Chapter Summaries

After taking Doro Town, Little Knife organized the players’ response and assigned them to assess the town and prepare for the enemy. The players had one to three days to regroup before news of the town’s fall reached the outside world.

• Little Knife asked about Doro Town’s population, then ordered the players to start cooking and went to the Earth Mother Goddess Church.
• The players reported no deaths, two wounded players, and a group of local residents they had intercepted; Little Knife told them to verify the residents’ identities and release them with their property.
• Home Alone reported capturing a woman and three men who might be special NPCs, and Little Knife proposed holding a public vote on whether they should live or die.
• Most player leaders agreed to Little Knife’s proposal, and he told Home Alone to organize the prisoners’ case after the meeting.
• A player confirmed that nobody had escaped through the gorge, so Little Knife said they had one to three days to rest and regroup before the outside world learned of the town’s fall.
• Little Knife assigned the players to investigate the town’s population, resources, surroundings, and enemy forces, tying mission contribution points to their performance.

Marlow struggled to gather supplies and shield taxes for the Republic of Bagnia’s military campaign, only to discover spoiled provisions and a shortfall caused by corrupt officials. The chapter left him facing news that rebels had attacked a convoy behind the front lines and stolen a wagonload of black powder.

• Marlow reviewed the military supply ledger and found major shortages of cheese, flour, and salted meat.
• Marlow recalled the Republic’s war plans and the new shield tax imposed on towns to provision three infantry regiments.
• Marlow caught cellar laborers trimming mold from cheese submitted as shield tax and recognized it as Montignac’s inadequate contribution.
• A guard told Marlow that rebels had burned twelve wagonloads of oats and stolen a wagonload of black powder from a convoy.

After learning that rebels had taken a wagon carrying twenty barrels of black powder, Quartermaster Marlow decided to pursue them before they escaped into the woods. He bribed Captain Hayden for access to the armory, unaware that two rebels had infiltrated the laborers entering it.

• Marlow confirmed that a little over twenty rebels carrying the stolen black powder were heading toward East Birch Town.
• Marlow realized losing the powder would ruin his military career, so he decided to lead the castle garrison after the rebels.
• Marlow gave Captain Hayden a 500-coin bank deposit certificate in exchange for authorization to take weapons, armor, arrows, and a little less than half a barrel of powder.
• Two rebels slipped into the armory among the quartermaster's laborers, and Little Knife warned his companion to stay quiet.

Marlow inspected and equipped seventy soldiers before leading them out to suppress a reported rebellion, while Little Knife and Five Nukes revealed that their disguised players had successfully infiltrated the quartermaster's castle. Little Knife prepared to begin sabotaging the castle once Marlow was far enough away.

• Marlow discovered that the halberdiers had rusty weapons and ordered replacements, then inspected the soldiers' armor, matchlocks, shot, and gunpowder.
• Marlow issued the seventy soldiers two days of food and promised each five silver coins for dealing with the rebels before leading them out.
• Little Knife and Five Nukes watched the soldiers leave and discussed how their improvised infiltration plan had worked.
• Little Knife explained that twenty players had posed as laborers from a supply convoy and entered the castle while their AI assistants controlled their characters.
• Little Knife told Five Nukes to follow him and wait until Marlow was far enough away before starting the sabotage.

Little Ghost’s raiding party ambushed a convoy, seized black powder, and accidentally reached East Birch Town while fleeing pursuers. Marlow identified them as rebels and advanced, but watched them abandon their wagon and escape with their horses.

• Little Ghost led twenty-two players to ambush a convoy at a pass, where they routed its guards and seized a wagon carrying twenty barrels of black powder.
• Home Alone and the others burned the convoy’s oats and headed back with the powder and draft horses, then rested overnight before resuming their journey.
• The party lost its way and arrived outside an unfamiliar walled town, where farmers fled and an alarm bell rang.
• Marlow spotted the mounted party near East Birch Town and mistook their fine breastplates for proof they were elite troops rather than rebels.
• Marlow ordered his men forward, but the players loaded some barrels onto spare horses, set the powder wagon alight, and fled with more than eighty horses.

Marlow pursued the rebels after their gunpowder wagon exploded, while Home Alone’s band fled through the countryside, raiding settlements and losing their way. After learning that the Quartermaster’s Office armory had burned down, Marlow chose to press on and promised his men rewards for killing the rebels.

• Marlow’s men exploded the rebels’ gunpowder wagon, and Marlow sent mounted infantry to pursue the fleeing riders.
• Home Alone’s group buried their powder barrels, escaped the pursuit, and became lost in unfamiliar mountains.
• The players raided West Birchwood Town, killed the mayor and others, took provisions, and announced that food from the granary was free.
• Over the next several days, the players raided more villages and towns while their erratic route exhausted and confused Marlow’s halberdiers.
• A messenger told Marlow that the Quartermaster’s Office castle and armory had burned down, so Marlow promised his men a hundred silver coins for every rebel they killed.

Marlow led seventy soldiers into Miller Town to confront the rebels, but a clash with elite cuirassiers left his forces suffering far heavier casualties. He ordered a retreat to Ankandela, promising silver to the survivors and compensation for the dead.

• Marlow ignored the fleeing bandits and horse herd, then led his troops into Miller Town toward the mayor’s house.
• Marlow formed his halberdiers and Musketeers to face nearly ten charging cuirassiers, whose armor mostly turned aside the opening volley.
• Marlow ordered the halberdiers to target the riders’ horses, breaking the legs of two mounts and forcing the cuirassiers to withdraw.
• A reckless young soldier was killed, but five halberdiers brought down one dismounted swordsman as the enemy retreated.
• Marlow noticed the poor quality of the Musketeers’ gunfire and ordered his troops to take the body and weapons back to Ankandela, promising silver rewards.

Home Alone and the surviving players failed to defeat the Republic’s forces, while Chris struggled to fund Bolas Fortress and discovered that moving large quantities between worlds could strain or expose the Greek Continent’s artificial reality. He abandoned plans to sell raw materials and considered ways to encourage players to spend as his regime continued rebuilding.

• Home Alone and the surviving players returned to the town square after losing Della and three horses, then argued over how to defeat the halberdiers.
• The players put out fires set by the halberdiers, but lost track of the enemy when their footprints disappeared at a river.
• Chris found that sending ten tons of logs to the twenty-first century strained him, and that withdrawing a hundred secondhand laptops made the Greek Continent’s sky and ground shake.
• Chris realized the Greek Continent was an artificial world drained of magic, stopped withdrawing laptops, and sent his thermal imager back to the secondhand marketplace.
• Chris gave up on selling bulk raw materials, considered holding a spending event for players, and worried that his recovering regime was not ready for a war abroad.

Chris investigated a brawl between followers of the Goddess of Agriculture and the Earth Mother Goddess, then imposed strict rules on religion in his territory. After two Earth Mother Goddess followers staged a protest, Bruno killed them, and Chris warned Alanka against provoking him again.

• A clerk reported that a hundred refugees had fought over a proposed place of worship, leaving twenty-one injured, and Chris rode to the scene.
• Chris discovered that Alanka had started the fight after opposing a worship site for Demeter, and suspected he had engineered the conflict to test Chris and gain influence.
• Chris punished both sides and announced that religious buildings and clergy needed approval, while public proselytizing and religious persecution were forbidden.
• Two followers of the Earth Mother Goddess shouted a protest, and Bruno killed them with his halberd before Alanka could stop him.
• Chris warned Alanka that he would not tolerate further provocation and might destroy a god if Alanka pushed him too far.

Chris rejected Priest Alanka’s demand to reverse his restrictions on religious preaching and warned him not to interfere with his work. Alanka backed down for now and went to obtain the required application documents, while Chris expected their conflict to continue.

• Alanka requested an audience with Chris and asked him to reconsider the restrictions on religious propagation.
• Chris dismissed Alanka’s appeal and declared that neither Alanka nor the Earth Mother Goddess would change his decisions through threats.
• Alanka denied that the Earth Mother Goddess Church had participated in the rebellion, but Chris said he did not care and warned he would take harsher measures.
• Chris invoked his education at the Seminary of the God of Light, and Alanka concealed his murderous anger and chose to retreat.
• Alanka agreed to consider Chris’s suggestion and left to get the application documents from the Clerk.

Chris reassured Connie after she offered to have a religious follower killed, then approved Diu Ni Leimu’s plans to attract players and build industry in Bich Town. With farmland around Bolas proving unsuitable for cultivation, Chris considered opening clothing factories to employ the remaining refugees and went to ask whether the plan was feasible.

• Connie apologized to Chris for failing to uncover Alanka’s actions and offered to have a killer eliminate a Goddess of Agriculture follower, but Chris forbade assassinations and told her to continue recruiting, training, and monitoring agents.
• Diu Ni Leimu developed Bich Town by building an industrial park, promoting workshops, and planning homes near the Kaslo Mountains; Chris approved tax exemptions and guarantees to buy qualifying workshop output.
• Players flocked to Bich Town, where they planned workshops for processing materials and making weapons and armor, while Diu Ni Leimu announced a railway project to Bolas Fortress and opened bidding.
• Chris reconsidered sending the remaining refugees to clear farmland after finding the rocky, infertile soil around Bolas unsuitable for crops.
• Chris considered opening clothing factories to employ the refugees and left his office to seek advice on whether the idea would work.

Chris planned textile workshops, construction projects, and other work to support the refugees around Bolas Fortress, but the Republic of Bagnia’s advancing army forced him to prepare for war. As Diu Ni Leimu ordered equipment for the expanded militia, nearly twenty thousand Bagnian troops approached Bolas Fortress.

• Chris decided to establish clothing and fabric workshops in Bich Town and create jobs through construction and land reclamation.
• Traveling merchants brought news that a legion of the Republic of Bagnia was coming toward Bolas Fortress.
• Dominic worked at his smithy and spoke with Diu Ni Leimu about smithing before the mayor asked him for militia equipment.
• Diu Ni Leimu explained that Bich Town’s militia had grown from two hundred to a thousand men and bought what gear the industrial park’s smithies had available.
• The Republic of Bagnia sent nearly twenty thousand troops toward Bolas Fortress, forcing Chris to halt his development plans and mobilize for war.

Lake traveled with a group of itinerant merchants to Bolas Fortress, where Prince Chris’s patrols and officials treated them unusually fairly. At the Fortress Supply Cooperative, Lake discovered its cheap nails could only be bought with Prince Chris’s unfamiliar silver dollars.

• Lake and the merchants rested by a stream, then encountered cavalry from Bolas Fortress, who warned them about brigands and gave them a signal flare before riding toward another fight.
• Lake’s group reached Bolas Fortress, crossed the bridge without being charged a toll, and received ration tickets from the halberdiers.
• Lake learned from lodge workers that refugees in Bolas had jobs and regular meals, though he narrowly avoided a beating after asking whether they had starved.
• Lake visited the Fortress Supply Cooperative and marveled at its inexpensive, well-made nails.
• Lake tried to buy ten packets with his Bagnian coins, but the attendant told him the cooperative accepted only Prince Chris’s silver dollars.

Lake bought industrial goods at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative, then secretly surveyed the refugee camp and became convinced that Prince Chris’s forces were elite troops. The chapter left Lake doubting whether the Republic’s Third Legion could capture Bolas Fortress.

• Lake admired a modern silver dollar and exchanged his rock salt, leather, and Redwood Dye for money to buy salt, cloth, riding boots, and steel needles.
• Lake secretly mapped the refugee camp and surrounding hills, mistaking construction lights and a locomotive’s steam vent for signs of military activity and a monster.
• Chris’s forces worked through the night laying railway tracks, testing a Vertical Boiler Locomotive, and preparing refugee men for militia service.
• Lake watched three hundred-man companies of black-uniformed soldiers drill with flintlocks and concluded they were Prince Chris’s elite troops.
• Lake questioned whether the Republic’s Third Legion could capture Bolas Fortress.

Lin Ruoyu prepared to take command of more militiamen for the Extreme Warriors, while intelligence about Prince Chris’s territory left Bagnia’s Lieutenant General Dalek shaken by its wealth, equipment, and manufacturing quality. Dalek was left struggling to accept the evidence as his adjutant reported details of the region’s elite troops and ordinary goods.

• Lin Ruoyu decided that the Extreme Warriors would accept a thousand militiamen despite the risk of upsetting other players, and a messenger ordered him to head north to receive a delegation.
• Lieutenant General Dalek read a spy’s report describing Prince Chris’s war beasts, flintlocks, plentiful supplies, and elite infantry, then angrily questioned how Chris had obtained such resources.
• An intelligence officer showed Dalek finely made silver dollars and steel needles from the Supply and Marketing Cooperative, and Dalek was stunned by their precision and strength.
• Dalek recoiled from his own comfortable riding boots after learning that similar boots cost only three silver dollars in Chris’s territory.
• Dalek hurled the silver coins at his adjutant and was further alarmed when they dented the man’s breastplate at identical depths.

Lieutenant General Dalek struggled to accept intelligence that Prince Chris had become too powerful to defeat, but resolved that the Republic’s campaign had to succeed. He learned that severe supply shortfalls and rebel attacks had left his advancing army with less than three months’ food, forcing him to reconsider his limited options.

• Dalek recalled how the Republic’s campaign aimed to kill or capture Prince Chris, while Captain Marion’s party had been sent to verify his identity and kill him if he was genuine.
• Dalek learned that assassins sent after Prince Chris had disappeared and that High Priest Alanka had refused to carry out an assassination.
• Dalek resolved to fight and win despite reports that Chris commanded elite troops, abundant supplies, a strong fortress, and a united populace.
• Dalek asked the quartermaster about the army’s grain, and learned that only two thousand of the planned five thousand cartloads had arrived, including rye mixed with sawdust.
• The quartermaster reported that rebels in Doro Town had attacked the supply route, burned the Quartermaster’s Office storage castle, and defeated Major Marlow Benson’s detachment.
• Dalek learned that the arriving food would last less than three months instead of the planned six, while his army had already marched toward Bolas Fortress.

Chris rejected the Restoration Army Council’s attempt to make him a figurehead and exposed its political schemes and threats. As the Republic broke through the eastern defenses and advanced on Hegrande, he told the envoys that his elder brother was arriving with reinforcements from the Bohemian Empire.

• Three Restoration Army envoys offered Chris a royal robe and an oath scroll intended to bind him to the Council.
• Chris rejected the offer, questioned when the Council had formed, and recognized that the oath would legitimize its plans for a constitutional monarchy.
• Chris revealed that Count Dirac had warned him of a Council faction’s plan to assassinate him if he refused to cooperate.
• Chris learned that the Republic’s First and Second Corps had broken through the eastern defenses and were advancing toward Hegrande.
• Chris told the envoys to return and said his elder brother was arriving with Bohemian Empire reinforcements.

Chris reviewed the Restoration Army’s divided factions and doubted they could ease the pressure on Bolas. When a Republic vanguard arrived near the fortress, he sent the Players to capture prisoners and scout, seeing the army as useful practice for newcomers and a chance to boost the economy.

• Chris recalled how his saltpeter trade route through Count Dirac’s territory had succeeded and learned from their correspondence that the Restoration Army had three rival factions.
• Chris concluded that the republican faction was the most vulnerable to manipulation and worried that the Restoration Army could not be relied upon.
• A five-thousand-man Republic vanguard camped south of Bolas Fortress, where its men began cutting trees and building structures.
• Chris used a telescope to assess the vanguard and considered whether it was bait for a larger force waiting nearby.
• Chris posted prisoner-capture and reconnaissance missions for the Players, expecting the newcomers to gain experience, silver, and reputation by confronting the vanguard.

Knife-in-the-Butt and the players defended Doro Valley against repeated Republic assaults, using coordinated volleys, a Crouching Tiger Cannon, and a bayonet charge to break the attackers. The remaining Republic force fled, but an army of a thousand still waited outside the valley.

• Knife-in-the-Butt gathered more than a hundred players in Doro Valley and put Aku in charge of calculating firing data for the musketeers.
• Knife-in-the-Butt and the players repelled three Republic charges before preparing to meet a fourth.
• The players' flintlock volleys killed many Republic musketeers, while the enemy's return fire killed two players and seriously wounded another.
• Aku called for the Crouching Tiger Cannon, and the players blasted the charging Republic soldiers with cannon fragments and birdshot.
• Knife-in-the-Butt led the players in a bayonet charge that broke the Republic formation and drove the survivors to flee.
• Knife-in-the-Butt stopped the players from pursuing and told them to carry their wounded back for treatment as an army of a thousand remained outside the valley.

Major Marlow’s forces failed to break through Doro Valley, while Little Knife’s defenders refused to leave their stronghold. In East Birch Town, Wallace was tortured into accepting conscription, then stabbed the soldier guarding him and declared he would never surrender his freedom.

• Major Marlow withdrew his infantry after repeated assaults failed, leaving cavalry hidden as bait, but the rebels stayed inside Doro Valley.
• Little Knife remained in Doro Town, unwilling and unable to lead the players out against the Republican Army.
• Wallace recalled how he had helped take grain from West Birchwood Town’s granary and later traveled as a peddler without being recognized.
• A soldier told Wallace he had been arrested in East Birch Town for refusing Major Marlow’s conscription order and released him after Wallace agreed to serve.
• Wallace drew the soldier’s dagger, stabbed him in the flank, and proclaimed that he would rather die than surrender his freedom.