@Simpli has asked that I stat up and play a very important person in your adventures.
Say hello to your commanding officer and his forces. The Hero Character Lyudmila is considered permanently attached to this force unless deployed to your forces.
Name: General-Leitenant Gideon Lubomir Nikolayevich
Age: 47
Description:
General-Leitenant Nikolayevich (pictured front row seated, second from the right) with other officers of the Imperial Army, taken after his promotion ceremony to General-Leitenant for his valorous services and command during the Crimean War.
Bio:
Born to minor nobility as the second son of a relatively prestigious and wealthy merchant family, the young man named at a whim by his devout father had a relatively quiet and calm upbringing, which did nothing to prepare him for schoolyard pranks and bullies, before he learned to enact clever, and very cruel, pranks and plans in return.
Upon finishing school, the young man joined the military immediately, desiring the strange prestige that comes from being in war and commanding fighting men, bloodying himself on the bloody battlefields of the latest round in the Russo-Turkish Wars, while carefully navigating the web of politics to earn himself a place as a Polkovnik (Colonel) of his very own Regiment and meeting the Witch Lyudmila, and while neither could call the other friend without a few stiff drinks first, the young Colonel respected the witch's instincts and experience while the witch found the straight-laced officer amusing enough to be near on a few occasions.
On at least two occasions they have saved the others' life, cementing their respect for each other.
Soon after, the Colonel was involved in the bloody quagmire of a siege, leading his regiment against fierce Ottoman resistance to take a key fortification and cementing his promotion to
General-Maior (Major-General) in securing Russian victory.
It was then that the newly-minted General was involved in the nightmare that was the Crimean War, as British, French and Italian technology and magic aided the Ottomans, but it was here that the general proved himself once more, managing to bring low an opposing army with the aid of Lyudmila and an ad-hoc detachment of witches to secure key fortresses that while did not prevent the Russian Empire losing the war thanks to British psychics, blunted the enemy victory sufficiently that it was remarked Italian that the victory felt pyrrhic.
For the valor that pushed his forces through automatons and deadly alchemical poison gas, the
General-Maior was promoted to
General-Leitenant, and is now in charge of what could be the greatest endeavor in Russian history, or the greatest folly.
The General is easily distinguished from other officers for his love of a particularly thick, rich and noxious brand of cigar, one that according to regimental myth takes so long to smoke that the General could measure how long a campaign took by measuring how much ash fell from his cigar every day. Such is the man's love for this cigar that at great time and expense he purchased an alchemical tincture said to protect men from diseases of the lung caused by smoke.
It clearly works, he's still smoking those same jet-black cigars as thick as a man's thumb where others have gotten incredibly sick from smoking just one.
Stats:
-Strength: 2
-Agility: 2
-Intelligence: 2
-Charisma: 2
Talents:
-General Of The Expeditionary Corps: Half of the character's Charisma is added to the Morale of
ALL units present in the same battle as the character.
The 17th Imperial Guards Rifle Regiment 'The Woodcutters'
Regimental Commander: Polkovnik Kanalina Tarasovna
History:
The first of two personal regiments of General-Leitenant Gideon from the Russo-Turkish Wars and the Crimean War, drawn from young and adventurous city-borne noble scions seeking glory on the battlefield. They have faced down towering clanker weapons, encountered bizarre alchemical abominations, battled spirits and charged through artillery and gas. Their name is earned from the storm of fire these disciplined men and women can lay down, added with a battery of potent American Gatling Guns purchased at great personal expense by the General himself, and over time the adventurous spirit of these veterans and the young adventurers who join them has given them a distinctly roguish air.
Regiment Build:
-Veterans Of The Crimean War
-City Origin
-Line Infantry With Rifled Muskets
-Band Of Rogues
-Gatling Gun Battery
-Military Priests
-Improved Supply Train
The 12th Georgian Dragoons Regiment 'The Devils Of Keldara'
Regimental Commander: Polkovnik Johnathon Harmon
History:
The second of General-Leitenant Gideon's two personal regiments, the Devils are a fierce and proud Cossack who are drawn from the Keldara Valley, claiming ancestry to the Norsemen of the Varangian Guard, maintaining the pagan religion of the Norse as well, prompting the General to have this claim tested.
When it was proven true, the General promptly ordered the Keldara conscripted in to his service. The Keldara refused and fought back. After the General brought in a battery of artillery, they agreed.
The Devils are the General's main skirmishers and eyes in the field, perfect for slowing the enemy while his main forces arrive to crush them from the front, supported by alchemist detachments and now the addition of Lyudmila's personal war-coven.
Interestingly, the Devils by hook or by crook have always had someone of foreign blood commanding them, and their latest commander is an American, whom they address by an archaic title of 'Kildar'.
The General finds these events mildly exasperating.
Regiment Build:
Cossacks
Land
Dragoons
Alchemist Grenadiers
Alchemist Field Apothecary
Improved Supply Train
2nd Foreign Adventurer Regiment 'The Wayward Sons'
Regiment Commander: Polkovnik Huig Tessemaker
Regiment History:
The Adventurer Regiments are less about adventurism and more about having a quick and ready source of reserve troops, attracting foreigners, the poor, and the disgraced into one place where they have to find common ground before they are sent into an actual war.
Armed as light infantry forces, the 2nd Foreign Regiment also happens to be the favourite dumping ground of arm-chair generals and philosophers, barracks-room lawyers, and other 'intellectual' or 'artistic' individuals who are not criminals, but just plain annoying.
The General certainly views them this way, especially with their superstitions, but knows better than to dismiss them. Even if their Colonel is a deviant twit.
At least they're a useful justification for the deployment of clankers, and the money that the richer recruits are required to 'donate' pays for better supplies, religious guidance and medical care.
Besides, their main job is to protect the pioneers who will be building bridges and fortifications once through the gate.
Regiment Build:
-Active Reservists
-Land
-Light Infantry
-Alchemist Close Combat Troops
-Clanker Company w/ Engineers
-Mitrailleuse
-Field Hospital
-Military Priests
-Improved Supply Chain
-Pioneers
-Etymology
-Soldiers Of 100 Nations
-Unpopular Officer
7th Imperial Guards Artillery Regiment 'The Old Queens'
Regiment Commander: Polkovnik Irina Stepanovna
Regimental History:
The Old Queens are the largest smoothbore guns in service with the Imperial Army, each one a mastercrafted work of destructive art, so large that they need special wagons to transport and capable of loading the largest cannonballs, the superstitious men who man these guns are old veterans who are the only ones with the nerves of steel to not flee and leaves these beautiful, valuable and powerful guns to the enemy.
While the slowest moving force in Gideon's forces, the firepower of these big guns is immensely valuable, and to protect them further, General Gideon has furnished them with Gatling Guns to supplement their chain and grape-shot.
Regiment Build:
-Veterans Of The Revolutionary Wars
-City
-Smoothbore Artillery
-Scout Balloon
-Gatling Gun Battery
-Gatling Gun Battery
-Improved Supply Train
-Military Priests
-Field Hospital
-Etymology
8th Heavy Cavalry Regiment 'The Salt-Blooded'
Regiment Commander: Polkovnik Zhirov Fyodorovich
Regimental History:
The Salt-Blooded are horsemen who have the song of the sea in their veins, and while many of their fellows are destined for the Navy, many more are born and raised in the saddle, forced to balance their innate love of water with the care of their mounts.
This regiment of Heavy Cavalry made their name through the battles of the Crimean War, making deadly charges across water-logged and muddy terrain to scatter infantry lines, such that many believed that these men and their horses were blessed by the Rusalka of myth, that water nymphs rode with them and commanded the mud, ice and water to part before their heavy chargers while miring their enemies.
Whatever the truth, it is true that rivers are no obstacle to the charge of the Salt-Blooded, even if in recent days they have been saddled with a high-born Captain whose prancing and strutting annoy the men.
Regiment Build:
-Veterans Of The Crimean War
-Sea
-Heavy Cavalry
-Alchemist Grenadiers
-Alchemist Close Combat Troops
-Unpopular Officer
102nd Foreign Assault Guns Regiment 'The War Boys'
Regimental Commander: Polkovnik Joseph Moore
Regiment History:
The infamous 'War Boys' are a barely literate grouping of men from across the world who man some of the most sophisticated artillery in the Imperial Arsenal, a fact that makes the General wonder who these anarchists annoyed to be sent to another world in lieu of execution or dispersal.
Lead by an ex-American military officer who purchased his rank, the War Boys are relatively new since they formed too late to enter into the Crimean War, so this expedition is their chance, and Moore's, to earn glory on the field of battle.
Regiment Build:
-Trained Conscripts
-City
-Rifled Gun Battery
-Wind Scout Coven
-Improved Supply Train
-Field Hospital
-Military Priests
Elite Witch Coven 'Daughters of Kunersdorf'
Coven Leader: Lyudmila
Recent History:
Formed by the near-legendary witch Lyudmila, the Daughters are the largest concentration of combat-capable witches in the Russian Empire, all of them ready for the challenges that may be encountered on the other side of the gateway...
Coven Build:
-Elite Witches
-Russian Imperial And United
-Warlike Coven
-Alchemist Apothecary
