Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

The men and women of the Sixth Legion were just that - men and women. Predominantly human, at that. They were good. Well-trained, well-equipped, drilled and practiced.

But they were only human. And like all people, they made mistakes, little ones that skills didn’t always catch. There were errors. Pranks. And the occasional malicious compliance with stupid orders.

During the war seasons, a good amount of the bullshit was put to the side in favor of staying alive, of presenting a united front and fighting well.

During the winter, when people were bored?

That’s when the shenanigans happened.

“Detail! I want my wagon shining clean!” [Centurion] Astenies roared. His wagon - his personal wagon, the one he’d always rode in - had been an unfortunate victim of the morning’s drills, having been splattered from top to bottom with mud. Nothing too unfortunate, but it would stick out like a sore thumb. Not only that, but the soldiers had nothing to do. Keeping them busy with something was better than letting a dozen idle hands figure out mischief.

All in all, something of a win for the [Centurion]. He adjusted his cloak against the bitingly cold wind.

“But-” One of the hapless soldiers started to say something. Astenies turned and roared at him.

“But nothing! Are the Han descending upon us? Are dinosaurs attacking? Has the alarm been sounded? What was that? No? That’s what I thought! Now get to it!”

Perhaps if the line leader had said something Astenies would’ve been more inclined to listen, but the woman in question was standing ramrod straight, saluting her understanding of the orders.

“You heard the [Centurion]!” She barked out, Astenies missing the glimmer of mischief entirely. “We’re going to make this wagon shine!”

“Very good.” Astenies said, huddling a little deeper into his cloak and wishing for the warmth of his tent and the small brazier he had going there. He turned and left, visions of hot food and warm furs dancing through his mind.

A malicious gleam entered the line leader’s eyes.

“Right then! He wanted his wagon to shine. Septimus, Octavius, start working on the mud. The rest of you, start hauling buckets of water. Need to make it nice and clean after all.”

Octavius furrowed his eyebrows.

“But it’s freezing out.” He protested.

“Exactly.”

[Centurion] Astenies emerged from his tent the next morning to find his beloved wagon shining and gleaming in the early morning sun, the attention of half the Legion on it as sparkling light caught the block of ice freezing it solid.

“I know [Camp Prefect] Robin has a duty roster, but this is stupid.” Legionnaire Bunny complained to Specs. Rain was pouring around them in great sheets of water. The clever location and design of the Legion’s winter fortress meant it wasn’t too much of a concern, the water captured and funneled away before it could do too much harm.

Specs pushed some water around with his broom, giving Bunny a strange look.

“This your first time in the army or something?” He asked.

Bunny shut up, and continued sweeping the dirt roads.

In the pouring rain.

Why?

Because the duty roster said so.

“I am an [Alchemist]! Not some two-bit jar-headed grunt that doesn’t know the difference between a reagent and a solvent!” Orhun protested.

Tribune Hazel shook her head. Optio Maxlin was on a well-earned temporary leave, and Hazel had taken command of the alchemist lines in his absence.

“Everyone rotates through. Would you rather have this duty during the summer?” Hazel was a big believer in ‘convince people you’re right’ when she had the opportunity to. She knew she could pull out the ‘I’m your commanding officer and I’m ordering you to do this’, but that didn’t work long-term for herding the collection of egos and specialized skills that was the Specialist Cohort.

“No.” Orhun defeatedly admitted. “I wouldn’t. Alright, hand over the manual. It’s just one night duty right?”

Hazel glared at the alchemist-soldier.

“You will be getting the manual yourself from the [Scribes], and I didn’t hear how you’re unfamiliar with some of our standard operating procedures.”

Orhun felt a shiver run down his back.

Right.

[Tribune] Hazel, not [Optio] Maxlin. He had to watch his words.

With a groan and complaint, Orhun went to the scribes to pick up a copy of the manual, detailing how, exactly, one was expected to perform guard duty in the Sixth.

Warfare was a constant around the world, and every country had its own militaries and procedures. The more tribal, less centralized militaries, where everyone knew everyone else, had no concept of bureaucracy. Of a single, standardized operating procedure. Of a manual detailing how things had to be done. Of course they knew how things were done! They’d hunted and fought together from a young age. They had a sort of wordless communication, where they could know exactly what everyone else was doing, what their skills were, the whole nine miles, just from pure experience and familiarity.

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As militaries grew more centralized, they gained in some aspects and lost in others. The Exterreri Empire had the most centralized military. The Han Empire was able to contest that claim when they weren’t fractured by a great civil war, but at the moment they were a little busy.

One major way centralized militaries benefited was in the size and scope of the armies they were able to field. A [Baron] of Rolland could field a few dozen knights each and maybe a hundred men-at-arms - ignoring peasant levies for a minute - but they couldn’t get much larger than that. Tribal hunting packs were a few dozen strong warriors, but try to mash several tribes together and it all went to hell in a handbasket.

One major way they lost out though was the sheer amount of bureaucracy and paperwork required to keep everything moving and running properly. Hence the deployed Sixth having multiple lines of [Scribes] frantically trying to keep on top of everything.

They were busy. They had lots to do. They were only human, and everything was done on paper and ink. Occasionally, a word was missed in a copy, and copies of those copies would have the missed word. Sometimes they were harmless, and obvious that something was wrong. Other times, the new sentence made perfect sense. An infamous example that was taught to most aspiring young [Scribes] was ‘a camel’s hair going through the eye of a needle’ got turned into ‘a camel going through the eye of a needle’ to describe a particularly difficult task… and nobody noticed, because the analogy still made sense. A similarly devastating type was ‘the clergy should go celebrate’ turning into ‘the clergy should go celibate’, ending with the slow downfall of the religious order in question.

Missing the words ‘or higher’ happened in a copy, and was distributed in the Sixth. Nobody ever read the operating manuals - people were usually taught how things were done.

Nobody read them except the nerdiest of [Alchemists].

Orhun was deeply unhappy to be on guard duty. He was cold. He was tired. He huddled a little closer to the torch that was somehow defying the winter winds, trying to page through the manual one page at a time and get caught up before anyone important came through.

One line in particular caught his eye.

“... only permit the rank of Centurion through…”

It seemed strange that the restriction was locked to a single rank, and not higher or lower, but who was Orhun to complain? He didn’t want to be here, but orders were orders, and he’d dutifully, maliciously, follow the orders.

Naturally, that morning was when a 5000-man commander of the Wei came through for his scheduled meeting with Katerina.

That afternoon, Orhun discovered that a single piece of paper was a far more powerful shield against wrathful officers than the thickest Legion-issued iron.

It was a fine line to walk between readiness and relaxation in the winter. A few of the more inventive [Centurions] took to running impromptu drills on the soldiers, testing for alertness.

The black ops group also had their fun.

One of the tasks soldiers were supposed to do, but often fell to the wayside, was securing their armor and weapons at night. Armor was impractical, but the spears were possible and important. The all-powerful manual stated that soldiers were supposed to sleep on their spears, putting it sideways under the small of their back while they slept facing up.

Only the harshest sticklers for rules did it, and even they recognized it was a losing battle to try and insist other members of their line do it. The Legata herself had done her very best to get the rule removed, but they were not as all-powerful as the manual suggested.

It was also a neat rule for the readiness-minded people to abuse, along with the black ops squad.

Boot’s eyes flew open in the middle of the night.

Someone was in the tent!

It could’ve been one of the fellow members of the line returning from a late-night excursion, or it could be one of The Lady of Death’s minions. The odds were heavily, heavily stacked in favor of the first one, and Boots didn’t yell or raise the alarm.

She just did the first thing she thought of - she kicked the dark shape that was crawling around on the ground.

“Owe.” The figure said, clutching his face. “Muh noze.”

Boot’s hands flew up to her mouth in horror as she realized who she kicked, two whole level up notifications ringing in her ears.

“Wren!?” She hissed at the Primus Pilus, the first spear, the best soldier in the Legion. He shuffled into a sitting pose, still holding his nose.

“Good job. You got me. Go back to sleep.” His voice was muffled by blood and hand.

Boots looked around, figured there was no reason to be awake, and was back asleep seconds later.

“No way.” [Legionnaire] Nesmus stared at what [Legionnaire] Mogna had cooked up.

“Way.” Mogna refuted, patting the side of the keg. “Look, it says right here in the manual.”

She waved a single sheet she’d brought with her, convinced it’d be the answer to all her problems. Nesmus leaned over, put it on the bar, and read, sipping his beer the entire time.

“...soldiers entitled to bring three (3) beers back with them from leave…”

“It doesn’t say anything about size!” Mogna jumped with glee. “Just amount!”

“There’s no way.” Nesmus refuted. “They’ll never let us through.”

“But imagine if they do! We’ll drink like emperors!” Mogna encouraged.

It took four beers for Nesmus’s good judgment to be impaired enough to go along with his friend’s hare-brained scheme. One very large purchase and Mogna retrieving their line’s wagon later, and they were heading back to the Legion’s fortress.

Bunny was on guard duty, and even drunk, even not part of her cohort, Bunny scared Nesmus. She looked friendly and happy enough.

He’d met a few strong people over the course of his life, and Bunny reminded him of them. It wasn’t anything obvious, it was simply the way she could perfectly control her presence. He’d missed her entirely passing through the gates one too many times, only noticing her lurking in the shadows when he was only two steps away from the woman. He’d also seen how, in spite of her tiny size, she could tower like a titan and yell down a dozen people, each with a foot and a hundred levels on her.

That sort of presence control and complete unflappability in the face of power was not normal. The only reason she could possibly be unscared of so many large warriors looming over her tiny self was, Nesmus reasoned, if they were weak compared to her.

His mouth dried up as they approached the gate, and the guards naturally barred their entry. An entire keg was too much, let alone six. Mogna flourished the paper like it was a sword.

“As you can see! Regulations permit us to bring six whole drinks in with us! One, two, three, four, five, SIX!” Mogna weaved unsteadily on top of the barrels as the guards looked at the paperwork with furrowed eyebrows.

“Well, she is technically correct.” One of the guards mentioned. The senior one sighed, but Nesmus only had eyes on Bunny. He was sure she was the real boss here.

She wasn’t moving, which was an encouraging sign in his books.

“Alright, you lot, get through. Don’t do it again, and you better invite us to the party!” The senior guard waved them through, and Nesmus couldn’t believe his luck.

They were going to drink like emperors indeed.

At least, until the regulations were amended.

A few years after the conclusion of the Han Civil War.

Silver-clad Li Wenxian stared at the numbers in front of him, trying to work out who he could reasonably make take the fall for this disaster.

It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his responsibility.

But he had been tasked with finding out, and the results were terrible. Heads were going to roll, and he needed to figure out a way to make sure it wasn’t his.

The [Scholar] went back to the old records, hoping to find an error there, one that would demonstrate that he was in the clear.

Census Records: Year 711 of the Han Dynasty

Households: 10,677,960

Population: 56,486,856

It was only 60 years ago. Were the [Scholars] then corrupt? Did the [Court Officials] change their numbers to make themselves look better?

It was impossible. Li Wenxian’s report had radically different numbers. Things had settled down enough that he couldn’t even try to claim disharmony from the rebuilding!

Census Records: Year 3 of the Zhao Dynasty

Households: 2,459,840

Population: 16,163,863

“We’re in agreement then?” Selene asked Lunaris. The two vibed on a deep level together, able to know each other’s thoughts sometimes before they even had them. Still, for the important things, they communicated directly, making sure there were no issues.

“Yes. We need to tell Iona.” Lunaris agreed.

Communication on Pallos was difficult. It took a long time for word to spread from one nation to another, and that was in the great ‘civilized’ south.

In the north, things were even harder.

It had taken Reinhard the kirin a good deal of time to get home from the School of Sorcery and Spellcraft. Time to reintegrate back home. Time to do the thousand and one ‘welcome home!’ tasks and activities. Time to refind her place among her people, to settle back down.

Only when everything was set and settled did one of her lowest-priority tasks finally bubble up towards the surface. A little note from one of her roommates that she was to pass on. That they were going in a direction, and might settle down there.

Reinhard dutifully passed it along, and it took time for the right kirin with the message to meet one of the reclusive and elusive phoenixes, and let them know that a long-lost sister of theirs was traveling through the southern continent. A burning needle in a gigantic haystack.

The message had been garbled as it was passed along from one place to another, and the myriad of languages it went through didn’t help. The phoenixes got the general idea.

One of their own was being held by a human in the Exterreri Empire.

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