The march on Javiksholm – Preparations

So, the Loyal and New Dawn are preparing to march onto Javiksholm. There is a lot of things to keep in mind. Careful planning is of the essence. So I want you to really think this through.

- Who moves where at what time, do they rush or do they take their time? From what direction do they approach the city? (including New Dawn forces. You lead the campaign at the moment, though Sir Roderick might object to certain decisions)

- How many forces are left behind to secure your territory?

- What do you take with you? (There will be no conjuration of additional things once you have made your choice. Should you forget something that will turn out to be vital, you can behead your Npc- Quartermaster for being incompetent and messing things up, but you will have to deal with the situation nevertheless.)


- Everything else you deem important.


Your decision will also affect how long your forces will need to reach Javiksholm. Naturally, the more time you take to prepare, the more time the enemy has.

Remark: Please do not discuss things here. Either open a new thread or use the ooc section. In here comes just your final decision, posted by Aranor, so I can stay on top of things (hopefully, at least). I might edit this post a little during the next few days. This is just the first draft to give you guys a heads up about what to expect.

Here are our preparations for the march! (finally..)

TROOPS:
ALREADY DEPLOYED-
Blaze's force: 50|70
Wolf Riders: 70|125
Rineheart: 1|50 (scouting between Windholm and Javiksholm)
Our combined forces between Aranor and Rodrick-
71 knights, 543 retainers + 50 ebony gauntlets

Garrison troops!

Sir Rivalin due to his age, will stay with 10 knights and 20 retainers at the chapterhouse in Avendor

Sir Rodrick should leave 10 knights and 20 retainers at his chapterhouse in Valonbray.

PREPS:
Lords of Valonbray and Avendor shall be informed of the threat, and advised to watch their regions and deploy troops to protect villagers.

Sir Rodrick should bring some pre-fabricated siege equipment, hopefully 10 catapults, 5 rams, and 20 ladders if possible, with additional supplies in case if infiltration and ruse fails with the dummy army they shall bring with their own supplies.


OUR CHARACTERS:
Blaze is at Kulum,
Wolf is patrolling,
Merzinas is infiltrating Ironoak,
Aranor+Thaddeus+Varis+Laralthir+Fabien (NPC) are at Avendor preparing to march

I *think* Rodrick+Henry are preparing to leave from Valonbray.

NOTE: Once Army comes into sight of Kulum a messenger will be sent to Wolf to inform him to come.
NOTE 2: Didn't put any battle plans for the actual siege itself, due to the lack of a map for the city. (could one be provided?)

OOC:
I hope this suffices for our preparations. If I need any more please tell me.

Nice to see some movement here . I have one question though. Why would you think the New Dawn would be able to provide this kind of siege weapons and with what reasoning would you try to convince Rodrick, that his faction should supply all of them?

For the siege weapons:
Avendor may or may not have the weapons needed for the assault, but Valonbray is a port, they are bound to have a siege workshop or anti-sea defences (vanskerry assaults) Transporting them from ship from Valonbray will save us a lot more time then dragging them from Avendor. And since Rodrick has the love of the people maybe some commoners would pledge their labor to the cause and make some last minute siege equipment.

P.S sorry for not telling you sooner I had RL issues.

Sir Aranor wrote:

For the siege weapons:
Avendor may or may not have the weapons needed for the assault, but Valonbray is a port, they are bound to have a siege workshop or anti-sea defences (vanskerry assaults) Transporting them from ship from Valonbray will save us a lot more time then dragging them from Avendor. And since Rodrick has the love of the people maybe some commoners would pledge their labor to the cause and make some last minute siege equipment.

P.S sorry for not telling you sooner I had RL issues.

He means how are you gonna persuade Rodrick.

Ill tell rodrick via letter that us transporting siege weapons of our own would be bad for several reasons:
1. We have to go by land and therefore will cost us more time
2. Us going by land means that any scouts that see us with the siege weapons will immediatly go back and we lose the element of surprise.
Now the most favorable course of action would be this:
Any siege weapons that Rodrick can rustle up any way he can should book the quickest trip to Kulum, preferably on merchant ship so it is better hid, then when it is rolled to Kulum we can march to Javiksholm. I also promise to pay for any costs that may be needed from my own personal coffers.

May I post in the IC thread Azlanek? I fear the event is getting too slow.

I blame the slowness on all the new games that just came out. Just saying.

You can post that letter in the ic-post Aranor, that is your decision . My weekend it rather packed, though, so I think I won't be able to respond any earlier than Sunday afternoon, or maybe even Monday. Just so you know. And don't worry, since this is my fault this will not result in an extra week bonus for the Red Dawn.

I will discuss your plans with the other gms and try to come up with a map for windholm. We should be able to launch the actual campaign at some point next week.

I still need your list of supplies that you want to take with you (foot, shelter, spare weapons etc.). As I said, you will ot be allowed to conjure stuff up once everything is launched. To keep the pressure up, deadline for this is the 27th.


I will start working on a Map for the City as soon as I can, so you can then make detailed plans.

to say enough supplies isn't adequate? How micro do you want it to be, b/c I doubt anyone has the experience in making an approximation for what every soldier needs in terms of food, beddings, ammo, stuff for the warmounts ect.

It is enough when it comes to food, tents and healing supplies. It is not enough when it comes to stuff you might want to use for the siege. If you want to fortify your camp, bring the necessary stuff. If you want your plans to work, make sure you brought the proper supplies for that. If you want people who know how to build a tunnel, hire them. If you want equipment beyond the standart gear of your knights/retainers, decide how many men are armed with what kind of weapon.

For the dummy army ruse-

No cost:
The wooden lances they could pull off the trees on their way to Javiksholm
they could place the orders pots and pans on the heads of the dummies for helmets.
The large horde of retainers would be able to share the burden easily, and the goods would not need special transport
The shields would just need to be wooden bark and some cannabilised ships planks

Cost:
150 burlap sacks for body
7 miles of rope to fasten all the men to the horses
20 litres of red paint for shields
3 litres black paint for emblams
ten kilograms of hay for each fake knight 1.5 tonnes would need to be bought from villages and taken from the Guilds stock.
150 of the cheapest horses (saddle horses)
150 x (1.5 metres squared white sheets) to be placed on the horses as fake heraldry for them

Plus
Food,
tents,
medicine,
the 15 ladders and 5 rams from the New Dawn transporting them on 2 Merchant ships that were contracted.

I will also bring with us-
about 30 mercenary disguises consisting of-
Merc helms,
Chainmail Haubergons,
Chainmail Chausses,
chainmail gloves,
inconspicuous scabbards, (forgo the fancy scabbards of the sarleon knight longswords to the ones of regular leather swords)
and cavalry shields.

All soldiers will be instructed to keep their shields ALWAYS over the hilts of their swords, in order to hide them.

For Laralthir- A Banded armor coat, no helm, mail chausses, with a kite shield and noble cross hilt sword.

Wooden spikes will also be taken in order to put up a defence for the camp to stop any surprise cavalry charges.

Noted and granted. The costs should be reflected in your next report. Gathering all that stuff from the surrounding lands will take you one week. To keep things simple getting to Kulum and then to Javiksholm with so many supplies will take you another week. Roderick can arrive with most of his men and the siege equipment within one week, but he needs an additional week to establish his supply lines.

With this the campaign is officially launched! I will now focus on the troops already in the field, so that they finally get some responses to their actions. After that....it is time to besiege a town.


Please make good use of the time and discuss your actual tactics for the siege.

So two weeks? As long as we are not doing one step at a time.

Two weeks just in regard to the preparation time the enemy has. We will start with the siege as soon as I have supplied the troops in the field with some information.