Legion(s): LEGIO VI GRADIVIUS (Sixth Legion, Blessed By Mars)
Patron Diety: Mars, in his aspect as the Soldier-God Mars Gradivus (2/10) (+1 to all Mars-specific auguries)
Superstition: 2/10 -- The men put some stock in the word of gods and spirits, but do not quake at sunsets.
Okay, that sounds pretty good. The bonus to Mars-specific auguries is good. On the other hand, let's hear out the cautionary tale of what happens if we crank up superstition TOO high.
Besieged Cities: Nola (1 Month)
Winter Stores: 5 Weeks worth of food.
Huh. Yeah, that's not very reassuring. Turns last a month and our stockpile has to last for four weeks per month, I assume. Let's make sure to throw actions at procuring food for the legion to the best of our ability, and keeping very secure caravans running to and from Beneventum. Maybe big ones guarded by a lot of troops. That might be best.
You again begin your daily discussions with Sertorius, but now they are tempered by the wisdom of command. You have led men, fought in battle, and held your own against Rome's enemies. The steel in your eyes is no match for Sertorius' own grey slates, not yet, but there is steel. When he speaks of the throng of battle and the difficulties of commanding an army amidst the chaos of war, you no longer have to imagine some distant theoretical conflict -- no, you have very real experiences to draw upon, and your conversations are all the richer for it. He instructs you in tactics and strategies you cannot truly comprehend without understanding their necessity on the battlefield, and your knowledge of warfare grows as the days spin into weeks.
Good that we can keep learning from him.
Now, Scaevola is clearly a biased figure, and incautiously pro-Sullan, but we
SHOULD remember that if Sulla wins, Scaevola isn't wrong to point out that being too too too close to Sertorius is bad. We may have to take drastic steps.
As time passes, your discussions even stretch into other topics. Sertorius is a magnetic figure, capable of arresting an entire legion's attention with a few words, and his voice is filled with such gravitas that you have seen men years his elder be swayed by his rhetoric and force of words. Your own feats in Samnium have made you a capable diplomat, and so you and Sertorius often fill your conversations with discussions of how best to sway hostile forces to your side, and of the careful balance of appeasements and counter-appeasements necessary to negotiate compromises favorable to Rome.
950 XP to Diplomacy (8000/8000)
Rank Up: Diplo Rank 10
Level Up: Accomplished Diplomacy (+2 Bonus)
(0/10000) XP to Diplomacy Rank 11
DING!
WOO-HOO! Sertorius, one of Rome's greatest masters of martial diplomacy-fu, perhaps
the greatest master, has pushed us up and over the line!
[I mean, I know that we actually spent free XP on this, but I like to think of it this way, in roleplaying terms]
This is one of the first concrete, specific times that we've gained something mechanical from our efforts to gain XP and level up. Maybe THE first?]
But this, too, is a double-edged sword. Many note your new status in Sertorius' eyes, and not all do so with deference. Outside the notoriously self-serving Cinna, Sertorius is the greatest ally of Marius still in Italy, and there are many who have not forgotten that, even in the legions, where the bond of Mars has supposedly erased all other ties. Whether you wished it or not, you have made enemies in the ranks of the Sixth Legion, enemies who, though their hands are now tied, may not be so docile in Rome.
Someting to bear in mind. We CAN run into problems as a reputation for being 'too Marian.' On the other hand, if Marius wins we may
need those connections, so it's a tradeoff.
As the siege enters its' second week, you gain permission from Sertorius to gather Veniximaeus, the Gauls, and a cohort of the legion in order to ride out and hunt down the renegade Samnites in the surrounding regions. These bands of rebels have harassed the legion's supply lines since before you returned from Bovianum, but with your arrival, the legion now has enough forces to both securely hold the siege and hunt these rebels down. You set out from the camps around Nola with roughly six hundred men, and use the Gauls as outriders to search the surrounding towns for dissidents.
But the rebels of the Hirpini prove as stubborn as their Pentri brothers. They disappear into the hills and valleys of Samnium as the cohort approaches, and though there is more than one time when you are hot on their heels, they always manage to affect an escape. The Gauls are brutal in their searches, and scour the countryside in pursuit of the rebels, but even their famed ferocity turns up nothing more than rumors. In the days that follow, you investigate a farm where a handful of rebels may have slept a week or so back, a cave where they might have been sighted, a farmer's boy who claims to have seen armed men in the woods — whispers and tall tales that amount to nothing, in the end.
Your search, while fruitless, is not without it's benefits. With your forces hot on their heels, there is little chance for the Samnites to strike at your supply line or hound the villages that have sided with Rome. The Samnite commander, while shrewd, is no Gemino, and it is all he can do to stay ahead of you, much less continue an offensive at the same time. That is a small consolation, however, as you return to camp empty-handed, with only a few dead scouts and a handful of tall tales to show for your trouble.
We rolled a natural 20... but they rolled an eighteen, and were just able to keep up with us thanks to Hearts of Steel and Home Turf. On the other hand, we
PREVENTED the Samnite guerillas from doing any real damage to our supply lines, and if we'd caught up with them we probably would have done a lot of damage. When bonuses are subtracted out, though, we need to roll +4 over them on the dice to catch them.
Next turn, we could do worse than to keep pressing this option, in my opinion. It's got a low probability of success per turn, but a good chance of working out well in the long run. We MAY lose some cavalry if the Samnites roll higher than us, but this kind of asymmetric warfare means we can afford to lose some men as long as the enemy is kept pinned down and at risk themselves.
However, the turn after that, our augury bonus expires, and we may not want to push our luck. We'd need either more cavalry (to give us numerical bonuses) or advisors to provide us with bonuses (say, procured via diplomacy with the surrounding Hirpini), or some other advantage.
The siege continues to crawl along, day slipping after day at a snail's pace. There is work to be done in a siege camp, make no mistake of that, and constant vigilance is always demanded, but the fact of the matter is that there are days when the interminable waiting becomes maddening, boring. The common soldiers rectify this with gaming, gambling, and other pastimes which keep them occupied. You and your fellow officers are no exception, and you often pass the time in quiet conversations with your fellows, eating your lunches with Rufus, Mercator, Pompolussa, and the rest of Sertorius' 'inner circle', the centurions and tribunes which make up his closest advisers. Perhaps it is because almost all of you have fought and bled together, but you and these men hit it off splendidly, deepening your already tight bonds. Pompolussa, already friends with Tercerus, needs little convincing to take a shine to you, and Carcellus, the brick-bodied prefect, is more than happy to regale you with the sort of riotous and filthy japes often shared between soldiers. Even the standoffish Mercator acknowledges that Rufus may have some spine after all, and holds you to be a promising future commander. This is no small thing -- the support of the primus pilus is the backing of the most skilled and well-liked centurion in the entire legion.
Uh, just to be clear, this is Bonds of Brotherhood in action? Which of the die rolls affected that, by the way? Or was it an action that required no rolls?
Being connected to the centurion has other, more political benefits as well: Mercator's father, Proculus Agrippa, won glory in his youth in Numidia under Marius, and though he never sat the Senate, became wealthy and connected enough to launch profitable careers for his sons. Mercator seems well on his way to making just as great a name for himself, and his brother Gnaeus is currently serving as a quaestor in southern Spain.
Hm. Connections good!
Acting in your position as Sertorius' second-in-command, you call the Samnite officers together one overcast August morning and speak to them. You carefully explain that it is in their best interests to force their men into cooperation -- should the siege fail or their men revolt, their entire region would be punished. Should the siege emerge a success, however, they and their men will fill their pockets when the city falls, and their people will be handsomely rewarded, as Sertorius promised. Their faces are impassionate and stony as you speak, and you leave the tent wondering if you've changed any minds. However, in the weeks that follow, you receive reports of Samnite dissenters and troublemakers being punished harshly for inciting arguments with the Romans, and the Hirpini in general seem to snap to Sertorius' commands more quickly than they did before.
Phew! That went well; could have gone badly, too. The roll was close; that +2 versus +1 Diplomacy bonus made the difference between meeting and exceeding the roll results.
Trait Lost: Enemy of the Samnites
I am
glad that's gone! It was seriously cramping our style. The biggest thing we can do for this campaign, and our own reputation, isn't to cover ourselves in martial glory, because our martial stats are no better than those of a middling-goodish centurion. It's
diplomacy, because our oratorical and diplomatic skills are so good even Young Cicero sat up and took notice. We can persuade and win over Samnites much more effectively than we can kill them.
And having the reputation of the destroyer of Aeclanum starting to fade helps with that.
In your rare moments of free time during the siege, you attempt to pen letters to your friends and allies back in the city of Rome. Your first letters are to Scaevola, who writes to you of uncertainty and suspicion in the city of Romulus. Cinna's hold on the city grows more tenuous by the day, and his political enemies and rivals -- whether or not they are friends of Sulla -- are being proscribed, executed without trial, and their belongings sold off to fund the wars in the east. Blood runs thick in the streets of Rome, but Scaevola himself has somehow managed to emerge unscathed. As one of the Senate's foremost legal minds, he has argued staunchly against these proscriptions, using his status as Pontifex Maximus as a shield, but with the Marians in full control of the Senate, it has been little use. The more moderate elements with which the Marians aligned themselves at the beginning of the year have either split off or used the growing radicalism to their advantage, pitching their lot in with the Marians wholesale. Flaccus, the consul whom many hoped would tone down the radical voices of the populares, has instead become a rubber stamp for Cinna's increasingly heavy-handed policies, while Marius the Younger, though skilled enough for his age, shows none of the backbone or savvy of his father, serving largely as a figurehead and a rallying point for the Marians in Rome.
Scaevola spends much of his letters bemoaning this last point, that a man barely 25 years of age, who had led few battles and held few positions of importance, should sit as Consul over men years his elder. The blatant nepotism and favoritism of the Marian party disgusts him, and he outright states that a true Roman such as Sulla would never stand for such corruption in the halls of power. Indeed, he sings Sulla's praises, and urges you to distance yourself from Sertorius, a noted enemy of the general since his youth -- should Sulla return and meet you at his enemy's teat, there may be little Scaevola can do to keep your head off the chopping block.
Lastly, your mentor mentions almost offhandedly that Pompey's legions have withdrawn from the city proper -- ostensibly at the command of the Senate, but in reality under pressure from Cinna, whose wealthiest supporters had grown tired from having their stores and homes terrorized by drunk soldiery for nearly two years. He writes that the young butcher has fallen back with his legions to his birthplace, Picenum, in the east of Italia, and bids him, and his foolish schemes and immature plots, good riddance.
Again, making allowances for Scaevola's biases, there are some relevant considerations going on here. We should be careful.
On the other hand, if Marius wins in the east, then after Marius the Elder dies Sertorius is going to be a pivotal figure in... call it the alternate Triumvirate that may emerge as a result. Because he'll be the pre-eminent military muscle of the Marian faction.
Proserpina's letter, which follows quickly on the heels of Scaevola's, paints a different picture. Pompey, ever proud, paid little heed to the words of the Senate or of Cinna, and, with three legions at his beck and call, had no need to. Rather, according to Proserpina's informants among the aristocracy, he had owed several very large debts to several very important men, and his funds, while quite large due to his father's long career, are rumored to be sinking lower by the day as he personally finances 15,000 armed men, their food, and their supplies. Proserpina speculates that Pompey has thus headed with his men to Picenum, his family's homeland and his own birthplace, not out of compliance with the Senate, but rather in order to raise money from his father's supporters and reinforce his under-strength cohorts with men loyal to his family, as well as remove himself from his debtors.
What he will do next is any man's guess, but according to slave on your payroll, several prominent young noblemen have privately declared their intent to stand by Pompey and support him whether he declares for Marius or Sulla, while many elder aristocrats have begun trying to directly or indirectly manipulate him. Marriage offers are flooding the young general day and day out -- and Proserpina takes this cue to end the letter on a wry note, suggesting that perhaps you should find yourself a suitable wife before Pompey snaps them all up.
Not the worst idea.
That said, it seems very likely that Pompey will opportunistically join whichever side of the civil war gives him the best offer or the best opportunity to gain more power. He's likely to be on the winning side.
And he hates us. That's bad. It's arguably a lot worse if the Sullans win (we'd be potential targets for a proscription anyway as an associate of Sertorius). Not so bad if the Marians win, because the strongest Marian general aside from Marius the Elder himself will remember us as his right-hand man.
Note, Pompey is only three years older than us; I doubt his stats are THAT much better than ours, allowing for a possible wild card like Gift of Mars. The trick is, he's got a huge advantage in having inherited the political loyalty of three legions and a large chunk of Italian territory, whereas we have the loyalty of like eight guys.
Oh, another truly good thing that just occurred to me...
Guys? If Sulla is banging at the gates, and Pompey offers to join his three legions to Sertorius's one to help stop him, and he makes one of the conditions of his assistance "I want Atellus's head in a bag," then while Sertorius might or might not agree to that, Cinna and Marius the Younger would agree to it in a heartbeat. Because it's
their necks if Sulla wins, and better us than theirs, right?
Something to consider.
Then the priest raises his arms above his head and bows deeply before the altar. On this silent signal, it begins -- slowly, at first, a soft thumping on the dew-coated grass that rises into a rhythmic thudding that echoes through the clearing. It spreads like wildfire from man to man, and you find yourself moving in time with it without even thinking. In moments, every soldier present is thumping his feet in time with the flickering of the flames, a rhythmic thudding that echoes in the hills of Samnium. It is the sound of Roman boots on foreign soil, the sound of a legion marching -- the sound of Mars Gradivus, the soldier-god.
The smell of the incense, the low chanting of the priest, and the rhythmic thumping begin to blur together. The flames dance before your eyes, the rhythm of the march fills your bones, and you lose yourself. There is no Atellus now, no Pompolussa, no Mercator or Carcellus.
There is only the Sixth Legion, unbent and unbowed, Mars' own, now and forever.
Excellent. I've already commented on the implications in detail. By the way, do we gain any points toward our rep with the legion for any of this? Or did it just not move the meter?
Siege:
Week 1:
(Sertorius) Lay Siege: 1d20 +6 (Epic Military) +4 (Renowned Logistics) +2 (Voice of Mars) +0 (Average Troops) = 23
versus
(Meddix Appius) Defend Against the Siege: 1d20 +4 (Renowned Logistics) +5 (Hearts of Steel) +4 (Rank III Walls) +1 (Adequately Supplied) -1(Outnumbered) = 33
The Siege Holds
Well, now we know some of Sertorius's bonuses. Looking at the numbers...
1) Sertorius is probably Epic Command too, though he
might be Legendary (+8, right?). About as far above Gemino as Gemino was above, say, Pompolussa.
2) Effectively, sieges are opposed Logistics checks; this makes Logistics
SUPER important for our future military career. The attacker gets a bonus for their Military skill, whereas the defender gets bonuses for walls and supplies. The Samnites goddamn Balls of Steel bonus still applies, making this rather difficult for us.
3) Outnumbering the enemy in a siege is only slightly helpful, which should be
totally unsurprising.
4) I think we're still getting benefits from Voice of Mars. That's our augury bonus from critting the augury before the Battle of the Tabelline Gate, right? Is that applying to Sertorius's offensive rolls, too? Cool beans, if so.
With all that said, Sertorius has a +12 on the die roll and rolled an 11, while Appius has a +13 on the die roll and rolled a natural 20. Each of these rolls was close to evenly matched bonuswise; Sertorius just got unlucky.
Week 2:
(Sertorius) Lay Siege: 1d20 +6 (Epic Military) +4 (Renowned Logistics) +2 (Voice of Mars) +0 (Average Troops) = 17
versus
(Meddix Appius) Defend Against the Siege: 1d20 +4 (Renowned Logistics) +5 (Hearts of Steel) +4 (Rank III Walls) +1 (Adequately Supplied) -1(Outnumbered) = 24
The Siege Holds
Week 3:
(Sertorius) Lay Siege: 1d20 +6 (Epic Military) +4 (Renowned Logistics) +2 (Voice of Mars) +0 (Average Troops) = 23
versus
(Meddix Appius) Defend Against the Siege: 1d20 +4 (Renowned Logistics) +5 (Hearts of Steel) +4 (Rank III Walls) +1 (Adequately Supplied) -1 (Outnumbered)= 18
Samnite Morale Roll: 1d20 +5 (Hearts of Steel) +4 (Renowned Command) = 20
DC: 10
The Siege Holds
Sertorius keeps pounding away, and rolls a 5 and another 11 to Appius's 11 and 5, respectively. As usual, winning a round forces a morale check for the defender.
Can the Samnites pass a terrifying DC 10 morale check? Ahahaha,
is the Pontifex a polytheist?
But more generally, you can see how these bonuses would rack up after months and months of siege warfare. Under the Pompolussan strategem, we can keep forcing such rolls and probably keep the DCs high enough. If we were retreating under the Carcellan stategem, we'd have to start all over in the spring forcing these weaksauce DC 10 morale checks instead of DC 20 or 25 checks that a bunch of Samnites with a badass legendary hero-general might conceivably
fail.
Week 4:
(Sertorius) Lay Siege: 1d20 +6 (Epic Military) +4 (Renowned Logistics) +2 (Voice of Mars) +0 (Average Troops) = 26
versus
(Meddix Appius) Defend Against the Siege: 1d20 +4 (Renowned Logistics) +5 (Hearts of Steel) +4 (Rank III Walls) +1 (Adequately Supplied) -1 (Outnumbered)= 22
Samnite Morale Roll: 1d20 +5 (Hearts of Steel) +4 (Renowned Command) = 25
DC: 11
The Siege Holds
Yep, still hammering away. We force another morale check. Note that morale checks
do not go up very fast during a siege; it's far more protracted than in a field battle where each check is like +5 harder than the last one.
Now, as long as Sertorius and Appius are roughly evenly matched on bonuses, we can expect Sertorius to force two morale checks per month, on average. The next two (DC 12 and 13) the Samnites will almost certainly pass, but it adds up over time. Each check is 5% more likely to be lost than the last, and even at favorable odds you can't roll the dice and win forever.
At this rate, I'd bet on the Samnites failing their first morale check some time in the late winter. Who knows what happens then? Not me, that's for sure.
If Meddix manages to gain another +5 or so of bonuses over Sertorius, or impose -5 on Sertorius in turn, though, that calculation may change- because now Sertorius can't win as many checks, causing the siege to take MUCH longer. If the person running this siege were, say,
us, it would probably take a year or more to force the first failed morale check, because our Logistics penalty is so large we'd very rarely actually win a Siege roll.
Outriders
Hunt Down the Rebels: 1d20 +2 (Accomplished Military) +0 (Average Command) +2 (Gallic Cavalry) +2 (The Voice of Mars) = 26
versus
(Rebel Commander) Evade the Romans: 1d20 +1 (Proficient Military) +2 (Accomplished Command) +5 (Hearts of Steel) +2 (Home Turf) = 28
Samnite Victory
As noted, I think it's still worth trying this again, but not worth trying it over and over throughout the winter unless we can whistle up additional bonuses.
The Devoted of Mars:
Swaying the Legions: 1d20 +3 (Legion Reputation) +2 (Accomplished Diplomacy) +2 (Gift of Mars) = 20
Needed: 14
Major Success
Swaying the Officers: 1d20 + 2 (Accomplished Charisma) +2 (Accomplished Diplomacy) +2 (Gift of Mars) = 17
Needed: 17
Very Close Success
@Telamon , just out of curiosity, was the Swaying the Officers check aimed at bringing the officers in line with us on Mars-worship? And was the Gift of Mars something we get from the augury, or is Sertorius's bonus indirectly helping us?
Also, interesting that our bonuses to dealing with the officer corps come from Charisma checks, while our bonuses to building morale with the legion come from the legion reputation check.
Command (Training From Tercerus): 1d850 + 200 (Gift of Minerva) = 973
Command Rank Up: Rank 7
(296/7000) XP left to Rank 8
Yay, we dinged! The boost may not provide a direct bonus, but it's good to know we're getting up there. A Command bonus would really help us, because as we've seen, the vast majority of "high-stakes" military die rolls involve Command in some way.
