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

[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.”

[agogenpc]

"Oh, so you are simply here to mock me." Her tone is just as livid as before. "I suppose I should thank you? Do you expect me to grovel?"

But the lack of any clear directives, any explanation as to why he's here, just makes her more nervous. And a little angry-- what is she, some ancient zoo animal. "Or have you come to gawk?"

[mylawn]

"Gawk a little."

Even if that's not quite the right word for it. She can probably hear his clothes shift as he shrugs. It seems a bad idea to admit to the ostensible enemy that he doesn't remember joining COST, but he's going to have to give a little in his attempt to get a little. He sounds genuinely curious.

"I don't really know much about the Regency."

[agogenpc]

"The Watcher has truly abandoned me," she says in a curse under her breath. "I've been captured by backwater idiots."

She looks up at him-- or, she tilts her face in the direction she's pretty sure his voice is coming from-- and bears her teeth. "I am not a teacher. I am an assassin awaiting my death." These people are soft, so soft, they need to be reminded of the war they're in. Her pride aches and screams at being captured by these unworthy fools. "What do you think I'll tell you?"

[mylawn]

"Yeah, that's me."

Wouldn't be the first time he was called a backwater idiot. 76 takes it in stride, studying her face. What does he think she'll tell him? The answer is surprisingly simple.

"More than COST, maybe."

[agogenpc]

That's a curious thing to say. Is COST conscripting soldiers, now? Are they truly that desperate? Xici knows she cannot give this intel back to her handlers at home, there is no hope of that, but still, she is curious.

"And what did COST tell you?"

[mylawn]

"I'm not going in blind, if that's what you think I'm implying."

Jack knows how to give a little to get a little, but he's also not stupid. Isolated or not, even the chance of her passing information on to the Regency isn't a risk he wants to take. He simply doesn't know enough about the broader scope of the situation yet, and the last thing he wants to do is piss off the people who yanked him here.

"They're not so interested in your side of the story."

This is a war, after all.

[agogenpc]

Fair enough. Xici is going to die soon, anyway, she's going to disappear into the nothingness, not even given up to the afterlife of the Watcher's embrace. She wants to tell this man the important things she knows, the things she's been told. Maybe some part of her will live on... if only in the form of regurgitated propaganda.

Of course, Little Xici doesn't think of it as propaganda. It's the truth, fed to her since she was a child.


"The Tranquil Empire-- they call it the Regency, it's had a few names depending on the leader... What would you know if it? That we fight to maintain peace? That we bring unruly and backwater territories into our embrace as colonies, sharing with them our strength and might? That we are as just and kind as we can be when our enemies are so numerous? If you want questions answered, it would do you well not to be so obtuse."

[mylawn]

It sounds a little like propaganda--and 76 knows propaganda, having had it used both for him and and against him, but he listens attentively, matching up what she says with what he's been told by COST. 76 has been around the political block enough times to know that the real truth is often somewhere in the middle.

That said, colonies doesn't sit well with him. He can already see where this is going.

"You'd think that the past is something better left alone." As much as one might want to change it, sometimes--a desire he knows intimately. Still, it seems particularly irresponsible, running around int he time stream, changing events to suit their needs.

"You know how all this history-changing is going to turn out every time you do it?"

[agogenpc]

"The Empire needed resources. Resources that had died out, in our kalpa. We went back to secure them, to secure their preservation, and ours. But perhaps you prefer our people starving, punished by for fool mistakes of prior generations. I have met such callous philosophers before."

Her tone is harsh. She knows exactly what she thinks of such creatures, unadventurous and cowardly, who would prefer the present to whither and rot out of some childish fear that trying to better it could somehow make it worse.

"Tal-Viero has the best chronal prognostics in the Regency, the territory of which spans all times. In your... time, or reality, I do not know, do you have the phrase, a moth's wings may hasten tsunami? Our prognosticators calculate for every variable. And, I assume, yours do as well. Do not pretend we do not play the same game, even if your motivations are less noble by far."

[mylawn]

Ah, there it is. It’d be naive of him to think that COST was only interested in preserving the timeline. Though that’s been their mission so far, he’s only seen two battles, and knows full well that not all of them will be as straightforward as ‘make sure things happen the way they’re supposed to’. Coronal prognosticators. Of course.

“Every variable?”

It’s likely his own paranoia talking, but humans are humans. Unless they’ve perfected themselves over the course of thousands of years, 76 finds it hard to believe that no one ever makes a mistake. Miscalculates.

Arguing about that, however, seems like semantics. He takes what she says, and files it away for further processing.

“Pretty impressive.”

That much is genuine. If she’s telling the truth, he’s pretty impressed.

[agogenpc]

Little Xici is most certainly telling her truth. She beams, grinning wide. "So you see, now, how you have chosen the wrong side. I cannot ferret you from here-- my implant was removed. But Tal-Viero does not turn away talent, or a good mind."

[mylawn]

She’s young—or looks it, anyway (he has no idea how that sort of thing might work when everyone can hop through time), so he’s unsurprised that flattery has worked. 76 still isn’t sure how many boundaries he can push without getting in trouble himself, but this seems like an opening he should take. He wonders if Xici can hear the wry quirk of his mouth as he speaks.

“Even a backwater hick like me?”

[agogenpc]

She shrugs, more comfortable, less upset. It's easier not to think about dying, everything is. "I'm not in charge of recruiting."

[mylawn]

That gets a laugh out of him, but it's a sort of bitter, exasperated sound. Xici seems a little more relaxed, but 76 isn't sure what else he could press her about. The Commander will be here soon enough, and he doubts she'll be so amiable.

Then again, the Commander knows much more about what to ask.

"I'll remember that."

It's about more than half-joking talk about switching sides. It's about how he'll remember this, in general, the more human moments in the middle of war, even if one party is strapped to a chair and blindfolded. He shrugs again, a little slower this time.

"Think I've taken up enough of your time."

[agogenpc]

That brings her back to herself. She has limited time. She will soon cease to be. She takes another breath to steady herself.

"It is as the Consort of the Watcher says in the Book of Hours: Time is that which we have too much of, and vastly too little."

[mylawn]

"Yeah, I guess that's the problem with time travel, isn't it?"

Too much of it, but still not enough. So many variables and moving pieces and ripples fanning out from the center. No way to really tell what your actions will do, unless you have a highly-skilled team of predictors, of course. 76 gives her another once-over, like he's committing this moment to memory before he heads for the exit.

"Sorry it had to be this way."