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Race Human (Doelishman) Sex Male Age 51 Court Alignment Red Role Colonel (2 nd Regiment of Horse—"The Firestripes") __________________________________________________________ |  Untitled by Andrey Shishkin |
Divine Right. Despite his common origins, "Old Vic" in just a few years has proven himself a capable soldier, roughrider, and commander of men, an invaluable asset to the Inburians' peasant revolt. Equally adept in both the dragoon and the harquebusier styles of warfare, on the field he deploys with sword, carbine, and a brace of two Reiterpistolen; whereas on the street he carries a mercenary's Katzbalger—short, broad, and in all more suited to tavern brawls than proper dueling.
Ironsides. First to engage and last to withdraw, Vicquerno himself sets the 2nd's example in battle. As composed among enemies as allies, and unflappable under fire, he does not retreat until he's received the order; and even then, not until the last of his boys has gotten out first.
Similis Simili Gaudet. Handpicked not for their individual skills and strengths, but for their devotion to "Commander, Queen, and Cause" (purportedly in that order, ascending), Vic's "Firestripes," so nicknamed for their distinctive orange sashes, have cultivated a unit cohesion not achieved elsewhere but by the very most prosperous leaders. They do not rape; nor break ranks to run down a routed foe; nor whore or gamble at quarters; nor loot the houses and baggage of human foes, regardless of allegiances. (The colonel does condone the pillage of elven property, however.) Their discipline is admirable, their personal loyalties enviable, their repute as yet unrivalled.
Demagogue. That most of the 2nd began the war as common workmen—hunters, militia, and other decent shots, perhaps, but unskilled in battle all the same—and now command the renown they do, speaks to the methods of van der Szaalm and his serjeants. This begins not with the ruthless drilling of their bodies and horses, nor even with the communal prayers and catechisms in which all the men share between battles; but with recognizing in each man all the qualities beseeming a soldier of freedom.
Knave of Hearts. One would not expect the man who has forbidden gambling among his ranks to be so adept at games of skill, but especially cards and billiards.
Anguis in Herba. The Firestripes' personal devotion to their colonel has brought some of Ariana's councilors, and perhaps the girl herself, no small degree of anxiety in recent days. Why, for instance, this insistence on garbing the regiment in a color besides Ariana's scarlet? And why does it draft its own poems, its own songs and slogans ("We Remembre Grendell," "Be Thou of Good Couraige," "The Gunnes of Rodelkog" et al.), rather than join the other troops in their catechisms? Some cannot help wondering whether the good colonel's personal ambitions supersede his loyalty to the pretender-empresses...
Sanguinarian. Though marked by temperance and measure in most things, if one vice colors Vicquerno's decisions it is his rage. Slow to forgive and quick to avenge, it is little wonder that he's fallen in with the camp which promises the decimation, humiliation, and ultimate expulsion of the elves from Old Inbur. At times to the detriment of the war effort (inspiring those to fight to the death who would otherwise have lowered their arms and surrendered), those who have crossed the 2nd can expect no clemency; no quarter. And the grudges their commander keeps are strong as steel.
Son and heir to a family of poorters and husbandmen, relatively modest of means, Vicquerno even from a most tender age was spared the indignity of an idle life. Expected from the start to earn his daily bread, he had a small hand in many of the family's various enterprises—a tin smithy, a heraldry office, a small paper mill, all of these situated in the levee-town of Valtrecht—but his true duties were to the estate, where with godly grace he took to pick and plough and scythe, same as the sharecroppers who worked his father's fields. When there were no troughs to till and crops to tend, especially in wintertime, Vicquerno also enlisted with the town's standing militia, walking its dams and walls and sea gates, arresting the occasional robber-knight or burglar—a privilege afforded only to the wealthy of the city, as the stadtholder, Rodon Van Ecklingen, expected the men to supply their own arms. But with such exclusivity arrived opportunity. Enough service years in the Free Watch all but guaranteed one an eventual city government position, and Vicquerno van der Szaalm had been well on his way toward one such position when the wars broke out, studying as a solicitor. Oft he wonders what his life would look like now, hadn't he answered the chance for glory and adventure when it knocked; quiet, t'would seem. Quiet and comfortable and ignobly dull.
The other ignominies—the noxious fumes of the smithy, the drudgery of heraldry, the odoriferousness of the pulp, even the stink and the calluses of the fields—these he suffered graciously enough but not the courtroom. The courtroom drove him very nearly mad. Perhaps those ink and pounce-stained hands, unstimulated by the quill, yearned for the hoe and the hammer once more. Perhaps, given his first glimpse into Valtrecht's inner workings, it disgusted him just how much money the Doel was paying for Orrian's "protection"; how prosperous his household and his choice familial friends and his people at large could be, were they not racketeered by plumped-up horseback brigands. Then again, it may be the bills of lading, the manifests and the charterparties which so incensed him; inventories counted not in bushels or ingots, but heads. Names. Whole families and tribes branded, fettered, auctioned off to offshore mines and plantations, then squabbled over like goats and capons. Everyone knew Orrian's "Western Empire" did not exercise a chattel system—they justified their slave trading by convicting a person of a crime first (often enough a fictitious one), then calling it punishment—may be the aging Doelishman began to wonder when he would recognize a name on the list.
Regardless of the cause, his defiance started off small: first earning a few more guilders renting out the family's press to populist pamphleteers; later on penning and publicizing his own (albeit anonymously). Finding himself in their backroom beer halls, attending their speeches, their debates. Little arsons and vandalisms, especially of shipments bound for the treasurers of Orrian's court; his "tributes." The fourteen months Vicquerno spent in the Salaissant for such offenses were meant to dissuade him thereof. Instead they galvanized him all the further, giving him time aplenty to pen all manner of anti-Haltian verses and fictions, several still popular today among "Ariana's Ardents"; and making him a few lifelong friends among his fellow prisoners besides, several of whom have fought and died already for the Reds.
Only Vicquerno's time in the Free Watch saved his estate from confiscation, and himself from the very worst conditions inside the prison, cramped and packed and rife with disease—not even mentioning, besides, the aforementioned indentured servitude on some fever-ridden plantation somewhere across the sea. Of course, only God knows whether it was redemption or recidivism which laid coiled in van der Szaalm's heart of hearts when he walked free that fateful day; whether he intended to navigate the straight and narrow, or fall back into old habits. For in just a few short months the revolution had swept through Doel, and, most courteously, robbed him of the choice. Though whether they sought him out, or the inverse, is as yet lost to time, known only to the Red Empress and the man himself.
