It was the fifteenth of September, in the year of 1909. The Emrean Liberation had been being fought for near four years- by you and your home nation, for almost two- though you called it the Auratus War, after the region you and your comrades were now in, even if there was also fighting to the north, and in the Vitelian Sea. Amongst the numerous soldiers of the Viteliean Royal Army, all of its armed forces, however, you were rather special. You, <span class="mu-i">Sottotenente</span> Palmiro Bonaventura, were an officer in the Special Weapons Battalion, in command of an armored steel war machine.

Certainly glamorous sounding, but your unit had only fought in one operation that could truly be called a battle near a whole month ago. In the meantime, you were…idle. A strange thing to be in a war like this. A day without artillery slinging shells back and forth was rare, even if your unit was positioned far back from the front lines you had won, and a stray shell falling near the Special Weapons Battalion was a rarity. Not that the Grossreich would not have liked to shell you- rumor of long ranged heavy cannon had prompted the battalion commander, <span class="mu-i">Maggiore</span> Alphonso Di Marea, to command the entire battalion to commit great efforts to camouflaging your equipment from aerial spotters. It was something to do, for a while- but the strange monotony continued. Went on whilst you knew that infantrymen went forward and back- many wounded, many dead, as trenches traded hands in rapid succession.

The battle you had fought in the opening strikes of was ongoing, but little progress had been made without the initial burst of energy that tanks and smothering artillery barrages had lent. The <span class="mu-i">Arditi</span> had been moved away from your unit two weeks earlier to aid elsewhere, so Leo was no longer around for company- and reassurance of him still living. The commanding officer of your platoon and direct superior, <span class="mu-i">Tenente</span> Chiara Di Scurostrada, seemed more sore as well without his presence- she had complained in a reserved yet unmistakably bitter way, that an officer had been transferred in to take command of the company after your former company commander had been killed in the battalion’s first battle. Yes, there was an agreement that a new and familiar face was not easily welcomed in a unit that had trained together as long as you had- but Di Scurostrada’s ambition was obviously aching, the battalion’s inactivity making her restless.

So the way to pass the time, besides bickering with your driver Luigi and speaking cordially with practically everybody else, turned to communications over greater distances with people not seen for too long.