Quoted By:
Shall we not simply solve this with practice?
Influence is the left side. Affiliation is the right side. Basic admin operations are marked in boxes on the lower end. This may be more readable next time.
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Scholae Fulminant Fireskellian, in the new command tent, staring down at maps, shifts tokens around. Runs her fingers across the rough surface of a freshly carved one. The icon is a a horse, sleek, hooves raised, thundering in gallop. And with a faint twinge of distance, she places it on the decidedly wrong side of Elos East Station.
Her elaboration is brief.
The passages and mountaineous in this region is meant to be impassable for mounts and men, except at great effort and sustained supply convoys. Windchime pass, here, and further east, Elos Station, safeguard the easiest passes. There are others, smaller ones, in worse terrain, which is where recon patrols such as the one your cohort recently finished come in. The 4th, 7th, 9th, all these are meant to be distributed throughout the landscape because the terrain here favours for it. A single distributed force can block off the ways through. The rivers, when they flood in the wet season, will thunder in with voluminous masses of water from the high mountains. No Sparksworn force can advance far, pinned in slim passes, stopped by forts, knowing that unless they manage the very thing they cannot - speed - then the rivers will eventually rise and drown their formations and rent their blessings. These River Wars are meant to ensure the eastern front is relatively calm, that all the intense activity can occur around Wellmoth down south-southeast, where the rugged terrain gives way to more open plains and centuries of cultured agrarian fields. There, Legion High commits enormous amounts of material, manpower, munitions, all in some atttempt to break the deadlock around Wellmoth and because if they did not, surely the Sparkspeakers would drive their people west and eat civilization.
So, all rather pleasing theory, Fireskellian notes, Legion High is very proud of it, which rather makes it a fantastically awful time that it appears the Sparkspeakers have found a cavalry commander who *could* somehow contrive to get enough troops over the terrain that when the Sparksworn came rushing down Windchime from the east, as expected, and the 2nd Cohort formed for battle, as instructed, then they found themselves beset from *behind*.
Yes, it was a force of emanciated, half-starved cavalrists wearing light armor. So the passage across must be for the daring or the dead. But you try holding formation when you're penned in from both sides. The Legion is good. They almost managed.
But: We have a problem. . .
