Wiseman
Junior Member
Trisha watched with veiled disgust as the Foreigners quickly seemed to loose heart, and despite the strangeness of the cloaked man, who had yet to talk or respond, Trisha grew an equally silent respect for the man. Better to remain calm, cool, and silent, than to despair like the Count or turn to pessimism, like the doctor.
~Pathetic, no wonder their countries cant raise proper military systems. The stock of their people is down right wretched. What can I do to convince them that the odds are not so stacked against us?~ Trisha thought to herself, remembering how Desmond had snickered at her claims only seconds ago. He clearly thought her beneath him, he being an educated man of science, her being a brutish soldier, probably considered to be no more than a paid murderer by the likes Count Ulysses and Dr. Desmond. She had an idea.
"You should not be so quick to doubt the General, we "military maidens" as you call us, are more than simply warriors capable of killing and taking orders. Anyone of the General's Eleven battles would prove that to you, if you would bother to study it through a true scholars eyes. But that is expected, she is the General after all, so I will tell you of something I have done, which I think has bearing on our conversation." She stood up straight, stopping if the General gave her any indication to, but proceeding otherwise.
"It was the Twenty Fifth of Ash Wind, the summer season, and me and my troopers had been deployed to help take a stubborn city which had been rebelling for nearly three whole years. The new "Prophet of The Sea" was the name of this rebel, and according to the commander on duty there, he had been preforming miracles to keep his city safe. You see, this city was a fortress with high walls and anti airship cannons lining one out of five roof tops in the city. In short, the city was a nightmare to attack by air, and unless the wall was penetrated we would lose thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of men breaking into the city.
"The common sense answer to this dilemma was cannons, we bombard the city from afar with cannons to soften it up, then use a sapping team to plant explosives under the wall, blowing it apart if the cannons failed to provide a suitable breach. But every time cannons were deployed to the battle field, the earth would shake, the ground would crack, and the stones would give way and crush the cannons in a great stirring of stone. Sapping teams never returned, and their tunnels were always found caved in. As you can imagine, it was a terrible situation, particularly when many of the men began to believe in this prophet, making our position even more tenuous. Many men said it was a sin against the water elemental to remain here, to challenge the prophet of water, and even the commander thought my mission hopeless.
"So me and my men tried something new, we set up fake cannons, and as always, the ground trembled, shook, and tore apart beneath the fake bombards, and for a moment, even I thought that I was beholding a miracle. But despite the initial awe of the moment, I continued, not because I thought I could win, or because I was necessarily a non believer. I kept going because I had my orders, my men and my country were relying on me to solve this. So I did the simplest thing I could think of, I ordered my men to dig, and for five days we moved slabs of rock and dirt, and do you know what we found once we had pulled it all away? A tunnel thats what. No not a tunnel made by men, but I certainly was willing to wager it wasnt made by a god either.
"We tried following it, but it caved in several times, and we decided to cut our losses. So instead we laid a trap, used more fake cannons, but this time we spent a week digging a pit, a pit we filled with water. We then covered it with boards, and rolled he fake cannons over them into a firing position. The ground began to shake, the earth split, and something dug a hole straight into our pit. It was no god, instead it was massive drilling machine, one we had never seen before. The inventor who had created it for mining, the so called prophet of the sea, had used it to kill sappers and destroy our cannons. It had been seen as a miracle, but in the end it was a trick with an earthly method.
"Granted, killing an elemental is a somewhat bigger concern, but consider this. For roughly three years, a single city with less than 100,000 armed men was able to hold off the entire Haldani military, and though the miracle was an illusion, the effect it had created certainly wasn't. In the same way that they stopped us through an earthly method for three years, I believe this crime, amazing though it is, was perpetrated in a way we may be able to counter, maybe even by ourselves.
"But even if the task proves to great for us, we are not people of little resources. The General has been reinstated, at a command she could have the united Haldani fleets assisting us, and I'm sure we could get copious ground support as well. The Count seems to be a man of wealth, who could certainly finance any special equipment we might need for the task. Dr. Desmond, you said you are good at inventing? If someone invented a gun that can kill god, then I am sure you can invent one that can kill them.
"We are not so helpless, and we are certainly more than five drops of water in a lake. More like five stones dropped into a pond, capable of creating great ripples. So perhaps you could pull yourselves together and show some pride, you have been selected because the General either believes in you or needs you for her plan, which Im sure she would get to explaining if the two of you would be less doubting about our very odds of success before you have even gotten the whole story." Trisha hoped her tale would inspire some hope in them, the prophet story always had a good effect on rookies who thought they were doing something impossible, so maybe it would work on these Educated types.
~Pathetic, no wonder their countries cant raise proper military systems. The stock of their people is down right wretched. What can I do to convince them that the odds are not so stacked against us?~ Trisha thought to herself, remembering how Desmond had snickered at her claims only seconds ago. He clearly thought her beneath him, he being an educated man of science, her being a brutish soldier, probably considered to be no more than a paid murderer by the likes Count Ulysses and Dr. Desmond. She had an idea.
"You should not be so quick to doubt the General, we "military maidens" as you call us, are more than simply warriors capable of killing and taking orders. Anyone of the General's Eleven battles would prove that to you, if you would bother to study it through a true scholars eyes. But that is expected, she is the General after all, so I will tell you of something I have done, which I think has bearing on our conversation." She stood up straight, stopping if the General gave her any indication to, but proceeding otherwise.
"It was the Twenty Fifth of Ash Wind, the summer season, and me and my troopers had been deployed to help take a stubborn city which had been rebelling for nearly three whole years. The new "Prophet of The Sea" was the name of this rebel, and according to the commander on duty there, he had been preforming miracles to keep his city safe. You see, this city was a fortress with high walls and anti airship cannons lining one out of five roof tops in the city. In short, the city was a nightmare to attack by air, and unless the wall was penetrated we would lose thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of men breaking into the city.
"The common sense answer to this dilemma was cannons, we bombard the city from afar with cannons to soften it up, then use a sapping team to plant explosives under the wall, blowing it apart if the cannons failed to provide a suitable breach. But every time cannons were deployed to the battle field, the earth would shake, the ground would crack, and the stones would give way and crush the cannons in a great stirring of stone. Sapping teams never returned, and their tunnels were always found caved in. As you can imagine, it was a terrible situation, particularly when many of the men began to believe in this prophet, making our position even more tenuous. Many men said it was a sin against the water elemental to remain here, to challenge the prophet of water, and even the commander thought my mission hopeless.
"So me and my men tried something new, we set up fake cannons, and as always, the ground trembled, shook, and tore apart beneath the fake bombards, and for a moment, even I thought that I was beholding a miracle. But despite the initial awe of the moment, I continued, not because I thought I could win, or because I was necessarily a non believer. I kept going because I had my orders, my men and my country were relying on me to solve this. So I did the simplest thing I could think of, I ordered my men to dig, and for five days we moved slabs of rock and dirt, and do you know what we found once we had pulled it all away? A tunnel thats what. No not a tunnel made by men, but I certainly was willing to wager it wasnt made by a god either.
"We tried following it, but it caved in several times, and we decided to cut our losses. So instead we laid a trap, used more fake cannons, but this time we spent a week digging a pit, a pit we filled with water. We then covered it with boards, and rolled he fake cannons over them into a firing position. The ground began to shake, the earth split, and something dug a hole straight into our pit. It was no god, instead it was massive drilling machine, one we had never seen before. The inventor who had created it for mining, the so called prophet of the sea, had used it to kill sappers and destroy our cannons. It had been seen as a miracle, but in the end it was a trick with an earthly method.
"Granted, killing an elemental is a somewhat bigger concern, but consider this. For roughly three years, a single city with less than 100,000 armed men was able to hold off the entire Haldani military, and though the miracle was an illusion, the effect it had created certainly wasn't. In the same way that they stopped us through an earthly method for three years, I believe this crime, amazing though it is, was perpetrated in a way we may be able to counter, maybe even by ourselves.
"But even if the task proves to great for us, we are not people of little resources. The General has been reinstated, at a command she could have the united Haldani fleets assisting us, and I'm sure we could get copious ground support as well. The Count seems to be a man of wealth, who could certainly finance any special equipment we might need for the task. Dr. Desmond, you said you are good at inventing? If someone invented a gun that can kill god, then I am sure you can invent one that can kill them.
"We are not so helpless, and we are certainly more than five drops of water in a lake. More like five stones dropped into a pond, capable of creating great ripples. So perhaps you could pull yourselves together and show some pride, you have been selected because the General either believes in you or needs you for her plan, which Im sure she would get to explaining if the two of you would be less doubting about our very odds of success before you have even gotten the whole story." Trisha hoped her tale would inspire some hope in them, the prophet story always had a good effect on rookies who thought they were doing something impossible, so maybe it would work on these Educated types.
