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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.
Bane-enhanced weapons doesn't necessarly mean they are all banecaster, it just means they are elite troops, like the winged hussars. Perhaps they were as described, but they are too precious to be bogged down in a city sieged by ships, so they just left after killing dozens of soldiers on their own.
"A perfectly placed ambush: by a dozen expert marksmen?"
Lanzerel shakes his head with a grim chuckle.
"If only. That's what we'd come in expecting. If it'd been an ambush, we'd have flushed them out in minutes." It was the townsfolk. When we broke in, the few professionals guarding the city who hadn't already deserted pulled back to the castle. We didn't face no soldiers at that breach, or even at the walls."
Lanzerel pauses for a moment, gathering another breath.
"No soldiers, just folk, like the ones back at home. Tapsters, bakers, tailors, smiths; them and their wives and their children. Half the bloody town turned on us as we came through. They shot at us with heirlooms and hunting pieces, they hacked at us with saws and dirks and saintsdamned eating knives. They threw stones and bricks and cobbles and anything else they could lay hands on and—"
You almost know what he is going to say next. You have seen the burned wreckage which stand as the sole remnants of much of the town, you remember the huddled remnants of the former populace, sheltering in the shadow of the shattered walls.
"We killed them, damn near as many as we could, and they killed us. By the time we cleared the breach and the rest of the army came through, there was barely anybody left standing, under our colours or theirs."
-
Suddenly, the narrow street along which you and Lanzerel were walking along opens to a great mass of darkness. The town square, which had seemed so open and inert that afternoon, now seems a roiling expanse of vengeful shadows. You step along briskly as the chill night wind tugs at your jacket. Lanzerel pays it no notice, having long since grown used to this cold and bitter country.
"Lad, if you forget everything I've told you today, remember this: the Antari will fight us every step. Every single one of them will fight us if they've half the chance. Man, woman or child, they come at you with a blade or musket, you don't hesitate. You cut them down. If you've a soft heart, you have no place in this war or any other."
The Sergeant stops in front of a large stone building.
"Here we are, just go through the door. G'night sir."
With that, Lanzerel snaps off another salute and waits for you to return it before leaving you at the entrance to what you assume must be the impromptu officer's barracks.
As light from Lanzerel's torch retreats into the darkness, you can't help but think on what the Sergeant had said. Was there really no room for mercy in a time of war? You were brought up to believe that fighting for your King was to be a noble and honourable pursuit. Instead you have just been told that you may have to unflinchingly cut down women and children should they defend their homes!
Such actions are surely:
1) Inconceivable! This war should be conducted as a noble enterprise, not a massacre! 2) Injust. How can we claim ourselves on the side of right if we do not take pains to save as many lives as we can? 3) A bitter necessity. The loss of life would be regrettable, but if it helps protect our own, so be it. 4) A burden lifted. How could we expect to win a war without the ability to kill all of our enemies, not just the obvious ones?
Something doesn't add up. Why would the townsfolk fight when the professionals retreated? Did they have reason to believe no quarter would he given? Or did the invasion force do something we haven't heard of to prompt such a fierce response from the civilian population?
Something doesn't add up. Why would the townsfolk fight when the professionals retreated? Did they have reason to believe no quarter would he given? Or did the invasion force do something we haven't heard of to prompt such a fierce response from the civilian population?
I think it was mentioned with the hobo begging for cash that lenient terms were offered to start and that the terms offered after those expire are a big middle finger.
Still, hundreds lost while sapping and entering to angry townsfolk when the actual military force evacuated? That sounds kinda disgraceful for the infantry dudes.
I see. Do we (the Tierrans) have something similar?
I also think it's strange that the normal people seem to have decided on directly putting their lives at stake only when the siege was already practically over. I cannot think of any historical occurrence of this kind even during times where it was known that captured cities would be ransacked in a most brutal fashion. The Antari must have some national militia system going on (even though the townsfolk are described as ill-equipped and why weren't they on the ramparts then?), otherwise everyone would just barricade themselves in their homes and hope for the best. That, or the Tierrans are really worse than the Waffen-SS...
Kipeci Paul later wrote that he overestimated the effectiveness of the Tierran army given how the Brits were fairing during the time period he was inspired by. Also Tierra was basically an untested third-rate power (relatively tiny nation with population of 1 million) before getting momentum through its repulsion of the Antari invasion. So this ineffectiveness is very much intended and should have been even greater in theory.
JRIz Our Church Hussar analogue are the Knights of the Red, also a religious order (you can read about them in the reference - basically men dedicated to seek martyrdom through death in battle.) Only thanks to Tierra's smaller population, they are not really an organized fighting unit. You will run into an officer here and there who is one, though.
Re: siege. From my (very limited, and I had trouble finding examples for this earlier, so could be I am wrong) historical knowledge, civilians would participate in sieges on mass whenever they believed the only alternative to fighting was likely death. Antari civilians are mostly uneducated serfs, who only know of Tierrans by their actions: they are barbarians that Antari failed to pacify just years prior, they are backwards people who still have a king, and they are heretics who worship the wrong version of the faith. Plus add to that the language barriers. Now the Tierrans are at the Antari doorsteps, their ship destroying massive parts of the town (remember how much detail is put on how greatly the town itself, not just the walls, suffered from the bombardment). I think its plausible that the Antari civilians expected something far worse than occupation.
Easier explanation is that Paul wanted to ape partizans, because he thought partizans were really cool. To be fair, partizanship - whether political or military - is an established tradition of my people, along with reforming prostitutes (thank you, Dostoevsky.) Why deprive fake slavs of the fun?
A bitter necessity. The loss of life would be regrettable, but if it helps protect our own, so be it.
Indeed. Despite your best attempts, you cannot see any way around it. As an officer, your job is to serve His Majesty and the men under your command. If you must spill innocent blood to do what you are in this country to do, so be it.
-
The barracks turn out to be a large, stately building of grey stone, built with the curved roofs and elaborate stone scrollwork of the Kian style. Judging by the expensive work on the mahogany doors and the thick red carpets, the building had likely been the winter home of one of the great lords of the Antari congress.
The Tierran officers who had come before you have certainly left their mark. Every instance of the Antari double-headed eagle you come across has been defaced, sometimes brutally. One carving in the main hall, too big to be cut down, is instead draped with the gryphon and tower banner of the Unified Kingdom.
Despite the thorough job the first Tierran residents did of vandalizing the place, the furnishings were left mostly intact. As such, it is quite easy for the corporal at the door to find you a relatively undamaged room for the night. With the assurance that your personal effects are to be transferred from the Victorious in the morning, you proceed to your room.
Your temporary quarters seem almost impossibly luxurious, especially after a few weeks in the cramped and constantly rocking cabin on the Victorious. Before you can work up the urge to do anything else, you sink into the too-soft mattress of the ornate four-poster bed and fall into a deep, exhausted sleep.
-
You wake in the morning to the sound of an insistent knock on your door. After taking a few moments to make yourself presentable, you open it to find Sergeant Lanzerel, almost exactly as you had seen him last night, ill-fitting Dragoon jacket and all. He hands you an official-looking envelope stamped with a government seal: your orders.
You are to command a patrol of five enlisted men, including a sergeant. Your small unit of six is to report to the commander of the outpost at the Kharan river crossing in four days' time.
-
Producing a map from his jacket pocket, Sergeant Lanzerel points out the location of your new assignment. You guess that it would take you a day and a half of riding to get to your new posting. Lanzerel, with his greater knowledge of the country and the roads, gives an estimate closer to three days.
That would mean that you would only have a single day and night in Noringia before heading out to your new posting. In that time, you will be required to ready yourself with everything you need: a personal mount and a veteran ranker for a sergeant to pick your enlisted men and advise you.
Both the quartermaster's office and the personnel assignment office work on a first-come, first-serve basis, meaning that the earlier you request a horse or get your men recruited, the better quality they will be.
What do you deal with first?
1) I get a horse first. 2) I select a sergeant and assemble my unit first.
As of the Spring of the 602nd year of the Old Imperial Era.
There is no room for the thousands of soldiers in the King's army within the walls of a town the size of Noringia. While baneblooded officers like yourself get comfortable billets, the common soldiery must seize houses from the local populace or set up tent camps outside the walls. As a result the men in charge of looking after them must move with them. The officers in charge of personnel for each regiment make their office in a large, semi-ruined farmhouse outside the walls.
You meet with your regimental clerk, scanning paperwork and regulations under the light let in by the half-collapsed roof. Standard procedure stipulates that the commanding officer of a newly formed combat unit must choose his own sergeant who, being more suited to judge and choose men of a similar low station, will pick the rest of the unit.
The clerk sends a runner out to find candidates available to serve under an officer with your lack of seniority.
"You'll get the bottom of the bloody barrel of course." Lanzerel says, quiet enough so that only you could hear him. "A just-commissioned cornet won't have much chance of getting a good sergeant. The more senior officers will have snapped them up already."
-
Soon, the runner returns with three men, each wearing the grey tunic of the Royal Dragoons and sporting two yellow chevrons on each sleeve: corporals with the appropriate seniority to be eligible for promotion to sergeant.
The first to enter is Corporal Hernandes, a bespectacled young man with unkempt whiskers and a mop of long black hair. It only takes you a few minutes of conversation with him to realize that he is well-read on the art of war and has a head full of ideas for the ordering and training of fighting men.
The second candidate is Corporal Harlech, a large, two-fisted fellow with ten years of service behind him. Boisterous and hotheaded, he is exactly what you'd expect of a sergeant, rough and confident. He tells you about his "lads", a group of high-spirited ruffians more than willing to see some action under your command.
The last corporal for your consideration is a familiar face: Fenton, the eldest son of your mother's lady's maid. You recall that he had left to join the army some time ago. You remember him as a good-natured lad, faithful to his friends and your family. However, he still seems like the bluff servant boy you had known as a child. It is clear that he sees men below him as friends or brothers, not as subordinates. You find it hard to believe that your old friend would be very good at keeping order in the ranks.
You:
1) Pick Hernandes as my Sergeant. 2) Pick Harlech as my sergeant. 3) Pick Fenton as my sergeant. 4) Decide that none of these men will do. Lanzerel is still unassigned, might I request him instead?
As of the Spring of the 602nd year of the Old Imperial Era.
(Unit stats have been unlocked in the below spoiler. I will give a short summary of each.)
Senior NCO: POST VACANT
Discipline: 25% (How well drilled your men are in fighting as a unit and following orders. This is essential to produce high-impact cavalry charges, volley fire, and soldiers that won't fuck off to rape and loot the corpses as soon as combat is over.)
Morale: 25% (Pretty self-explanatory. Units high in morale at the expense of everything else are essentially gangs of thugs, willing to follow you as long as they get what and keep winning.)
Loyalty: 25% (How unlikely your men are to shoot you in the face and desert into the gloomy Antari countryside.)
Since we're going to ride with a small group in a wilderness, populated by peasants who hate us, perhaps Loyalty (choice 3) is the best bet, so that we don't get backstabbed by our own men.
I should add that its a bit more complicated choice than +stat. Also, these people clearly have different personalities and that means different kind of bullshit to deal with.
