You are Noel Tiberius, queen of the sovereign realm of Hazaran and among the top expert monster hunters in the world. But lately there haven’t been all that many monsters worth slaying – even the mighty abyssal ones have either had changes of heart, seeking coexistence with humanity and with your fellow half-blooded warriors, or have fallen to the combined prowess of your faction. Instead, most of the threat comes from the most difficult enemy of all for you and the other warriors like you to deal with – ordinary humans.

You’ve just dealt with a conflict in a Sakian town that was partly of your own making, between technologically advanced invaders from a far-off continent and the local people. The invaders had wanted to use a bridge through the town to move their heavy weapons, positioning them along the northern border of your kingdom. Destroying that bridge in the night drew the ire of nearby soldiers, who attempted to purge the town of most of its men and boys in retaliation.

Of course you couldn’t just allow that to happen. So you and Jenna, the most violent of your ‘ducklings’ from years past, stood up to the soldiers. Only one of them ended up dead after his own subordinates shot him to try to kill you, though a few also lost limbs in the process. Its only because of your insistence that the soldiers survived at all – the local townsfolk were ready to hack them to pieces themselves.

But even now that you’ve found a tentative resolution here, more has to be done.

“We should find the others,” you decide. “Other places may have similarly vindictive occupiers – maybe even worse.”

“Okay,” Jenna agrees. “So Helen and Nessa went to attack some supplies outside a town to the north, while Serana and Alexa will be hitting a bridge to the west. Valentina and Justina are dealing with a fortified house.”

“Each of those has different reasons to back up the warriors there,” you muse. “Serana and Alexa’s target is the most nearly similar to what we were dealing with here, so there’s a chance of reprisals. The loss of supplies could also be keenly felt by the invaders, and apparently they already had problems with the locals stealing from those supplies.”

“Would they make the leap to suspect the locals?” Jenna wonders. “Destroying is way different from stealing.”

“It’s possible,” you admit. “I wouldn’t make that leap, but some junior officer could get the wrong idea and assume the locals decided that if they couldn’t have those supplies nobody could. It’s dumb, but being dumb doesn’t preclude being possible.”

“I guess it all comes down to how likely you think it is,” Jenna shrugs. “Whaddyou think about Justina and Valentina’s target?”
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