Rojan leaned back in a chair as he tapped his fingers together, pondering his and his friends’ situation. They weren’t big enough to really call themselves a new power. After all, they only had a few thousand soldiers, and a single city. Nor did they have enough citizens or resources in Venite City to raise a larger army.
Rojan leaned forward, examining a map of the Peslir Kingdom laid upon the desk before him. There were three cities, each within three days march from Venite City, that he and his friends had designated as their next targets for conquest. One, Persi City, was situated near a mountain range, and was one of the Peslir Kingdom’s main sources of both raw materials for weapons and armors, as well as the finished product.
It was a necessity for them to quickly acquire Persi City so that they could best equip their future soldiers.
The second city they’d pinned down was the city of Fadera, a large, sprawled-out city that housed nearly a hundred-thousand citizens. Including its surrounding villages, there were thousands upon thousands of active youths there, ripe to be trained into soldiers for their cause.
The third city was “normal” in most aspects, but would allow for them to build a strong southern stronghold. Rojan didn’t care too much about this city for now - the other two would be his priority. Then, the question was, which was more important - gaining access to more soldiers, or armour?
It was actually a fairly difficult question to answer. Troops could be useful without armor, but needed weapons. On the flip side, you could have mounds and mounds of armors and weapons, but without soldiers to wear them, they were completely useless.
The rate at which the two types of “commodities”, equipment and soldiers were produced, differed as well. Soldiers required a great deal of training, which could be done in large batches, but until their training was complete, they couldn’t be really counted as soldiers. Armors and weapons, on the other hand, could be completed one at a time and paired to a soldier almost immediately.
“Aish.” Rojan rubbed his temples, then stood up from his desk and walked out of the room. “Wren, Adam. Gather the troops, we’re headed for battle!”
…
Three days later.
Rojan and his soldiers, around three-thousand strong, had arrived at Persi City. They’d left over a thousand soldiers in Venite City as a safety measure against any unforeseen attacks, and to keep a check on the navy soldiers they’d captured and recently “converted”.
Rojan and his friends weren’t quite foolish enough to take their change of allegiance at face value - it would only be after they’d fought together side by side multiple times, that perhaps they could be considered trustworthy.
Inside Persi City, the skilled laborers of the city looked on calmly as those who governed them ran around in a panic as if they were chickens with their heads cut off. It was quite simple, really - anyone attacking the city would undoubtedly be after its access to raw materials, as well as its hosts of skilled laborers. Thus, the city’s miners and blacksmiths and the like knew they were safe.
The city’s leaders, however, were not so indispensable.
In usual times, they would have had thousands of soldiers at hand to defend the city, potentially even ten thousand, as a city like theirs offered incredible strategic value for any power.
But now, with the Krohan Empire attacking, all available soldiers had been pulled to the southern border of the Peslir Kingdom. There was only a skeleton force of about five hundred soldiers and guards left to keep order in the city, far from enough to defend against Rojan’s invading force of roughly three thousand.
Rojan, Wren and Adam sat in a circle on the ground, just a few feet in front of their soldiers, who were lined up facing the city.
They’d received two simple commands. Glare as menacing-ly as you can at the city, and spread your ranks out slightly more than usual so we look like a bigger force than we are. Thankfully, they’d also received another bit of advice; this might take a while, so feel free to take a knee. It’s a tad hard to stand up quickly from a sitting position in full armor.
After almost an hour of playing cards, Rojan yawned and stretched. “How much longer do you think it’ll take for them to come to a decision?”
Adam looked toward the city, then shrugged. “If you’re getting impatient, we can give them something to think about. Hmm, what about bringing our siege ladders forward? Anyways, I play ‘The Maid’.”
“I play ‘The Fool’.” Wren placed down his card. “We might as well. Rojan’s about to lose, anyways.”
Rojan threw down his cards and stood up, patting his pants to knock off any accumulated dirt and dust.
“I swear you rigged the deck somehow. The probability of my having such a horrible hand naturally was somewhere below 10%.”
“Still possible.”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s get those ladders up here. Let’s give them five minutes to panic about it, and if they don’t do anything by then, we attack.”
“Will do.”
After they brought their siege ladders to the front of their formation, it only took the city’s leadership two minutes to run to the top of the walls and announce their immediate and unconditional surrender.
If given the choice to keep their lives, most would opt to stay alive - especially those who were naturally greedy. And so, the city was kindly handed over to Rojan and his forces, who promptly marched into the city and spread out, taking over its operations.
Well, at least the ones they could.
That night, Rojan sat alone at a table in one of Persi City’s many taverns. Of course, he wasn’t
actually
alone - Wren and Adam sat at a nearby table, and the rest were filled with their best soldiers, to keep guard.
Five thousand miners. A thousand hundred blacksmiths, Eight hundred of whom specialize in various pieces of armor, and a hundred who were responsible for creating weapons, usually spearheads. Two thousand apprentices to assist them. The city also hosted five hundred lumberjacks, responsible for sourcing the logs that fed fires for blacksmiths and for the general populace, as well as the logs for creating poles for spears.
Then, there were another five hundred laborers who fashioned the spear poles, and another two hundred whose jobs were to attach the spearheads the the poles. They made other weapons, too, but generally speaking, spears were the bread and butter weapon of any land-based army.
Rojan put down the papers and scratched his chin. They’d made quite the acquisition. Assuming normal output, the city would be able to provide them with roughly two thousand sets of armor a month, and an equal amount of spears.
He motioned for Adam and Wren to join him at his table, and they did.
“Pretty good, right? After we take Fadera, we’ll be able to raise a green, but decently sized army. 24,000 sets of armor and spears per year, not bad, right? Another ten thousand already in storage.” Wren highlighted the positives of the report.
This didn’t faze Rojan, who could instantly tell that something was up. Something that Wren didn’t want to tell him.
“What’s going on, Wren?”
Wren paused, but Adam spoke up in his place. “We just received word from down south. The Krohan Empire’s forces overwhelmed the Peslir Kingdom’s forces. About a hundred thousand Peslir soldiers were able to retreat and fall back to a second line of defense, but about fifty thousand were killed or captured. At the current rate, it’ll may only be a few weeks until the Peslir Kingdom collapses.”
Rojan shivered. Even with all he knew about the Krohan Empire, he hadn’t expected them to be so heavy-handed against the Peslir Kingdom.
“How many soldiers have the Krohan Empire sent?”
“Our intelligence reports that they have dispatched Five-thousand light cavalry, ten thousand light cavalry, and a hundred-thousand of their Silver Legion.”
The Silver Legion was known as the Krohan Empire’s strongest overall fighting force. Each soldier was an elite specimen, trained from youth to be an ideal soldiers for the Krohan Empire. Loyal, fearless, and incredibly disciplined. The Krohan Empire had three hundred thousand soldiers in their Silver Legion, a million in their Bronze Legion, and in their most elite force, the Golden Legion, only twenty-thousand.
But of course, those twenty thousand soldiers were the absolute cream of the crop, chosen for specialized training from the moment they were born. Most were sons of the previous generation of the Golden Legion, while some were picked from corners of the Empire.
A few would be chosen in their adolescence or as teenagers - but these were far and few between. But it was a great honor to be chosen as a candidate for the Golden Legion - not only would they be provided to best resources the Empire had to offer, their parents would be invited to the upper echelons of the Empire for their contribution.
Rojan, upon hearing the numbers, frowned.
“They’re really going all out this time, huh. I guess that makes sense. With the Tero and Armoa Kingdoms fighting, and the rest of the powers eyeing each other, it’s the perfect time for them to attack. That’s fine though. Given the right battlefield, we could make it so that it’s not worth it for the Krohan Empire to attack us.”
Adam shook his head. “That’s not all. They’ve sent four from your little fancy ‘Generation of Terrors’ to spearhead the effort. The Peslir Kingdom is in the midst of sending their own youthful prodigies to their second line of defense.”
“How’s the terrain there?”
“The Peslir Kingdom has sat their soldiers behind a vast forest range, so you tell me.”
“There’s no way around it?”
“Not without marching for several days, and the sides are well protected by mountains. It’d be a nightmare for them to move their supplies through the mountains. It’s a very defensible position the Peslir Kingdom has chosen, the Krohan Empire has to force their way through the forest to get to them.”
Wren nodded. “It looks like we’ll have time to complete our initial plans after all. We’ll stay here in Persi City for a week to consolidate and establish our power, then we’ll leave for Fadera and-”
“No.” Rojan interrupted him. “We’re bringing all of our soldiers, every last person we can muster, past Fadera City and to Madrias.”
Wren and Adam raised their eyebrows. “But why? We should be using this time to attack the city of Fadera, then use Madrias to defend the rest of our land. Otherwise -”
“It’s fine, as long as we take Madrias, we’ll basically have control of Fadera as well. More importantly, we have to ensure that we reach Madrias and are able to defend the valley route before the Krohan Empire reaches it.”
The city of Madrias was the one they’d been planning to use as a southern stronghold. This was because any high-volume traffic from central Peslir to northern Peslir, had to come through a single valley path that was less than five hundred feet wide at its most northern point.
The city of Madrias sat just a few hundred feet north of of the northern mouth of this valley path, perfectly situated to defend against southern invaders.
So, it made sense for Rojan to care so much about it - heck, they all knew why. But why was Rojan in such a rush to head there?
Rojan knew his two friends would be confused, so he continued and explained. “Your assumption when reading the report was that the Krohan Empire would have a hard time making their way through that forest, right?”
Adam and Wren looked at each other, saw the confirmation in each other’s eyes, then turned back to Rojan and nodded.
“I can promise you, the Krohan Empire will overrun the Peslir Kingdom’s defenses within two weeks.”
“What makes you say that?”
“As I made my way to Venite City, I had to cut through most of the Krohan Empire. Along the way, I had cut through some of their forts and camps - they’ve made some sort of “fire bomb” that is capable of being thrown by hand, and larger versions that can be used as catapult ammunition. See where I’m going with this?”
“...Shit.”