Life of a Roman: An AAR

[johnhughthom]

I had planned an update by now but I'm trying to run this alongside my Interactive Romani AAR and there seems to be little interest in that lately. I'm not sure whether to just scrap the interactive AAR and simply play out this now.

[johnhughthom]

The first few years of my military service were uneventful, the Legions never strayed from Italian soil, too fearful of Gallic attacks, the fragile morale of the new recruits would not have stood long to a barbarian charge. Slowly my father and Cotta drilled the Legions into a well disciplined group of men, they were conditioned to a certain set of instructions which they would follow when the centurion blew his whistle. Courage was not needed when men could be trained to act without thinking. I worked closely with Cotta as a tribune and spent many hours with him, learning what I could from his experience.
In my third year with the Legions we heard of a Gallic attack in the north, a tribe had burst past one of our Ligurian forts guarding the passes and were bound for Mediolanium. The Consul in charge dithered for days until Cotta came and took the Legion without asking. It was highly illegal, but who in Rome would challenge him? We marched north in less than a week, the Gallic tribe melted away back into the mountains when they heard who was leading the army. Obviously the Carthaginians had told their Gallic allies who to fear in our ranks. Oh, we were "friendly" with the Punic traders now, but we knew they still pulled Gallic strings.
We set to rebuilding the fort the Gauls had destroyed and a new batch of Ligurians came to defend it. I was spectical of how trustworthy these men were, but Cotta trusted them implicitly so I decided they must be honourable men.
Rome was abuzz with rumour of gold in Hispania, Cotta and father thought we should pacify Illyria, but this would be one battle they couldn't win. It seemed my destiny lay far to the west, in a land barely glimpsed by Roman eyes.