to home. The Republic Army Armored Arditi were the sorts hungry for glory, and surely, some could be found that might be willing to do something a bit more secret, though you’d surely need to call for favors from local authority for this.
>Other?

>>5947221
>Perhaps the Black Coats might be interested in a good cause. You were the Black Knight for a reason, after all, and perhaps they were still loyal to an old name and face, that had a part in keeping them in a world that had forsaken them…
>Other? Dreamy revolutionairy youths?
Just an idea. These type of boys are at any university.

>>5947221
>Other?
Partially Combine
>Find and appeal to the members of your old platoon, to your oldest comrades. They were wealthier in general, and perhaps your assets pooled could give the greatest value…though they were admittedly fewest in number, and also quite Vitelian.
and
>Seek new friends and allies amongst the units and institutions you’ve cultivated closer to home. The Republic Army Armored Arditi were the sorts hungry for glory, and surely, some could be found that might be willing to do something a bit more secret, though you’d surely need to call for favors from local authority for this.

Look for officer buddies that could command our "borrowed" troops, we could pitch it as an "exercise".

>>5947221
>Other?
Partially Combine
>Find and appeal to the members of your old platoon, to your oldest comrades. They were wealthier in general, and perhaps your assets pooled could give the greatest value…though they were admittedly fewest in number, and also quite Vitelian.
and
>Seek new friends and allies amongst the units and institutions you’ve cultivated closer to home. The Republic Army Armored Arditi were the sorts hungry for glory, and surely, some could be found that might be willing to do something a bit more secret, though you’d surely need to call for favors from local authority for this.


They say no new friends. I say get the new friends

>>5947221
>Seek new friends and allies amongst the units and institutions you’ve cultivated closer to home. The Republic Army Armored Arditi were the sorts hungry for glory, and surely, some could be found that might be willing to do something a bit more secret, though you’d surely need to call for favors from local authority for this.

>>5947221
>>Find and appeal to the members of your old platoon, to your oldest comrades. They were wealthier in general, and perhaps your assets pooled could give the greatest value…though they were admittedly fewest in number, and also quite Vitelian.

>>5947221
>Seek new friends and allies amongst the units and institutions you’ve cultivated closer to home. The Republic Army Armored Arditi were the sorts hungry for glory, and surely, some could be found that might be willing to do something a bit more secret, though you’d surely need to call for favors from local authority for this.

>>5947221
>Perhaps the Black Coats might be interested in a good cause. You were the Black Knight for a reason, after all, and perhaps they were still loyal to an old name and face, that had a part in keeping them in a world that had forsaken them…

Hopefully they're rich from those Southern City contracts.

>>5947221
>Perhaps the Black Coats might be interested in a good cause. You were the Black Knight for a reason, after all, and perhaps they were still loyal to an old name and face, that had a part in keeping them in a world that had forsaken them…

Remember, no Vitelian.

>>5947221
>>Perhaps the Black Coats might be interested in a good cause. You were the Black Knight for a reason, after all, and perhaps they were still loyal to an old name and face, that had a part in keeping them in a world that had forsaken them…

>>5947221
>>Seek new friends and allies amongst the units and institutions you’ve cultivated closer to home. The Republic Army Armored Arditi were the sorts hungry for glory, and surely, some could be found that might be willing to do something a bit more secret, though you’d surely need to call for favors from local authority for this.

>>5947221
>“Sort of, but not really. Old buddies from the war. People who are sick of how long it’s taken some of us to come back home. Makes some strange allies. Some people were on the Gilician side of things.”

I don't think having Gilicians and mossheads having to operate together will go well.

>>5947221
>Perhaps the Black Coats might be interested in a good cause. You were the Black Knight for a reason, after all, and perhaps they were still loyal to an old name and face, that had a part in keeping them in a world that had forsaken them…

>>5947221
>Perhaps the Black Coats might be interested in a good cause. You were the Black Knight for a reason, after all, and perhaps they were still loyal to an old name and face, that had a part in keeping them in a world that had forsaken them…

>>5947223
Black Coats and Like Minds.

>>5947224
>>5947225
Old friends, new blood.

>>5947270
>>5947365
>>5947595
The local ambitions.

>>5947285
Bring the boys back together.

>>5947367
>>5947401
>>5947431
>>5947689
>>5947709
Darksiders.

I'll mesh these together where appropriate, calling things in an hour.

>>5947741
Can't recall when exactly but there's still a bit until the Reich reabsorbs Fealinn right?

>>5947796
That happens in 1928. Not that anybody's expecting it right now, since the new Kaiser hasn't even been crowned yet and a regency full of Republicans is still running the show.
Until then, there's some time for the northwest to be completely messed up because of the lack of the Reich looming over it all.

Alright, no changes.
What I expected considering the time passed, but still. Writing.

Allies could come from many places, with where you’d been and what you had done, but when the criteria was concealing (direct) Vitelian involvement and the motivation was mercenary, there was a particular group that fit the bill. People you’d done right by, perhaps given more than deserved. They could live in peace and prosperity if they wished because you had seen fit not to sacrifice them, and they had earned renown under your command. Ironic that the people who would have been you and Cesare’s greatest enemies once might now prove to be your friend’s chance at being saved.

It was no guarantee of a force ready to join you, and you could offer no reward save for what there had been before, and the draw of amiability. Yet there had been hundreds of the Imperial Exiles, and if only one in five, only one in ten were to join you, it would be enough for the limited scope of the scheme. More could be counted if you extended the offer to those who had joined to chase after the repute of the original Black Battalion’s members. How many still lingered in Gilicia? It might not matter, if Leo was reaching as far as the eastern edge of the continent. Some would assuredly come no matter the distance.

What might Leo bring to supplement such, you wondered. He had been free to roam, and Vitelia still welcomed trade from all over. Its ships still reached far, unlike the north’s isolation. He himself couldn’t be sure of what might present itself yet, and that meant the imagination had no boundaries.

None of what you talked about would be shared with your families when you returned, but in time, they’d either have to be told, or it would have to be concealed. Neither settled well with you, given your promise to Yena…but what could be done? You would be fighting solely for yourself and your friends, not for any callous minded nation, and it was for a friend. A friend to Yena at that, even if he was not as close, he had still been scarred for her honor. Either she would understand…or it would be more an ease on her mind and that of your children to simply remain ignorant of what was going to happen, or that it had happened at all.

The house was left as the sun began to set, a cloud of children followed by their parents, headed and herded by your eldest daughter. Now was the prime hour for all the vendors and entertainers to be doing their business, and even though the capital would have been throwing a bigger party, the less bombastic affair here would be a better visit by your measure, especially if you were letting your kids off on a long leash. Allowance had been given out, but you expected there to be begging afterwards. The Mystics from mountains the world over knew well their biggest buyers, and they would be making a pretty profit from their trinket hawking tonight, even if Trelani trade was made with paper and enameled iron rather than silver or gold.

The color of the cloth to wear, as was eagerly sold, was lily white scarves and shawls and ribbons, the cheaper ones simply bars of snow-white but embellished and embroidered with cloth flowers or designs of them, the same kind that were smoldered away in the lesser Emck than the one taking place over this week. Paper facsimiles and hand-picked bundles of more common white flowers were being offered for small change by children who seemed little put out by the fact that they had to work during a celebration, considering the ease with which their offerings were sold.

“What do those weirdos do?” Marcella asked as your entire flock of children gathered around a heavily cloaked figure that seemed strangely familiar. “I’ve heard of mystics, but I didn’t think they’d look like that.”

“Parlor magic, mostly,” you said, “They write spells and seals and make charms and other nonsense. Card and palm readings. They’re harmless.”

“You’re eyein’ him kinda hard, El,” Marcella said to Elena. “You don’t agree?”

“Mountainfolk say they’re not to be trusted,” Elena said, her eyes narrowed, “If you can’t see their face, they’re a tricky sort from who knows where that calls nowhere home.”
The mystic either was comfortable with the suspicion or didn’t care, as he deftly made a little doll that was a miniature of himself on strings dance about with a skill you’d never seen demonstrated. Looking closer, the doll itself seemed to have its own doll, though you would have to be very close to see if it was handling its own performance as well as its master.

“Bonetto,” Leo said in your ear, “I think we’ve seen that guy before. It’s been ten years, but don’t you think..?”

“It is,” Yena said, listening in, and not nearly as cautious. “This is not so far from where he was, with how they wander.”

The children were entranced for about ten minutes, before the poppet took a mock bow and the puppeteer waved his hand to shoo them off. “Let some others watch close, now,” he said in accented Vitelian, “I will be dancing all night, but there is plenty more to see, heh heh.”

The kids went off, but Leo stayed, and you followed by as he walked up to the cloaked mystic.

“Heh heh,” the big thing chortled strangely, “Have I seen you before?”

“If you think it, yeah,” Leo said, “Are you selling anything?”

“Heh heh. My wares are too much for you, seaborne one. I didn’t come here to sell anything. I’ve merely come for fun.”

Leo didn’t give up so easily for some reason. “I’ve got silver, if you prefer.”

“No, no,” the mystic said, “I’ve nothing to offer tonight, though if you would like a reading of the cards, I will trade that for an autograph.” He glanced to you, “The same offer for you, if you wish, heh heh.”

“…Maybe later,” Leo said, whispering to you, “Let’s go get back to the others, I have a feeling this guy’s not going anywhere.”

Just as soon as Leo had stopped speaking with him, a new audience had formed and the doll was twirling and skipping again, so you had to agree.

A curious thing you saw for sale at some of the higher end carts, representatives of workshops and other such potential toymakers, were toy soldiers of all sorts, tin facsimiles of tanks and little wood fur capped troops. Toy soldiers hadn’t been particularly popular toys in Trelan last you knew. Was this some not so subtle move by Union Party members? They were certainly being sold cheaply for things that seemed rather well made.

“Must you?” Yena sighed when every child was bought a selection of soldiers and miniature materiel, the collective gathering forming quite a formidable troop.
“They’re not cork guns, dearest,” you said to Yena, “You won’t be having volleys aimed at your butt.” Luigi was not the inheritor of that particular toy, Vittoria and Lorenzo having progressed to mischief with hand catapults.

“I would prefer they play with goats and animals again,” Yena said forlornly, “The army is a poor example for children so young.”

“Not necessarily,” Leo objected, “If they’re delinquent, a martial upbringing can be good for children. Especially ones lacking a structure at home.”

“Well,” Yena sniffed, “That’s not a problem for ours.”

Your wife’s petty annoyance was soothed over with the turning over of coin for the accoutrement of the days to come, a uniform not of fighting men but of plain white lengths of wispy cloth with hanging tassels at their ends. As the month was still of summer, they weren’t substantial, even if Trelan was not so hot as Vitelia would be in these times.
Streams of festival goers trailed up the roads towards the center where the Emck flower sculpture would be, steadily being assembled from the layered-on wish talismans brought to it, mostly from youths and children whose whimsy was being stoked.

Along the way there were various centers of activity to “earn” these simple papers with space for dreams upon them with little wax seals and white threads at their peaks with a tassel. Games for the children like tossing stones or sheep-rolling (fake sheep, not real ones, which might disappoint some at home) or tug of war, or painting sticks and murals covered in childish doodling. The kids were all having good fun with such things, but that didn’t mean this was merely an event for the enjoyment of the young.

The things meant for adults weren’t the sort that children couldn’t look at, like a tavern or something such, but they definitely couldn’t be participated in by anybody but those grown for good reason. Some competitive spirit compelled you to try for at least one, in the spirit of things…

>Plenty of hotheads were getting into a boxing tournament. You wouldn’t be a slouch here, though you would have to keep Leo from participating if you had any hope of winning…
>An arena was set up for a contest against a living stone the size of an automobile- and a cash prize was available for any willing to put up their ante for a game of keep away. The land crab wouldn’t really hurt anybody- at least, such was what was insisted.
>It’d be as flattering to your ego as much as one of your party’s to enter a lady into a beauty contest. Especially knowing she’d win, considering…right?
>Look for something else?
Also-
>Anything else to do or talk about here, while you have this group around?

>>5947999
>“Mountainfolk say they’re not to be trusted,” Elena said, her eyes narrowed, “If you can’t see their face, they’re a tricky sort from who knows where that calls nowhere home.

Would this apply to Mal, or it just applies to mystics and soulbinders?


>It’d be as flattering to your ego as much as one of your party’s to enter a lady into a beauty contest. Especially knowing she’d win, considering…right?

Our wife, obviously

>Anything else to do or talk about here, while you have this group around?.

Fuck it, bring everyone round for Signore Poltergeist's Tarot.

>>5947999
>>5948005
+1

>>5948005
>Would this apply to Mal, or it just applies to mystics and soulbinders?
You may have noticed that certain mountainfolk, not all of them but a notable amount of them, like putting markings or tattoos on their faces. Not having such a marking doesn't really mean anything, but the idea of hiding your face brings up the possibility of hiding something you'd rather not people see, not just the general mistrust of strange masked wanderers. Especially when some things are brands rather than paint, or a permanent sort of tattoo.
Malachi in story had abjectly refused to let anybody see his face, and this would rightly be interpreted as very suspect.

>>5947999
>It’d be as flattering to your ego as much as one of your party’s to enter a lady into a beauty contest. Especially knowing she’d win, considering…right?

>>5947999
>It’d be as flattering to your ego as much as one of your party’s to enter a lady into a beauty contest. Especially knowing she’d win, considering…right?

>>5947999
>>An arena was set up for a contest against a living stone the size of an automobile- and a cash prize was available for any willing to put up their ante for a game of keep away. The land crab wouldn’t really hurt anybody- at least, such was what was insisted.
>Anything else to do
Get a card reading from that mystic. I'm curious as to why he would want our autograph. Surely we aren't famous enough for such a thing to be valuable, even if he knows who we are?

>>5947999
>An arena was set up for a contest against a living stone the size of an automobile- and a cash prize was available for any willing to put up their ante for a game of keep away. The land crab wouldn’t really hurt anybody- at least, such was what was insisted.
We gots to play the crab game. Also, supporting >>5948519 because there is no such thing as too much Polty.

Alright, I'm up. Enough abuse has finally knocked my sleep schedule back into line, even if it was the equivalent of smashing a track in several places and putting them back together backwards before actually fixing it.

>>5948005
>>5948020
>>5948081
>>5948180
The proclamation that Vitelian mossheads are just better.

>>5948519
>>5948546
Crabbing time.

Also getting card readings done by a weirdo.

Writing.

As tempting as facing off against a living stone might be, the other option would be just as flattering to your ego, if not more so. A beauty contest was finalizing its entrance process, well supported by outside funds from the look of things. One cause that the Lands Assembly could always agree on was getting more of its people out there getting to business. Though the culture had to be respected, as you noticed that while Pohja and other minorities were just about everywhere else, their dull colors could not be seen waiting to show off their charms here. An outsider might have thought that the brown of certain strands of Nief’yem and the brown of most Pohja was similar, but when one was more familiar with the spectrum of northwestern peoples, they’d see where the brown tended towards a stoney hue, their fairer shades a steely silver like Ydela’s, in a way. Neither hue was seen as attractive compared to the blessing of Yjens, which your wife and most of your children could claim to display.

Yena’s thirty second birthday had been just ten days ago, so she wouldn’t have the advantage of youth like many hopefuls did, but age and the toil of five children had failed to mar her features in the long term, and a year between Chiara’s birth and now had restored Yena to her relative peak. It was impossible not to be biased, but Yena had wide hips, an appreciably grown chest, a thin waist and beauteous long tresses of verdant jade hair that reached down to her thighs, a length of hair that by itself was difficult to cultivate and maintain for any woman who hadn’t been doing so for many years.

“Signore Bonaventura,” a recently familiar face greeted you after you had signed up Yena and loosed her upon the place for preparations, “You’re quite bold, aren’t you?”

“Assemblyman Saulius,” you recognized the politician with a small nod of your head and approached him, clasped his hand. Nathan Saulius was an important cog in the political machine of the Union Party, a stout man with a clean, round chin and a mane of brown hair edged with entrances of gray, clad in a pressed chocolate colored three-piece suit and small brimmed hat. He was a carouser and a gentleman at first glance, but it hid a rather unorthodox side of him where Trelani politics had a limit to how cutthroat they could get. Anybody who pushed the boundaries too far risked Saulius leaning upon his extremely wide set of connections and becoming completely politically isolated. His sub-faction within the Union Party could be held responsible for its rise- as well as the fall of anybody who dared to rock the boat too much. “You’ve seen my wife. How could I not be bold?”

“This contest was more envisioned for bachelorettes, you know,” the representative said, a capital man of capital interests, “Would it be more sporting to let the younger ladies have a chance on the podium? They’re the ones the young men should wish to chase, after all.”

“They’ll become complacent if they’re simply allowed it,” you said. “The Republic of Trelan’s ambition is better served by stoking such fires, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps so, signore,” Saulius smiled, “But you shouldn’t count your eggs too early. Not every judge or voter might appreciate the symbol scribed upon her cheek.”

“All the wise ones would see the value in there being no deception, atop everything else.” You countered, “Would you be against Yena’s triumph?”

“Not at all, not at all,” the assemblyman said, “I merely make the offer of consulting for any doubts, if you wish it.”

“That won’t be necessary,” you waved a hand, “I think the Union Party will be very pleased with the conclusions that are being made without any fingers pushing the scales.”

“Oh?” A glint in his eye, “New information, I take it? But if you are confident about that as much as you are of winning this lady’s match, then so be it, there won’t be any advice needed on the part of people with eyes to see.” Saulius set his hands behind his back, “You know, the entrance of your claimed woman into a spectacle, it reminds me of a practice on the other side of the Sho’reshmiz.” The Eastern Root, as the mountainfolk referred to the Imperial Gate, unconcerned with its new name or the name before that. “The Archduchy of Strossvald.”

“Quite far from here.”

“But a reliable gauge on what is happening on the southeast edge of the continent, for those interested,” Saulius continued, “They publish a collection of their most attractive noblewomen in exclusive periodicals, extremely provocative images of them, in fact. I’m reminded of this by you.”

“I doubt this will be provocative, Assemblyman.” Though Yena had a piece of foreign fashion that would doubtless be the top of such an attempt. “They probably try towards excess to counter their lack of notability, I expect.” Strossvald’s peak was when they defeated the Reich. Afterwards, they were merely another Sosalian squabbler, less important in the greater scheme, Vitelian analysts had decided, than Valsten. Perhaps that might change with the latter’s breakup, though. “I expect you to be congratulating me when the hour comes.”

“We shall see, Signore. But for the future, I am most giddy for your commission’s report on our martial readiness.”

“Until then.”

Back to your friends and your children you went, Chiara passed off to Elena to care for while Vittoria held Ydela by a small hand.

“You won’t enter, Marcella?” you asked, half in jest.

“Nah,” Marcella tipped her chin up, “They won’t appreciate what I’ve got to bring to the table, anyways. Where’re all the cars here, Bonetto? Even back home the streets’ve been getting’ noisey. Thinking of starting up a proper garage, since the kids ain’t so little.”

While Marcella had grown no less careless about showing such off, her loose white sleeveless blouse unable to be buttoned above any line that catered to decency, that aided her little more than drawing astounded eyes- mountainfolk did tend to not have such a buxom shape, and it was true enough that Marcella’s hair was too short and scruffy and her arms too muscular to be seen as charming by most of the locals. So too was the depth of rare mechanical skill unappreciated. “The trolleys are enough for most, and imports have to go through Kallec.” Suffice it to say, the apparently rising Vitelian automobile industry didn’t have a good vector here, with the current crisis on the border in Paellan territory. “Unless a path is carved through the mountains, I don’t think it’ll change.”

“This country isn’t poor,” Leo said, “They could make them here, if they wanted them, I’ll bet.”

That would make procurement of your pet unit’s equipment a hell of a lot easier for certain. “Maybe once I’m wealthier.” And if you were forced to stay for longer than you wished. “Or maybe you can stay a bit longer?”

Leo gave you a sad look. “Too much to do at home, Bonetto. I’m not a globetrotting blue-blooded venture capitalist.” Neither should you be, and yet.

The contest was prepared for over the next hour, and when the time came, the showing of ladies was quite public, though an elimination process had clearly already taken place. All contestants were redressed in simple white dresses, loose and flowing though clearly cinched tight over the waist to flare the all-important hips. Mountainfolk women were naturally blessed as a rule in this regard, but Yena had had five children, and the difference was stark as the length of hair. It was no surprise to you whatsoever therefore that she was adorned with the crown of leaves and little red and orange flowers, and a white fringed sash that symbolized being the most beauteous of a mountain, though you could have sworn you’d seen such a thing before on her…

“You have,” Yena said, a small, melancholy smile on her face in remembrance, “I thought it was overbearing. My father gave me the right to wear it.”

“What did you do with it?” you asked, stroking Yena’s hair behind her ears, “You clearly still deserve it.”

“When I was…” she hesitated, “I…threw it away. I was so ashamed, and everyone was ashamed of me.” Yena laughed hollowly, “These are supposed to be given to virgins, Palmiro. I suppose they do things differently here.”

“The state here demands far less in taxes because you have five children, love,” you said to her, “A virgin would have no children.”
Though you wouldn’t doubt that the perception of a woman in a faithful and bountiful marriage was much, much more easy to sell as a good thing than how Yena had left Monte Nocca- as a soiled and pitiful girl, the measures taken to avenge the wrong against her not cleansing her in the eyes of her tribe. Yet she hadn’t returned to them for a long time…and Yena reminisced still, in her belief that the children should know their ancestors.

“Great job, yeny!” Marcella came up and held Yena’s hands, “Bonetto must be sailin’ on clouds, huh?”

You were certainly happy about it, smug even, but you remembered how you’d told Saulius of what you would be deciding, and couldn’t help but wonder if he had decided to flatter your family as a favor. He hadn’t appeared to confirm that, but you couldn’t help but wonder still. You wouldn’t think that Yena would need the help, her lead in popular voting had been substantial enough, but for certain, outside influence could have led to a decision against her by other judges. There were certain Nief’yem, after all, who saw the marriage of green haired girls to people not of the mountains as an insult to them, even if it wasn’t like you plucked Yena from this place.

Maybe you were overthinking things. Let Yena have her win, you decided. You were hardly going to second guess her being the beauty queen of the city, perhaps even of the country.

Afterwards, the night dragged on, but at the very end of festivities, the streets were cleared out for a special occasion. Each night, you learned, a different unit of the military would be parading through the streets. A rather recent decision, with the surprise many people expressed, but the children were excited nevertheless. Tonight, lit by the gaudy displays of colored lamps and fiery spouts of braziers, broad chested Republican Guardsmen marches through the roads, adorned with cockades on their helmets and wreaths of flowers on the tops of their black standards, new parade rifles shining with chroming. A gentler side of the reforms going on, as they showed much of the fashion and little of the killing might that would be found added to the army over the past decade.

All tired out by the night, your children were carried where possible early on, as many crowds remained out as the beer, wine and mead continued to flow. As you walked back, the mystic from before remained where you had last seen his show, standing still as he entertained no audience, staring at the sky inscrutably until he noticed you stopping in front of him, bidding everybody else to keep on going.

“Heh heh. You’re back,” the tall figure said, somehow looming even higher than before, until he squatted on his heels like he had been doing when playing with the puppets. “You’ll make the trade, I take it?”

“I have no idea why you’d want my signature,” you said, “I’m hardly famous enough for that.”

“But you are famous, are you not, Palmiro Bonaventura? Your humility rings hollow, heh heh.”

Famous for what, you had to wonder. It could be many things, depending on how well informed this random weirdo was. “Then maybe I should ask for more than a card reading in exchange.”

“Heh heh. Don’t act like a fair haired Vyemani. I am not bartering. Are you not one who would not view society in terms of the value of an individual over another?” The mystic reached into his voluminous coat and pulled out a small black stone-covered book bound with bright blue cordage, that clacked as he flipped it open, and with his other hand, he retrieved a rather expensive looking ebony and enamel fountain pen that was entirely unlike what a wandering mystic should have. “Your part, first.”

“I see you don’t lack for money in spite of your occupation,” you said as you took the pen and looked down the paper of the book, divided by well lines sections. A cluster of names would precede yours, but you didn’t care to see who they belonged to. Perhaps just other people who used such their scribing as a kind of coin.

“Heh heh. Just so. Though I wander enough to find plenty of things abandoned and wanting for a good home.” You drew your signature, and gave silent thanks for the practice you had gotten with it in your duties with the Twentieth Century Commission. It was no longer the messy thing you might have been satisfied with back in the Azure Halls. “Heh heh. Thank you kindly.”

“Why do you laugh so much?” You asked.

“Heh heh. There’s a lot to find funny in this world of ours. Why not laugh?”

Maybe the influence of herbal intoxicants was to blame for such a sense of humor. “Deal your cards to me then, Mystic.” You’d already heeded the words of a colossal crustacean, or perhaps just a big rock that looked like one capping a mountain. A satisfaction of curiosity would be worth the price of this admission.

The book was returned to the coat, and in its place in the mystic’s hand came a deck of cards with a sheen to them like scales peeled off a great fish, cut into soft edged playing cards, their back sides painted with an odd, swirling paint that layered black on top of sparkling metallic notes, like looking into a dark night sky illuminated with naught but the stars. The mystic shuffled the deck with a single dexterous hand, clicking strangely as his fingers moved altogether too quickly, like you were looking at a wriggling spider’s legs instead of human extremities.

His other hand then moved, sweeping low to spread the cards over an unfurling mat produced with the same motion, a luxurious thing of blue and gold geometry that was arranged in a way to fool the eye into motion. “Pick a card, then. It matters not which one, your will find you.”

You did so, and turned it over. An unfamiliar design to you- an illustration of a man in blood-soaked armor and a tabard so spoiled it had no color save crimson, a bloody blade in one hand, and a crown of gold and gems grasped tightly in his other, both held high over a field of broken spears and tattered flags with storm clouds raging behind.

“The Tyrant, of the Suit of Crowns, Nemesis of Order.”

“I mislike this card,” you said disdainfully. “It implies evil in those who draw it by nothing but chance.”

“You are the one who drew it, heh heh. But do not be so disappointed in fate’s whisper. The Crowns are like the Knights. Their domains of Order and Power are not meant to be thought of as good nor evil. The Tyrant may rise to a throne for reasons unjust to Order, but perhaps the Order is flawed, or it is broken in a way that rising to Kingship through it is in and of itself an evil. The cards are full of doubts. Though if you wish another card, you could always find one in the deck of another, heh heh.”

“So what now,” you asked, “This isn’t it, right?”

“No. A full reading first requires your sigil, to anchor you. Now, you ask your questions of the cards. We’ll say three. The more specific you are, the better, because if your question is too vague or grand in scale…heh heh, the cards will give you an answer as suitably empty. Combine a breath with the sky and it is nothingness from the start. Breath pushed into a horn makes a note that can be heard as music. You understand, of course. It is all nonsense unless you hear a song in the answer the cards give you, heh heh.”

>You may ask three questions of the cards. (Try to keep it to one per voter)
Also-
>You may ask things...not of the cards, if you wish. For some reason.

>>5950068
>You may ask three questions of the cards.
Will my children live happy lives? The Dawn is coming and surely struggle along with it, but will they be happy?

>>5950068
>Will I see my family after all of this has concluded?

(Aka after the war and the new dawn)

>>5950068
>I have a friend who I haven't seen for about a decade, trapped in captivity. Is he relatively hale in body and spirit at least?

>>5950068
>You may ask things...not of the cards, if you wish. For some reason.
Can we see Leo's card?

>>5950068
>>You may ask things...not of the cards, if you wish. For some reason.
If you can see the future why do you live like this?

>>5950068
>You may ask things...not of the cards, if you wish. For some reason.

Your thoughts on Utopianism, wanderer. You seem the sort to have traveled and seen much around the continent

>>5950068
Will my eldest daughter follow my footsteps?

Sorry for the delays, people, I'm trying to get stuff drawn and it just feels like trying to climb up a flat concrete slab, it's incredibly aggravating.

Yeah this just isn't happening tonight either. I'll post tomorrow.

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Alright, about time to get the ball back rolling considering how much has to happen.

>>5950106
>>5950128
>>5950136
>>5950199
>>5950296
>>5950419
Questions for this weirdo about your children and what will happen! And a few other things.

Updating, finally. After I make dinner.

“I’m curious,” you said to the Mystic, “My friend earlier, Leo, who you made this offer to earlier. What’s his card?”

“He’d have to choose it,” the Mystic said, “Though I imagine you already know what you’d like it to be anyways, if you are the same suite, heh heh…”

“Enlighten me to what this suite is,” you said, “I wouldn’t suppose they are cups and coins, or Emrean playing cards either.”

“Heh heh. These are not simple cards to play Twenty-One with, these are Suites of Fate.” He took four cards out and flipped them over in his fingers to show you. “Very well. This is the Suite of Crowns. The Prince and the Tyrant, of Order, and the Throne and the Charity, of Power. The latter tend towards those who are born with the stuff of rulership, while the former tend solely towards ambition and fortune. I would say your friend would draw from the pair of Order. Now, what do you seek of the cards for yourself?”

“Alright,” you looked over to the others, who had noticed you lingering behind now, and had stopped. “My children. Will they live happy lives? Will they follow in my footsteps? After all is said and done, in the trials to come, will we be united?”

“Aren’t you morose,” the mystic said, “One more. Those are rather similar.”

Fine then. “I have a friend who I haven’t seen for about a decade, trapped in captivity since the Emrean War by our enemies. Is he hale?”

“You ask of fate, and fate answers with its signs,” the Mystic said as he shuffled his deck again and laid it all out in a circle. “Take three and turn them on their face.”

No point in not taking three from the same place and turning them over all at once. The designs that greeted you were as intricate and illuminated as before.

“The Wedding, the Storm, and the Peace,” the Mystic pointed to each, “In order, perhaps as consequences of one another. A reunion, a creation, a meeting of consequence. Then, a great misfortune, conflict, or an inescapable path. Beyond…stillness.”

Was this for one? No, it must have been for all. “I do not like this portent.”

“They are only cards, heh heh,” the Mystic shrugged, “In times of old, when the portents were poor, those who received them would read them another way, or they would simply take them again the next day. People prefer the future to line up with their expectations, heh heh.”

“For somebody who tells the future,” You mused, “You live rather strangely. Perhaps the cards don’t read so well for you.”

“Heh heh. I prefer to keep my future unknowable, and thus eminently mutable. I’ve lived like this for a very long time, and I’m quite satisfied.”

A curious individual such as this led you to ask, in spite of yourself, in spite of the likelihood that some nomadic masked mystic probably had as much proper education as a Vyemani vagrant that had just tried to sell you the shirt off his back, about a particular bit of wisdom. “Tell me, wanderer,” you said, “With where you’ve ventured, you must have heard of this. What are your thoughts on the coming dawn on Utopianism? Or has everywhere you gone not known such a thing?”

“Heh heh. Heh heh.” The Mystic chortled to himself, “What a question to ask me. Are you going to ask me what my birthday is, too? My favorite theatrical production?”

The image of this creature in an audience made you bite your tongue to keep from smirking. “Just the Utopianism subject. I’m already happily married.”

“Heh heh. Utopianism. I’ve little good to say about it. Are you still interested?”

“I am unafraid of hard truths.”

“Heh heh, heh. You would stand out amongst Utopians, then. They have a vision of a world that they have no idea how to create, and blame the rest of the world for not playing pretend. The Emrean Revolutionaries soaked the lands with blood after their war was as good as won, yet it is because their countrymen lacked the will to finish the Revolution, that they have fallen from favor. They did nothing wrong themselves, of course. The dreams of Utopians are appealing, for what fool wouldn’t want to live in Utopia? But reactionary and revolutionary tyrants both show their colors in their contempt for the people they claim to serve. Those are my thoughts on the general concepts of Utopianism. A sparkling curtain of sheer to be blinded by with, worth whatever it takes to glimpse past it to the shadows of beauties dancing behind.”

“What ineffable wisdom you have,” you said with a cold serenity, “To know perfectly a revolution that has yet to pass. Are you sure your cards don’t see the future clear as crystal?”

“Touched a nerve, have I? Heh heh. I am but a humble entertainer, dear Palmiro Augusto Bonaventura. You are the worker of your future, not I.”

“Palmiro,” Yena had returned, the children of the lot of you swarmed about in a loose ring. Her face was distraught, and you reflexively put your hands to her cheeks. “Come along now, it’s no good to speak to somebody like that for too long.”

You glanced back to the mystic, then to Yena again. “Alright. I’ll be right along.” You spoke one last thing to the mystic. “The Wedding, the Storm, and the Peace, you said.”

“Mere warnings, not destiny, he heh. You are the architect of your fate, not pictures on cards. The same is true, heh heh,” He squatted down again, as Vittoria had drawn close, and he got face to face with her, looming over, “Of your precious children.” He splayed his hand open oddly before Vittoria, and Vittoria stared. “What do you see, little girl?”

Vittoria reached out, and grasped for nothing, then blinked and stared at her empty hand.

The Mystic rose. “Your daughter has an uncommon talent,” he said vaguely, “If you wish to play the greatest part in her fate, then send her on pilgrimage when she is of age…or do not. That will speak the most for if she follows in your footsteps, whatever those may be, heh heh...” he whirled on a heavy boot, and walked away down the hill without another word.

“What do you mean?” You demanded afterwards, but Yena pulled you away, and no response was forthcoming anyways.

-----

Leo’s family would be staying at an inn, and Elena would return to her own old room up in Travaglio, taking the last cable car ride of the day up. They’d both be around for some time longer, though you’d have to be going to work the next day.

Your dreams were full of the Mystic’s cryptic words, and a future you felt powerless against in spite of his meager reassurances. Visions of remaining in exile for the rest of your life, and Lorenzo and Luigi conscripted by an ungrateful Republic and sent to die for it in a war somehow of your making. Just desserts for sins ongoing.

When you woke again, it was to a familiar wet feeling.

“Dearest,” you sat up slowly and stretched out your arms, then caressed Yena’s head, bobbing against your lap. “I thought you said Elena was coming over early this morning.”

Yena’s mouth rose with a small gasp for breath, then a huff, and she pouted at you, holding your stiff manhood against her cheek with her lip put out, “Then you should hurry up, shouldn’t you?”

You and your wife got dressed after that was done with, your appreciation shown, though the act had gone unasked for. You’d long learned to not question the whims of Yena’s libido, and the children were still all asleep when Elena knocked at the door.

“Good morning,” you said to Elena, and you let her in, your childhood friend closely followed by her adopted son, who was blinking blearily. “The coffee’s about ready.”

“Thanks,” she said, entering the house and looking around. “The kids not out n’ about?”

“Last night tired them out,” you said, “It’s quite early. You must have been on the first cable car ride down, to get here now.” The time being six fifteen in the morning.

“I wanted t’ see ya before you went to work,” Elena said, “I wanted to pick up some make up stuff from Yena. ‘s better here, since…well, y’know,” her fingers brushed her cheek, “I’m pretty old now, Bonetto…I’ve been lonely, and I ain’t getting’ younger, so I figure that Yena knows best. She don’t even got no stretchin’ on her, y’know? Guess you would.”

“I have it,” Yena said quickly as she rushed down the stairs, “Morning, El…” She panted as she pushed a small round wooden cosmetic container into Elena’s hands. You weren’t sure of which one it was. “Did it work out alright last time?”

“It…might’ve been old,” Elena glanced down, “S’not yer fault.”

“Well, this isn’t,” Yena said, “Nobody will be able to tell when you’re forty years old with a daub when you get up and when you go to sleep.”

“Uh huh,” Elena said, “…Could y’ go over how to, again?”

“Isn’t it a facial cosmetic?” You asked, “It’s rather simple, isn’t it?”

“It is not,” Yena waved a finger, “Time takes its toll elsewhere than the face alone. Come on, El.”

They were going upstairs. “Can’t you do that here?” You asked.

“Not unless you let Elena wear my Atom Suit,” Yena said crossly, “We’ll be right down again.”

…Women. Though you wondered if Marcella would have been interested in this seeming reversal of ageing, but then again, she already had a man wrangled.

Perhaps Elena was right, in that she’d need every advantage, considering that she had elected to adopt Benito, who sat meekly at the kitchen table.

“Do you drink coffee, Benito?” you joked with him.

“No…” He yawned.

“What do you drink, then, milk?”

“Yeah…”

What a wordy five-year-old he was.

-----

After some time chatting with your wife and Elena, and the kids as they got up in turn, it was time for a rather big day at the Twentieth Century Commission’s place of operation. The finishing touches were to be placed on an evaluation report on the feasibility of an armed operation in the very near future, considering what had been happening just the next country over. The problems that had to be considered, the stakes of what might happen, and the capability of the present Trelani Republican Army were to be weighed to gauge what actions should be taken when it came to any intervention in what was referred to as the Northwest War.

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The Union Party, and much of the Republic’s more jingoistic population, already had an answer they wanted. The upcoming 1920 Summer Report wasn’t meant to sway them, but the members of the minority party coalitions. A rather hefty majority vote was necessary for any declarations of armed conflict, after all, and the Union Party was not so powerful as to decide that out of turn, even if they themselves were still in debate not about whether there would be a war, but what the goals of such a thing would be. Goals that would be defined by you and your office.

Firstly, you read through an assessment of Holherezh- the country that any interventions would be taking place in, as it directly bordered Trelan. No matter what, if there was a war, it would go through this neighbor.

Holherezh was not a rich country, or possessed of a flourishing culture or intellectual influence beyond its place in the world. Its people were farmers and ranchers, who grew beets and greens and roots. The notable outlier crop being a strange sort of plant called a Cow Poppy, an ancient bulbous-bottomed cultivar that grew more strongly than its typical cousin, though was grown for the same secretion. Its trade was in cattle and opium, in iron and coal, though most of it went elsewhere as its own industrial capabilities were small. The Holherezhi people were a culture either raised to the saddle or tied to the land, the two castes no longer legally officiated but still deeply culturally bound. The ranchers and horsefolk made up the more prestigious, martial class, and to be a grown adult amongst them meant to take from another whether one was a man or woman, so raiding and looting was common both within and on the edges of the country. Great pride was taken in multicolored alternating bands of beads and knit weavings, each material and color a separate accomplishment of pillage or triumph, the best amongst them striped like tigers. Their internal relations were fractious and competitive, but the bluster and brawling hid deeper connections amongst blood and clan, where newcomers were readily accepted, but few thought of, or were even allowed, to leave. A fierce people, that the Nief’yem looked down upon seeing them as unexceptional from other Pohja, but at least Trelan’s contempt for them was rooted in wrongs committed over centuries by their wanton culture.

The land and people were not of particular interest to Trelan, however. Nobody spoke of or desired occupation- they thought of replacing the existing government with a Republic of their own appointment. Holherezh was ostensibly already a Republic, but it was far from a democratic one, instead being made up of various regional aristocrats who rather firmly directed their people to vote on a president of their collective choosing. The ideal result for Trelan was thus to turn Holherezh’s authorities into an amenable puppet, rather than these troublesome confederates. The Nief’yem minority would also be scooped up, but in theory, the main boon was to create a buffer between Trelan and the increasingly aggressively expansionist Fealinn, as well as shutting down for good the border troubles and disputes that had gone on for decades.

Opposing this result would, of course, be the Holherezh Militant, an army made up of a smattering of official armed forces that mixed a warrior class officerial and manager corps with masses of conscripts and volunteers alike. They worked together with various irregulars made up of tribal raiders and rogues of varying skill and armament based off of their own private wealth, along with a corps of mercenaries that had been brought over, mercenaries of all stripes being common on all sides of the Northwest War, but those hired by Holherezh being ones of particularly unsavory and brutish character, either from desperation or, as the Union Party would put it, a baseline affinity to barbarity in the first place.

None of these forces were particularly impressively equipped. The best of their infantry and cavalry could be said to be equivalent to their potential Trelani rivals, but Holherezh lacked artillery, and most of their soldiery was on par to what Trelan had before you had arrived, with efforts to modernize their forces only having materialized after the Fealinnese had mustered their full effort to conquer them in the past year. They had no tanks, no aircraft, and even if they were not heavily involved in fighting on their eastern flank, the Holherezhi would decidedly have been defeated in a straight up conflict, the Commission had decided easily.

Besides the Holherezhi, the other Pohja-centric concern was Wezkatinbach. Ohtiz was uninvolved in the conflict, besides independent volunteers and adventurers, being safely wrapped by the mountains and the sea and content to try and trade and sustain rather than invite destruction on themselves. The northernmost Pohja nation was not so passive, and having just lost a chunk of territory to Felbach while also making peace with Holherezh to fight Fealinn, they would likely not stand by if Trelan invaded. Their armed forces had been equipped and organized by the Grossreich in the past, but they had also been defeated by Felbach. Thus, the opinion of them was that they would be on even standing with the new Trelan Republican Army, though being distracted against the Fealinnese incursion could tip the balance. A limited operation in Holherezh might even avoid coming into conflict with them whatsoever, if Trelan did not press northwards enough to become more threatening than the post-Reich protectorate states. The most ambitious plans of the Lands Assembly and their affiliated ideologues proposed, though, that Trelan should strike while the northwest was weak in general, which would require defeating the Wezkatinbacher army in the field and storming their cities. This was viewed as still plausible, though only after Holherezh was soundly defeated, and without the intervention of the third factor.

The Fealinnese. Theoretically, they were only a successor state to the Reich protectorate, made up of the same people, the same military forces, yet they had found themselves flush with enough support to not only trounce Holherezh as Trelan might have done, but also to occupy part of the Auratus and fight to their south in Gilicia as well, even if they were losing ground there. It defied logic- unless they were either very good fighters, or much better equipped than one might think, for whatever reason. Analysts and hearsay hadn’t been able to conclude on why, but the Twentieth Century Commission’s sources could generally agree on one thing. That it would be better for Trelan not to fight them. Not unless, that is, Wezkatinbach could be suffered to be approached as an ally rather than an enemy. Something the Union Party thought little of as a concept. Much better to work with them in dividing the northwest, if possible, if working with them at all.

However, with Leo’s plan to rescue Cesare, you would be planning to fight Fealinn no matter what happened, even if it was on a very limited scope.

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So such were the three conclusions. Firstly, a quick and rapid seizure of Holherezh’s southern reaches, to get to their mountains and also to secure the border and establish a buffer. Secondly, an attempt to completely subdue the northwest by defeating Wezkatinbach as well, which it was uncertain if the Trelani Republican Army could accomplish in its current state. Finally…the last advisement. A deal with a devil, as it were. Divide Holherezh with Wezkatinbach, and propose to work with them to smash the Fealinnese incursion. That would be overreaching your station for certain, but if you made it sound possible, and a necessity…the Union Party would likely be behind it as much as the lesser parties. Though it would doubtlessly be the most difficult and extended operation, given how Wezkatinbach had already failed in the north and weren’t doing much better now that they were involved in the south.

>A quick and fast war would be for the best. A certain and quick operation for a limited result…and just enough to enable your rescue of Cesare.
>The people of Trelan wished for a war and a triumph. Let them have one. Their enemies were on the ropes, there was no better time to humble Holherezh and Wezkatinbach both…
>If Fealinn could be distracted to the utmost, it would serve you the best- and likely their own future as well. Advocate that the true threat was Fealinn’s greed, and that they should be prioritized on top of occupation of border territories.
>Another sort of plan? (Must be in the frame of an assessment of capability and risk- you are in an advisory position, not a political decision maker)

>>5952030
>>A quick and fast war would be for the best. A certain and quick operation for a limited result…and just enough to enable your rescue of Cesare.

Trelan's industry still isn't build enough for a long war imo, especially with Wezkatinbach ruling the local waters. A short victorious war should do nicely for Unionist support in the next election...

>>5952030
>>A quick and fast war would be for the best. A certain and quick operation for a limited result…and just enough to enable your rescue of Cesare.

>>5952030
>>A quick and fast war would be for the best. A certain and quick operation for a limited result…and just enough to enable your rescue of Cesare.

>>5952030
>A quick and fast war would be for the best. A certain and quick operation for a limited result…and just enough to enable your rescue of Cesare.
It's never quick and fast though.

>>5952030
>>The people of Trelan wished for a war and a triumph. Let them have one. Their enemies were on the ropes, there was no better time to humble Holherezh and Wezkatinbach both…

>>5952030
>A quick and fast war would be for the best. A certain and quick operation for a limited result…and just enough to enable your rescue of Cesare.
Captcha: ARS2NV

>>5952030
>A quick and fast war would be for the best. A certain and quick operation for a limited result…and just enough to enable your rescue of Cesare.
Our ability to pull such off is a different question. But we better try our best to make it one.

>>5952045
>>5952049
>>5952117
>>5952138
>>5952212
>>5952271
Secure the Parallel and no further.

>>5952140
Take them both on all the way up.

I'll call it and update after I get back from lunch in about a couple hours or so.

>>5952212
Arse to envy
What did it mean by this

>>5952030
>>A quick and fast war would be for the best. A certain and quick operation for a limited result…and just enough to enable your rescue of Cesare.

>>5952388
One more for the quick shot.
Reminds me of another character thirteen years from now.

Writing.

All could agree on what the easiest, if least ambitious sequence of events would be. With superiority of arms and numbers, it would be child’s play to take advantage of the northeastern nations’ current predicament to force Holherezh out of its southern half (more like its bottom three quarters), taking what could be seized while the Fealinnese fought the Pohja to their northeast, trying to conquer the Holherezhi capital city. Then, Trelan could simply sit and do what had to be done until the Northwest War concluded, and it would be seen what would come of that after a swift and decisive victory. An extended occupation, once again, was not seen as desirable or even something to consider, but there was a possibility of that becoming a necessity should the Pohja prove stiffer in resistance than thought, in spite of all their misfortunes.

Still, things could go wrong, but the scope being smaller meant that it was much more difficult to overreach. The unexpected trials of those the Twentieth Century Commission had given patronage to would not find themselves becoming disasters. With little risk but much gain being the thrust of the final evaluation, the report was bound up, copied by an exhausted typist, and sent to the Lands Assembly to discuss over the next two weeks, though action was advised to be taken by the next month at minimum to not lose any opportunity.

Of course, you talked over the matter with Leo while your friends were still here, over the remainder of the Gran Idolo Emck’s duration. You stood alone up on the edge of the mountains at Travaglio, looking down at the city and the lands that stretched out beneath, unafraid of anybody listening in on your plans.

“The limits of the operation,” you told Leo, tracing a finger over a stylized map on an illustrated postcard, “Go up this far, the same latitude as Trelan’s northern most regions. As far as the Republic is concerned, that secures Holherezh’s mountains, but if I remember correctly, the work camps you spoke of are also right across the border with Fealinn, there.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?” Leo asked tentatively, “It sounds like you made it sound really easy. I still need time to set everything up, you know.”

“It’s still one hundred and thirty kilometers of northward movement. A lot of territory to move over and pacify, and the Holherezhi army still has to be completely defeated no matter what happens, maybe Wezkatinbach’s too. You said you needed a few months, and it’ll probably take that long even in the best-case scenario. The Pohja aren’t expected to give up. They’re a stubborn group of nations, I hear, when it comes to territorial matters. Especially regarding mountainfolk.”

“Alright.” Leo crossed his arms, and paused. “Once things get rolling, we’ll just have to deal with the hand we’re given, but I know I can trust you on this.”

“It’s all I can do,” you said, “I don’t have any field command. I’ll just have to trust that the officers and the troops are up to the job, and that when you come here with our band of filibusters, it’ll be right on time. There’s little else I can do.”

“Well,” Leo said, “There is one thing. You’ve got all the access to the intelligence, so while this happens, if you map out a path so that we can stroll through Holherezh without having to fight much before we get to Fealinn, that’d really help out.”

“Anything,” you said, “Most of the people I can appeal to for help are in Gilicia. Can you help them get here?”

Leo nodded. “Yeah. Lately, some of the underworld’s been beaten into line. They can smuggle people if need be. Not keep them around, but nobody will bat an eye if I come around and say they’ll be gone before they know it.”

“Good,” you said, with little more to say. From there on out, you would both be doing your best to enjoy the moment, with your friends and families present. The hard times were yet to come.

The week after everybody left, Elena carrying your letters to Gilicia and elsewhere, events proceeded apace in Trelan.

The recommended window of starting operations would have given enough time for the war to wrap up and for Leo to finalize preparations for the expedition in the future, but the Trelani were impatient, and the report was the talk of both political figures and the town all about in no time.

The vote for what to do was held only two weeks after the report’s release, and with such an appealing throughline, the course of the Lands Assembly was obvious. Even most of the Welfare Party saw the way the winds were blowing, and voted for war, holding their noses and believing every word that an intervention would be so easy that not supporting this measure would be a severe blow to their political careers. In the end, only ten representatives voted nay, and an overwhelming majority passed through the resolution to intervene in Holherezh, to invade. On the morning of August the 21st of 1920, Trelan joined the Northwest War.

Word came to you through political contacts that the only reason the vote wasn’t sooner was to give the army the minimum time necessary to prepare, and within hours of war being declared, the troops were already marching forth, the artillery on the border already booming and flattening the meager prepared positions to dust.

The opening engagements couldn’t be called battle rather than cleanup, as not even the enemy had thought there was any point in manning the border’s feeble defenses for more than a token display of resistance. Their best troops were up north, fighting desperately in the capital, and the advancing Army of the Republic of Trelani smashed aside what little resistance, usually local, it found. The Special Armored Division, the expanded result of your most visible reforms, seemed to do little but drive as none dared to face these new metal monsters in battle, even if the tank models were no longer so new.

You saw none of this, of course. You scarcely left Pietrecirchio or Pietranello. The school season had begun, and three of your children, Luigi having recently become old enough, were now attending a new school where you hoped Vittoria wouldn’t get into more fights again. You’d never heard of any ten-year-old girl getting into so much conflict with her peers…

Yena was none too happy about the outbreak of war, but she was at least reassured by your closeness to home.

“Rychel’s husband has gone to war,” she said to you as you helped her do the laundry one morning, “He is in your tank force, yes?”

“He is.” One of Yena’s friends, and by extension a passing acquaintance of yours, was half of a new married couple younger than the two of you by six years. Sottotenente Leva would be a fair bit older and wiser than you had been when you had been at the same place in martial service as he was now, but he was an open minded fellow curious of the Republican Army’s newest developments. Like most of the Special Armored Division’s mechanized troopers, he had practically no experience with machines or vehicles not drawn by animals prior to his service, but the Special Armored Regiment had collected a cadre of experienced instructors by now, who could teach the most cross-eyed blithering dolt of a man the necessary skills to not destroy their expensive pieces of equipment.

He was amongst the most junior of leaders and still brimmed with confidence. The higher officers of the unit had had the honor of fighting the Kalleans to a draw in the now famous mock battle exercise, and they were plenty confident that the Pohja could not hope to come close to the Kallean’s cunning and daring.

Thus, when you said, “He will be perfectly safe,” you merely echoed the belief of everybody, even if you knew the myriad ways an overconfident tanker could still meet their doom regardless of any beliefs of invincibility.

“Many husbands are out, either in uniform or training,” Yena said. A conscription wave had gone out on your Commission’s recommendation in anticipation of losses or need for reinforcement. It really should have happened earlier, but it wasn’t as though there weren’t already more men about to come out the pipeline with the waves of jingoism washing through the Republic. Yena set her wash down and came over to you, and wrapped her arms around your neck. “Not you, though. For once, not you.”

”You wouldn’t deceive your partner in matrimony, would you?” A voice that called from above and around, ”Even if she is a heretic mosshead, does a wife deserve to have her faithfulness rewarded with the deception of a sinner?”

Your breath stuck in your throat. Not right now, you thought. Ever since that dream where they had appeared, these voices had been invading the real world. Whispering, creeping, shouting. Entirely unwanted.

”Come now,” the more soothing of the voices intruded, ”What of her happiness? A small lie will not harm her or the children.”

”Just as the Judge Above knows, so too may man find out in time.”

”Who the hell cares? She does not understand and never will.”

”You never cared about her anyways.”

Shut up! You thought as loudly as you could to quiet this fiction.

“What’s wrong, Palmiro?” Yena rubbed your shoulders, “You’re so tense all of a sudden…”

Tell her, or don’t, you thought, to try and give quiet to the debate that occurred whether or not you wished to hear it, or if you gave any input. You had told Yena you wouldn’t go off adventuring, or off to some war. It was true that you wouldn’t be serving any nation’s interest, and that it was for Cesare’s sake…but would she understand? Did she need to know in any case..?

>Yena was your wife. Your closest companion who had stayed with you for over a decade. She had borne you five children. Who deserved to know if not her, even if she would be upset? Regardless of how she felt about it, you would be going anyways.
>It was for the best not to tell anybody not in the know about your plans to save Cesare. All you had to do was to say that work would take you out of the city for a few days. There was no need to be the source of any stress.
>Tell Yena everything, and ask for her permission to go on this rescue mission. You’d take the chance of her refusing to let you go, if she chose that. It would be better than lying to her, or crossing her in spite of her thoughts.
>Other?

>>5952552
>Tell Yena everything, and ask for her permission to go on this rescue mission. You’d take the chance of her refusing to let you go, if she chose that. It would be better than lying to her, or crossing her in spite of her thoughts.

>>5952552
>>Yena was your wife. Your closest companion who had stayed with you for over a decade. She had borne you five children. Who deserved to know if not her, even if she would be upset? Regardless of how she felt about it, you would be going anyways.
And this is why I didn't want to promise her we wouldn't go to war again.

>>5952552
>It was for the best not to tell anybody not in the know about your plans to save Cesare. All you had to do was to say that work would take you out of the city for a few days. There was no need to be the source of any stress.

>>5952552

>Yena was your wife. Your closest companion who had stayed with you for over a decade. She had borne you five children. Who deserved to know if not her, even if she would be upset? Regardless of how she felt about it, you would be going anyways.

Honesty is the best policy even if she doesn't take it well, she'll be even more pissed if she finds out Bonetto lied to her.

However Cesare is one of Bonetto's last remaining pre-war friends and someone who got semi-crippled for Yena, he's worth going to war for.

>>5952552
>>Tell Yena everything, and ask for her permission to go on this rescue mission. You’d take the chance of her refusing to let you go, if she chose that. It would be better than lying to her, or crossing her in spite of her thoughts.
It sounds like this mission will have enough support that our personal presence won't be key to its success or failure. It would be nice to be there, but if we can't then it isn't something to ruin our marriage over. Cesare will be saved regardless.

>>5952552
>Yena was your wife. Your closest companion who had stayed with you for over a decade. She had borne you five children. Who deserved to know if not her, even if she would be upset? Regardless of how she felt about it, you would be going anyways.

>>5952552
>Tell Yena everything, and ask for her permission to go on this rescue mission. You’d take the chance of her refusing to let you go, if she chose that. It would be better than lying to her, or crossing her in spite of her thoughts.

>>5952552
>Yena was your wife. Your closest companion who had stayed with you for over a decade. She had borne you five children. Who deserved to know if not her, even if she would be upset? Regardless of how she felt about it, you would be going anyways.

>>5952552
>>Yena was your wife. Your closest companion who had stayed with you for over a decade. She had borne you five children. Who deserved to know if not her, even if she would be upset? Regardless of how she felt about it, you would be going anyways.

>>5952556
>>5952701
>>5952772
Let her decide.

>>5952562
>>5952567
>>5952746
>>5952777
>>5952807
She can know- but you're going no matter what.

>>5952564
No need to rock the boat.

I think we've got most everybody, calling it and updating.

…Yena was your wife. Your closest companion. She had gone where others would not go, stayed with you over a decade in a foreign land, borne you five children. If she did not deserve to know what you were planning and why, who did? Even if she would be upset, she had a right to know. Especially considering that, regardless of what she felt or what she said, your mind had long been made up. You could only hope that she would understand.

So, you slowly told her what was bothering you. What Leo had told you. About how you had lost Cesare, how bitter that loss had been, and how you had found out he had been languishing, imprisoned and enslaved, but now, there was a chance to rescue him. A chance to make everything wrong, right again. All it demanded was a final battle. One that you had to participate in. You had to be among the first to see him again. To be part of the band that would take him back, and take him home, after so, so long.

“I have to,” you said, “You understand, don’t you?”

Yena’s face had settled into an empty gaze, a slackened jaw, a taut frown, and she shook her head slowly. “You promised, Palmiro…”

“I didn’t know something like this would happen,” you said, unable to deny that this was a breach of that, except in an argument of technicalities that mattered not to Yena. “I truly thought nothing could tear me away now. This is different. It’s Cesare, Yena. He was wounded avenging your honor-“

“I didn’t ask anybody to avenge me,” Yena snapped sharply, bitterly. “I didn’t ask anybody to be hurt for me.” She looked down, her chin sinking to her chest. “You have children, Palmiro, a family, a future…I don’t want you to vanish. It is selfish of me, but…” She touched blindly for your face, and ran a finger along the scar on your head, “I nearly lost you. Twice.”

“You would have lost me for true,” you said, “Were it not for Cesare. He was the one who saved me from death, perhaps from the same fate he now suffers from. I must, Yena.”

Yena said nothing, then slowly sighed. “Nothing that I say or do will change your mind?”

“For anything else,” you grasped Yena’s hands, “The man you married would not refuse this mission. I will come back to you, and as a hero. I don’t know a better cause to fight for, and I don’t say that lightly.”

“…” Yena sighed again, her shoulders slumped. “Fine. Do as you want.”

“I’m sorry, Yena.”

She said nothing to that apology. “Let me be, Palmiro,” she said quietly, “I will forgive you before you go. Just…not now…”

When you made love that night, it was a cold and mechanical thing, an obligation. Yet, unlike in the past, she did go to bed with you, did sleep in the same place, though she wrapped herself in her blankets apart from you.

She did understand, you thought. Yet she couldn’t help but want to grasp you as tightly as she could, rather than lose you to some cause, some connection that had been thought long lost in the past with every other tragedy that had been inflicted upon her and her friends…

-----

The Northwest War went on. Despite being an easy and guaranteed thing, it was still much effort by the freshly reformed army, and the necessity of such effort combined with the lack of glory made for no lack of grumbling, even if by all assessments things were going exactly to plan and with only acceptable setbacks, a rare mercy in any war you’d been involved in.

The Trelani Republican Army’s primary troubles didn’t come from enemy attacks, or fortifications or tactical blunders by inexperienced commanders, but from the amount of ground to hold and cover and keeping the army moving forward over it. The Holherezhi command in the south wasn’t stupid, and knew better than to try and fight a battle they had no chance of winning, so they delayed and skirmished just enough to buy time and trade territory and towns for minutes, where whatever supplies could be denied to Trelan would be seized and run north with.

The resistance that the normal civilians would put up was also underestimated. The Irregulars had been expected to cause trouble, yes, but it was soon found out that, having left their families behind when Holherezh had dictated that most of the fighting men join the retreat, the women and similar noncombatants suddenly took the place of the militia and raiders. Even if the weapons were antiquated, nearly every Holherezhi home had some sort of firearm, and the horsed class tended to have several. The rear lines soon became unexpected battlegrounds, and in some places, the newly formed bands of fighters would recapture a town through sheer mass when it was either unexpected or any patrols were far off. Learning from this, Trelani commanders would confiscate all weapons upon capturing a town or population center, but Holherezhi were clever, and the tactic had little success before weapons would simply disappear ahead of the advance into caches, or be carried off in the hands of those who conscripted themselves.

In those weeks, the invasion was referred to by the troops as the “Women’s War,” since such a high proportion, perhaps even half of those that did fight were young women of the households. They weren’t to be underestimated, as Holherezhi women had to take things just like men in order to be adults and were craftier and fiercer than could have been expected, but they were nevertheless not proper soldiers. It was hard for the Trelani soldiers to claim any pride for shooting women, and they bitterly complained of the perceived cowardice of the Holherezhi army itself, patchwork as it must have been at this point.

August went into September, and your plans steadily worked themselves forward, as did Leo’s, with the war’s progression. The south of Holherezh at this point was completely occupied, and the battle for Keliias, the country’s capital, had dragged on into a scene said to be reminiscent of the Emrean Liberation’s nastier battles, but the Fealinnese were persevering and had pushed through over half of the city, which had been made into a ruined hell hole by months of battle. The Trelani wanted to go nowhere near that, but now, they had pushed far enough and the enemy had consolidated enough that the coming of autumn had also been the time for the Holherezhi, with Wezkatinbacher aid in many places, to resist much more rigorously, to even counterattack in places. The war had properly begun, and an increase in casualties introduced Trelan to what modern war was like, the thing that they had prepared so much to wage.

The leaves on the trees were changing color when an unexpected face turned up one evening, one that you hadn’t seen in years, though not because of your own choice. After all, you respected the man enough to have named one of your children after him.

Luigi Lucanto, dressed in plain dark clothes and having gained a fair bit of weight since you last saw him, ageing gracelessly as lines had formed a frown around his lips and the corners of his eyes. He had come with you over to the side of the Gilicians, but the two of you hadn’t operated nearly as closely as you had in the greater war that had come before, as you had quickly shifted away from commanding vehicles. He blinked at you as you held the door open, not looking pleased nor unhappy, as though he were merely here to deliver milk.

“Hey,” he said, “I heard you needed a driver. I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“That’s all you have to say after all the years?” You asked, astounded. Luigi had never been a sociable, personable sort, but you’d expected a bit more. Maybe unwisely. “Come in, then, you old grouch.”

“That’s fine.” Luigi said, “I’m just here to say I’m answering the call. I’m pretty tired from coming all this way. Had to do a lot of walking. My knees aren’t what they used to be.”

Complaining, excuses, and you knew that if you didn’t trap him here he would probably pretend that any socializing could come ever later, until time came to do work. “I have somebody you should meet, Luigi,” you said, grabbing him by his shoulder and pulling him into the house. “Besides, if you’re tired, you can rest here some. I don’t remember you ever turning down a free meal, and it doesn’t look like you’ve changed on that.”

“Ah, piss off,” Luigi grumbled, but he let himself be led in, and seated at the table in the kitchen. Yena was busy changing your youngest daughter at the time. You’d have some time to yourselves.

“Luigi!” You called for your young son.

“I’m right here, Bonetto,” Luigi (the namesake) grumbled, “You seein’ ghosts these days?”

Luigi (the son) came bounding over excitedly. “Who are you?” He gawped loudly at Luigi, who covered his ears in shock.

“Judge Above,” he hissed, then his eyes widened in early realization.

“Luigi,” you said to you son, “This is Luigi Lucanto. He’s an old friend that I met during the war. You’re named after him.”

“Oh God…” Luigi sighed and put is face in his hands, “Not only did y’ name a kid after me, it’s a mosshead kid…”

“He’s fat!” Your younger son exclaimed uncouthly.

“What a sweet kid,” your driver grumbled. “I don’t remember you talking about him.” The sound of shrieking children began to rumble around as more of them appeared on the upper floor to see who had come. “Holy cannoli, how many kids do you got?”

“Five,” you said, pointing. “That’s Vittoria, my eldest, you’ve met. Then there’s Lorenzo, then there’s Ydela. Chiara is with her mother.”

Luigi shook his head. “Was afraid you’d have more friggin’ Luigis hopping around, but no, you brought back the blonde headed brownie from the dead, but as…” He paused, “All the girls are blonde, aren’t they?”

“Chiara is green haired as Yena,” you said.

“I don’t get you,” Luigi sighed and tilted back on the chair, the legs straining under his weight. “Man. I didn’t expect you to pump your girl so much. Leo’s right. You really don’t know how to pull out.”

“Luigi, have a care for the kids.”

“Pull out?” your son Luigi asked loudly.

“It’s a mechanical term,” you improvised, “I don’t mind, you know,” You sat at the corner next to Luigi, the table by this point rather crowded with chairs, though the central furnishing itself had refused to be replaced. “Children are a blessing, and I’m of means to care for all of them. Yena hasn’t said she’s had enough, and I want to give her everything she wants. Don’t you have a wife to satisfy? Children to care for?”

Luigi scrunched his face up like you’d told a funny joke. “Nah. Just been living. There’s a railroad company in Gilicia that hired me on, and I’m a senior engineer now. I’m well paid, and with no woman around I’ve got nobody spending my money. I’m pretty happy, you know.”

“You could be happier I’ll bet,” you countered. “A charming man like you with plenty of means? It’d be easy for you.”

“I’d have to go back home and check with momma,” Luigi said with a lazy stretch, “Just can’t be assed to go through the hassle of a woman, then bribing my way back into Vitelia to find out what I didn’t notice.”

From there on, Luigi’s visits were infrequent, and usually forced by you, but you at least got your family to know who he was. There were too few people from your past that they were familiar with…and Yena was happier for them knowing, since they had yet to meet any grandparents still, and likely wouldn’t for some time.

October came, and the northwest’s forces were still trying to catch up to the advances Trelan had bought and blustered through though. The Pohja response to the Special Armored Division had been to try and evade it, or to lure the division to where it could be bogged down and delayed rather than having to deal with the difficult task of destroying both armored vehicles which they had no dedicated weaponry for, while also having to fight the most elite troops of the Republican Army. However, such trickery did not work on the Special Armored Division’s commanders, and they followed their own whim rather than being fooled by the Holherezhi into acting reactively for lack of imagination and tactical awareness. Instead, leaving token forces to disrupt enemy intelligence, the Special Armored Division dove into an escalating infantry battle and skewered enemy lines in two places, forcing a general retreat.

Yena, while still muted and morose from anticipation, still had her bright spots, perhaps where she forgot about what was going to happen, or let herself imagine that there was as little to be concerned about as you insisted. Your thirty fifth birthday passed with the beginning of October, and Yena put on a brave and glad face for you the whole day. To say she did something specially for your birthday would imply that certain amorous acts had ceased (not the case), but this birthday was much like one many years ago, where her gift, in a way, was announcing to you that she was pregnant, again. Rather than your first, this would be your sixth child…and one you didn’t actually have a room in the house for, as the others were already shared as it stood. A good problem to have though, was it not?

All the while, you mapped out where it would be easiest to pass through. You and Leo’s expedition route to minimize behind-lines troubles and get to the area of operations without issue…and then make your strike and get out. For Cesare, yes, but also the numerous other prisoners there, who had been thoughtlessly imprisoned for a whole decade now. The Emrean War had numerous soldiers listed as “missing,” who truly couldn’t be found and confirmed to be alive or dead, but may as well have perished. These men must have been amongst them, for how long it took to find out that Cesare was there…

The flow of various adventurers and volunteers and the occasional mercenary continued, all scattered through inns on the outskirts of Pietrecirchio, even up the mountain at Travaglio. None of them were suspect or ill-natured seeming sorts, even those who were your own Black Coats once. Perhaps the years and the necessary character to volunteer to aid you had only allowed the good hearted to trickle through the sieve. You learned that Yena might have been the only one of the friend group back in the Gran Idolo Emck to have not known of the coming operation. Not only was Leo back around, but so were both his wife Marcella and Elena as well. Had they known from the start? No, Leo had said, but they were familiar with violence, and could not be kept away. Not when they wanted to help.

In the last days, on the fifteenth of October, just before everything would be ready to embark, there was but one more special entrance. One more person you had sent an appeal to in the hopes they would come round, and you had thought such a request in vain. Yet here they were- with their own special boon, at the last moment.

>One more person- One that you’ve met, special amongst those you’ve met. Depending on who they are, they’ll have brought something special to the cause…
Also-
>Anything else to do, speak to people about, take care of?

>>5953243
>One more person- One that you’ve met, special amongst those you’ve met. Depending on who they are, they’ll have brought something special to the cause…

I'll put forth in the Colonel, he's probably pretty old at this point but we go way back and Cesare served under him on the Gilician Front.

>>5953243
>One more person- One that you’ve met, special amongst those you’ve met. Depending on who they are, they’ll have brought something special to the cause…
Julio.

>>5953243
>One more person- One that you’ve met, special amongst those you’ve met. Depending on who they are, they’ll have brought something special to the cause…

Debon

>>5953243
>Poltergheist personally

Taking today off. I'll call it on Monday.

>>5953680
Poltergeist will under no conditions whatsoever intervene in this.

>>5953243
>One more person- One that you’ve met, special amongst those you’ve met. Depending on who they are, they’ll have brought something special to the cause…

Marcus Di Portaltramento

>Anything else to do, speak to people about, take care of?
Not much but maybe go do something towards a celebration for hopeful success. Maybe not a big drink but something that up's the spirits... a special activity...

Rolled 3 (1d4)

>>5953311
The Zucc Champ

>>5953388
Not his first unwelcome entry and not the last.

>>5953679
Deeb

>>5953912
The other cousin.

Alright, wasn't anticipating to have to do things like this at all, but maybe it's better this way. Round and round it goes, where the wheel stops, nobody knows.

So as a heads up, I got called to fill in for a call out at work tonight, so this update (which I was lazy on and got started late with) isn't going to cover as much or be in depth, but I'd rather have something out just in case I come back way too tired from work tonight.

An unexpected knock at your door one day- not uncommon right now. With the swelling ranks of those who would join the expedition, you found yourself making introductions often, but usually it was Leo, with a distinctive heavy thump from his giant’s arm trying not to test the door’s strength. An odd knock- such was what made you wonder in particular who it could be. Not somebody from work or a politician. Both knew well to bother you while you were at your office. No, this was somebody different.

You opened the door wide, and looked up and down at the person waiting.

It had been some time since you’d seen him, though you had written to one another every so often, and he had come to learn of your plight, even if exactly what you would do wasn’t so recklessly shared. You hadn’t expected him to come here though…this veteran officer in khaki and dull golden piping, the trim denoting one who was meant to be seen by his fellows and heartened.

“Jean-Phillipe,” you said I surprise, “I didn’t expect you, let alone in your old livery.”

“I come with more surprises than standing here,” the Emrean said with a brush of his fingers against a groomed mustache. More grey had crept into his dulled auburn hair, but it was better cut than last you’d seen him, his face was fuller. “It was troublesome to bring them and the proper equipment, but three of my brothers of the Bronze Shield have come, with mounts befitting us. They heard tell of a fellow seeker of Utopia in distress, and we have come. Our wayward mother nation may not approve of our opposition to Fealinn, but if the successors of the Reich act just as the Reich did, if not worse, then they may as well be Alexander’s own.”

Befitting mounts? “You brought tanks?”

“A favor from my brother. He is not as unsympathetic as he comes across. Or perhaps he felt it necessary that I leave the country, hah.” Jean-Phillipe shook his head sorely, “Four of them in all, of the Zephyr model with a few small improvements. I thought that, in spite of my lack of crews for more than two, you would know others to bestow the vehicles on.” Indeed, you and Luigi could readily claim one. As for the other, there would surely be somebody who could make use of such a precious gift. “…It is a strange feeling. I thought I had enough of war forever, but given a good cause again, I find myself giddy like I once was for battle, for showing the foe what for…are you occupied? I do not know where in this dreary country to find a good cup of coffee or a decent glass of wine.”

“…No, I’m not particularly busy, but I wasn’t expecting anybody this evening.” No plans had been made, thank goodness, besides what was a daily occurrence. Yena wouldn’t like being blown off her evening walkabout with the children. “Let me tell me wife, then I’ll be along. Are all your companions in the same place?”

“It was easier to find our fellow adventurers than you,” Jean-Phillipe said, “So we are staying with a clutch of them. It’s quite interesting how far some of them have come.”
Yena was indeed disappointed, but she seemed happy that you were going with a friend someplace. You didn’t make many of those in this land, not because you couldn’t, but the distance had never shrunk between Vitelia and this place. Away you went, riding the trolleys to where Jean-Phillipe’s men and some others were. By good fortune, they happened to be staying nearby a watering hole of some quiet repute. The favorite secret spot of more than a few of the Special Armored Division officers, though it was much quieter now with their absence.

A small surprise was that Luigi was already here with Jean-Phillipe’s three friends, instantly recognizable by their similar garb to their leader, making a display of being foreign soldiers. You went and introduced yourself, and recommended the mead, for even the unadventurous, since you volunteered to pay for the normally rather expensive libation, though you hardly needed to indulge yourself beyond a small bit for the sake of friendliness.

Though, the bar being as unpopulated as it was meant that you readily noticed the other strangers, who definitely were attention grabbing. A tall and broad man with a long mane of night black hair down to his back, perhaps around your age, along with a much shorter and rounder man, respectively in a black and a beige longcoat, sitting at the bar away from the Emreans, near the wall. Even if the bar was so small, this was only about fifteen paces away.

This pair of men were speaking in New Nauk…practically unheard of in Trelan. Most spoke Vitelian, many spoke the Mountainblood tongue, and the Pohja minority often spoke their own regional dialect, the one local to Trelan a one apart from all the others of their ethno-linguistic group, but nobody spoke New Nauk around this place. Which must have meant these men had blown in recently from somewhere that did.

“What’s up with this place, Liemann?” A tall, dark-haired man asked his squad compatriot, “Green heads as far as the eye can see, but no brothels? That’d be fine, I’m fond of romance myself, but does no bar on the part of the edge of the world have any female patrons? Not even barmaids to woo?”

“Mosshead women don’t tend to drink, and if they do it certainly isn’t socially.” The squat man observed quite accurately. “Didn’t you roam about beds enough in Paelli? I thought you’d never leave that place, we barely got here on time.”

“Being early to heroics is poor form,” the black maned man said, “As long as we’re not late, there’s no reason to enjoy the adventure we have along the way. Maybe if you did more than walk and eat you’d get that paunch under control. You’re starting to look like a pig.”

“Nothing wrong with pigs,” the squat man said without even a pinch of offense. He noticed you listening. “Hey, looks like one of the chiefs here knows the language. Act like a bit less of a louse, will you?”

The maned man looked over his shoulder at you, then looked back to his friend. “The guy with a scar on his head, yeah? It’s alright. Things are easier the better you know your people.”

“He might get to know you too well with your mouth opening so much. Honestly. I’d think that a man like you would be sated with where you came from.”

“The highest and more dirty courts of the Archduchy,” the taller adventurer said without hesitation, “Are only the singular aspect of a single country. Let me put it in terms you can understand, Liemann. Even if you could eat whatever you wanted every day and not get fat, would you just get a big sack of fruit fancies and chocolate for every meal? I don’t think so. I’ve seen your conduct at parties and dinners, piggy, and you like a bit of everything. So do I, you know?”

“As long as you don’t stay distracted and forget that we’re here for a reason…”

Perhaps you should get to know these latecomers. Or maybe you shouldn’t. If Leo got them, they couldn’t be unreliable, especially if, in spite of this long-haired man’s seeming lack of purity, he claimed to come here out of “adventure” and “heroism” when he could assume nobody could listen…

>Talk with anybody here about something?
>Last Minute Prep?

>>5954845
>Talk with anybody here about something?
Better introduce ourselves to these easterners, we'll be fighting together after all.

I forgot but have the Hogs been founded at this point? Maybe ask them if they've ever cross paths with our Black Coat friends down in Sosaldt

>Last Minute Prep?
Bring Marcella and Luigi over for a last minute inspection of the tonks

>>5954845
>Talk with anybody here about something?
Introduce ourselves to these guys since we're fighting together.

Also like >>5954860 said, inspect the tanks, give them a quick test if we have the time.

Also speaking of things from PCQ what's the big daddy of the revolution up to right now? I mean Vang.

>>5954845
>Talk with anybody here about something?

I've heard you Sosalians like to fight each other all the time, any interesting wars you've been in?

>>5954845
[spolier]Schweinmann's real name is Lieman!? How is he connected with Liemanner?[/spoiler]

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>>5954845
>Talk with anybody here about something?
>Last Minute Prep?
Previous suggestions are all good with me, boss.

>>5954845
Introductions and tanks.

As expected yesterday evening was tiresome and sleep came early. Now, though.

>>5954860
>>5954867
>>5954945
>>5955176
>>5955263
Cavorting and inspections.
See if these Zephyrs are Zefir.

Updating.

>>5954860
>I forgot but have the Hogs been founded at this point?
Not yet- not for about another three years. Right now, this foreign nobility is merely on an adventure to a faraway land.

>>5954867
>what's the big daddy of the revolution up to right now? I mean Vang.
Sigmund Vang is on the big post-war Republican activist tour in Emre and the Grossreich, particularly the latter as Republicans try to push through reforms in the Reich from their place as Regent Council. It's a good time, for them.

>>5955080
>Schweinmann's real name is Lieman!? How is he connected with Liemanner?
Who knows? Though the latter man was never just one person anyways...

>>5955277
Ze Zephyrs are ze Zefirs.

>>5955277
>Who knows?
i suspect you do

>>5955277
>Republicans
>On a Regency Council

Disgusting.

Sorry for the delay, update won't be until late tonight at best. My rhythm's really been thrown off this past week and it's been really hard to stay motivated.

Alright, way, way late, but update's about ready. It's just so long I'm going to chop it in two to have it out a bit earlier.

You were never good at being a wallflower, even without being compelled by curiosity.

“Gentlemen,” you said in Vitelian to them. Best not to show all your cards yet. “Are you with this other party?”

“We are.” The squatter man replied in relatively rough Vitelian. You noticed he had an…interesting nose. Squat and fat like a tomato on his face, made wider with fat nostrils. It made him tragically piglike.

“He makes it sound like a tragedy,” the taller adventurer said, in an affected accent that spoke of tutoring rather than an accent you’d heard anywhere out of a common man. So they both spoke the language, then.

“I thought as much.” You turned smoothly into New Nauk, “We can talk like this, if you’re more comfortable with it. My name is Palmiro Bonaventura, and I am the co-leader of the coming…expedition.”

The tall one’s New Nauk accent was like nothing you’d ever heard before. A form less colored by Emrean affect, harsher and haughty. “It’s my pleasure, Signore Bon. I’m called Hell, my friend here is Liemann, and we’ve come for a lot of reasons, but my sword is yours, if we’re righting some wrongs against Imperials.”

Liemann seemed to resent the lack of specificity. “Hell might be here from the goodness of his heart and a need to throw away his money, but Signore Leone has introductions I’d appreciate being made in exchange for this favor.”
The favor of two men? A drop in a bucket frankly speaking, but apparently ones who didn’t need financial compensation. Neither you nor Leo were rich men, so every favor was one to be thankful for.

“You sound like you’ve come from far away,” you said, “The Archduchy, I heard you say? That’s quite a journey.”

“It is a long journey,” Liemann said, “But if you know where you’re going, then it’s not so far as it might seem. Zhantao might be the eye of the storms, as they say, but the spice junks always sail. Your associate also cast his net as far as he could.”

“And hauled in a lunker,” Hell jammed his thumb into his chest.

A lunker, hm? Really. “I have heard that you Sosalians love to fight one another. Does your confidence spring from experience?”

“’Course it does. If I only knew how to pose as a warrior I’d have stayed home and rotted in the courts like my father. Big game hunting and saber matches, border riding, I won’t bore you with the small stuff. I’ve been to Valsten during their dust-up, and the action over near Netilland, took outriders into the wastes of Sosaldt. What about you? Where’d that scar come from?”

“The Emrean War,” you said, not celebrating your experience.

Hell said something you’d never have expected somebody to say of that terrible time. “I envy you.”

The response was reflexive. “You shouldn’t.”

“But I do,” Hell leaned closer to you, bright green eyes wide, “Have you ever heard of how Strossvald was made? That fateful day at the Battle of Messingplatz, where the Imperial Army finally met its match, where they got their heads handed to them, where they got put on a spit and roasted, put to manic flight on the scale of an army for the first time in their history?”

“I have,” you said, “I was a student of history in Lapizlazulli’s Azure Halls, but I doubt that even on the other side of the world, people would be unaware.”

“The Kaiser’s Legions were shattered and put to flight there by Helman the Silver Lance, and so began the crumbling of the Reich to today.” Hell gestured to himself, “I am the descendant of that man, he and his second woman, his shadow Silke Mondhohe. So yes, I envy that you bore arms against the Reich. I wish I could have been there, no matter how bad people said it was. What I’ve tasted of war, I’ve loved, even with all the, you know. Maybe I’m just a bit crazy though, hah, hah.”

Histories would often summarize the event of the Battle of Messingplatz by accrediting Duke Roland the Second with the victory, but he was the one who hired on the mercenary company headed by Hell’s ancestor, and then ennobled him in gratitude. As for the latter…maybe some people were meant to fight, were built for it. Leo was and Cesare wasn’t. Were you?

“This cause will be more noble than the one my comrades fell for,” you said with a wistful resignation. “I assure you of that.”

Liemann looked over to the Emreans. “I don’t think that bunch would agree, do you think, Hell?”

Hell shrugged. “To an Emrean, any fight against the Reich is a punch thrown for them. I don’t want t’ bullshit the boss here with that sort of thing.”

“Speaking of,” you said, glancing over yourself, “Have you spoken with them? I need to go meet them myself. I know they’re associates of Jean-Phillipe Debon. He’s an Emrean War veteran himself, of tanks, and so are they.”

“Tanks, you say?” Hell suddenly seemed very interested, “I haven’t had a chance to do more than climb on them in the yard and drive them around for fun, myself. I’m a cavalryman myself, but my horse had to retire after the work in Netilland.” He paused, “If they’re tank people, long shot, did they bring any?” You nodded. “Well, damn,” Hell rose from his stool, “I’ve got to have a look.”

Debon, once you had reunited with him, introduced you to his fellows. All of them were once his subordinates, his officers, to be precise. They were all also, you presumed correctly, frequent visitors to the same coffee house you yourself went to in your dreams.

They didn’t divulge their precise reasons for coming here instead of staying in Emre, but it was clear that they sought some small bit of new, Revolutionary purpose that they hadn’t been able to reclaim in the Emrean peace that followed their struggle. Though they knew they were fighting to free former comrades from afar. Despite the dismissive tone that Hell had about their motivation, their support seemed true enough.

Of course, counting Debon, there was only four of the Emrean tankers, to crew half of the tanks. Yourself, Marcella and Luigi could man another of the two-crew tanks if you were inclined, but what of the third?

…Well, Heller had said he had experience with them. Maybe him and his friend could do it. Who knew? Maybe he would turn out to be a natural savant with the machines.

It wouldn’t be until the next day that you’d get the chance to look at the tanks themselves, as they had to be specially shipped. Debon had used his familiar relations to make the transport easier- no reason to deny the representative of an arms company his wares to demonstrate. The interested members of the Expedition-to-be all appeared for the reveal of the tanks, though your designated mechanic had arrived quite a bit earlier to make her own inspection.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Hell said as he saw the tanks…and Marcella. “All a man could want, eh, Liemann?”

“The tanks, Hell,” Liemann said sternly, “They’re different from the ones we know, though.”

“All the better for me to look closely,” Hell said as he jogged up, and you walked after him.

Though, against what he said, he only gave the tanks a passing glance on the way towards the particular tank that had a panel open on its flank.

“Hey,” Hell said as he leaned on the Zephyr’s steel flank and looked down at Marcella. Or rather, her grease-stained half-bare bosom. “You know how to work on these? That’s pretty special, y’know.”

Marcella gave Hell a coy glance, looking up at the addressal. “Seems like that’s not the only thing y’ find special.”

“I like special women, can you blame me?” Hell said, casually putting a hand on his hip. “What’s your name, hot stuff?”

Marcella knew where he was looking, but she was used to it and made a mocking smirk. “You’re a bold one, askin’ somebody’s name before you even know the color of her eyes. How about your name, big guy?”

“Green, good lookin’, and it’s Heller Von Tracht,” Hell said with a flex of his arm. “Do y’want to take a break for a bit and blow off some steam? I know a good time no matter where I go.”

Marcella crossed her arms and smiled slightly, then raised her left hand. “Marcella Orologaio. Y’see this?” she asked, wiggling her ring finger with its golden band.

Hell was nonplussed. “Second thing I saw, babe. Is that a no?”

“If I didn’t have this band, I’d take you up on that offer, pretty man,” Marcella closed her hand and waved her pointer finger, “But I’ve got all the man I want now.”

“Was worth a shot,” Hell stood on his feed again and put his palms up in acceptance of defeat. “I’d have asked the lucky man too, y’know. I’m not the kind of guy that’s afraid to face another man for what he wants.”

Marcella barked a laugh. “You go around hittin’ on married women that much, stranger?”

“Only if they’re too good not to go for, honey,” Hell said, smiling broadly, “My own brother has a real fine piece of ass that I’d lay in a moment, but she didn’t take the offer so well.”

“Hell!” Liemann barked, “Lay off for a damn moment. I take my eyes off you for a minute and you’re trying to get in the sack with the first pair of tits you see. You said you were going to look at the tanks…”

“I said I was going to look, mother dearest,” Hell said, waving his hand like brushing off an annoying fly. “One of these days you’ll loosen up a little and drink something harder than small beer, eh?”

As this nonsense was playing out, Luigi had gone to the opposite side of the commotion, where you joined him.

“What do you think of these, Luigi?” You asked, “I didn’t get much chance to work with the sorts of these that we appropriated.”

“The differences in these models don’t stand out at first,” Luigi said as he looked in the opened crew hatch of one of the Zephyr tanks, “The hull’s longer and the turret’s not so cramped, looks like there’s space in the back of that turret for ammunition or something. Treads are tougher lookin’. The engine’s a completely different model, and it looks like it has more ventilation and air flow. The temperature should be less a pain in the ass to manage, ‘cause of that, but more importantly, these should be a lot faster than they used to be.”

“The weaponry looks the same,” you observed. A pair of “male” and “female” variants, with cannon and a machine gun respectively.

“They’re iterations,” Luigi said, “Newer refinements of the old guns. The cannon’s longer, and the machine gun’s something different with a box feed system for the clips. There’s markings that say about everything on these was produced in 1919 last year, guess we’ll call these Zephyr 1919s, then.”

It was still very, very similar to a tank made more than ten years ago, in spite of the iterations. Perhaps since most of the fighting was finished between the larger and more significant powers of the continent, there was little need to push innovation, but this tank was likely inferior to the Delsan models used by the Trelani Special Armored Division…or perhaps, these older iterated machines were all that the Emreans were willing to let leave their country, especially considering how their first armored vehicles had been kept a great secret, however unsuccessfully guarded, what with the Reich deploying their own at nearly the same time.

Still, it would be more than the Fealinnese could bring to bear to support a rear line prison camp. Tanks were something that they didn’t appear to have in their war against the Pohja, though by all indications they hadn’t needed them yet either.

While the tanks were the showy centerpiece, they were far outnumbered by the volunteers that would be coming on foot. There were one hundred and two, and every single one of the men was a veteran of some sort or another, whether it was from a war or mercenary work or border scuffles. Leo had found a decent bunch, but you knew your own far better, and they had come from just as wide around, some having been in Gilicia where you left them, others having ventured to Sosaldt and heard the call to arms from their fellows, also trying to get the gangs back together.

The Black Coats that had returned numbered sixty-seven: they’d make up more than half of your assembled force, and you had concerns that the Emreans might not appreciate their presence, but nobody save you knew what they had been before, and they were wise enough not to speak of what their unit was. Their title was now a misnomer, even, as none of their old black coats had either survived or been brought forth in favor of neutral greens and browns, though some steel helmets remained. To Debon and the others, they were fellow exiles of their homes, and there was a unity in such now. Especially given that they were fighting for the same cause now. Von Kalterose was the man who headed the new return of the Black Coats, his second being a vaguely familiar face, a young man then but grown older and scruffier now, one Vincent Vangheiss. He had a new scar that spanned the height of his face, and a new broadness to his shoulders and chest. An impressive development for a man who had once, near assuredly, been but a child pushed into war for an unknown reason.

You’d been concerned with equipping the force, but you shouldn’t have been. Plenty of the former Black Coats had kept their own weapons, and many of the more mercenary inclined had more they brought along, with their own preferred weapon having replaced older ones. It meant the weaponry was rather inconsistent, but you wouldn’t have to fight for an extended period of time anyways. All in all, everybody was well equipped as could be asked for. Some even had body armor, but others disdained it for its weight, especially if they expected to march with it. You planned for a baggage train of mules and wagons to carry most of what was needed, but the armor naysayers would always have (an admittedly valid) reason to keep on with just the cloth on their backs.

Everything being ready to assemble and go, you had to ponder once again what your place would be. After all, you had experience with just about everything that had to be done, right down to the logistical planning and paperwork from your days under Di Zucchampo’s first command of you, back when he held dreams of a war of intellect and craft, before his superiors stole his talent to use up in a war of butchery.

>You would stay back and coordinate the operation from afar. You did have the most experience as an officer outside of Debon, after all.
>Ride the tank once again. How many more chances would you have to ride into battle alongside an Emrean War hero once again, after all?
>Take charge of your Black Coats once again in the attack on foot. You had to be the first to see Cesare- to be the one to save him. The others could do everything else just fine.
>Other?

>>5957550
>Ride the tank once again. How many more chances would you have to ride into battle alongside an Emrean War hero once again, after all?

>>5957550
>Ride the tank once again. How many more chances would you have to ride into battle alongside an Emrean War hero once again, after all?
Vinnie already on his way to become a fully fledged stormtrooper. They grow up so fast.

>>5957550
>Ride the tank once again. How many more chances would you have to ride into battle alongside an Emrean War hero once again, after all?

For tonk commanders our MCs play infantry way too often, time to change things.

>>5957550
>Ride the tank once again. How many more chances would you have to ride into battle alongside an Emrean War hero once again, after all?

>>5957550
>You would stay back and coordinate the operation from afar. You did have the most experience as an officer outside of Debon, after all.

>>5957557
>>5957574
>>5957591
>>5957667
It's tank time again.

>>5957699
"Colonel" is a rank you rather liked.

Calling it in an hour or so, I'll try and push out a second update faster tonight to make up for delays.

>>5957550
>>Ride the tank once again. How many more chances would you have to ride into battle alongside an Emrean War hero once again, after all?

>>5957550
>You would stay back and coordinate the operation from afar. You did have the most experience as an officer outside of Debon, after all.
The question is not what we do well, but what others do poorly.

>>5957550
>You would stay back and coordinate the operation from afar. You did have the most experience as an officer outside of Debon, after all.

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>An hour or so
Lmao.

>>5957799
Another for tanks.

>>5957845
>>5957890
More for watching.

Writing.

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>>5958133

It had been years since you’d commanded a tank, but you still felt the strongest when thinking about being in one. Your faithful driver would be at your side, and you would be riding alongside an Emrean war hero. Could you be anywhere else for this besides commanding a tank? You could direct from afar, yes…but that would mean you would not be part of the hammer that would smash apart the chains of your countrymen, your friends. No, you had to fight, and you fought best while encased in steel.

All that needed to be planned was therefore ready, at least until you reached the place. The information Leo’s scouts had on the place was muddy, but it would absolutely stand out. It was no subtle complex, and the geographical location was certain for the lack of practically anything else of note. A pair of blurry photographs represented the sum of your intelligence on it thus far. Something you’d simply have to solve later.

The seventeenth of October, it was finally time to go. One more time, you spent the morning with Yena and the children. They didn’t know where you were going- Yena wanted it that way, to not concern them, even though she could not hide how distraught she was.

“I had thought this all over,” Yena said morosely as you both stood by the door.

“It will be,” you reassured her, putting your hands on her shoulders.

“Will it?” She asked, a tear welling up to roll down a cheek, “…You will come home to us.”

“I will,” you said.

“Do not make me wait a moment longer than you already will.” Yena said severely, another tear going down her other cheek.

You kissed her, and held your wife close. “I promise.”

One you had confidence in keeping. It wasn’t an unfair presumption to think that, with all that you had, you might for once truly be in no danger yourself.

The shame of failure to save Cesare and the others, to lead people to their deaths, that was the true source of fear as you left your house, that had everything a typical man could ask for. Yet not all that you wanted.

-----

Out on the trail you went- over the bridges, and beyond. Your expedition looked little different from some merchant caravan, or band of mercenary toughs without a flag or emblem. No normal local company would be likely to have tanks, you wagered, but those had been disguised by suggestion of Heller’s partner.

“No reason to let anybody see us as we really are,” Liemann had said coolly as he revealed the shells that would go atop the Zephyr tanks, crude boxy structures with wheels that wouldn’t pass any close inspection, but from a decent distance would fool the eye decently well into believing that the tanks were actually trucks. “These people up northwest might not even know what a tank is, or a truck for that matter, but no reason for anybody to know at all until the last moment.”

“There is no more suitable disguise?” Debon asked skeptically.

“From what I’ve learned about Holherezh,” Liemann said as he picked a cigar out of a box in his jacket pocket, “Hay bales might be more fitting, but even theirs don’t tend to move or spew smoke.”

The drivers complained, of course, of having to drive with an additional hood over an already temperamental vehicle, but it was very little hassle for what might be vital in preventing any warning from reaching your target. Even if they had no reason to expect that a filibuster was coming for them. Your official papers that would get you out of any trouble with Trelani suspicions came from an authorization for a mercenary expedition from your own department. Anybody who bothered to follow up on that paperwork would find that this strange mercenary outfit wasn’t being paid anything and had no stated mission beyond vague transportation escort, and as soon as this mission was over even that small bit of paperwork would be destroyed in its entirety, but it was just enough to let you move to your destination with little fear of official molestations or obstacles.

You’d been in Holherezh before, but in its southeastern reach, where the land was little different from Trelan, meadows and foothills and open sky. As you ventured further within, the land transformed, the grasses made a deep gold by autumn, reaching up to the chest and studded with dry grains and berries where aggressive burns and clearings hadn’t cropped the growth down to the dirt again. Great dark stony pits and buckling of the earth where blue boulders had been spit out in some long forgotten tumult were common, and themselves ringed with other kinds of stones, again, assemblies older than the First Empire and still maintained by those left behind. Besides these dips and the occasional rise, Holherezh was a very flat country, and the mountains with their court of foothills far away could be seen clearly, just like the ocean might have in another place, but you were too far inland, and the land fell away into the distance westward as though you stood at the edge of a cliff that divided the world from naught but sky.

The locals could be seen every now and then, either bemused or distantly curious, but you didn’t wear the colors of the Trelani so they were more confused than anything. Holherezh had its own sellswords, but Trelan did not- not officially, as you were not acting under their direction despite the cover you had given yourself with your department. Nobody knew their language, which was just as well as nobody felt any need to interact.

It would never be as simple as walking there and walking back, even with your relatively small warband. Much planning and procurement effort had gone into normal, mundane, and still rather expensive investments into getting food, water containers, camping supplies and wagon carts. Fuel for the tanks, feed for the mules, medical supplies for those that came out of the work camp that might need it. The amount of forewarning reduced the pain and shock of needing so much, but for all the headaches there were in planning, it meant that everything was ready to go just on time, the group as well prepared as it could be, even for unexpected setbacks while passing through occupied Holherezh.

The meals of those days was reminiscent of army food long forgotten, and you realized just how spoiled you were by Yena’s cooking. Hard bread and pickled roots, dried fish and smoked sausage made up every meal of the day with the occasional treat of hard cheese and fruit preserves. Coffee was a necessity not skimped upon, and most everybody drank it with the notable exception of Hell, who complained of a lack of tea under his breath whenever coffee was served, though he wore a rigid smile of practiced gratitude whenever receiving the drink.

One night, thieves did attempt to sneak into the camp. Three women, caught by one of the Emrean officers near a wagon, not unnoticed, but he had been curious who might dare to approach. While there was an armed standoff, an agreement was reached to allow them to abscond with a small share of goods.

Heller, who had been the one to sacrifice his share of coffee and cheese without hesitation, had a thought right after. “Coffee doesn’t feed many people. Didn’t this all blow up right in the harvest season? Maybe they’re starvin’.”

“They aren’t,” you told him, “The Trelani Republican Army has been giving them food. It’s part of their culture to steal things from each other. They live in a sort of constant controlled conflict that, say, the Trelani Army, or the Fealinnese for that matter, don’t appreciate.”

“Besides,” the Emrean officer who caught them, a man called Jacque with a gaunt shaven face, added. “This food is not just for ourselves. We need this for the people we’re to save. Your charity is short-sighted, Sosalian.”

Heller made a small and carefree shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t think so. The one heading them had big fat tits and a cute face. Maybe she’ll show her appreciation of my kindness later, when I can let her take something else?”

”A woman should be handsome for one to warrant that talk,” Jacque said under his breath in his own tongue.

“I can understand that, you know,” Heller said with a cracking grin.

The Emrean snorted. “I know you can.”

A bit more about the Strossvalder adventurer came out on the trail. He was an energetic sort, irrepressibly sanguine, boastful but rarely using words to do so. He held the rank of Captain back in the Archduchy, but from what Liemann implied and what some of the Black Coats could tell, he was talented enough to have risen higher, but he rubbed his superiors the wrong way, acted on his own initiative too brashly. He had been put on forced leave for insubordination, and responded by taking a holiday across the continent to go on some adventure that might end in a battle nobody would sing of. A strange fellow to understand, since he seemed to hold no Revolutionary beliefs.

When asked about what his insubordination had been, Heller did not hesitate to tell.

“Glory hounding,” he said with a grin, “I saw an opportunity and took it. My higher up wanted another noble son to have an easy victory and take the point for an attack on this fortified town that had to be taken during the Netillian trouble. I looked into it with my company’s vanguard, and I figured out that it was undermanned, and it’d be better to attack early in the night instead of waiting ‘til the next day. So we did, and we won without a scratch on us. The other guy whined about havin’ his chance taken, and so I got transferred. What a tragic story, huh? But I’m not so easy to stuff in the shed and forget about.”

He wasn’t one to linger on the details, but Liemann was. “Tell the good people how many were in your van, and how many were in this undermanned village.”

“Thirty-three on fifty,” Heller said dismissively, like it was a story about finding a bakery that sold bread for cheaper. “Just about that much, didn’t count how many ran off. All I was thinkin’ of was how fast I could smash them so we could move on to the real fightin’, and I got shifted off before I could reach it. But that wasn’t the last fight to have. I’ll put off my place in the spotlight in a badlands stage if another show’s gonna have the world in attendance.”

Less came out about Liemann. He was observant and analytical, but asocial compared to most anybody else, who felt comfortable in sharing their history (save for the Black Coats’ infamous initial operations, of course) in the company of so many like them. He would have been incredibly untrustworthy seeming, were it not for Heller’s own openness and his guarantee.

Nobody was unused to the harshness of the trail, not even the women, Marcella and Elena. They’d both known martial camp life, after all.

Marcella mostly worked on the tanks, while being doted on by Leo. In a strange sense, they rarely had this much time to each other. Leo had said that most of her time was spent with their children, and that Leo was usually very busy out and about with the Future Leagues. Something you couldn’t imagine Yena tolerating.

Elena by contrast was only rarely amongst the expedition, as she had volunteered (no matter what anybody had to say in opposition) to scout ahead of the march on horseback, clad in the garb of the locals to try and avoid being targeted by any irregular militants who had ideas about ambush. Not that Elena would pass inspection on close observation, as no Pohja had her color of hair. The golden spectrum was absent from their kind. She insisted that she’d be alright anyways, after all, she had been trained and kept up her fitness. Her choice of a lever-action carbine did make her even more similar to the locals, and even if it made you concerned to send out a childhood friend to range ahead in unfamiliar territory, she never gave you reason to doubt her competence, hard won from years of courier work you’d never seen yourself.

On the third day on the trail, you heard gunfire ahead, for five straight minutes. It wasn’t unheard of in the territory, but when you asked Elena about it, she said frankly-

“Oh. That was me, had t’ scare off some rats.”

“Are you alright?” you asked, looking over Elena, “That was a lot of shooting.”

“Just tryin’ t’ scare each other,” Elena said, “Maria’s still all antsy, but I’m alright. It’s not m’ first gunfight, Bonetto. Not the worst. Don’t think we even were tryin’ t’ kill each other.” She checked a bandolier and a pouch, “I burned a lot of my ammunition, though. Don’t think we can do that again.”

“Stay close to us,” you said, “We’re almost there anyways. Just a couple more days.”

“…Bonetto?” Elena said, as she pulled out her ponytail and brushed the dust from her hair, “This is fun, isn’t it? Like old times…”

She could be talking about several things of past times. “Like the wind that hails a storm, perhaps.”

Elena laughed nervously. “I guess. And we can’t have our kids along fer this. But, jus’ bein’ out like this, in a new place, y’know?”

You hadn’t been home in much long. Answering that question was impossible with such a cloud in front of you hiding what the alternative might have been.

-----

The day came of the arrival- the new border between Trelan occupied Holherezh, and Fealinn. The golden grasses had faded into harsh hill scrub, and the mountains to the south loomed high. They drank up water and made the land here drier, and with the autumn chill, this place had become truly desolate. Nobody lived here, except perhaps mountainfolk from the peaks towering above and the rodents that made their rock piles in the sunny places.

You, Elena and Leo had gone ahead to scout out the place. The work camp looked to be a mine, a great chasm carved into a pair of hills on one side, ringed with barbed wire fencing and wooden posts forming a palisade better suited for containment than outside protection, guard towers, and a great central fortification that watched over the semicircle of what were assuredly prison barracks. Half of the place was for work, and the other half respite, though the higher section was clearly the residences of the garrison. The patrols were aggressive, and you could only observe the place from far away, until it was time to get to the bloody business of this.

“So this is it,” you said in simmering spite for the place, “The camp.” Its official name was cold and clinical- Arbeitslager H2, no more hospitable name labeled anywhere else. Merely a letter and a number. What it even mined was a mystery, not that any of you knew about digging into the stones for precious minerals. There was nothing you recognized as ore, only covered containers.

“Funny as hell, Bonetto,” Leo said grimly, “I’m looking at this and all I can think is, that this isn’t nearly as tall as Castello Malvagio was, but it’s just as…evil.”
You scarcely remembered what the Imperial fortress looked like. All you remembered was being beneath it. Running like rats in the trenches around and about it. This place had no trenches, it had no fortified tunnels, but it was a grave for comrades nevertheless. One you had to dig up, after much too long to bear.

“They don’t look so tough,” Elena said, “Maybe there doesn’t have t’ be a fight.”

“We shouldn’t underestimate them,” Leo advised, “They could stall for reinforcements. You see those? Telegraph cable. This place is important enough to communicate with. If they’re cut off, that might prompt a response, too. An ultimatum isn’t worth anything unless it’s backed up by force, and if the Fealinnese decide they can take us, we’ve lost the advantage of surprise.”

“Still worth a try,” Elena insisted, “I don’t see how a big fight wouldn’t be a mess with all the prisoners around too.”

“We’ll go back to camp to plan this out,” Leo said, “El, I have a secret weapon in my backpack. Can you get the black box out of it? It has a handle on it.”

Elena went to his bag on the ground, and dug it out. “What is it?” She asked.

“A portable camera,” he said. “Bonetto, tell her where you got it.”

“Emre had them, and they aren’t that expensive, either,” you said. “I don’t remember any of the type being in Vitelia, though.”

“They’re popping up here and there,” Leo took the camera back, a toy-like box covered in leather save for a few brass dials and buttons and a glass lens. “…Did you get new film for this, Bonetto, or are we going to find dirty pictures of Yena on this thing?”

“I don’t share so carelessly.” It was old film, but the only things you had pictures of were completely innocent.

It was twilight when you returned to the camp, the members of the expedition now equipping themselves for war readiness. There were no cookfires, no songs, only the grim focus of maintenance and getting what rest could be found. A familiar time of cold coffee.

The officerial sorts, with experience in tactical planning, all met around a table with the developed photographs later, a decent job made of making them despite the improvised setup that had to wait until darkness to not ruin the film. It was a lot of equipment to support such a little box.

“Tonight,” Heller said first, “We should hit them hard and fast in the dark. We have tanks, we have stormtroopers. We’ll never win a drawn-out fight, but if we can punch in and capture the command center right here, or otherwise trap everybody inside and take out everything outside. Force a surrender, and we’ll be out before any response can be organized. Our people have experience with workin’ in the dark, and their guys are probably rear echelon who’ve never been in a real battle. It’ll be the hardest battle for them.”

Debon had his share of plans next. “I agree that it would introduce the most chaos to the enemy to attack in the dark, especially with our materiel superiority,” He said, “But even the most skilled soldiers can be disrupted by the totality of darkness. The moon will not be bright tonight, we are unfamiliar with the land even with these photographs. We risk losing coordination, and losing track of friend or foe. I believe we should attack at dawn, after a deep infiltration. The sun will be at our backs, and we will have the light needed to operate at full capability.”

“That also means,” Leo said his piece, “That we have to move behind enemy lines.”

“I like that part. Daring.” Heller said. “Lets us cut the cables, too.”

“But risky still,” Leo finished, “A friend brought up the possibility of using a show of force to demand the release of the prisoners, try to spook them into not fighting.”

“Then we surrender an advantage impossible to reclaim,” Debon growled critically.

File: scene_48_ABLH2.jpg (107 KB, 1000x714)

107 KB JPG

“That’s what I said at the time,” Leo agreed, but less harshly, “It’s still an option. Besides that, we could toss out any clever thinking and just dive straight in at daytime. The patrols are predictable and sloppy. If an Arditi team catches a patrol, we have a wide-open space to just run in and use shock to bowl the whole place over. Simple as hurling a rock into a Zhantao Porcelain shop.”

Eyes turned to you, as even though Leo was the commander of the expedition, they knew you as co-commander, and also that you would readily sway Leo into one plan or another. Ultimately, the decision was yours of what plan to take. Though there was no reason you couldn’t think of something else, too, considering the caliber of people gathered around this dimly lit tent…

>A night attack would be best. A sudden strike by good troops supported by tanks? Nothing could knock the enemy off balance more, and you would need all the advantages you could get for this battle…
>Make the assault at first light, from behind the eastern side of the camp. It would be risky to maneuver there, but it couldn’t be denied that such would be the least expected place for an attack to come from.
>Don’t make this complicated. You have the right men and equipment- a simple and straight up sudden attack in broad daylight would be the least risky operation even if it lacked the style and flair of other plans.
>Try your luck at a bluff. Show up with your forces and demand the release of all the prisoners to you. The chance it would work without a fight was too much to simply give up on.
>Other?

>>5958324
>A night attack would be best. A sudden strike by good troops supported by tanks? Nothing could knock the enemy off balance more, and you would need all the advantages you could get for this battle…
Our bread and butter.

>>5958324
>>Make the assault at first light, from behind the eastern side of the camp. It would be risky to maneuver there, but it couldn’t be denied that such would be the least expected place for an attack to come from.

Cutting the relay seems pretty important to me.

>>5958324
>Make the assault at first light, from behind the eastern side of the camp(black cloaks). It would be risky to maneuver there, but it couldn’t be denied that such would be the least expected place for an attack to come from. Tanks from the south and west.

Could we do a night op with our black cloaks on the other side and have our tanks hit them from the front first. They'd be so distracted by the tanks they wouldn't realize the black cloaks have already crawled up their bum and cut the telegraph wires.

Aka a old fashioned pincer attack.

Kind of best of both worlds. The black cloaks can catch any messengers sent out for reinforcements. We don't have to put the tanks behind enemy lines.

>>5958349
Supporting

>>5958324
>>Make the assault at first light, from behind the eastern side of the camp. It would be risky to maneuver there, but it couldn’t be denied that such would be the least expected place for an attack to come from.

>>5958324
>A night attack would be best. A sudden strike by good troops supported by tanks? Nothing could knock the enemy off balance more, and you would need all the advantages you could get for this battle…

>>5958324
>>Make the assault at first light, from behind the eastern side of the camp. It would be risky to maneuver there, but it couldn’t be denied that such would be the least expected place for an attack to come from.

>>5958349
Supporting the pincer attack. I don't know if we can infiltrate the tanks, they're fucking loud.

>>5958344
I'll support this modification >>5958349

>>5958324
>>5958349 has my soup port

>>5958342
>>5958515
Go in the darkness.

>>5958344
>>5958349
>>5958461
>>5958463
>>5958520
>>5958552
>>5958598
Hardly the first time you've assaulted somebody at first light from both ends.

Writing.

“The timing will be at first light,” you decide, “But we’ll be dividing our forces. The Zephyr tanks are quite loud. They might hear them coming too soon, so I think they’ll have to come from the other way,” you pointed, “My contingent is experienced in night operations. Von Kalterose here can lead a sneak attack in from the other side, cut the cables and interdict any messengers trying to go out for help, and the rest of us with the tanks can make our move from this side. The rest of us make plenty of noise at daybreak from the front of the facility. Their walls won’t do much to help them, we have wire cutters and grapnels to make short work of it. By the time they realize we’re not the only enemy they have to face, it’ll be too late.”

“I like it,” Heller smiled a broad flash of a grin, “I’ll take that job.”

“No, you won’t,” Liemann interjected as Von Kalterose began to frown.

“I mislike dividing our strength,” Debon said, “But it is true that these tanks, even disguised as they are, will not escape detection by anybody with ears that strays close.”

“The amount of soldiers that might be in there could be two to three hundred,” Leo voiced his doubt, “Bonetto, are you sure your guys can take those odds?”

“We don’t have to beat two to three hundred at once,” you said, “They’ll start this off divided already. They’re set up to defeat in detail, and the best way to do that is to divide ourselves as well.”

“It won’t be just one surprise attack,” Heller surmised, “It’ll be two. Two torpedoes from either side.”

“Exactly,” you looked to Von Kalterose, “You and your men can do it, yes? Accomplish all that is asked of you without blowing your cover?”

“Nothing is certain,” Von Kalterose said cryptically as he cleaned his nails with an ivory pick, his appearance as well groomed as his name might have indicated, his time away from the Black Coats only seeming to have been devoted to making him a sculpturesque, beauteous creature with black curled locks to his cheeks. “However, my command is familiar, and the terrain is like that I have been within before. My soldiers are skilled and the enemy is unaware. If I should fail, it will be because the Judge Above demanded it, not because of any lack of competence.”

That would pass for a yes, then. “Good enough. Von Kalterose, brief your officers and have your men ready to infiltrate by three o’clock next morning. Everybody else, get ready for the same but be ready to deploy at six o’clock. We won’t be able to rely on any signals, so if anybody hears protracted gunfire, that’ll be the tell to do or die. We didn’t come this far to retreat empty handed. Understood?” None disagreed. The days of mingling had let everybody know what their angle of personal investment would be. Most, as it turned out, were further in this for their pride, and would have sooner gone down fighting than live with the insult of being put to flight. “We’ll reconvene at the arranged hours, just before you have to go. Get some rest. We might not get any for some time, if they choose to pursue us.”

-----

You sat cross legged in your squat tent, looking over the pictures you’d taken, the sketch assembly of what the land looked like, in the dimmed light within heavy canvas. The night was cold and dry, and you appreciated the warmth of the lamp keeping you focused as you sipped at black, bitter coffee full enough of grounds to fill your mouth with cold sand.

“Hey, Bonetto,” Elena’s voice floated over before she pushed aside a flap and stuck her head in. “You won’t get no sleep if y’ drink coffee, numbskull.”

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I tried,” you said without looking, flat toned. “You’re one to talk, too.”

“I’ve got time.” Elena let herself in and sat next to you. “I’m going with th’ night crew. A girl on horseback’s more normal. Not so easy t’ see. No better place for me. Y’ got a problem with that, or no?”

“You have a son,” you said, “You shouldn’t put yourself in harm’s way.”

“Marcy’s got a son and a daughter, and she’s still here with her husband. ‘sides, if anything happens, you’ll take care of ‘im, won’tcha?”

That was something you preferred not to distract you at the moment. “Did you ask Von Kalterose?”

“He said t’ ask you.”

“Heller might be better for it,” you mused to yourself, “He was a cavalry officer and he seemed to prefer night tactics.”

“Already talked t’ him too,” Elena said, “In case he needed th’ horse. He didn’t. He wants to ride th’ tanks, and besides, he was talkin’ ‘bout how we don’t got enough mounts. Even if we loosed th’ mules, we risk them not bein’ able to pull anythin’ if they get hit. Wasn’t goin’ for it.” Elena laughed a small hoot, “Said he’d ride me if I wanted. Ain’t it funny, Bonetto? Some guy makin’ a pass on me like that? Told ‘im I’d think about it. Though…y’know. Not really.”

“Not your type?” you asked.

“’S not that. More that I’ve stayed a virgin, sorta a shame t’ throw that away th’ just ‘cause a good lookin’ ‘nuff man gives me a smack on the bottom, after I’ve been single for a while.”

“Hm.” Another distraction, but Cesare was still clear in the mind. He was much more what kept you awake, rather than any other fears.

“Y’know,” Elena leaned her back against your shoulder, “So much’s changed, y’ tell me that things’d be like this twenty years back, wouldn’t have believed a word of it. ‘Specially with…our home. Our birthplace. Everywhere else I’ve been keeps on changin’, but that old town? It’s the same as it ever was. The people are older, there’s new kids, but everythin’ else…just like how y’ left it.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” You wondered aloud.

“Both. Neither.” You felt Elena shrug her shoulders, “Does it have t’ be? Not like th’ dawn’s gonna rise outta th’ place. Maybe th’ place’ll never change.”

Maybe the world wouldn’t. No, you could cling to the meager assurance that it would. No matter what had to happen, no matter what misfortune or malady. A new sun would rise, and a better world would awake to that morning.

“So what’ll it be, Bonetto?” Elena asked, turning her head, “I won’t go if y’ don’t want me ta. But y’ should. ‘specially if you’re goin’ y’self.”

>Let Elena go along with the night party.
>Keep Elena back at the camp.
Also-
>Any other personnel management/assignment/specifications to plans?
>Do anything else/speak with anybody else about anything?

>>5959195
>Let Elena go along with the night party.

Let's get this show on the road. I assume Leo is going with the stormtroopers?

>>5959195
>Let Elena go along with the night party.
>go to sleep

>>5959195
>>Let Elena go along with the night party.

What are the prison guards armed with? Small arms only?

>>5959195
>Keep Elena back at the camp.

>>5959195
>>Let Elena go along with the night party.

>>5959262
>I assume Leo is going with the stormtroopers?
This is the case, yes. Not yours, his.

>>5959527
>What are the prison guards armed with? Small arms only?
It is reasonable to expect them to have machine guns, considering what they have to keep under control, but otherwise yes.

>>5959195
>Let Elena go along with the night party.
>go to sleep

>>5959195
>Let Elena go along with the night party.
>Double check all preparations. Do we have everything we need? Is everyone prepared?

>>5959262
>>5959425
>>5959527
>>5959535
>>5959638
>>5959689
Let her along.

>>5959531
Keep her back.

Writing.

“You can go,” you told Elena, “I wouldn’t be able to keep you from it anyways. You didn’t come all this way to watch a cold cookfire.”

Elena gave you a loose hug. “Thanks, Bonetto. I’ll be fine, trust me. You’ve got plenty a’ other stuff t’ worry about right now.”

That you did. Try as you might to sleep, every time you tempted the night to take you by closing your eyes and resting your head against the ground, it was futile. The lamp being off didn’t help. Clearing your mind was impossible. The quiet tempted other voices to try and whisper to make themselves heard in the lonesomeness.

So instead, you trudged about camp, double checking everything. Seeing that those besides you were either getting rest, or weren’t forgetting anything. It wasn’t something you should have worried about. Anything you did find was of exceedingly minor consequence, and you weren’t about to tell people who weren’t even in uniform to button their cuffs, regardless of your history as an actual officer.

The one thing you did look over and second guess were the shells of false trucks over top the tanks. The maintenance was being done around them, rather than dispensing with the things. Even though they were loose enough disguises that the driver could see out the front, the engine deck protruded into a false covered bed, and the turret barely cleared into and occupied a false cabin, you found yourself climbing up to fiddle with the bolts holding one together over top. They were designed to be able to fall open quickly if needed, but why have them still at this point?

“The hell are you doing?” Liemann had come up silently, and you glanced back at him.

“I think that the time for disguises is over.”

“It’s never that time until the very last moment,” Liemann said, “Now stop messin’ with my work. If you need them off in a hurry, I’ve got explosive charges I’m about to put on them. Just enough to make them burst open if they’re too sticky.”

You weren’t in a mood to apologize as you got down from the back of the tank. “I don’t want a single thing to go wrong tonight.”

“Are you God now?” Liemann asked, “Sometimes there’s nothin’ to do but wait. Trust me. I know the feeling.”

“What did you do in your mysterious past then, Schweinmann?”

Liemann practically didn’t hear the slight. “I was born and raised to be a bullet, as far as I can remember. More a cannonball now, heh.” He touched his growing jowls with both gloved palms, “One day I met Hell, and it made me think about being something else. Anything else.”

“You’ve told me practically nothing.”

“What I was. What I am.” Liemann pulled a cigar out of his pocket, then put it back. “I hardly know a thing about you, but I know enough. Both here because we can’t stand just letting things lie, keeping on in our place in the world.”

You squinted at Liemann. “Are you a Utopian?”