The player Expeditionary Army's advance went far more smoothly than Chris had expected.
Defeat in the invasion of Bagnia, a joint invasion by the Kingdom of Bagnia and the Retalia Empire, a succession war, a crushing defeat while resisting the kingdom's invaders, and so on...
After going through those four stages, the Minicia Kingdom was truly devastated.
The veteran soldiers the old king had built up were almost entirely gone after those wars, and much the same was true of their equipment.
The Expeditionary Army swept north almost unopposed. Inside the fortresses fortunate enough to have escaped destruction, scattered defenders wore ill-fitting, heavily patched uniforms. Their weapons were an equally motley collection: rusty spears, chipped chopping blades, and even the occasional farming tool.
The sallow, emaciated men on the walls hardly looked like soldiers. More likely, they were locals their lords had forcibly conscripted.
These soldiers, with nothing but a blue uniform to their names, had eyes filled with exhaustion, numbness, and profound fear.
When the Expeditionary Army's vast, orderly formations appeared on the horizon, grim and resplendent in armor, the players only needed to ride forward and fire a few token shots. The men on the walls would either cower behind the battlements or simply raise a white flag.
Some lords went even further. Before the Expeditionary Army arrived, they fled their towns with their wealth and private troops, disappearing into barren fields and ruined villages.
Really, the players did not even need to haul their field guns forward and fire a few rounds to make an intimidating show. They could acquire a town for nothing, along with starving people everywhere... then abandon that strategically important town.
Even after the Expeditionary Army had advanced two hundred kilometers north, the conditions they saw in Minisia had not improved.
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