Telling Stories

Littorand started as a minor fiefdom on the fringes of Boscan territory. Its lack of vital resources and extreme distance from the capital meant that its was given a reasonable degree of autonomy from the beginning.

The territory got its first taste of independence when it was cut off from the central government during the empire’s second civil war; the province’s obscurity precluded it being a target for any of the warring factions, and its governor maintained a firm stance of neutrality in order to preserve the peace. In the three years before full imperial authority was restored, the province became nearly self-sufficient, with tightly-knit bureaucracies in every major city and a large enough agricultural sector to make food imports unnecessary. The region’s poor mineral wealth had allowed a flourishing trade in repairs and tinkering, with broken or damaged machinery being recirculated instead of replaced.

The greater empire’s indifference to the province continued after the war, and as a result the bureaucracy established during isolation grew more and more integral to Littorand’s governance, to the extent that each new governor was eventually pre-selected by a council of city mayors before being presented to the capital.

When the third Boscan civil war shattered the empire, the province of Littorand was barely affected. Only when the imperial army and police were withdrawn to quell unrest in the north was the lack of central authority noticed. The resulting lawlessness caused the local councils to decide to take matters into their own hands: bands of citizen constables were elected to keep the peace in each town, with each town’s actions held accountable by the province’s governor. By this point, the office was almost entirely beholden to the councils – it was quickly reduced to a figurehead position, with executive decisions made by an assembly of appointed representatives from each of the major population centres.

The relative success of Littorand’s constables in restoring law and order was not missed by the province’s neighbours – within a year of the withdrawal of imperial troops, the better part of six former provinces had joined together into a loose coalition. Stability was the driving force behind this meta-nation, but the opportunity for true independence from the empire had not been lost on the citizens. Their taxes were now paying for their own security and infrastructure, and they did not look forward to a return to funding works half a continent away.

The official secession was almost unnoticed – by the time the nation of Littorand claimed sovereignty, another five or six smaller territories had already announced their independence from Bosca proper. In many cases, these earlier declarations were purely political in motivation – some were simply breakaway fiefs of the empire, with the local governors seeing an opportunity to set themselves up as kings, while others were genuinely revolutionary, embracing radically different forms of government – some democratic, others military.

Over the years, most of the breakaway states have been conquered or bribed back into becoming part of Bosca, but Littorand has always maintained its self-sufficiency. To date, Bosca has launched three major wars of invasion and at least half a dozen attempted annexations of minor scraps of territory; none of the former and only two of the latter have succeeded. Littorand’s political independence – founded on self-sufficiency and reinforced by its distance from and economic superiority over the Boscan homeland – has become an assumption of all of its citizens.

This time around, I ended up taking a look inside Alexander’s head in the early days of the war. I think he’s an optimist at heart.

—

It’s true that I have misgivings about this war. Fighting the old empire is a duty I will never shirk from – our nation will only remain independent while her soldiers defend her. The intervention in Ferres was born from this unflinching opposition to tyranny – the principles of liberty we uphold would have suffered if we had idly watched another nation ground beneath Helmuth’s bootheel. I certainly have no regrets about my soldiers’ conduct – the behaviour of the men has been exemplary by all accounts.

My distrust stems instead from the politics behind our deployment. While I am sure that some of those who urged for intervention genuinely held the welfare of Ferres to be important, there are many more who would never support a military operation on such altruistic grounds. Paranoia about Galacia has been running high in the capital, and I suspect that this operation is intended to be as much a show of strength as a humanitarian mission. General Fielding dismissed my concerns about the army’s use as a political instrument as naive, and I have no doubt he nominated me for this command in order to force me to get my hands dirty.

I do not think that Galacia will be so easily intimidated. They do not view us as a rival nation – in their collective consciousness we are little better than savages. No amount of posturing will change that opinion; they consider us to be irredeemably backward, and all this noise will accomplish is to reaffirm their prejudices.

If nothing else, their military disposition implies that they do not expect a war; their standing army numbers barely more than ten thousand – not sufficient to stand up to an attack from Littorand even if we were to maintain a home guard large enough to dissuade Boscan opportunism; our victory in any conflict would be a matter of time.

If the simple fact of an easy victory is what motivates the rhetoric coming from the capital, then I am not sure I would be willing to prosecute a war. My resignation would not stop one, of course, but I will not fight for a nation that is simply seeking to expand its territory – I have seen firsthand what Bosca has done in the name of Empire, and the thought of being an instrument of such aggression sickens me.

Of course, it is very easy to tell myself that I would choose to resign before allowing myself to be misused – but if push came to shove, would I do so? It is not my lot to decide upon the army’s strategic use. If I had wanted to dictate the direction our nation takes, then I would have entered politics – my duty as a soldier is to obey orders. If I begin questioning the ethics behind those orders then I will have to tread very carefully, because once I refuse an order on those grounds I will be forced to justify myself. I joined the army to protect our nation from Boscan aggression, but my oath of service was far less specific. Perhaps it would be hypocritical of me to choose my own battles – if I had wanted to play politics then I ought to have become a politician.

My hope, then, is that this posturing goes unacknowledged. When the Galacians make their usual aloof answer, I am sure things will return to normal.

This is the first in a series of semi-prose ramblings I’ve started to try and get a better grip on the characters in Xenesis’s upcoming Advance Wars 2 hack. There’s not going to be any super consistent theme to them, but the general premise is that I ask the character a fairly vague question about their motivations or outlook and get a response of sorts. In this one, I ask Carla, the commander of the high-tech Galacian faction, why she thinks going to war is the right thing to do, and how she plans to prosecute it.

—

For me, the trappings of ordinary life – family, friends, work, leisure – were stripped from me by people who did not believe I had a right to them. For me, the invasion was not simply a political statement, it was an existential struggle. We were not treated as conquered citizens or even prisoners – to the soldiers that attacked my home we were no better than vermin. I will never command such an army. If the Autonomous Defence Forces I have lobbied so hard to create end up no better than the desensitised thugs they are fighting against, then I will have failed.

I do not consider this war to be a matter of duty to the Galacian nation – I prefer to think of it as a moral obligation. I have experienced first hand the evil that prejudice can work in the hands of the powerful, and I intend to prevent it wherever possible. To that end I will oppose the empire’s incursions at every turn, both militarily and politically. My moral obligation is not simply to repulse imperial attacks on the territories I have been ordered to defend – it is to convince my superiors and my colleagues that these nations are worth defending. I do not discriminate in this duty – for the ADF to act as a true moral force, all of its members – every infantry grunt, every engineer, each officer, mechanic, nurse, spy and orderly – must share this belief in their hearts. For the first time, we have the chance to show that an armed force can serve not as an instrument of destruction and oppression but as a shield for those who cannot defend themselves. I hope to prove with this unit that Might can be made subordinate to Right – that it can be used to uphold principles of universal human dignity and steadfastly oppose those who spit upon them.

Every soldier deployed to Ferres needs to think of this mission not as a rebuff to the Boscans’ aggression but as a bulwark to guard the people of that small nation from brutalisation at the hands of a pitiless empire. If my soldiers consider this campaign to be a matter of resources, targets and strong points, then I have failed – it is crucial that the people of Ferres are regarded as exactly that: people. Sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. While the armies of Bosca and Littorand habitually regard the rights of their own citizens as impediments to the completion of their mission, our army must regard the preservation of those rights as their mission’s central and most sacred objective.

It is true that I deplore the behaviour of our enemies – their actions in this war are morally ambiguous at best – but this does not mean that I or the soldiers I command will stoop to their level. Many people have suggested that the Boscan soldiers – and those who command them – ought not to be treated as humans. The argument follows that their callous and brutal treatment of those around them has disqualified them from the fair treatment that all Galacians believe every human deserves. I disagree: if anything, we must offer them the same compassion that we offer their victims, for to do anything less is to sink to their level. The principle of empathy is central to the entire nation of Galacia, and to set it aside even now, when tempers are high, would be hypocrisy.

Naturally, I do not mean to suggest that this compassion should stay our hands when we are given no choice but to fight – I instead remind you of it to emphasise that this war must be waged in a civilised manner. Enemy soldiers, officers, and even political authorities must all be given ample opportunity to surrender and treated with clemency and dispassionate justice when imprisoned. It is true that many of these people have committed monstrous acts, and it is not only understandable but right for us to be enraged at their inhumanity. What is not right is for us to use that rage as an excuse for joining them in their barbarity. In war, as in everything else, our emotions should serve as motivation, not as moral compasses. Any Galacian soldier who thinks that they ought to be the sole arbiter of a prisoner’s fate will not be a soldier for much longer – I will not tolerate such childishness in the ranks.

—

That’s it for now – there may be more on this subject in the future!