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Completed [LP] Enlist in the Royal Dragoons! Codex plays Sabres of Infinity

baud

Arcane
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Septentrion
RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
4.

No social handouts from our hard-won money! :keepmymoney: What's next, free healthcare?
 
Joined
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You return the old woman's gaze with a flint-hard glare of your own. Your lips curl into a snarl as your hand goes for the hilt of your sabre. Thoroughly cowed, the Antari woman retreats, empty-handed.

Was that justified? Of course it was. It is military practice to offer a besieged town good terms at the beginning of a siege and unconditional ones by the end of it. It was their fault that they put up such a stupidly hopeless resistance and it was only fair that they paid the price for it.

You walk on, convinced of the rightness of your own argument.

-

You continue onwards as the sun sets and the sky turns a dark burnt red. You almost reach the shattered ruins of the town's landward gate when you hear a shouted greeting to your right.

You turn to see a tall, brawny man in his late twenties sporting some of the most impressive sideburns you have ever seen. He wears a rather ill-fitting Dragoon uniform and carries a lit torch in his right hand. He approaches with a brisk swaggering gait, a shotgun slung over his shoulder.

"Cornet Ortiga, I presume?"

When you answer in the affirmative, he sketches a quick salute. "Sergeant Solhammond Lanzerel. Your captain told me to find you. Not safe to be doing that alone, not after dark. We've whipped most of these moose-shagging bastards well and good, but some aren't so easily cowed. A few of them still have it in their heads that their overlords may reward them if they draw a knife across one of our boys' throats every few days or so."

Suddenly, the alleys seem to have grown a lot more menacing. The town is now more than dark: it is in shadow. Every corner and every house seems more threatening now that there is the possibility of a hidden ambusher with a knife hiding in the shadow of every stray barrel or fence.

"If you don't mind, sir. I'll show you where the officers are billeted."

-

The two of you make idle conversation as you walk across town. You feel assured that while any lone idiot might attack a single unprepared Tierran, two soldiers armed with weapons and a lit torch would give any would-be assassin pause.

"I was one of the first men to land on Antari soil four months ago," boasts the Sergeant. "I'm — was, Second Battalion, Fourth Regiment of Foot."

Come to think of it, the man does seem less at ease with his uniform jacket than a sergeant with some years' service would have any right to be. If he had, up until very recently, worn the burnt orange of the line infantry, that would certainly explain his discomfiture.

"I've some advice to offer you lad, if you'll have it."

1) "Of course!"
2) "If I need advice, I'll ask for it."

As of the Spring of the 602nd year of the Old Imperial Era.

Alaric d'al Ortiga
Age: 14
Rank: Cornet
Wealth: 110
Income: 5

Soldiering: 64%

Charisma: 40%

Intellect: 0%

Reputation: 38%

Health: 75%

Idealism: 62% Cynicism: 38%

Ruthlessness: 41% Mercy: 59%

You have no decorations as of yet.
 

Kipeci

Arcane
Joined
May 22, 2012
Messages
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Location
Vicksburg
Your family is always relatively poor (for noblemen) but you can choose to start with a letter of credit.
Oh, I thought that this choice indicated some sort of yankee industrialist type background with more moolah. Does it have greater influences on some sort of a stat like intelligence or something for figuring out how all that stuff works?
1) The North, the economic powerhouse of Tierra, a land of iron mines and mills.
 
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Oh, I thought that this choice indicated some sort of yankee industrialist type background with more moolah. Does it have greater influences on some sort of a stat like intelligence or something for figuring out how all that stuff works?

You are right, that also gives more money. Still your house is relatively poor for story reasons, but less so if based in the North.
 

JRIz

Augur
Joined
Aug 17, 2015
Messages
502
I've some advice to offer you lad, if you'll have it

That's not how you talk to an officer -- but to a 14-year-old maybe. 1, we are still green enough.
 
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Messages
1,832
Lanzerel gives a rough grin. He stands up a bit straighter as he speaks.

"Alright lad, you want to stay alive out here, remember this: The Antari aren't hares on your father's estate. They aren't foxes, they aren't wolves, and no matter what they'd have you think, they aren't bears. They're folk: thinking, breathing folk, and we've just invaded their homeland."

Lanzerel takes a deep breath as he pauses for a moment, as if he were about to say something truely distasteful.

"We lost fifty men storming the heights outside the city, another thirty digging saps to the walls. When we finally led the King's army into the city, we left two hundred men dead behind us. There wasn't enough of second battalion left to reform into a company. They sent the officers back to Aetoria to put together a whole new battalion, and left the rest of us up here for the other regiments to gobble up. Some captain in your regiment was told I could handle a horse, so they gave me this jacket and told me I was one of them now."

You are quite shocked by the Sergeant's recounting of his regiment's woes. To have had a battalion of six hundred fighting men reduced to less than forty was not something you had expected out of a single minor assault against a decrepit castle town. Lanzerel sees your expression in the guttering torchlight, and his mouth hardens to a thin slash across his face.

"You're shocked. I can tell. You saw those pathetic walls. You can imagine how many guns our fleet trained on them. They weren't what did it. Those walls were breached three hours after we finished our siegeworks. Do you know what did?"

1) "A hundred church hussars, with flaming swords in hand and angel wings unfurled, ready to sally?"
2) "A perfectly placed ambush: by a dozen expert marksmen?"
3) "A powerful banecaster, eighth or ninth calibre, calling up lightning and flame?"
4) "The townspeople, given courage and aggression by the fact that they were defending their homes?"
5) "I have no idea."

As of the Spring of the 602nd year of the Old Imperial Era.

Alaric d'al Ortiga
Age: 14
Rank: Cornet
Wealth: 110
Income: 5

Soldiering: 64%

Charisma: 40%

Intellect: 0%

Reputation: 38%

Health: 75%

Idealism: 62% Cynicism: 38%

Ruthlessness: 41% Mercy: 59%

You have no decorations as of yet.
 

JRIz

Augur
Joined
Aug 17, 2015
Messages
502
From our meagre experience, 3 sounds likely (my vote). How would you set up an ambush inside a town that's being assaulted? Maybe with ramparts not visible from the outside and therefore not destroyed by the artillery on the ships. That would mean the leaders didn't do their homework when planning the siege. Dunno about 1, is it a joke? 4 is bullshit, and why should we say 5? The Sergeant's introduction seems to lead up to 4.
 
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Messages
1,832
Dunno about 1, is it a joke?

Antari church hussars actually do have wings attached to their armor (think Polish winged hussars at their prime) and wield bane-enhanced weapons. Though option 1 seems to present them as a bit fantastical.
 

baud

Arcane
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
1, I just want to see him shoot down an idiot 14-year old’s vision of it.

It could be fun, since I think all possibilities seem likely.
Perhaps it's just a flavor choice, all choices are equally valid and it will just give a different bit of story for each. Or perhaps the next enemies we'll meet?
 

Kipeci

Arcane
Joined
May 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
Vicksburg
1, I just want to see him shoot down an idiot 14-year old’s vision of it.

It could be fun, since I think all possibilities seem likely.
Perhaps it's just a flavor choice, all choices are equally valid and it will just give a different bit of story for each. Or perhaps the next enemies we'll meet?
It seems to me like it can’t be real. They have flaming swords, so they’d be bane wizards who can actually do something at least. If they have all that armor and horses and all on top of it, one hundred of them seem like they’d eat the infantry for breakfast while defending a fortified city.
 

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