Well done, once again. I´m looking forward to what´s up next.
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Well done, once again. I´m looking forward to what´s up next.
Cool writing!!
Great to see you continue it! I absolutely love it.
Please continue.
:yes:
Thanks to everyone for the comments. I'd respond individually, but I'm attempting to knock out the next few installments. Should be up today or tomorrow, barring any holiday mishaps.
Scipii Simulator
The door to the simulator opened, admitting glaring light, a blast of heat, and the oppressive din of jackhammers thudding into the asphalt outside. A form slipped in quickly and shut the door behind him, which latched and then mechanically tightened the seal with a soft hiss. The noise stopped as soon as the door was shut.
“Loud out there,” Jones said.
“Jonesy! How’s it going!” Trevor said, bounding up from his seat. The others of Trevor’s command team had already met the rascally History Assembly employee.
“Good, how’re things here?”
Trevor opened his mouth to answer when a small chime sounded and the four central screens joined to form the image of the Scipii. The announcements for the new turn appeared on a number of the other flat panels and the large map on the floor of the simulator updated to show the latest intelligence.
“Sorry Jonesy, business. Alright, what’ve we got?” Trevor scooped up the wand, as well as a one-handed keyboard that had recently been delivered by the execs at the Assembly. A strap ran around the back of the palm, leaving a number of buttons and keys within easy reach of thumb and fingers. Each key could be mapped to different menus and functions and were individually configured. Trevor still hadn’t quite figured it out in its entirety, and it showed.
“Alright, where’s population growth. Ooops, not there, that’s the building menu. I want . . . oh, well, family tree, too. Hey, Aulus grew up? Let’s check his stats.” Trevor flicked the wand and brought up the information on Cornelius’ fourth son. There was a groan from the group. “Fruitful, restrained, and that’s it?”
“Bit of a paradox, there,” Hank said. The rest of the adults guffawed.
“What’s so funny?” Carl asked.
“Tell you when you’re older,” Jones replied.
“Okay, so he’s worthless, except to make us more Scipii down the line. And I hope – knock on wood – that he’ll never be the heir. What else? Ports finished in Messana and Capua, that should give us some extra money. We’re trading to Rome, Tarnetum, Arretium, Capua, good good. Monica, see if we can keep that spread around. Trade to all the factions if we can. We already talked about a militia barracks in Messana, right? Let’s get that going. And we’re recruiting locals for town watch in both cities as well, that should free up some legions for field work. Formal declaration of war from the Senate against the Greeks . . . that’s good. I’m not sure how we would’ve taken Syracuse for the Senate if they hadn’t let us.”
“What about the fighting?” Mike asked.
“We’re getting there, hold your horses,” Trevor answered. He strolled down onto the map. “Let’s see. We’re besieging Syracuse, and what’s in there?” He tapped a few buttons on the keyboard and the force projections for both sides of the siege in Syracuse were displayed. “We outnumber the defenders nearly 3 to 1 in Syracuse. That’s good. The only problem is . . .” he flicked the wand to the Greek army, which had earlier been uncovered by Quintus’ scouts “. . . if whoever’s playing the Greeks brings this army back to Syracuse, then we’ll be evenly matched. And flanked. Carl, Mike, what do you guys think?”
Mike glanced at Carl, then spoke. “We’ve got the ram built, and enough ladders for two cohorts. We’re building siege towers, two of ‘em, and if we wait until next turn we can put all our ground forces on the wall at the same time. They won’t have a chance to stop us, then. We’ll just open up the gate and roll in with the cavalry.”
“I don’t think we can wait,” Hank said. Trevor looked at him and waved vaguely. “We don’t want to get caught between the walls and that wandering army, and we’ve been too busy building siege weaponry to dig in the way we should’ve. We don’t have any contravallation to defend from an attack, and the siege could be broken easily.”
Trevor looked around at the group, then nodded. “Alright. We go this turn. No sense in waiting around to get sandwiched. You guys ready?”
The two boys simply grinned.
Seige camp around Syracuse, Command tent
“Ave, Julianus!” Quintus brought his horse up at a quick trot and dismounted in front of his elder brother’s command tent. The early morning light cut harshly across the camp, illuminating men dragging themselves from their tents toward latrines and cooking fires.
“Ave, brother. Come, sit with us. I was just speaking of our plans with my commanders.” Quintus strolled over to the map and tucked his plumed helmet under his arm. “We will attack their northern gate, here.” He pointed with his dagger. “The ram will be under the control of the IV cohort. After you’ve breached the gate, move through quickly, but stay there. I want you to take and hold the gatehouse once you’re through, neh? I cohort will be right behind you and they will deal with any boy-loving Greek sissies we find inside the walls.”
“Cohorts II and III are going up on ladders to either side. We don’t know where the Greeks will stick their heads out, but I doubt they have enough to cover the gate and the walls on either side of the gatehouse.” He looked at the centurions of II and III legions, who just so happened to be Carl and Mike in their VR rigs. “Your task is to take the gatehouse and, if the ram isn’t successful, open the gates. We’ll regroup inside the walls once I am inside with the cavalry and the auxiliaries. Clear?” The men chorused their assent. “Very good. Now see to getting some breakfast into your men and then line up on the siege weapons. Tonight, we dine inside those walls.”
The centurions left to their posts and the younger nobles of the brothers’ guard retinues left to see about general preparations before the battle.
Quintus glanced sidelong at his brother, who was staring down at the map and up at the walls of Syracuse, bathed in the sideways light of morning. “Will it work?”
“Mmm. I think so. We’ve plenty of men. But we’ll be wasting more of them than we should have, without those siege towers finished.” He glanced at the half-built hulk of the first tower, which was being stripped for extra roof lumber for the ram. “But if we wait around here to build them, the rest of those Greeks will be at our back doors quicker than I’d like.” He straightened up with a creak of armor and a groan. “This is how it must be done."
*****
The stamp and clash of arms, the blowing of horns, the sweat and smell and sticky sand. All familiar. War changes in the particulars, but the general themes are always there. Death and the joy of not dying. Something that they have and that we want. High words of praise, of fighting for the glory of your country when in truth it is fighting for your own pride and for the sake of the men next to you.
The young men of Rome stamped forward, hefting ladders and heaving at the lumber of the battering rams. The auxiliaries – one unit of ill-trained archers and another of the poor peasant velites – waited in loose lines in front of the cavalry bodyguards of the two Scipii brothers.
Carl and Mike had studied the battle plan with Trevor before going into the simulation and knew what to do, and what to expect. Each was on the inside edge of the advance, closest to the ram and the gatehouse, and would therefore be leading the way up the ladders closest to the gatehouse. IV Cohort led slightly with the ram and II and III held back, letting the ram find its way to the gate first before their ladders reached the walls.
The three cohorts of hastati were two hundred paces from the walls when the wind shifted and the smell of naptha wafted from the walls of Syracuse. Moments later a full volley arced out from the walls to the right of the gatehouse. Flaming arrows landed to hiss and sizzle atop the battering ram, but the flames couldn’t find purchase in the wet leather. Among IV cohort the men were not so lucky. A few fell either injured or dead; where injured they beat and stamped at the flames, where dead they did nothing and the fires soon took hold.
Carl, at the head of II cohort on the right flank of the advance, looked at the walls in front of him and quickly came to a decision. If he could engage the archers on those walls, they could no longer fire down at the ram. “Double-time!” he called, and the order was repeated down the line. The men began jogging toward the walls, ladders in hand and reserves arrayed in ranks behind them.
Two more volleys thudded in among IV cohort but, despite inflicting more losses, could not slow down the inexorable roll of the ram. In the last moments before it reached the gate the Greek archers seemed to sense the futility of firing at the ram, and poured a few volleys into the Romans at the base of their walls. Carl cringed from the hiss of arrows slicing the air, but still managed to get the orders out to plant the ladders and raise them to the walls. Shield overhead, he began scrambling up the ladder while two of his cohort held the base. The same was repeated on three more ladders farther along the wall.
“Well, that wasn’t too bad so far,” Quintus said casually from the rear of the action.
Julianus, resplendent in plumed helmet, didn’t even look at him. “Could still go worse. Let’s move up.” Seconds repeated the order and soon the auxiliaries and cavalry were marching toward the gates, trusting that by the time they reached them the ram would have done its work.
As Mike neared the top of the wall, he shifted his shield from overhead to in front and peered around it. There was no need, however; as he dropped onto the battlements he saw a few unarmed men running away, likely messengers posted to warn of troop movements. He glanced quickly to his left. Whoever the computer had assigned as his optio was doing a decent job as second-in-command and was cajoling the hastati into formation as soon as they were off the ladder. Of course, his job was made much simpler by the fact that III cohort had taken neither fire from the archers nor casualties, and the broad walls of Syracuse were large enough to shake the cohort into a decent formation.
Mike took a moment to glance around the field. The general – Julianus, he remembered, the eldest brother – was bringing up the cavalry and auxiliaries. The ram was at the gates, and Mike could feel the shuddering thumps of its impacts through the soles of his sandals. Shouts and curses drifted over the gatehouse from where Carl was undoubtedly slaughtering the archers. A unit of hoplites, probably militia judging by their slightly ragged lines, were drawing up behind the gatehouse to repel the invaders once the gate was broken. That's going to decide the battle, right there, Mike thought. The hoplites were the only unit that could plug the hole once the gate broke, and III cohort was the only unit with the freedom to act. And Mike was the only unit commander with all the information.
"Alright, boys!" he barked. "Let's find some stairs!"
Scipii Simulator
"Let's see how your particular tactical decision turned out, shall we, Carl?" Trevor's tone made it obvious that he was not asking a question, and his smile made it clear he was not pleased with the outcome. He turned from where Carl and Mike were sitting on the couch to the enormous screens of the simulator. With a few quick keystrokes and some flicks of the wand, he cued up Carl's assault on the archers and zoomed in on Carl's digital self. The camera showed a decent, aged likeness of Carl which had been distorted slightly with a few scars, much poorer dental work, and a wispy, partial beard that was – by most standards – quite pathetic but of which the 14-year-old was inordinately proud, even if it was only digital.
Trevor began playback and added his own commentary. "Here you've get a decent line to advance with. Not bad. And why were you planning to advance?"
Carl shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. "Umm . . . well. There were bad guys at the top of two of my ladders?" he asked.
"You mean, these two?" Trevor swivelled the camera to show the two ladders farthest on the flank of the advance. One had fallen to the ground, and the other was surrounded by broken men at its base and not a single man on its rungs. "You might have noticed these were out of comission because there were no Romans on the walls there. Not a one. So just to be clear, what you're about to do is to save a bunch of men under your command who don't actually exist."
Trevor turned back to the screen and advanced a few frames in slow motion. "Here's where you're giving the order to throw spears. Makes sense to me. Might have been good to tell them to ready spears first, but whatever. And luckily these men who're fighting on the front lines with you are smart enough not to drop their swords and follow your orders. And then, right after you gave the order to throw, what did you do?"
"Charged . . ." Carl mumbled unhappily.
"That's right. You charged. Let's see how that goes." Trevor again let the playback continue. Carl's digital self turns back from yelling the order and leaps across the gap toward the Greek peasant in front of him. An arrow streaks from the ranks of archers and finds its mark in his throat. Immediately afterward, a pilum from his own cohort smashes through his right shoulderblade and pushes out of his chest. The impact of the javelin throws his body at the archer, who was already slashing upward with his knife. The point slips in under his ribs and very clearly finds his heart, as he slumps to the ground moments later without a single death throe.
"Let's see that again, and watch the clock this time, eh?" The boys again watch Carl's spectacular digital destruction in slow motion, this time noting the counter in the upper right corner. "You managed to get killed three times in under two seconds. If you had asked me yesterday, I would've said that was impossible." A snicker escaped Mike, who was trying not to smile. "Oh, I'll get to you in a second, Mike, just wait."
Trevor resumed playback, this time at triple speed. "So after their leader goes down in the first charge of the day, II cohort is understandably shaken. So much, even, that they get fought to a standstill by a bunch of peasant archers. And what's left of IV cohort after they've been shot at, had boiling oil dumped on them, and finally smashed through the gate is still in better shape than the boys you abandoned when you decided to pay a visit to Hades' hall, so they have to come bail your guys out.
"Which brings us to you, Mike." The boy instantly sobered. Up in the technician's booth, one of the techs leaned to the other and muttered, "I can't tell if he's more like a drill sergeant or my 4th grade music teacher when I didn't practice . . ."
"You did the right thing," Trevor said. "Strategically, it was the right move to make. Tactically, it sucked." Trevor cued the playback and showed Mike charging the phalanx. He ducked beneath the first rank of eighteen-foot spears, then used his shield to smash the shaft of one spear up and to the side. It tangled with the spears behind it, but then a spear from a rear rank thrust out and caught Mike just beneath the rim of his helmet. He dropped to the ground like a marionette with cut strings.
"How was I supposed to know the guy in back would get me?" Mike protested.
"Because it's a phalanx. That's the whole point. That's what the guy in back does." Trevor dropped the wand and keyboard onto a side table and flopped into a recliner facing his friends. "Seriously, you guys are trying to be Rambo. That's not your job: your job is to lead. And you can't lead when you're dead."
Behind Trevor the playback continued, showing the rest of the battle. The optio of III cohort held the group together after Mike's death, giving Julianus time to gather a charge into the weak flank of the distracted hoplites. After mopping them up, the Romans marched on the city's center. With pitifully few infantry, the Scipii brothers waited for the auxiliaries to arrive, but the Greek general, Dionysios, charged Quintus' banner before the Romans could prepare. Without supporting spears, Quintus' guards endured heavy losses until sheer numbers defeated the Greek general.
Trevor sighed. "And besides, you guys are great at winning battles, but you're really bad at winning fights. I'd say you're the worst soldiers in all the Roman legions right now, because you haven't trained. You just throw on your VR goggles and expect to have some fun, but you wind up almost costing me a battle. So if you guys want to fight anymore, I'm sending you to train in the new barracks we built in Messana."
"What?" Carl said. "How long will that take?"
Trevor shrugged. "I don't know. Until you suck less. Maybe we'll have the simulators cook up an accelerated program. But you're gonna go to Roman boot camp."
Up in the booth, the two techs looked at each other. "Do we have a program for that?" The other simply shrugged.
Really good. :laugh4: Although now I´m quite eager to see what Roman boot camp is like. Don´t keep us waiting all too long, will you?
I'll try not to. I'm actually away from my game, and I can't quite remember what happens next in the gameworld.
I'm glad you liked the update. I wasn't sure how it would work out to tell all the build-up to the actual fighting, then skip ahead and out of the gameworld and treat the actual bloodshed as a recap. Any thoughts? Would you rather have had the story progress through the battle, uninterrupted?
No, that was perfectly fine, since it shows the interaction between, well, the "real" battle and the simulation. Also it doesn´t end up in endless descriptives of the fights. Those are fine once in a while, but require a balance in order not to get tedious. You did that well. Variation, that´s the key, even though that´s easier said than done, of course.
Your call :beam: How many turns are you in? Are you planning on going all the way?
Ciaran: Thanks very much. And easier said than done, indeed when it comes to variety. Having the simulation to duck into makes it much smoother to skim over things, and I guess this means I can save the 'real' battle write-ups for when there are more worthy battles.
Mrdun: I've only played in about ten turns or so, and story-wise we're not even to the fifth. I want to stay a bit ahead, but only a bit. I find some of my best storytelling comes when I back myself into a corner and I have to think up a decent way out. And by the same token I don't want to be tempted to reload or anything if I do something stupid. Hopefully that should add some difficulty and realism to the inevitable march across the board that happens even on the high difficulties.
As to how long, I'm not too sure. I have at least one medium-length arc to set up in the 'real world' part, so as long as there's interest here I'll get through that much. Unless I lose before then, of course. Always a possibility, given the way I play.
OOC: Just a quick post to bump a few aspects of the story forward. Something a little more meaty to follow shortly.
History Park, History Assembly Sublease Division. Conference room “Apollo”
“. . . in any way whatsoever. Look, I’ve been with this kid for nearly a month now, and I can tell you that if you short him, he’ll know it!”
“How? He’s just a kid!”
“A kid who outsmarted an Oxford professor in the first week of the game.”
“Oh, that was just a . . .” The speaker’s voice drowned on a tsunami of chatter and babble. Jones turned to Ian and grinned, then pushed open the door and strolled into the roomful of engineers. Ian and Jones both recognized the central table from an earlier meeting – the meeting, in fact, in which it was decided that Trevor was going to play the Scipii. Ian idly wondered how many more full-scale meetings the kid would cause before going home for school in September. Quite a few, he guessed.
“Gentlemen, please, please. Quiet down,” Ian called from his chair at the head of the table. The babble increased slightly as a dozen conversations heated up a few degrees. The heads of every tech support team for every faction were present, as well as whatever members of the team weren’t on shift and felt like attending. In some cases, this was three of the four total team members, all of whom looked like they’d been picked as extras in yet another sequel to Revenge of the Nerds. There was not a single face without glasses and one – in an unconscious tribute to Corey Hart, no doubt – was wearing sunglasses. They were clip-ons, however, which negated whatever coolness he might have achieved otherwise.
Ian sighed to himself. He reminded himself that his job was to fill in the social graces that some of these men (and one woman, although it was hard to tell with her hair pulled back so tightly) lacked so abundantly. “Guys! Zip it!” he bellowed.
The conversations tumbled to a stop, clothing was readjusted, and the assembled crowd turned toward their boss. Ian cleared his throat. “Thank you. Now, as you know, we are assembled here because one of the game leaders has made a request that is outside the scope of the current game model. We will discuss alternative . . .”
“It’s not outside the scope, just throw them in a few easy battles,” someone interrupted. The debate was off and running again, and any control Ian might have had over his people quickly evaporated.
He opened his mouth to shout again, but felt Jones’ hand on his arm. He turned to look at his newest employee. “Give them a second to shout it out, eh?” Ian looked quizzical. “Let ‘em spend some time convincing each other it’s impossible to fix, and then we’ll drop the solution on them.”
Ian shook his head. “Always the showman, eh, Jonesy?”
Jones grinned. “It’s served me well, boss.”
The fight had stabilized into two camps; those who believed the software could perform well enough as designed, and those who were for a total re-write to provide a new subset program for the training drills.
“Look, we just don’t have the algorithms to run a character to do what the Scipii want,” one of the pro-re-writers was stating. There was some general hubbub but he powered through it. “We’ve got soldiers who kill other soldiers, and we’ve got civilians to interact with civilians. We never designed this sort of thing.”
“So like I said, we give the kids a few easy battles to help get them on their feet. They die a few times, they’ll be better for it.”
“But that’s not what they asked for,” another programmer argued. “They didn’t asked for a training program for the simulator, they asked for Roman boot camp.”
“Yeah, and Roman boot camp isn’t dying five times then feeling all the better for it.” There were some guffaws as well as an answering rumble, both for and against.
“So what do you think then? We have soldiers interact with soldiers, and civilian interact with civilians. And now you want to add in soldiers with civilians, and soldiers fighting but not to kill, and what about drill sergeants? They sure don’t treat other soldiers like anyone else. You’re talking about taking a system that deals with two basic interactions, and adding in at least five more, all of them interacting with each other? We’re talking three, four orders of magnitude of complexity, at the least. To say nothing of the time involved.”
Four rebuttals sprang up simultaneously. Jones leaned over to Ian and whispered, “On my cue, dim the lights. Slowly. With some majesty, right?” Then the man proceeded to walk, seen but unheeded, to the opposite side of the huge conference table. Three men were on their feet now (although one of them might’ve been the woman, there was a baseball cap involved) and things seemed to be coming to a head. Jones nodded.
The lights slowly dimmed, while the large screen at the end of the conference table came into focus. The conversations died off one by one as people noticed the change in the atmosphere, until everyone was staring at Jones, whose face was lit by the glare of the projected image. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce someone.”
He stepped to the side and showed the screen. In white text on a blue background – that most basic of computational interfaces – was the word “Wahlberg.” Beneath it was “C:” “This is the interface for the Mark III Mark VIII Computational Mimicry Engine.”
“Why’s it say “Wahlberg,” then?” asked one curious and courageous soul.
“Well, ‘Mark’ has been used to distinguish Artificial Intelligence upgrades since the Turing Convention, of course, ever since the Web 3.0 debacle took all the social punch out of the whole “point oh” convention. They though about ’38, but that has some slightly violent connotations, and before anyone could think up something better, they’d been calling it Mark-three-Mark forever, which was eventually shortened to Marky Mark.” Jones looked back into twenty two pairs of eyes behind twenty three pairs of glasses. Those clip-ons were still clipped on, even in the darkened room. “Marky Mark? And the Funky Bunch?” Jones looked to Ian for support. “Did these guys go outside in the 90’s”
“Not really,” one answered, and the rest chuckled.
“Anyway, it’s a Wahlberg, that’s all you need to know. They’ve been training it for a year now, so the AI intellect portion is pretty much as good as it’s going to get while still being chained down by imagination-inhibition programming.”
“Okay, but what does this do for us? I mean, it’s not good enough to write this on the fly, there’s just no way.”
Jones turned his back and took a one-handed keyboard from a suit pocket. “That sounds like a dare to me.” He typed “Rome simulator,” then “New program,” then “Scipii.” He took one quick glance at his audience to make sure every one was watching, then typed “Roman boot camp,” and hit return. The screen was blank for a total of three seconds (2.8715 was the number a few of the programmers later pulled from the machine) and then slowly brightened on the image of Roman military sandals stamping the dusty ground. Speakers around the room poured out the ragged stomp of their feet, the call of centurions, and the sound of horses and clashing metal in the background. The camera slowly panned up, passing through the ranks of the marching century, and showed a view of the parade ground, before passing higher up and farther back to show the entire barracks for the City Militia of Capua.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me . . .” breathed the naysayer.
*********
Rome, Mons Palatinus
The four guardsmen watched as Cornelius Scipio poked around the central peristylium of the manor house. The plants had gone to seed somewhat, but the underlying floor was solid and the mosaics were quite beautiful.
“. . . can be such a burden with only a few servants, as I’m sure you understand,” Lepidus said as he entered with Metella, Cornelius’ wife. He was a minor noble in Capua whose elder sister had married above her station in Rome. After the death of her husband, it had fallen to Lepidus to keep her in the manner – and manor – to which she was accustomed, a burden that was increasingly difficult to bear, given the new taxes that Cornelius himself had instituted to pay for his levies.
“Indeed, my good man, indeed,” Metella answered. “Can she not be convinced to return home to Capua?”
“She insists that all her friends are here, my lady, though from the stories of backstabbing and deceit she has to tell, no one can be a true friend here in Rome. Why, just last month one of her . . .”
“How much?” Cornelius asked. Lepidus faltered and his mouth ground to a halt. He opened it once or twice, experimentally working his jaw. “Yes yes, out with it. No? Very well. Here’s two thousand denarii for the house, and here’s another thousand to make it worth your while to put up with listening to your sister while you uproot her.”
“My lord, while your offer is generous, I’m afraid . . .”
“Lepidus, I need a presence here in Rome. A house. A place to entertain. This, in turn, will increase my own personal power. Power that will be reflected in such places as Capua.” Cornelius’ look made it clear that both men knew who was the power in Capua. “I will not be ungrateful. And to have both my gratitude and three thousand denarii . . .” Cornelius left the sentence hanging in the fetid air of the half-abandoned domus.
Lepidus quickly determined where his interests lay. “Would be more than any servant of Rome could ask. Your offer is exceedingly generous, and is accepted whole-heartedly.”
“Very good.” Cornelius glanced around the courtyard once more, idly tugging at a creeping plant which had grown up around one of the columns. “I will expect to move in at the end of the week.”
Oh my, is it really over a year that you updated and worse, I didn´t see it :oops: ?
However, once again that was a neat update, but did I understand it correctly, basically the programm added the bootcamp scenario by itself? Wouldn´t that be a nice tool to have...