THROUGH STRIFE AND FAMINE AND WAR AND PEACE,

[agogemod]

WHO? Everybody!
WHAT? Fight in the historic Battle of Valmy.
WHEN? September 20th, 1792. Valmy.
ANYTHING ELSE? Violence, as always. Please warn in subject lines for anything beyond physical violence, and move to a personal journal if things go beyond PG-13.

it'll be fine;

between sainte-menehould and valmy,
1792: revolutionary france.

read the valmy setting infopage

MISSION OBJECTIVE

Win the day!

Historically, Valmy was an unexpected victory for France that really kicked off the French Revolution. Make sure this holds true! Don't let the Prussians break through French lines, take either Dumouriez or Kellerman, and survive.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO GOETHE

The life of Goethe was saved by those who volunteered to keep him from the clutches of Regency assassination, though it was a near thing; they were not able to leave completely stealthily, and had to run back to French lines as dawn broke.

Most important after saving the life of Goethe, they were able to apprehend and capture the Regency spy. She is in holding, restrained in a tent hidden far behind enemy lines. You can speak with her, if you wish.



SHARPSHOOTING

Famously, Kellerman had his troups climb up a windmill and the nearby farmhouse to shoot down at the valley below and the Prussians attempting to run through it from the cover of the forest. Take out as many Prussians as you can. Alternatively, if you're not much for shooting but you're quick fingered and organized, you can help reload the shooter's muskets, hand them supplies, more musket balls and powder, fresh muskets when one of theirs becomes jammed, or simply keep the rain out of their eyes.

Battery

You hear that? It's canonfire! Cannons take at least two people to load, aim and fire, making it a steady process requiring teamwork and balance. You want to go as fast as possible so the attacking army doesn't get right up to your nose, after all. Be careful! Don't drop a cannonball on your foot.

COMBAT

Get into the thick of it! There's less armor in this era, more quick jabs with sabers and bayonets, and your pistol can only hold a single bullet at a time. Unless you've got time to reload, you're better off just throwing the thing aside after firing a shot-- you'll see this tactic is popular among troops on either side, not wanting to be weighed down by a now-useless hunk of metal. Horses are not uncommon either, though they're largely reserved for officers who are more than happy to reach down and stab you while they ride by… if they don't just run you over in the first place. And did I mention the cannonfire occasionally making the ground explode into huge chunks? Try to avoid those.

MEDICAL

As always, wounded soldiers require assistance. The medical tent has a steady supply of the wounded, many with injuries from cannonfire, where limbs have been blown off almost in their entirety, and blood gushes readily from damaged major arteries. Act quick, and don't be afraid to, uh, amputate. Nobody else is.

STEALTH

There is reason to believe some Regency spies are undercover as French officers, and intend to kill either Kellerman or Dumouriez. Stay near the generals and protect them... without letting on. Capturing the spies alive would be a serious boon for COST, so if you could manage not to kill the spy, please? ...Please?

INFORMATION is worth its weight in gold

The way these battles work is reliant on the generals sending information down to their troops from the hills they're using to overlook the fighting. Fast riders or runners are essential for this task, and it affords you an opportunity to be near either general should you need to protect them against spying. Or maybe the runners are the spies? Who knows. Regardless, try to preserve the flow of information, and fix any tangles that may appear. If a runner with vital orders gets attacked, back them up; if they get killed, replace them; if they disappear… figure out what happened?

cannon killer squad

For the fast, stealthy, and / or magically gifted, Takatora has set up a 'Cannon-killer' plan, intending to weaken Prussian artillery through magic, speed, and the application of giant hammers. It's risky-- you'll have to get pretty close to the Prussian lines-- but it's worthwhile if you can weaken them even a little.

I'm going down I'm yelling timber

At some point late in the day, just when the worst of the rain has finally stopped, Prussian artillery finally gets aim good enough to send a volley of cannonballs straight at the windmill and farmhouse on the hill. There's a reason this strategy was considered a bold move; stationary targets are never safe in wartime. The windmill comes down in an explosive crash, and the farmhouse begins to collapse. Were you caught in the crossfire? Are you coming to pull bodies out of the rubble? Do what you can to recoup from this loss.

MORALE

When all else fails, keep spirits high. This battle will be impossible without enthusiastic troops committed to the cause. Give rousing speeches! Inspire people! Sing a song! Do whatever you need to.

read the valmy setting infopage

NAV NETWORK LOGS OOC PLURK DISCORD

Comments

PLACEHOLDER.

[agogemod]

LITTLE XICI.

[agogenpc]

In the tent that the Commander has secured for COST use, a girl is tied to a center support pole and blindfolded. She is being guarded lightly; she isn't making much of an attempt to escape. Her expression under the blindfold, though, is one of rage and frustration.

The guards will not stop you if you attempt to talk to this true believer, this resolute follower of the Regency. Good luck getting anything worthwhile out of her, but it's worth a try, right? When the main battle is over, she'll be interrogated properly by the Commander. Until then, maybe you can soften her up, make the job easier.

Or, who knows, maybe you can try to be nice, get her some water. She's dirty, still wearing a Prussian uniform, chest bound, hair tied back. It's not impossible to be sympathetic toward this bound and blindfolded creature.

[northerndragon]

The livery soldiers wear here seems inconsistent... here a blue coat, there a red hat... but even in the dim light of the tent, there's no doubt that the blindfolded young woman is on the other side.

What is "the other side"? At home, every day, Jon is less and less convinced of sides and enemies and petty politicking, more convinced of the need for people to band together. The situation is not quite the same here, and he understands that there are two wars: the French with their smallfolk and the attacking Prussians, and the hidden fight between the Regency and COST. This girl is an enemy in both.

He'd been a spy for a while himself, not quite willing and often full of fear that his ruse would be discovered, and ready to lie to protect the Watch, his brothers. He thinks of how he would have wanted to be treated under those circumstances, and how Mance had treated him, even while suspecting him the entire time.

She's not him, and he has no illusions that she'll tell him anything true, but it's worth the attempt before someone else tries something harsher.

"You must be thirsty," he says, with a little bit of sympathy in his voice, but not standing quite close enough for her to kick.

[agogenpc]

Little Xici does not kick. She will not waste any more energy on these rebel dogs. Her head snaps in the direction of the voice-- a man's, or someone with a voicebox implant to give them a deeper tone-- and if one can glower through a blindfold, Xici has accomplished it.

"I need nothing from you pugnates," she says, voice full of spite. Her tone makes it clear that whatever 'pugnate' is, it's meant to be a dire insult. "Especially your pity."

[northerndragon]

"It's not pity," he says, watching her closely. "You're caught. You can be more comfortable or less. If I were in your place, I'd choose more."

He can see the scowl under the blindfold, but there must be a reason they've chosen to blindfold her at all. He thinks they're not convinced she won't escape or be freed, or they don't intend to kill her... probably one of those. Or she can contact the Regency just as he could contact COST at any moment. If that's it, don't they have a way of stopping it, now that she's been captured?

[agogenpc]

"Are you always so kind to those who want you dead, aggressor?" She spits another insult, one that won't have any weight for another two thousand years. "That's no way to win a war."

[northerndragon]

That one makes a little more sense than 'pugnate,' but he only raises his eyebrows for a moment. It's not much different in impact from one of the Free Folk spitting Crow at him. It's a line on the ground but it doesn't hurt him.

"Not always. It depends which war you're fighting." Being kind to those who had previously wanted him dead was exactly how he'd won something: the lives of as many people as he could save, without regard for which side of the Wall they'd been born on. It was also exactly how he'd lost his own life.

"I'm sorry, I don't know your name, my lady." She may not be one, but better to be courteous here. "It's strange you're calling me 'aggressor' when you're saying you want me dead."

[agogenpc]

"I want you to answer for your crimes against the legitimate government of Lemuria," she says with the rapidfire pitch of someone who's said the line a thousand times. Are any of the words she's saying really her own?

"I am Tamomarr Xici of Little Hama, and I wish to speak to a Chronaic representative; you are impuning upon my rights under the Winhoek Accord."

[lonelywar]

There is much and more that Ashitaka still does not completely understand, from the immediate and palpable conflict brewing around him on French soil to the loftier machinations of COST and its struggles against the Regency. He has in hand pieces to this puzzle, though he felt they only gave him a fragmented sort of look on it. It would not do. To put on blinders and believe only in what is set before oneself is a path that he has seen lead to hatred and destruction. The wise woman had bid him farewell from his people and his home, leaving him only the words to see with eyes unclouded by hate to cling to in his journey.

He had spoken with those that were the same types of gods as the one who had cursed him. He had spoken with the woman that had poisoned that god and sent him, enraged, across his own path. In those situations, his own anger had been sharper and more personal, so it had been a larger struggle to remain calm and stay his hand. As he nodded to the guard posted by the tent and shouldered his way inside, he finds that he was not afflicted with the same anger—just frustration and the same restlessness he had felt since awakening in Jersualem a short while ago.

In a way, she is like a mirror. Similar emotions are written on her face, despite the cloth blindfold obscuring half of her expression. He withholds all judgments, wasting no time in approaching. A few feet away from where she is bound to the support pole he lowers himself to sit seiza, hands resting on his knees. He is silent for a moment, weighing words.

"I have questions." His tone is neutral, somewhat cautious. "Would you answer?"

[agogenpc]

Little Xici's answer is immediate. So the interrogation has come, and with it, she is sure, the torture will follow. She reacts with anger to hide fear, her form expanding to give the false sense of size, shoulders rising, back straightening. Her hands grab at the dirt on either side of her.

"I will not give away troop locations or strategy. I will give my life for Tal-Viero. Do your worst, pugnate."

[lonelywar]

There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding.

He supposes that she is brave, though, in the face of the unknown. Many would cower and beg and plead. Ashitaka isn't sure which one is smarter, which would broker better results. None of them seemed particularly beneficial in such a situation, however. Regardless, Ashitaka is no strategist, and he still doesn't feel a personal vested interest in this conflict. He doesn't care about troop placements or overarching strategies. He just wants to understand.

"Those are not the questions I wanted to ask. I also have no intention of harming you." Perhaps that would've been seen as a weakness, but he stands by it. Information received under duress could be corrupt, regardless.

"Tal-Viero," he says the words carefully, trying to preserve the pronunciation. "What is it?"

[agogenpc]

"They truly give you no briefings? I thought that intelligence was a myth." She rolls her eyes-- under the blindfold, of course.

She'll leave the 'I have no intention of harming you' comment, for now. She knows a lie when she hears one. Which means his ignorance is probably feigned, but it doesn't matter. She can speak of her General all day. She has a locket, hidden underneath her clothes, with a picture of her dame on one side, and a picture of her General on the other.

"Tal-Viero lifted my line from obscurity. He unites Lemuria under the banner brought down by Divine Kuon. He is the Empire. I pity you for not knowing his leadership."

[lonelywar]

He gives her no answer to this. Truth be told, he didn't know if he had been properly debriefed. Apparently there was a hole in his memory, and whatever information COST deigned give them upon their installation to its numbers might've been contained therein. For now, he belatedly attempted to put together the pieces.

Her mistrust was valid, though. Ashitaka did not believe he was lying. He did not come to visit her in captivity with an intention to hurt her, though he knew if some situation necessitated it—if she slipped her bonds and attacked, or something of the like—he would. That was what war was to him, or at least a small facet of it.

The term line brings to mind what the commander had told him, information of blood traitors. That they would target not only you but your entire family, your ancestors and your descendants. It was hard to believe, but he found more and more he was not in a position to doubt anything he was told. As it was, it was a powerful motivator. He could sense no doubts in her statements.

"Is Lemuria the Empire you serve, then?"

[agogenpc]

"The capital. The empire is all. We stand on its soil now." She says this with pride, her chest puffing out, a sharp grin forming under her blindfold. "The Empire, the Regency as they've called it for the last eighth-kalpa, is the largest spanning sovereignty in all creation. It is an honor to serve."

"Tal-Viero is the best leader its had since Kuon. He united the military and cleaned out the weak buerocrats. He secured Kuon's line! He raised up the crosslands, opened zygote classification, brokered peace with--" She pauses; this word is always hard for her to pronounce, "Thish, and signed the Winhoek Accord. He will go down in history-- he already has."

[hakanai]

Yoshitsugu is muddied, a little bloody and feverish. Soon he is going to have to slip away and spend some good time recuperating, having done as much as his body will allow him in the main battle, but before that...

The captive from the mission.

He doesn't even stand once he slips into the COST tent and moves to the area where she's secured, pulling up a stool and taking a seat. Yoshitsugu remains quiet and thought for a while, until he says, in a very matter-of-fact way:

"You're a flawed representative."

[agogenpc]

She can hear someone coming. It's not their bloody commander, she knows what commander models sound like. No, this is one of their recruits. She tenses, waiting, until the recruit speaks.

She sniffs, as though he's told some grand joke.

"I am an assassin, not a diplomat. At least have the presence of mind to insult me based on my failings, pugnate."

[hakanai]

Yoshitsugu doesn't sound bothered, but he does sound sharp and quiet when he talks next.

"I know what you are."

It's hard to know exactly what to do with this spy. He personally doesn't think there's much chance of getting information out of this one at all and he is quite content to leave the job of trying to get it to their commander. Yoshitsugu willingly joined COST, going with the flow, and has the basics of their mission in his head. Some basics of their enemy.

If what he has been told is indeed correct, they wouldn't send out an operative who wasn't completely bone-deep loyal to their cause to do the job of an assassin. One might compare them to a ninja, and a ninja without dedication to their Lord was no ninja at all.

"You are flawed, and your mistake will be erased."

[agogenpc]

"Don't I know it," Xici hisses back. Her teeth are bared like a cornered animals. Some of the idiots who have come to talk to her have tried to win her to their side, tried to treat her with kindness, but this one? He speaks only the truth.

That hurts more than anything.

"They'll be erasing me as soon as the Tribunal realizes I've been compromised. It'll be as though I never existed at all." The thought fills her with terror. She tries to hide it. "A marked improvement from your company, worm."

[hakanai]

So that much is true, then. Perhaps even worse than that which had been directly shared with Yoshitsugu before. Kill a person's ancestors so that ancestor will never exist to fight them? Add 'erase your own people if they make a mistake' to that list.

If he wasn't certain about the cause of COST before, he is now. There is cruelty, and then there is the danger of twisting and altering and messing around with the flow for the sake of your own power, your own forced vision. A peace that is no peace at all, really, just a bloody tyranny named with pretty words.

(Not that COST is without its own darker side, but there's, ha, a cost to everything).

"I ought to thank you for what you've taught me during this very brief exchange but you won't be grateful. So I won't. You have fear enough to deal with without indignant feelings as well."

He stands up, steps a little closer and says very quietly:

"I'm going to erase an entirely different mistake from yours, but yours has contributed to my own mission. There's the 'success' in this."

[agogenpc]

"You zealot," she hisses, without a hint of irony. "And you believe everything the enemy says is true?"

Of course, she did speak the truth. But his bravado makes her nervous, and she desperately doesn't want to fail further than she already has. Can this be fixed? No, likely not. But she will try.

"I had heard the rebels recruited fools, but I will disappear knowing it is true."

[mylawn]

It's easy for 76 to laser-focus on the immediate tasks--prepare for battle, sabotage the enemy equipment, fight and survive. The rapid-fire pace between Jerusalem and Valmy has important questions about why they're here and who they're really fighting shoved into the back of his mind, and it's only when he has a moment that he realizes he still has more questions than answers. For one thing, he can't be entirely sold that COST is actually the good guys--sure, so far their aims have been to preserve the flow of history, which he can reasonably say is the right thing to do, but with such a large gap in his memory and the possibility he may have been kidnapped, 76 isn't totally convinced.

He finds it strange that the guards outside the tent don't stop him, and he finds himself wondering who else has come and gone. Is the Commander really going to trust them with access to a prisoner? Will the guards be enough, if someone particularly determined decides she should be freed?

But it seems like a missed opportunity not to try and ask her a few questions, which has him taking his chances in the tent. He makes deliberate noise when he enters, enough to let her know that someone new is here, but 76 doesn't actually say anything, instead standing there and watching her. It's a purposeful moment of silence, an attempt to make her sweat.

[agogenpc]

Xici is already nervious, already jumpy, but she'll be damned if she shows it. She already failed her mission, failed her general, failed her line. She'll be scrubbed from history as soon as they realize, the genetic techs going back to the moment of her fertilization and plucking her zygote from the batch. She'll cease to exist, erased from history, erased from time.

She just has to wait it out until then.

So when she hears someone approach, she listens carefully-- genetically enhanced ears being what they are-- and aims as best she can to spit in the opposing soldier's face. She doesn't quite make it, hitting their chest instead, but blindfolded, it's finally a failure she can't see.

[mylawn]

76 stops a few feet in front of her, close enough that she’ll be able to feel his presence. He studies what he can see of her face very careful, as if expecting her to betray something. When she doesn’t react, he takes another step closer and immediately pays the price for it.

He doesn’t blame her—hell, he might do the same thing in her position, and she manages to get an exasperated exhale out of him as he wipes the spit off the front of his shirt, and then wipe his hand on his pants.

“Hello to you, too.”

[agogenpc]

Her grin is crooked and hungry, too full of rage to be anything polite. "I don't greet pugnates," she says, and it's clear from her tone that she sees pugnate as some kind of dire insult. "Do your worst."

She keeps waiting for the torturous interrogation to come. It hasn't yet. She intends to meet it full on, rather than show an ounce of fear-- though fear does cloud up at the edges of her voice despite herself, anxiety, impatience.

[mylawn]

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

Just to ask some questions she probably isn’t going to answer. That’s fine—76 is pathologically stubborn himself, and he’s not about to give up very easily, even in the face of creative insults.

“Can’t speak for the Commander, but you don’t have to worry about that from me.”