Editing User:Trungle/Cataphracts Idis/Recap (section)

== The final assault ==

While I waited in Torvaldsen for my mother to arrive with the full details of the Wischeppian agreement, I was made aware of another army infringing on Fenpri territory, this time of Narithan origin, making their way through the eastern part of my territory from Lomowaza, encroaching on my capitol. When I asked their aim, they responded that they meant no harm to Fenpr and were merely looking for an obscure artifact. I did indeed know its location; it was held in the fortress of Shivan, close to the capitol. An ordinary banner belonging to a long-dead ruler and associated with Narith’s founding myth. Returning the artifact to Narith would simply a point of pride for their nation, as I would learn.

It was here that the plan to truly deal with Uuqita was finally formulated. With the combined force of my army, my mother’s army, and the Narithan army which was, as I learned, headed by one General Telefor, we would dispose of the East Uuqitan forces, join with the West Uuqitan commander, and proceed through Uuqita. We would install the rebel government in place of the despot’s loyalists, ushering in a period of long-standing peace between the Uuqitan populace, now officially under a friendly government, and the Fenpri.

This plan… kind of worked.

As we were negotiating in Torvaldsen, I was informed that Hounslow had fallen to Uuqitan rule, followed by Ghenio. Furthermore, Yuqiwuara had been secretly funneling information to me as mistrust grew between him and the East Uuqitan commander, who I found out at about this time went by the name Lt. Palvis. There were allusions to some mistreatment and potential abuse of the West Uuqitans and desperation seemed to set in as Yuqiwuara began to see my army as a beacon of hope. I learned that after taking Ghenio, Palvis intended to march to Torvaldsen, where he was convinced I was holding Umehi-Tso. In reality, I had relocated the captive commander to a fort off to the west that I never even learned the name of (though Torvaldsen was the correct direction).

<span id="the-battle-of-ghenio"></span>
=== The Battle of Ghenio ===

As we set off, we encountered Palvis marching south exactly as Yuqiwuara had suggested he was intending to. Upon seeing the combined might of our three armies, Palvis retreated, alongside his troops, to Ghenio, where Yuqiwuara already was located. Yuqiwuara’s reaction was more hopeful. He offered to join our assault if we would make promises not to hurt his army. I welcomed the possibility of more help, but did not hear back. Keep in mind that our messages back and forth had had a staggeringly low rate of actually making it to each other. Perhaps two-thirds were correctly received, but not much more. So, worried that Yuqiwuara might not believe he was welcome to contribute to our assault, I sent another copy of the message. Yuqiwuara explained that though he had seen the message, he was hesitant to write back as he was afraid that Palvis would intercept it and learn of his distrustfulness. He promised to lower the gates and let us into the city if we confirmed our commitment to not harming any West Uuqitans.

I debated for hours on whether or not I should respond. Yuqiwuara’s concern about interception was certainly a valid one; however, he had also said that without my explicit confirmation he would not know whether to betray East Uuqita. In the end, I decided to respond, but I made it short and vague to obscure what we intended to do. With that, I gave the order to invade Ghenio on behalf of all three armies.

I don’t know what tipped Palvis off to our plan but he was prepared to contest Yuqiwuara’s opening of the gates. By a small margin, only won due to the West Uuqitan force’s higher morale, the drawbridges were lowered and the slaughter of the East Uuqitans began. The battle was a decisive victory for our coalition. There was almost no chance of failure for the allied forces once the gate was open (although the odds would have been much fairer

All would have gone well except when Yuqiwuara was carried away from the city in an East Uuqitan covert operation. If Yuqiwuara was not killed, we were not able to find him in the ensuing days. The West Uuqitan army disbanded anyway after rumors spread of their commander’s death.

I have to wonder how long Palvis was aware of our cooperation. Was it my final message, the one that I made intentionally vague and only said that we agreed to the West Uuqitans’ terms? If so, did Palvis accurately predict our plan basically to the letter and preemptively order the abduction of Yuqiwuara all based on the fact that I had agreed to some terms that Yuqiwuara had set forth? Incredible tactical knowledge, if so.

Or was Palvis aware of our cooperation before that final letter that I sent? After all, many communications were lost; it is more than possible that Palvis had intercepted an earlier letter and had seen the information that Yuqiwuara was funneling to the coalition. But, if Palvis knew that Yuqiwuara was working with our alliance, why wouldn’t he have attacked the West Uuqitan forces on his own before we arrived? Why wait until their interference could (and did) spell doom for his own army?

This is as much theorizing as I care to write down. A fractal of causes and effects has been unfolding in my head since that day in Ghenio but it would not actually be too interesting to go through them all. I will know the definite answer soon enough anyway.

The disappearance of Yuqiwuara was distressing for another reason: I now had no information on the military structures in Uuqita and no one to place on the throne once the despot was deposed. My hope was to appear to the Uuqitan people not as a dangerous general asserting myself in foreign lands but as a liberator, come to free them from a corrupt regime. After all, it is not like the despot’s rule was all that popular. That West Uuqita exists should be proof of that. But without Yuqiwuara, my options were dwindling.

I eventually decided the best course of action would be to go straight to Reihulo, depose the despot, and allow the power vacuum to sort itself out. Frankly, at this point, discussions were indicating that the game was likely to end soon. While I would have loved to craft an enduring peace to keep our nations content for generations, the gameplay effect of doing so would be basically indistinguishable from simply upsetting the power structure and leaving as soon as I could, which would be significantly easier than finding another candidate or proclaiming myself leader.

<span id="supply-chain-issues"></span>
=== Supply chain issues ===

I went to great lengths here to attempt to describe the isthmus in this story. I have also mentioned all the many times I foraged in this area. If you put this together, you may be realizing by now that this isthmus is, by this point, entirely picked through. Every army who had spent substantial time on this isthmus was critically undersupplied ''and'' had been a contributor in the of conjuring of a resource desert separating Fenpr from Uuqita by five or so days of travel during which stops to resupply would be extremely dangerous (and not even that fruitful, frankly, given that the territory is sparse in the first place). In short, it was a ''terrible'' place for thousands of troops to spend four months walking up and down.

A few days before setting out from Torvaldsen, Telefor had requested an opportunity to forage for food and come back. I granted this, and even pointed the Narithans to a patch of unforaged ground. On the first day Telefor was out, I thought “perhaps I should do this as well,” and then promptly forgot. On the second day, I had the same thought. When Telefor eventually came back, I had not foraged at all. This came to a head on the day that we were set to invade Ghenio, when I was informed I could not feed my army.

This was easily the least defensible decision I made in the course of the entire game. I still kind of have nightmares about it. I guess I always assumed I would just “get around” to actually giving the order but of course that is flawed logic if you don’t do it at some point.

But there was no use dwelling on the past if I was in danger of losing all of my soldiers to hunger. I insisted that the coalition make our play as soon as possible so that I could get somewhere and find food. There was some chance of finding a few scraps in the ransacked city but I found it unlikely given the conditions. I decided my best choice would be to forage around the city of Hjaltein, which had already been taxed, but only once. It was also not directly on the isthmus but a couple days’ travel away.

I made a decision to keep this excursion a secret from Telefor. At the time, there was not a great deal of trust between us and I was afraid that showing my embarassing lack of preparation would dissuade him from continuing our partnership which I did not want to risk. So I explained it away as an expedition to search for General Yuqiwuara. This was made quite awkward when Telefor made the decision to follow me after I made the baffling decision to tread through poor roads to a remote city. When Telefor caught up to me in the middle of some scrubland, I spoke only in vagueries about what I was doing in Hjaltein. My thinking was that, should Telefor betray me, I may have planted a seed that something important – maybe even the captured general – was stored there. Should an attacker follow this lead, they could be easily surrounded and killed.

I think that my lie ended up not mattering much. As you will see, Telefor did not betray me and even himself gave an order to forage that patch of Scrubland, which turned out to be rather fruitful. We also eventually had to start sharing resources including supplies. In the end, this lie may have just sown confusion and halted us for a bit longer. Still, I’m not convinced that it was ''exclusively'' a bad idea. I actually think that I looked marginally better for having marched off in search of some undisclosed resource than I would have looked if I admitted to not foraging at all in the time that I had been allotted for specifically that purpose. However, any competency that I may have seemed to display would have been offset by something even more embarassing.

<span id="the-ghensurrection"></span>
=== The Ghensurrection ===

Remember how I said that things would be fine for me if I could just manage to not provoke the Ghenians again? Both I and my mother reined our soldiers in after taking the city so as not to provoke the locals further. Telefor, on the other hand, thought nothing of it and let his soldiers loot. This was something I absolutely should have discussed beforehand but honestly it just slipped my mind. The locals of Ghenio, who has been foraged twice by my own soldiers (which we had run away from) and at least one more time by my enemies, became very violent over the looting. Nine thousand soldiers gathered outside Ghenio. And in the face of this? I, the commander with the largest force of us three, ran away to a remote village, leaving Telefor to deal with all of the rebels by himself.

Once again, I implore you to remember that I ''absolutely needed'' to procure supplies. No waiting could be tolerated. If I had waited any longer I would have been risking an uprising of my own troops. So despite the abysmal optics I left to pursue other goals.

Fortunately, Telefor was able to placate the peasants with some bribes and some words and no Narithan blood was spilt. I was embarassed about the whole ordeal but had no other choice once I had dug myself this far into my own grave. Either way, it seemed to work out fine.

<span id="the-push-to-uuqita"></span>
=== The push to Uuqita ===

After quickly taking back Hounslow, we began our march to Reihulo. The details of this march are less interesting moment-to-moment than most other parts of my story. The Uuqitan winter was harsh and we walked at a reduuced pace. We at one point became trapped between two forts, each of which would send harriers every night. Telefor concocted a fascinating plan to deceive the harriers and attempt to kill them, which I simply signed off. Telefor’s playstyle, as I would learn, was quite different from mine. I felt foolish many times when I saw the way he played. I had never considered suggesting my army do something to the harriers. I hhve to wonder the ways that other people got creative with the rules while I boringly kept my mind firmly ''inside'' the box.

I am not the one who has the right to brag about the specifics of this plan. It would have been successful regardless of my involvement. I am simply grateful for the lessions I learned from it.

During this march, I also received a message from the Uuqitan dictator, Urtu, who had heard of my recapture of both Ghenio and Hounslow. In this message, Urtu essentially admitted defeat, but also warned me of some potential treachery on the part of Narith. He claimed that a Narithan force had arrived by sea to Reihulo, despoiled the capitol, taken him prisoner, and demanded to know the location of Shivan. As promptly as they had come, they left, seemingly to besiege Shivan. and offered to rule Uuqita as a Fenpri protectorate under my authority, conditional upon me removing the Narithan forces from my retinue and signing a deal with him.

If this message was to be believed, did that mean that Telefor’s alliance with me was just meant to draw me away from Shivan? If so, was I playing into Narith’s hand?

If it was fake, how did Commander Urtu know about Shivan? If it was real, why didn’t Telefor do anything to block my mother from going back to Torvaldsen to collect a recently-raised army during the time this operation was presumably meant to be carried out? The Narithans’ plan in this story is also weirdly convoluted. Surely it is more economical to march their force into Shivan unimpeded after helping me capture some cities than to sail, at great expense, an even larger force around the entire continent? They would risk all the lives of the army that was traveling with me as well as those of the larger naval force and a sizeable fortune in loot. In the first scenario, the only risk was that they might lose some of their men traveling with Telefor. Not to mention what I might do to the contingent traveling with me when I learned of their treachery. Isn’t having a nation’s gratitude much more useful than having its ire?

In the end I decided not to trust a word of it. There were too many inaccuracies. My initial theory was that Urtu had heard the name “Shivan and thought he could trick me into self-sabotaging out of fear of the Narithans. I decided not to show the letter to Telefor as we would receive confirmation in just a few short days. Days during which I received even more confirmation that Telefor had no intention of stalling us in Uuqita. He imparted portions of his supplies to me when he could have simply denied to do so, letting me starve long enough to convincingly overpower my larger force. So much wasn’t adding up, however.

When Reihulo rose over the horizon, however, we were confronted with the horrifying truth, confirmed by our own eyewitness accounts, that Reihulo had indeed been attacked. I considered that perhaps the city ''had'' been attacked but by a different force. Maybe the Pirate faction who I had heard were encamped in the bay or the Lomowazans. Maybe West Uuqitans, althought there was scant proof that West Uuqita existed as an organization at that point.

However, further evidence was found that Urtu was telling the truth: the locals were abuzz with rumors that the attackers were indeed Narithan. Cautiously this time, I posited that this could be a rumor started by the dictator himself. I wouldn’t put it past him to pin an attack like this, were the perpetrator’s alignment was not known on the party that I traveled with just to make me doubt myself.

Apparently, however, I didn’t need to hypothesize so much. Telefor, upon hearing the news, claimed innocence but offered up a different possibility: that the other force of Narithans, behind even his back, had gotten impatient, assumed Telefor had died or abandoned them, and gone after the artifact themselves. I had been thinking in absolutes, assuming that if Narith ''had'' attacked, that meant that Telefor ''was'' in Fenpr to distract me; but this proved not to be the case. We jointly signed letters addressed to the various leaders located at Shivan, imploring them to come to a peace.

As we waited for those responses, we basically just walked into the already badly-beaten city, captured the dictator, and, after he refused to offer up any information, executed him. Then, it was time to return to Torvaldsen. We considered leaving by boat but assumed that the walk back would not take ''too'' long.

The return journey was plagued by familiar problems, primarily food insecurity. We weathered these conditions, but not without losing a wizard and a detachment due to the poor conditions.

We also heard back from Shivan. The confused mayor explained that no force had ever arrived at Shivan, perplexing us further. Where had the Narithans actually gone? As it turned out, the Narithans had simply lost their way and gone to the wrong fortress. They were at Calimai, to the east, as we were informed by the frantic commander at Calimai, understandibly worried about the large force now gathering outside the walls.

It was at this point that Telefor sent a letter which I also signed, commanding the other army to cease their hostility and meet us to talk things out.

The final scene of my adventure was at the remote fishing village of Bayside, where all of our armies met to discuss. We made peace and returned the banner to the Narithans, which they would take home not only as a symbol of their authority to govern but also as a reminder of their wholehearted cooperation with Fenpr, an alliance which its founders hoped would last generations.

<span id="conclusion"></span>