09/06/2023 Snippet, SEVEN FLAGS.

I’m glad to be back at things.

Seven Flags

2836 AD

Tribunus Liza Skullcrusher Lupator had heard once that peace was supposed to be too dull to interest an orc. She was really looking forward to testing that saying, at least in terms of a couple of months in camp. So were her troops, she thought. The Third Imperial Legion might still be marching in perfect form, disciplined and inexorable; but there had been absolutely no grumbling when they were finally pulled off of the line. In fact, Liza could almost see the shared vision of cold beer and hot showers hovering over the heads of the legionnaires.

It wasn’t that any individual fight in what was rapidly becoming the Imperial Province of Ansteorra had been bad. The new, improved Imperium Orci had the — she carefully did not think the phrase ‘whip hand’ — advantage over renegado orc tribes, stay-behind Dominion atrocity squads, and less savory human bandit gangs. What had been so rough was the operational tempo. March to a new town. Kill the local monsters used to keep the human peasants cowed. Accept the town’s submission. Find out who the local oppressors were. Defeat them. Start all over again, the next day. A half year of constant, relentless liberations was a lot, even for orcs.