You take a moment to wax nostalgic for the days when all you needed to command your army was a few banners, horns and sufficiently loud captains.
Those really were the days, huh Garrick? Almost making me nostalgic too!
You watch as the color seems to literally drain out of the creature, the vision of the night sky decorating its body fading as wisps of multicolored smoke waft upwards into the sky before dissipating, the creature quite literally evaporating before your eyes. Within moments its musculature becomes visible, followed shortly thereafter by its skeleton, bones the color of swirling nebula peeking through before they are shrouded by a cloud of rainbow-colored steam.
See, it's things like this and the rest of the description of its death that had me feeling bad for the Ursa Major. Like, that whole deahtly description makes me feel like we just committed some unspeakable act that we should all feel guilty for. Though it was in defense, we slayed something so beautiful and pure.
Anyhow, I'd feel most well about a write-in for an assault on Mare-a-Thon. The Scorched Earth tactics are an immediate "no". If we wish to have any hopes of a long-term integration (as I wish to do) or even reconciling the pro-Imperial Abolitionists with the Royal Guard remnants, we will need to ensure we are endeared to the population. Furthermore, Maretonia is in the middle of a famine only staved off from OUR shipments of food. If we burn the harvests now, it will make the post-war food situation
that much worse.
However, a siege also isn't tenable for the fact that I very much expect Pegicles to try a massive and flashy suicide attack because that's been his modus-operandi as of yet. Pegicles may be a pegasus, but he acts more like a fox. When you corner a fox is when they are at their most dangerous. Said "flashy and massive suicide attack" is likely something that would attempt to take out a large chunk of our forces (and would possibly succeed at making a large sum of casualties), even if I don't expect it to change his fate.
Finally, that leaves the outright assault. As it stands, Mare-a-Thon should have the core of his army. Said core consists of the military aristocracy - the pegasi - that made up the elite core of the Maretonian military before the civil war. I expect a direct assault itself will also be perilous, though his manpower will likely be low and each veteran death will be a large and irreplaceable blow to his overall army. His auxiliary would have been, for the most part, left on the ground and unable to be garrisoned in the clouds above.
Thus, I think the best thing to do is to work out a more in-depth assault plan to whittle his elites to minimize our own casualties.
