"Orders can wait. The battle won't take place for some time. However, I need to convey to you my strategy." Asidhara nods gravely to Aetheor. "You may rise, Paladin Aetheor, I find it difficult to talk to you knelt this way."

It was a lie really, as she quite enjoyed it. Then again, trust, trust. Oh, the fun lost at the expense of making someone your puppet. Where does the time go, anyway?

"Our General Astidus has kindly stationed us immediately behind the gate. Behind us, he has stationed a phalanx, and two more on either flank. Archers too, will accompany the buildings beside. Clearly, he intends to trap us within a kill zone that will encompass both our own forces and the enemy's." Asidhara/Johanna explains, "Under normal circumstances, this could be seen as acceptable, but you and I, and by extension of my pride, my command, are not so expendable. It can be construed that this is an illegal order, and the human troops under Astidus' command are performing a traitorous act."

Asidhara frowns, and paces before Aetheor, letting this sink in. "Now, I understand this is a strech. Clearly, we cannot lightly regard our kinsmen as being hostile, but for the sake of the battle's opening moments, we must be prepared to accept this fact. Ignoring it does a disservice to the people in my squad, and to you." Hastily scrawling the battle plans on a sheet of parchment that was readily available from the barrack's tactical table, Asidhara draws a diagonal line connecting the gate's left wall point, which slants backward toward the center of the plaza.

"I however, have a plan to break through our own lines and secure an avenue of retreat while not sacrificing any of our own men." She highlights the right flank phalanx, and notes the diagonal formation, "Our unit is a mixed unit, and it will be incapable of assuming formation, thus making our best tactical option one of an urban melee. This dangerous tactic requires we exit the good general's kill zone long enough to properly scatter the enemy's forces where we can properly pick them off piecemeal. We will do this by routing the enemy charge into our right flank phalanx by skewing our own formation."

She highlights the path she hopes the ogres will take, away from their diagonal and into the right flank.

"I hope to achieve this by clever use of the gate as it is breached. I understand this tactic requires betraying our own forces, and it may not be amenable to you. Have faith that this sort of tactic is nothing new to me, and that we have already been treasonously betrayed by our own commander. My loyalities are with my command, and it's survival."

"The stipend is fair m'lord, but just barely. Seems the standing contract is iron clad, can't walk out on this one." The speaker said in a tone of hushed exasperation.

"Aye, those half wits are lucky to employ at least one man with skill enough to see this threat. Those ogres have been hampering the countryside for months now, and suddenly it's a state of national emergency? If you ask me a country this backwards deserves what's coming to it... but I digress. Won't do much good to lose our base of operations now then would it Jilex?" replied a slender young half-man from behind a desk suspiciously absent any paperwork.

"No m'lord, no it wouldn't do at all." Jilex assured, chuckling good naturedly.

The young man had a stern expression on his face, his brow knotted and the faintest hint of a wrinkle appearing between his dark eyebrows. "I suppose we'll be mustering with the rest of the regiment then?" he asked.

"Actually m'lord, commander Farless has instructed me to inform you of an offical summons before the Lord General, says something about particular disposition of the Bladewinds, 'course such talk goes right o'er my ears." Jilex replied.

The young man's face went from stern to dark in an eyeblink. Murder played across his features, silent as death.

"That son of a bitch..."

.................................................. ............

The mercenary captain walked purposefully through the grand halls of his Lord General, tossed his overcloak unceremoniously to a waiting attendant and veritably stormed into the General's antechamber, tossing aside the heavy oak doors with a contemptuous ease that belied his slight stature.

"Ah, commander Thalas, I see you've received my summons." the lord general spoke with an air of false benevolence. "I wanted to inform you that your Serpents will be used to bolster an... experimental unit. We need your strong arm to help us spearhead the counterassault against these inhuman beasts." the general spoke, producing an unpleasant inflection over the word "inhuman", his bigotry showing through despite whatever facades of civility he chose to place over it.

Commander Thalas fought valiantly against an urge to leap across the room and throttle his Lord General-ship, eventually winning out at the cost of several long moments of teeth grinding.

"Yes m'lord, the Serpents will avail themselves as they always do." he managed to eek out.

"Excellent Hashel, now go and confer with commander Johanna about the proposed tactics, it is her unit you will be supporting." the Lord General said.

"Yes m'lord," Hashel spoke before turning on his heels and exiting the compound, snatching his overcloak from the fumbling hands of the attendant with such force the poor man was nearly knocked bodily from his feet.

As Hashel stormed from the compound in search of commander Johanna, he mumbled to himself in the relative safety of the front gardens.

"Fucking pompous, backstabbing racist swine! I'll see him breathe his last one day, I swear it!"

.................................................. ............

Somewhat cooled from his distasteful confrontation with the bigoted Lord General, Hashel managed to find his way to the training grounds where Commander Johanna stood in conference with what appeared to be a paladin of some sort, judging from the gaudy nature of his armor.

Hashel approached the two, paying little heed to what they were saying, caught in his own thoughts for the moment. "Good day commander, sorry to interrupt your discourse but I must speak with you most urgently. I am commander Hashel Thalas and my company has been assigned to support your unit, we haven't much time to discuss tactics and I must insist on knowing precisely what the Lord General has planned for your "experimental unit." Hashel recited in his most military tone, still sounding every bit the aristocrat his blood and breeding had made him.

"More sheep to the slaughter, is it? Our friend is most enterprising indeed." Asidhara's head turned away from Aetheor to Commander Thalas, whom had just adressed her. She grinned at him with a wolfish look of mixed cunning and frustration in adversity. "One moment, Commander."

Asidhara removed her fetching hat, and placed it on Freeny's head, whispering the following instructions with it... "Gem, Freeny. We're going to run into problems with Aetheor. I need you to find a friend of mine. Gem knows where he is, so follow my hat, Freeny." Standing, she smiled back to the half-elf.

"Excuse us, Paladin." She shot back to Aetheor, without turning her head back to face him, and stepped toward Hashel, "Commander Thalas, if you would walk with me? I would prefer to confide in you my tactics alone." gesturing to a path outside the barracks/field, where they could talk more privately.

Hashel finally took a moment to notice who he was addressing as something more than an annoyance to his day and realized what a beautiful woman he was speaking with. Still, if she was in league with the Lord General she was not to be trusted as far as she could be flung, even if considering her slight build that might be a fair distance...

Hashel bowed rigidly in acquiescense to his peer's request and began walking with Commander Johanna away from the fuming paladin.

"My Lady I must forewarn you that I have certain, reservations concering the Lord General's tactics..." Hashel advised as the two began to converse, trying to be as political as possible, he had no desire to show his hand entirely before discerning his opponents play, he had even less desire to be branded any more an outcast than this paranoid and xenophobic regime had made him into.

"Excellent!" 'Johanna' replied with a wide, almost undiplomatic smile, "That saves me time to plead my case. It's clearly apparrent that this 'special unit' of mine is not any more special than your standard public execution given some window dressings and extra flair."

She drops her voice farther, "Do you know why I took you aside?" she asked, but didn't wait for Hashel's response, and went straight to an expression that signified he did. "Of course you do. Human battlemages of this skill don't fall from the sky, nor do they suddenly gain a command within a handful of hours. I imagine General Astidus has suspected this, which is why he gave me the command, the fool."

She nods gravely, and clucks her tounge, still not letting Hashel speak. She'd just... Tell him, and if he didn't agree, she could... persuade him. Or Gem could persuade him. Possibly both, because it had been years since Asidhara had frozen someone while they were being burned from the inside.

"The Lord General has kindly given me the option of fleeing the field once our ranks fail, as they inevitably will. The rest of you will be killed. Astidus is haughty enough to believe I will go through with this." Upon finishing this last line, she stops, picks a twig from the ground and locks eyes with Hashel in a very... dire way. Offering him the twig, it swiftly contorts into a beautiful, glimmering flower of red glass.

"You're a half-elf, aren't you? Where do your alliegences lie?" her voice is now quite commanding, though still soft as she offers the glamoured trinket to Commander Thalas.

As his recent benefactor strode off with yet another new addition to the rapidly growing anti-suicide squadron, Dagan found himself alone with the paladin. Every possible avenue of conversation he could muster was squashed by what he assumed were the man's ridiculously hard won prejudices. The usage of 'filth' had not escaped the werewolf...but at least he was upfront about his convictions. Better to stare your hatred in the face than, say, send it into a battlefield of sure death a few miles up ahead.

The paladin's armor was both an eyesore and an object of fascination to Dagan, who found himself drawn to the metal he feared was his antithesis. "That armor looks far too immaculate to be pewter?" He could not stop the sentence from devolving into a question. At least the woman had seemed to not care about the particulars of Dagan's irregularities, subtly bringing up his nature to this man was far trickier.

Jack Ark had walked out into the field to address the cramp in his foot. Jack became Sergeant not because he was the best shot, that was Jimmy Knak who had been sent to a advance unit. Jack began Sergeant because he was always stringing the bow and hitting target. In the early morning he up and on the field and in the dark he kept shooting and hitting targets. Jack had seen that freaky bug, but had no time to school the monster what with all the paper work. The only reason he never elevated higher was his manor and his questionable attitude towards the state and the enemy. That stretched back home put a bad streak in his record.

Of course his eyes didn’t come in bad need either. In the distance he saw the reflection of light from a moving armor piece talking to a moving furry rug of some kind. Off to the right he saw what he thought was Kay talking to the bird in the armor; the front fodder conversing before the battle march. Another half here? God must have cracked an egg and used one elf to complete the two; shame should have just thrown it away. Pretty boy.

Jack stringed his bow arched his line pointed towards the two and released it.

(I guess I'll use 'he' and 'she' for whatever form Tharex takes.)

Tharex watched simply as the 'monsters' made their way out. Without a moment to spare he made his way to the Generals door and gave it a few loud knocks. His intentions were clear and it would most likely place him closer to finding his goal. This would need to happen before the battle.

Torind laughed dryly at Anim's suggestion. "That sounds just about right; I had hoped that I was simply being paranoid for thinking that."

Torind flashed him a grin. "I have a very effective plan in mind for getting us out of this city, but I think I'll keep it to myself for a while, you never know what might get leaked to an unwitting ear." Torind had no intention of releasing the knowledge of his abilities just yet; it was always good to be a few steps ahead of everyone. Even if the Xodar seemed trustworthy, he would have to tread lightly.

He began walking down the hall. "They call me Torind by the way." He told him over his shoulder. "I may want to question you about a few issues later, but for now I'm going to go find our benevolent leader. I need to "clear up" a few things."

Hashel was suddenly brought screaming into the moment, whereas before his mind had seethed in past betrayals and future battles, all his considerable focus was now bent upon the single object of glamour and beauty grasped within the hands of a True Fae standing before him

His emotions battled, rage at finally having proof of Astidus' despiccable practices and awe at meeting such a person as "Johanna" in such an odd circumstance. As his emotions were thusly entwined, he defaulted to his logic.

Hashel had always been a man of action, his mother had remarked of this that it was most decidedly his human side he favored. Somewhere between a conscious decision and an innate desire to act he plucked the glassware rose from Johanna's hand, marvelling at it's intricacy as he spoke.

"My loyalties lie with the men who've fought and died for and with me, my lady..." he intoned almost without emotion, his focus entirely on the magical craftwork in his hands, still silently struggling with his untamed emotions beneath his austere surface. "And yes, my heritage is an obvious matter wouldn't you say? Far more obvious than your own in any case." he mused as he absently smoothed his jet black hair, revealing his unmistakably elven ears. "But more to the point, since you have shared this plot with me, would you be so kind as to tell me what your plans are to avoid this shameful demise?"

And then there was nothing left within Hashel's mind or heart, a moment of action, a blur of emptiness and motion and nothing more.

The rose shattered on the ground in a thousand glimmering droplets of dream and mystery as it's place in Hashel's hand was taken up by the hefty shaft of a well fletched arrow. Hashel could not speak, only glare into the distance at a fool who thought himself an assassin.

His blade flew from it's scabbard swifter than midnight over deep forest, he shouted a challenge at the top of his lungs, sure now that the Lord General had gone mad and simply ordered his death. He'd be damned if he drew his last breath before that bastard.

"Hail! Stranger! I am Death made flesh, for the scant few seconds remaining to you, you may address me as Prince of Blades, prepare yourself!"