Chapter Summaries

Doran watched the disciplined soldiers defeat the routed troops and return captured goods to civilians, recognizing the virtues of the Paladins he had read about. The officer then ordered Doran to gather the townspeople in the square to reclaim their property and witness the punishments.

• Doran and his servants followed the players as they drove the routed soldiers through town, but the players finished each fight before Doran could intervene.
• Doran watched Black-and-White Bear ask the soldiers to return their spoils to the civilians, and he admired their unfamiliar ideals of sacrifice, compassion, and honesty.
• Doran compared the soldiers to the Paladins from a fantasy novel and reflected on their virtues.
• The officer announced punishments under Prince Chris’s rules, causing several surrendered soldiers to panic.
• The officer told Doran to summon the townspeople to reclaim their belongings and watch the punishments.

Black-and-White Bear’s players punished captured stragglers in Hilla Town and prepared to return their stolen goods. He assigned Doran to oversee the return, and Doran eagerly agreed.

• Black-and-White Bear’s subordinates punished captured stragglers according to suspected crimes, while Doran watched approvingly.
• Black-and-White Bear ordered the surviving wounded prisoners sent to Bolas for Prince Chris to deal with.
• Two players brought the looted goods into the square so they could be returned to the townspeople.
• Black-and-White Bear called Doran over and ordered him to oversee the return of the goods.
• Doran agreed and thumped his chest in assurance.

Doran returned the townspeople’s belongings and comforted them through practical help as the Han-Tang Warriors arrived outside Hilla Town. Impressed by their discipline, Doran hurried home to persuade his father to support an idea of his own.

• Doran carefully distributed recovered belongings, including a dead coachman’s pottery to his widow, Auntie Brenda.
• Black-and-White Bear recognized Doran’s skill at organizing and saw that his efforts helped calm the townspeople.
• The Han-Tang Warriors’ main force, numbering fewer than two hundred, reached Hilla Town after a slow march carrying heavy armor, weapons, food, and supplies.
• The players camped outside town rather than frighten the war-weary locals by entering in full armor.
• Doran was astonished by the warriors’ restraint and ran home to seek his father’s support for his plan.

Major General Marlow faced a starving, lawless Ankandela as Prince Chris’s forces approached and wrestled with whether to flee or defend the city. After learning that the prince’s knights had driven off Wallace’s rebels, he was left with the enemy still outside and no grain to save the city.

• Marlow stayed in Ankandela with the battered Garrison Regiment while the city’s dignitaries fled and public order collapsed.
• Marlow learned that Wallace’s rebels had killed the fleeing dignitaries and their families, while the rebels and Prince Chris’s scouts fought outside the city.
• Marlow considered escaping because Ankandela lacked food, but his honor and desire to save the city kept him from leaving.
• A messenger reported that Prince Chris’s knights had driven off Wallace’s rebels.

Little Knife’s Mountain Tiger Warband defeated a force flying Wallace’s banner outside Ankandela, but Little Knife resented missing out on the riches Home Alone had won in a separate ambush. After recruiting starving slum dwellers to bury the dead, Little Knife began plotting how to steal the spotlight.

• Little Knife and the Mountain Tiger Warband routed roughly five hundred fighters flying Wallace’s banner, killing nearly two hundred and taking no prisoners.
• Little Knife learned that Home Alone had ambushed a convoy and won a fortune in gold, silver, jewels, and grain.
• Little Knife sent players to bring slum dwellers to help clear the battlefield in exchange for food.
• Little Knife ordered the bodies buried so he could open a campsite outside Ankandela and charge other players for lodging.
• Little Knife wondered how he could outshine Home Alone on the forums.

Home Alone’s convoy was ambushed by Wallace’s blue-faced fighters, who mistook his players for impostors acting under Wallace’s banner. The players broke the Giant Bear Assault Squad’s charge with grenades and gunfire, forcing Wallace to retreat into the woods.

• Home Alone rode at the head of his convoy with the valuables taken in a gorge ambush when a gunshot knocked him from his horse and blue-faced attackers opened fire.
• Wallace pursued the convoy after learning that impostors using his blue flag had slaughtered the Republic’s elite and threatened to bring the Republic’s wrath upon him.
• Home Alone rallied his roughly fifty players behind the wagons as Wallace’s more than three hundred fighters advanced under suppressive fire.
• Wallace’s Giant Bear Assault Squad charged, but Home Alone’s players threw grenades that disrupted them and followed with flintlock volleys and an armored counterattack.
• The players overwhelmed the Giant Bear Assault Squad and pinned down Wallace’s archers and gunners with gunfire.
• Wallace ordered a retreat, and his fighters withdrew into the woods while the players regrouped by the wagons instead of pursuing.

After defeating Wallace’s bandits, Little Ghost and the players discovered that most of their draft horses had been killed, leaving them unable to move the loot-filled wagons. They chose to haul the wagons themselves to Ankandela, the nearest inhabited settlement.

• Little Ghost surveyed the convoy and found that only five horses, three mules, and an old yellow ox had survived, leaving at least half the wagons without teams.
• The players counted more than forty bandits killed and four of their own dead, while Home Alone and four others were wounded.
• Little Ghost dismissed a suggestion to link two wagons behind one animal, and Home Alone checked his Personal Map and found Ankandela ten kilometers away as the nearest populated place.
• Little Ghost offered the players a choice between waiting for help from Ankandela or pulling the wagons there themselves, and everyone voted to haul them.

Boswell watched Prince Chris’s men punish thieves and heard Little Knife accuse soldiers of hiding food from an aid convoy. Little Knife’s efforts to feed and employ the refugees had become strained, and he was left furious over the missing supplies.

• Boswell recognized the local thugs who had robbed refugees and watched the prince’s cavalry hang them for murder and robbery.
• Little Knife interrogated and whipped Prince Chris’s soldiers after finding five wagonloads of food missing from the convoy.
• Boswell listened as the soldiers denied hiding food and continued to curse Little Knife.
• Little Knife recalled organizing refugees to clean the battlefield, build bathhouses and a hospital, and dig siege trenches.
• Little Knife explained that the growing number of refugees had exhausted his food supplies, so he had requested emergency aid before discovering the missing wagons.

Chris struggled to manage the growing needs of his forces and the more than twenty thousand people under his care as players expanded his territory and built a transport network. After learning that players and locals had secretly murdered suspected followers of Priest Alanka, Chris ordered the killings left uninvestigated and considered ways to improve his control of Bolas after the war; Asa remained unaware and regretted that Alanka had escaped.

• Chris saw the Mountain Tiger Warband spend heavily on food and watched player groups rapidly bring towns and villages under his influence.
• The Han-Tang Warriors Battle Group absorbed a town, established freight routes between Bolas Fortress and Ankandela, and recruited local guards, while Chris provided support.
• Asa recalled how starvation had killed most of his family, how Chris had given him land and a home, and why he fought to defend them against the Republic Third Infantry Regiment.
• After the battle, Asa and other locals joined a secret purge of suspected Earth Mother Goddess fanatics, killing them and concealing the deaths.
• Connie reported the killings to Chris, who ordered her to stop the matter and avoid further investigation, then considered creating a baojia system after the war.
• Asa remained proud of taking part in the purge but regretted that Priest Alanka had escaped.

Major General Marlow tried to preserve order in Ankandela and feed his Garrison Regiment while Prince Chris's forces gathered outside. After seeing the enemy’s reinforcements arrive, Marlow reconsidered his loyalties and decided to wait for a possible Surrender Letter from Prince Chris.

• Marlow rejected an attack on Prince Chris's vanguard and instead encouraged starving refugees to leave Ankandela for food, while his soldiers suppressed troublemakers inside the city.
• Marlow could not seize grain from the wealthy families because his own family was among those hoarding it, so he taxed returning refugees half a flatbread each to feed the Garrison Regiment.
• Marlow disguised himself in ragged clothes and led more than a hundred soldiers into Prince Chris's camp to work and gather intelligence.
• The Mountain Tiger Warband's players and militia reinforcements arrived, rapidly increasing the camp's strength.
• Marlow doubted the Bagnia Republic could win its wars and decided to watch Prince Chris's forces, hoping to receive a Surrender Letter.

Major General Marlow decided to defect to Prince Chris and worked to secure a valuable bargaining chip by collecting evidence of the councilors’ seizure of Royal Family property. He won over the Garrison Regiment’s officers, leaving them ready to defect together, though they had yet to contact the prince.

• Marlow realized the Benson Family had not helped overthrow the Royal Family and began listing properties the councilors had taken from the crown.
• Marlow asked an old city hall clerk for copies of property transfer records, and the clerk revealed that backup contracts might be hidden in another archive.
• Marlow gave the clerk a key to a stocked safe house for his grandson in exchange for help locating the records.
• Marlow summoned the Garrison Regiment’s officers and persuaded them to join his plan to defect to Prince Chris.
• Marlow and the officers concluded that the city’s defenses could not withstand an assault and that hidden soldiers from the prince’s army might already be inside Ankandela.

Little Knife delayed taking Ankandela because he lacked the grain to feed its starving residents, but he began considering a plan to claim the city and its artisans for the Mountain Tiger Warband. The chapter ended with a trembling old man arriving to discuss Ankandela and Prince Chris’s wealth.

• Little Knife learned that Ankandela had fewer than a thousand poorly equipped defenders and that at least a third of the city’s residents were hungry.
• Little Knife decided to stockpile grain before taking Ankandela, since his supplies were already strained by feeding refugees and troops.
• Home Alone and the others arrived with a wagon convoy full of gold, silver, and jewels, which the Extreme Warriors later hauled away.
• Little Knife considered asking Prince Chris to let the Mountain Tiger Warband claim Ankandela and its nearly ten thousand artisans.
• A player told Little Knife that an old man from Ankandela had come with important business concerning the city and Prince Chris’s wealth.

Chris accepted Major General Marlow’s surrender after discovering that the documents he sent included a list of rebel noble and wealthy families. As Chris considered helping Ankandela’s refugees, he weighed his shortage of transport against the possibility of using prisoners of war to form a team.

• Chris confirmed that Major General Marlow had surrendered Ankandela and reviewed the documents Little Knife had brought back.
• Chris found a list naming noble and wealthy families involved in overthrowing the kingdom and decided it could help identify useful local elites as well as untrustworthy people.
• Chris chose to accept Marlow’s surrender and considered bringing him into his administration if he had committed no serious crimes.
• Chris assessed the food, medicine, and winter clothing needed for Ankandela’s refugees and realized player logistics teams lacked capacity to transport the clothing.
• Chris looked down at the prisoners of war’ camp and considered selecting some of them to form a team after months of ideological education.

Joachim, a Bagnian prisoner of war, reflected on his fear of rain and the surprisingly humane conditions Prince Chris provided in the camp. When Roderick recruited prisoners for a paid transport corps, Joachim signed up and gained a chance to become a squad leader.

• Joachim remembered how an autumn downpour during battle had caused many of his comrades to die and left him fearing rain.
• Joachim contrasted his comfortable prisoner-of-war camp, with its meals, new clothes, and paid work, with the brutal conditions he had seen prisoners endure elsewhere.
• Roderick arrived in the rain and recruited prisoners for a transport corps, offering twenty silver dollars per trip and the possibility of joining Prince Chris's army.
• Joachim and many other prisoners volunteered, and Roderick told them to sign up and collect travel equipment before departing the day after tomorrow.
• Roderick noticed Joachim's carving of Prince Chris and promised to recommend him as a squad leader if he finished it.

Chris expanded his transport operation to ten teams while keeping forces in Bolas because the fighting in Hegrande could expose him to a northern attack. Meanwhile, Wallace prepared to ambush one of the supply convoys, believing his bandits had the advantage.

• Chris formed five transport teams from prisoners, then expanded the operation to ten after the positions quickly filled.
• Chris refused to create more teams because he needed manpower in Bolas and feared a Republic attack through Hegrande, possibly aided by the Restoration Army.
• Wallace learned that Chris's men had used his name to rob Republic lords and planned two raids before fleeing the region.
• Wallace spotted a convoy of forty horse carts carrying clothes and food, guarded by more than fifty soldiers and accompanied by laborers.
• Wallace brought fifty bandits to ambush the cautious convoy and believed his men had the advantage.

Roderick spotted bandits preparing an ambush and readied the transport convoy to repel them. After the convoy’s crossbows and pistols wounded the attackers, Roderick led the guards and laborers in a charge, leaving Wallace stunned.

• Roderick noticed the bandits hiding in the woods and ordered the convoy to prepare for battle, offering a bounty for each enemy killed.
• Roderick told Joachim to keep the convoy in formation and follow their plan once they entered the ambush site.
• The convoy halted, formed a shield wall, moved its horses, and aimed pistols and crossbows at the woods before the bandits could spring their trap.
• The bandits attacked with arrows and gunfire, but the convoy’s shields held while guards and laborers returned fire and wounded a dozen attackers.
• Roderick led more than two hundred laborers and fifty guards in a charge into the woods, leaving Wallace frozen in surprise.

Joachim and the convoy guards defeated bandits and collected bounties for thirty-two heads. Watching the convoy arrive in Ankandela, Marlow saw the losses caused by Prince Chris’s policies and chose a military career over civil service.

• Joachim inspected his Arming Sword and Cotton Armor after surviving a bandit attack, while the laborers beheaded the bandits to claim their bounties.
• Marlow watched supply carts enter Ankandela as Little Knife distributed grain and cheap goods, undermining the merchants who had hoarded supplies.
• Marlow considered breaking with the Benson Family after his uncles ignored his warning to sell their grain.
• Marlow weighed Chris’s offer of a civil-service post against the chance to build an Infantry Regiment.
• Roderick told Marlow that bandits had ambushed the convoy and that the escort had lost one guard and two laborers while earning bounties for thirty-two bandit heads.
• Marlow decided to join the military.

Little Knife struggled with the burdens of managing Ankandela until the city's merchant associations and guilds invited him to a banquet. He suspected the invitation concealed a threat or an attempt at bribery and looked forward to confronting them.

• Little Knife reflected on the difficulties of restoring order and ending hunger in Ankandela under Prince Chris's conditions for making the city his fief.
• Little Knife hired Alex as his secretary, and Alex efficiently organized the city's records.
• Alex delivered an invitation from Ankandela's eight merchant associations and twelve guilds to a banquet in three days.
• Little Knife interpreted the invitation as an attempt to assert economic control over the city and possibly bribe or threaten him.
• Little Knife welcomed the banquet as entertainment and considered the merchant associations and guilds unimportant to the Mountain Tiger Warband.

Little Knife faced a grain-buying panic engineered by Ankandela’s merchant associations and restricted cooperative purchases to silver dollars. As the guild leaders paused their planned strikes to wait for the banquet, Little Knife prepared to strike back.

• Ankandela’s grain merchants spread rumors and staged long lines to provoke panic buying at Little Knife’s Supply and Marketing Cooperative.
• Residents rushed to buy grain, and Little Knife’s purchase limit backfired as half his stock disappeared in one day.
• Little Knife required customers to pay in silver dollars, curbing the frenzy and drawing complaints from residents.
• The merchant guilds and other associations interpreted Little Knife’s response as a retreat and suspended their planned strikes until after the banquet.
• On the day of the banquet, Little Knife struck back against the guild leaders.

Moby learned that Ankandela’s food crisis had worsened as the mayor and merchant guild continued their dispute over grain and Bagnian Silver Coins. On his way to work, he saw a looted grain shop and heard that its owners had fled the city.

• Moby ate a meager breakfast with his wife and children, while his wife gave him the larger bowl of oatmeal.
• Moby saw unfamiliar armed Police patrolling the streets and heard from Thomas that the mayor had deployed them after starving people looted a merchant guild warehouse.
• Thomas told Moby that farmers had stopped working their fields and that Wallace rebels had taken the crops.
• Moby found a grain shop smashed and looted, and heard people say its owners had left the city overnight.