Re: Chapter 7 - Something About Steel
For the first time since he arrived in the city, Kedo is put into a position where he can appreciate just how much of a trial he's been to Daidoji Sakura by following her around like some relentless Bushido-driven fortune-cookie-programmed slicing and dicing machine, but with typical cosmic justice fails to recognise the irony at first, instead bowing deeply to Hida Zenko and replying, "I have hopes that your protection will be unneccessary Hida-san, but I am grateful for your sword.", a polite formulae to cover just how unsure he is about the propriety of a well-born clan Samurai being ordered to protect a ronin, even one on pilgrimage.
In any case, when he rises out of the bow it's to address the questions being fielded to him and he turns to address the group, half-closing his eyes as he tries to see that perfect, shimmering structure that is fast becoming only a memory, "By the time they reach this throughfare the Lion forces will have had to fight past these ambushes here, and here - they will be prepared for a third upon the side-street but as they reach this road the archers from the first ambush will be here." - he taps the map gently - "Or, if they are unavailable the Ashigaru from the second."
This being a feature of his plan for the city of course - redundancy. No unit has more than a half-dozen orders, but those orders overlap at many points, allowing really quite serious reverses to be recovered from. The idea at the core being that it is not the breach of the wall that loses a city under siege, but the panic and loss of morale that follows. Make the breach part of a clear plan however... And the equation changes as a massive army pours itself without central control or command into a hundred tiny skirmishes that it's helpless to understand or respond to.
"When the foe see the ambush force in the open, they will almost certainly give chase - past the market stalls into this courtyard, where the archers from the second ambush will be on the rooftops or, if they are unavailable, Ashigaru from the next street over. They break contact by closing the market gate here, which will take some few minutes to breach. By which time they will have moved onto their next objective."
The questions are gradually fielded - not always with the haunting, ethereal elegance of the night when he devised the plan, but with solid competence that plays heavily to the Daidoji strengths and finds uses for each little blossom upon the great Crane tree, the plan rarely repeating itself as such but always using the twists and turns of the city as force multipliers, encouraging cavalry charges in market throughfares and archers or thrown spears in narrow confines, making use of countless stockpiles of weapons and arrows so that as the Crane forces fall back, they need not carry all they need to do battle, but can instead prick and slash and bleed the increasingly angered, fevered Lion into thrashing impotence.
When you fight a stronger foe, make use of every advantage seems to be the theme, though to Hida Zenko it probably all seems a little old hat - the Crab being after all, the acknowledged masters of this art form.
The hardest answer of all of course, is the simple one that is fielded against the question 'but what if a unit is cut off and unable to fall back?' - to which Kedo must honestly and simply reply; "Then they must sell themselves as dearly as they may. And be honoured for their sacrifice."
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11:14, Today: Kedo rolled 23 using 8d10, dropping the 5 lowest rolls, rerolling max with rolls of 5,3,2,8,3,8,2,7. Trying to put across the idea..
Finally, a normal roll. ^_^
A success with one raise.
This message was last edited by the player at 10:32, Fri 22 Jan 2010.