Deadly Angels of Chickamauga
At the time of the Serpentfall, Fort Oglethorpe (located in Georgia, just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee) was a major training command for the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). In the confusion of the state governments of Tennessee and Georgia collapsing, not to mention the burning of Chattanooga itself, contact with the fort and its forces were lost; most people assumed that the facility was overrun by somebody, or something. That happened all the time in the Poisoned Lands, after all.
This assumption proved incorrect in late 1947, when a scouting party of Konfederates from Birmingham looking to a way to bypass Cullman and menace Huntsville directly were ambushed, wiped out to the last man, and their severed heads flung back into the staging area from whence the party had set out. Each head had been branded with the rough outline of an angel; and that motiff continued with lost scouting party after party until the Konfederates retreated a few weeks later. Things got dire enough that Grand Dragon Momyer even sent up a Konfederacy trainer to scout the area — only to almost have it shot down. Whoever these ‘Angels’ were, they had access to bazookas as well as decapitation knives.
The Konfederacy is by now reasonably certain that the Angels draw their forces from both the old WAC cadre at Fort Oglethorpe and whoever survived Chattanooga, and now are effectively warlords for the immediate area. The consensus from the Angels’ neighbors is that the Angels are half-wild and becoming more so every year, but if you don’t mess with them then they won’t mess with you. There are the usual rumors of lewd and lascivious behavior that get attached to all-female groups, particularly secretive ones; but it must be admitted that the rumors seem to have more weight to them than usual. Certainly no-one ever seems to encounter a male Angel, although female ones seem to have no inherent problem with men in general.
All of this would merely annoy the Konfederacy, except that all the reports agree that the Angels are racially integrated; they also consider open Konfederates to be bigoted slave-mongering traitors who should be killed on sight. It’s getting to the point where people in the area are afraid to show their allegiance to Birmingham! That infuriates the Konfederacy, and soon it might actually launch a proper expeditionary force (one it can’t quite afford to raise, and definitely can’t afford to lose) to try to punish an unknown number of woods-canny fighters and assassins who will have no interest in either mercy, or forbearance.
Such an expedition could be a disaster for the Konfederacy, in other words. Assuming that it launches too early. But who might have an interest in having that happen? — This is, of course, a rhetorical question.
Dear Lord, but that terrain is *nasty*. If the Cherokee had fought rather than folded, I really don’t think the 1830s Army could have dug them out.
Heck, IMO, the only reason the Union was able to dispossess the Confederates of Chattanooga and force a pathway south was named Braxton Bragg. That control freak did more to lose the Western theatre of the war…
He won at Chickamauga because he lost control of his Army, and was very determined that it never happen again.
I assume you’ve read Turtledove’s re-imagining of that campaign as high fantasy? https://amzn.to/2UiJDTq
One of these days I am going to acquire the rules for Day After Ragnarok. I even know who the first character I am going to build will be: a former army MP who was stationed in Alaska at the end of WWII and wants to get somewhere warmer. He would love to go back to Hawaii, but anywhere without 30 ton polar bears is acceptable.