Tylonius — Roleplayer Guild

The Huǒ Fènghuáng

Geography and people:

|Geographical Location of CLIQUE:| The Phoenix Count holds no land to his name. Officially at least. Unofficially he holds the loyalty of small sections of much of the Royalist holdings, who pledge themselves to his political cause. However they are often forced to do so in secret, acting primarily as sources of intelligence and recruitment, instead of rescue centers. The one exception is central Delraat, which openly celebrates the man who saved them. If Huojin could be considered to be master of any lands, it is those that border the mountainous passes between Delraat and Yandar.

|Cities:| Only one city falls within the territory Huojin nominally controls. The small mining city of Tie Diman. However, it's size belies it's productivity. The iron and copper mines of the mountains it is built into have been the source of Huojin's rapid ability to mechanize and armor his forces, and the city is located far enough from the lines that Huojin is capable of leaving only a small garrison, leaving the main defense to the local militia trained by his troops, and the naturally defensive terrain of steep mountains.

|Name:| Yang Hujoin
|Title:| the Phoenix Count, Major General of the Heavenly Imperial Army
|Age:| 23
|Ethnicity:| Minga

|Personal Ideology: |

Enlightened Liberal Autocracy - The right to rule is derived from the Holy Mandate, given down from Heaven to the First Emperors so that they may rule in their stead on earth. However, while it is the divine right of the monarch to rule, the monarch may not rule solely as they wish. As they serve the gods in heaven, and the people of the earth serve them, so too must they serve the people. It is the monarch's duty not only to rule, but to rule well. 

The followers of Enlightened Liberal Autocracy have taken a look at the state of the country, and decided the old order has lead the Empire to an unacceptably bad end. A collection of highly placed incompetent nobles and out of touch emperors have caused the Empire to collapse into civil war and much of it been forced to bow to the whims of foreigners. Change must come in order for the nation to survive, and that change will not be found under the leadership of the old high nobility. 

They wish to replace the old system of reliance on ancient bloodlines and gross abuse of the common people with a more meritocratic system with more upward moment for the less and non-noble citizens. The Emperor must reign supreme, but he must do so with more of an eye for all of his people. Not a nation of or by the people, but one that is undoubtedly for them.

|Influence in the faction: | 10%

|Personality: |

Yang Huojin is a man who has been shaped by three things. The death of his mother, his childhood friendships, and his military genius. He is a man torn between two impossible forces. An deep and earnest desire to bring peace, security, and reform to the Empire, and a consuming lust for battle. He is a man of burning passion and burning charisma, capable of convincing sympathetic ears to join and aid him with fiery speech and conviction.

He holds little love for his enemies, seeing them as problems that must be removed in order to reach his more prefect empire. This makes political battles far more difficult for the young general, and he often is forced to rely on his closest allies for aid in these areas. However, he can also be merciful in victory, often accepting the surrender of beaten opponents and treating prisoners with honor. In his mind, a defeated foe is no longer a foe, but a countryman who should be treated as such.

However, he has little such care for foreigners, who he sees as a plague on his nation that must be excised. A plague almost as great as that of the controlling and power hungry nobles that allowed said foreigners to gain the foothold they did.

He is a stern and distant man despite his charisma, and can be said to only truly love his sister and two childhood friends, who act as his closest advisers and chief agents.

|His/Her Virtue: |Tactical Genius - Huojin is a student of history and warfare. He is of the firm believe that the history of humanity is the history of war, and strives to ensure that his name is not lost to that history. He has studied extensively the many military campaigns of the past, victorious or defeated, native or foreign. He has spent what little time and fortune he has scrapped together from his service to expand his knowledge. And he has combined that with a mind seemingly built for the purpose of war, through which maneuver and counter-maneuver run with all the fluidity of a glistening river.

|His/Her Virtue: |Charisma of the Flame - Huojin has always stood out as a leader of men. From his time as student in the military academies, to his time as a solider, leading men in and out of impossible situations. He gathers followers to him like moths to a flame. He has a manner of existence that makes other want his respect, and makes them work to get it, for unlike many of the noble class of officers, he grants recognition and respect to the peasant born soldiers under his command who earn such. However, such actions draw notice from above, and many of the old guard look upon this rising leader with interest, as either a new pawn, or a threat to be squashed.

|His/Her Sin:|The Passion of the Inferno - It has been said that Yang Huojin is an man who exists for war, and he would be the first to agree with that statement. He understands and studies statesmanship and politics as a nessecity, not a love. His one true love is, and will always be, the battlefield. He longs always for the rush of battle, the greatest test of mind and body as solider is pitted against solider and tactician against tactician. It takes all of his iron discipline to keep him from the fight, and eventually he must give in to the urge. 

Yang Huojin is a man who earnestly strives for peace and security for his Empire, but it is unknown if he would ever be able to exist in such a world.

|History and Background:|

Yang Huojin is descended from a long line of nobility, stretching all the way back to the Minga conquest of the early Zangef kingdoms. In the intervening millennia they have been Generals, Governors, and Princes. However, those loftey days of power are far behind the family now. Over the past two centuries the Yang family has been stripped of it's power and prestige, thrown down by political enemies. Stripped of ancestral lands and it's fortune, Huojin was born to a family much lessened. 
 
The second child and only son of the previous Count Yang, he lost his mother very young. She had been a fierce political activist, believing that the nobility were corrupt. She had organized movements and lead protests against the local nobles in a peaceful demonstration that hoped to gain greater liberties for the people of Shāfeng city. The city's governor responded by ordering the local garrison to attack the demonstration. HUjoin's mother and three hundred others died that day, alongside the young boy's believe that he lived in a just land.

The tragedy forced his father into drink, putting the family further and further into debt with foreign wine merchants who were perfectly happy to allow a Count, even an impoverished one, to rack up debts. 

In this bleak period of his life, Huojin's only solace was his older sister Li-Wei, and his two friends Lian and Jun, the twin sons of a local merchant. Together the three young boys played and lived under the watchful eye of the older Li-Wei. For a time it seemed that the young boy, so enraged and furious at the world for the death of his mothers, would find peace in this life. However, it was not to last.

On his thirteenth birthday, the nation was rocked with terror and anguish as Emperor Shigi-Qutuqu the II was assassinated by his own guards for failing to lead their nation back into greatness. It was the beginning of the end of Old Zangef, and the beginning of Huojin's future.

Soon after the assassination, Huojin left home to enroll in the Imperial Military Academy, given entry on the back of his ancient family name. He brought with him Lian and Jun as his retinue, and together the three boys studied and learned, racing through courses on warfare, combat, and culture. Wherever the three went they gathered other young students around them, brought together by the shared charisma of the three. They did everything together, much as they had done in the halcyon days before they joined up. And in all classes they found themselves ahead of their peers, racing each other for the top more than anyone else.

It was for this reason that the three were granted early commissions in the Imperial Army early, as at fifteen Huojin was made a Lieutenant in the Emperor's name. The three were then split up and each sent to a different front, the commanders of the academy judging the three too dangerous together. For Huojin had not been silent in the academy on his views on society and the ways it needed to change to survive. 

He often got in fights with the children of powerful nobles, and it is likely he was only allowed to continue in the academy due to his own unmatched performance, and a clear loyalty to the throne. But once out of the protection of the Academy, political forces pounced on the boy, stripping him of his allies in order to weaken him. However, this attempt failed.

Huojin was given command of a backwater outpost beleaguered by bandits. He took the then local militia, whipped them into shape, expanded their numbers, and annihilated the bandit fortress with a daring midnight raid. Afterwards he was rewarded by being given command of a supply convoy that was harried by rebel forces south north of the Sixty Fortresses. He not only kept the supplies safe, he counter-ambushed the rebels and personally slew their commander with few losses on his own side.

Again and again Huojin was given dangerous or suicidal commands, and each time he not only completed his mission, but did so with a brilliance that found him rapidly advancing up the ranks. At 21 he had made Colonel, the youngest in the army, a meteoric rise made possibly by personal charisma and skill, and the bloodshed of the battlefield. And as he rose, he continued to talk. 

He gathered like minded soldiers and officers around him, including Lian and Jun who had achieved their own military successes. This was a coterie of soldiers who were utterly loyal the the throne, but saw the high ranking nobles as the greatest problem facing the Empire. Their obsession with power and prestige had come at the expense of those under them. Slavery like feudal ties, a stranglehold on the press, exploitation of natural resources that were all funneled directly into their shadow games against each other with no concern for the common people.

This group slowly began to grow. And as they did they began to gain allies and enemies as Huojin was forced step fully into the world of politics. He started to go out of his way to espouse his views, and the numbers that supported him grew, even as his superiors came to fear and hate him as much as he did them. It was one of them who decided to move first, a young Colonel who desired power sent assassins to murder Huojin's father and sister.

Huojin's allies caught word of the upcoming assassination and he raced the many miles to his old home flanked by his childhood friends and closest allies. They came upon the house already ablaze with the assassins throwing flaming torches at the house. The soldiers fell upon them and slew them to a man in brutal combat. Then Huojin ran into the house. He stayed in there for a long minute, the only sound the roaring of the fire and the sounds of Jun struggling to follow his friend as his brother and allies held him back.

Then, charging through the flames came Huojin, carying the unconscious form of his sister. Behind him, the house collapsed on the already dead form of his father. It was said by those who were there, that when Huojin emerged, he did so as a reborn Phoenix from among the flames, and his eyes burned with the fury of the sun. And it was from this, as Huojin carefully nursed his sister back to health over the next few weeks, that a name was chosen from his allies and their beliefs. The Phoenix Movement.

However, this was not the end of Huojin's political adventures, but only the beginning. With his father dead, Huojin was the new Count Yang. An empty title, it was a title non the less, and came with a promotion to Major General of the Imperial Army. He moved quickly to capitalize on his new powers, beginning with having the colonel who had ordered his father's death resigned to a unit in dangerous territory. The man was soon after killed by Communist forces.

Since his promotion two years ago, Huojin has continued to grow his list of allies and accolades, and his list of enemies. Much of the power structure of the Blacks is arrayed against him, stayed only by his raw skill on the battlefield and mass popularity among the common soldiers that make up most of the Phoenix Movement. It is from them that he gains his moniker, the Phoenix Count.

Now, he marches to another impending disaster, hoping that he can save the men of the Imperial Army. Huojin and his allies race against the clock to Delsai, and pray to the gods and the ancestors that they make it in time.

|Armed Forces:|

Unlike most of his Royalist contemporaries, Yang Huojin did not begin his career with a large fief upon which worked peasants that could be levied for war. His lack of ancestral holdings and ties to the Imperial Banners that still make up most of the Royalist war machine has forced him to improvise and cultivate his own forces.

From his first assignments, Huojin has been utilizing his charisma to cultivate his forces, gathering to him cadres of soldiers who are loyal to him and his beliefs. These troops he then took and trained extensively, always ensuring he had a squadron of highly trained elites on hand for his various assignments. Then, after he had inevitably completed his mission and was moved on, he would start the process all over again

As he passed up through the ranks, he began to gather these troops to him, ordering their reassignment to his personal force. This was the birth of what would come to be known as the Phoenix Army, a relatively small but elite force of troops loyal to Huojin not because of any ancient ties of fealty or supplication, but because to them he represented the best hope for the future.

This army remained small until Huojin’s overwhelming success in the battle of the Yandaar Pass. He left that battlefield with almost seven thousand new troops pledging to his banner, bringing his troop numbers up to a respectable nine thousand strong which he was quick to train up and equip to the standards of the rest of his troops.

Since acquiring the rank of Major General his army has expanded greatly. No longer is the Phoenix Army a small collection of elite troops, but a large army over fourty thousand strong. Huojin has worked hard since his ascension to gather to him what warmachines he could, mostly older models he requisitioned or purchased from other Royalist warlords, though also a handful of newer models acquired from unscrupulous foreign arms dealers who care little for political association, or in smash and grab raids on his better equipped enemies. This has allowed him to create an armored division to join his more tradition infantry formations, giving him a heavy metal core for his battles.

Overall, Huojin has an army that is less massive than some of his contemporaries, but well trained and equipped and highly motivated by their leaders promise of a better tomorrow.

The infantry forces of the Phoenix Army make up the largest percentage of the force, with three of the four battalions made up of them. They are made up of a large influx of new recruits following Huojin’s promotion to flag rank, and the battle of the Yandaar Pass. These more new soldiers are backed up by a core of excellently trained troops equipped to a high standard that represent the soldiers that have served under Huojin the longest and have received more attention from his exacting training regime.

These troops are generally armed with the bolt rifle that is ubiquitous of the civil war, but they are also trained in the usage of short swords for close in fighting, instead of having to rely on antiquated bayonets. To supplement this, all troops are given a grounding in hand to hand combat, at least enough to ensure basic competence.

Alongside the infantry formations are several smaller specialized forces. Chief among these is the divisional artillery attachment, sections of which are deployed to supplement and assist maneuvers by the infantry. It is primarily made up of older mortars and cannons, but interspersed with new howitzers procured from foreign sources. These units are rigorously trained in geography and mathematics to ensure a superior firing abilities.

Alongside the artillery detachments are the motorized squadrons. These fast moving units are typically used in a scouting role or rapid deployment. They are mounted on half tracks and lightly armored troop carriers and are well trained at fighting from the back of a moving vehicle if needed. However, they are closer to the old dragoons than a truly mechanized force, prefering to dismount and fight from the ground once they have arrived at their target.

The regiments are also equipped with various support companies, such as medical and signal companies.

The fourth division of the Phoenix Army is the armored division, a smaller force than the infantry formations, but it serves as the hard hitting hammer of Huojin strategies. The division is separated into four smaller regiments, each focused around one form of warmachine, allowing flexible combat plans. They are also supplemented by several support regiments, including a highly trained engineer corps.

The first two regiments are focused around the light tank, a fast moving force that sacrifices some protection and damage potential. They utilize many older models of tank, and are primarily used for rapid assaults and to assist infantry movement alongside mechanized forces.

The third regiment is one built around the medium tank. A harder hitting force, Huojin primarily uses them to crush hard targets and enemy armor. These forces are usually backed up by the Mech Battalion, a force of hardened warriors who match heavy armor with speed for a devastating result.

The Armored Division is also home to Huojin’s air wing, a small force of planes and pilots who act primarily in a reconnaissance and ground attack role, forced upon them by the aging biplanes that they fly. However, with the rise of the modern airship assault and increased airplane assaults Huojin has begun amassing faster and more modern biplanes, and the occasional new monoplane, to act as a screening and interception force. This force is rigorously trained for aerial combat, and are specialists in destroying airships.

An elite unit of commando troops personal selected, trained, and lead by Major Aiyan Jun, they specialize in various special operations, from infiltration to assassination. They are not overly well suited to field combat due to their small size, but are undisputed masters of irregular warfare.

Something of an anomaly in the modern battlefield is the Minga horsemen. A unit that harkens back to an earlier age, their usefulness on the battlefield is doubted only by those who have never seen a battleline routed by their charges. Armed with a variety of ranged and melee weapons with which to bring destruction to the enemy, these troops are often kept in reserve to act as a hammer in Huojin’s anvil. And it is in this unit that Huojin most often fights when he steps onto the battlefield.

This is a unit capable of even taking on armored and mechanized units and seeing victory, destroying the  warmachines with thrown explosives and explosive lances.

|Their finest hour:|

Huojin breathed in deeply, allowing the stink of the battlefield to wash over him. It was exhilarating. The smell of blood and death and fear all accentuated with the adrenaline of combat that still ran through his veins, even now when the last of the fighting had ended with the surrender of the holdout forces that had retreated into the mountain’s foothills. 

The sun hung low off to the side, illuminating the valley he has carpeted with dead men. Some, too many for his liking, his own. But far more of the enemy number lay unmoving on this field, in their republican uniforms or the garb of their particular foreign mercenary force. It was, by all accounting, a glorious battle and had been one long in the making.

Three months ago the commanders of the Heavenly Army had lost contact with the small garrison force guarding the Yandar-Delraat border against the Republicans. Not much attentional had been paid at the time, as this silence had come as the communist hordes had begun another great push against the line. The already overstretched southern armies had been forced to rally and focus on repealing the red wave, leaving the concern of a small border garrison going quiet on the back burner.

It had only been the purest of luck, perhaps even providence of the ancestors, that a young Lieutenant Colonel had been passing through one of the Sixty Forts when a pair of junior officers had been mentioning it to each other within earshot. This had peaked Huojin’s interest enough to investigate further and soon come to a dread realisation.

The republican forces had used the distraction of the communist offensive in order to being their own strike, most likely planning to take the fertile Delraat farmlands to help feed their people and warmachine. 

Huojin moved quickly after coming to his realization. He sent Jun and Lian to gather those loyal to him and have them meet him in the highlands of Delraat, near to where the invading army was likely to be encamped if they were after the farmlands as he suspected. He could easily have been wrong, that this wasn’t a simple land grab but a full fledged invasion. But if it was then there was nothing to be done.

The southern armies were already overstretched dealing with the communists, and the northern armies would not abandon the encirclement of the nationalist forces for anything at this point. The commanders were gaining far too much prestige and wealth in breaking the white’s backs to have an interest in anything else. 

He even knew that the commanders would ignore the warning he dutifully penned to them before he and his small personal force rode off into the south. The high ranked nobles looked down their noses at him with fear and disgust. An impoverished lesser noble that rose so high on wings of merit as opposed to ancestry, who cavorted with peasants instead of supplicating upwards to his supposed betters. If they even read his report they would just as likely allow the republicans to continue in the hopes that he would die trying to stop them and free them of a thorn in their sides.

But yet Huojin still rode south with his small force of a hundred and fifty. A force that grew along the road Jun and Lian returned with more and more men, until eventually a full two-thousand men entered the borders of Delraat province, his small army swollen with the common soldier and junior officers that his philosophy and mannerisms had captivated. Those loyal enough to the Phoenix Movement to likely die in battle with a far greater force.

Eventually the small army reached a secluded valley where they could encamp and begin to plan.

~~~~

Huojin’s first move was to send out scouts to discover more about the enemy. What he learned enraged him. The republicans had sent sixty-thousand men into Delraat, mostly foreign mercenaries purchased with their incredible wealth, under the command of the notoriously brutal Choujin Lai. Lai the Bloody Handed. He had a reputation for leaving lands stripped of everything of value and with little left living on it, a reputation he was fully living up to here.

His men had marched into Delraat the better part of a month before and, after contemptuously sweeping away the few hundred men guarding the pass in the mountains, had proceeded to ravage the land.

The fertile farmland was ripped bare, harvests gathered by farmers at gunpoint and stored in waggons marked with the blue bar and circle of the republican forces. Those who dared to resist were shot on sight and their bodies dragged to the roads and left to rot to act as a warning to others. Sometimes, the general didn’t bother stopping there, and just burned the entire village to the ground with the people inside. After removing anything that might be of value of course, since not even his bloodthirsty nature could stop the Blue Greed that infected his entire faction.

Choujin treated the peasants, fellow Zangavfi, as if he were some form of barbarian conqueror instead of a countryman with a different viewpoint. And he did all this secure in the knowledge that he was unopposed in the entire province. Well, that was a viewpoint that would all come crashing down soon.

Huojin knew he could not take the enemy army on the field, not as he was. Even with all his talents, he had never managed to pull off a victory at a thirty to one disadvantage. He’d often advocated that just having a six to one advantage would be enough to allow a decent commander victory, and Choujin was not a fool for all his barbarism. No, Huojin would have to be careful if he wanted to deliver the righteous vengeance that the people of this region deserved. And it was in that vengeance that he found his answer.

~~~~

Captain Aiyan Jun was among the most fortunate men on the face of the planet, was how he saw his life. He had been blessed enough to meet a boy named Huojin. The son of nobility who had not cared that he had Quin ancestry, or had been only the child of a merchant. He had always treated him like the equal that society insisted they weren’t. And if that were all he did it would be enough for Jun to follow him into hell.

But Huojin had taken his life and given him purpose, bringing him and his brother along when he enrolled in the military academy, constantly challenging him to stay at the top with him, and pulling him from the backwater he had been assigned to as soon as he could become a senior officer. And once he had done that, he had been quick to put Jun’s particular talents to work. The talents that Jun used to great affect now as he struck with the speed of a viper. 

His left hand brought a padded cloth up over the guards moth, silencing his few gurgles as the other hand brought a razor up and across his neck, cleanly separate the vocal cords and carotid artery. He slumped unconscious against him in seconds, and he was dead before he reached the ground, lowered silently by Jun as all around him his hand picked and trained commandos did the same. 

Jun turned to look at his two local guides, expecting to see some horror or revulsion in their eyes. Those not used to the bloody necessities of war were usually horrified when they first saw them. Jun himself had been. But instead, he saw nothing but vindication and joy in their eyes as they saw the dead bodies of those who had helped ruin their lives. Lian had done well in his recruitment, and Jun recognized the same flame that was coming over their eyes as they looked at the dead bodies. It was the same flame in his. He knew, in that moment, that these two men would sign up to follow Huojin when all was said and done. They had seen the fire of the phoenix and wished to see more.

Jun turned away from the two guides as they settled in to wait. They had done their part of the job. The locals his brother was recruiting were to help guide Jun’s commandos to the enemy camp and away in the dead of night. They had waited three days for a night when the moon was covered up by clouds and the ground was pitch black outside the well of firelights the guards used before they struck.

Now it was all up to him and his men. As one they slipped into the enemy's camp and dispersed. Each had the tools that were needed to complete their job. And come morning, the camp would awaken to find over thirty dead men, and that the tents of the commanders had been ransacked in the night, the officers in question too busy celebrating their now obviously premature announcement of victory.

And this was not the last time Jun struck. Again and again he and his men infiltrated the camp to perform whatever assignment Huojin had cooked up for them. Stealing intelligence, planting explosives that were timed for when the camp was waking up, sabotaging warmachines. In one very memorable moment they had been tasked with stealing several of the invasion force’s mechs. It had been a harrowing night, but their success had made Jun more proud of his men than he ever had been. A pride that was only increased when, next morning Huojin strode out of his tent, saw the mechs, and started smiling that smile he got when he knew he was going to win.

But their greatest strike came almost two months after their first. They had waited this long because they needed a night without moonlight, when the stars were fully covered by clouds. A night that surpassed the definition of darkness. 

The enemy had more than tripled it’s guard, so thoroughly spooked were they. It didn’t matter. The guards still died silently, and the alarm went unraised. But this night was not a night for sabotage and mischief. This was a night for death.

Silently, grimly, the commandos moved into the camp to begin their bloody work. At every tent they came across their silently ghosted inside and cut open the throats of the men they found asleep. The camp, despite their fear, had allowed themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security that the infiltrators only attacked those standing guard. Tonight, Jun would disabuse them of that notion. His own task was different, and he turned away from the section of the camp that had been selected for the massacre, and started making his way up the small hillock towards the commander’s tents.

The next morning, when the republican’s awoke, they did so to blood. Over five hundred men lay dead in their tents, their necks slit open like the guards that had failed to raise the alarm. An entire mercenary force were dead, and in their center lay the worst of it all. Hoisted up on a pole, his front coated in blood, was the body of General Choujin. Above his hanging corpse flew a simple banner. Yellow, with a red phoenix emblazoned in the corner. And carved with deftness into the pole above his limply hanging head, were three simple words.

For the people.

~~~~

It was a week after the final bloody strike that the army turned away and began to retreat towards Yandar. Word had reached them that the communist offensive had been beaten back, and the Royalist commanders had sent an army of forty thousand men to route the invaders. This was even mostly true. The men were on their way, but not because the high nobles who made up the upper echelons of command had ordered it. Huojin had personally penned notes requesting aid to a general on the southern front that he knew to be receptive to his viewpoint, and with the communists repulsed the man was finally able to come.

But they would never make it on time, they were a week away and the republicans had plenty of time to slip back behind the border with their stolen goods. But Huojin had planned for this. It was finally time to move openly, to take the field instead of sitting idly by while Jun and Lian did all his work for him.

The republicans came across his small force in the field a day’s march from the border. The sun was only beginning to rise on the battlefield, illuminating the five thousand royalist troops that stood arrayed against them. The laughter started somewhere among the tankers, but quickly spread among the rest of the troops. This was the force that had so wounded them, had sown such terror in their hearts. Such a weak force, a twelfth their size. The laughter was not long lived however, as the grim determination of battle overcame the armies. Across from them Major Zheng Cai allowed a small smirk of his own to cross his usually stern face. These republicans would not be laughing soon.

The battle began with a careful advance by the republicans. Whoever had replaced Choujn was clearly not a fool. A pity, as the man himself had been known for his aggressive maneuvers, and Huojin had hopped for much the same. Still, that caution only saved him from the second and third mine cluster. The first blew apart much of his advanced screening force and made the army slow down greatly to uncover and remove the remaining mines. 

And as they advanced, Cai had to do what is possibly the hardest thing for any soldier to do. He had to retreat, slowly and orderly, just within range of the enemies guns, but outside the range of his own. He still ordered his riflemen to fire at the enemy from time to time, but both sides knew it was pointless. 

He lost dozens of good men every volley from the enemy, but he knew his orders, knew the plan, and stuck with it. And the men stuck with him. A less dedicated army would have broken at this maneuver, or stopped to try and face the enemy from within their own range. But these men were dedicated. A solid core a five hundred good soldiers, bolstered by a force of hastily trained but fiercely dedicated locals prepared to sacrifice themselves for their people’s vengeance.

And so they kept retreeting, and the enemy kept advancing slowly for fear of more traps. Until eventually they reached the line of a great forest in a valley at the edge of the mountains, hemmed in by steep foothills and with nowhere to run. It was here Cai ordered his men to halt and take up positions to fight. The enemy commander however knew the range of his guns now, and stayed outside of it, in the middle of the valley where he would have plenty of time to respond to the clear trap that the forest was.

Which was when the trap at his sides exploded. Men, thousands of them, came pouring down the hills in a great wave. Locals, armed with whatever Houjin could get them, and screaming bloody murder at the invaders that had ruined their homes and killed their loved ones. The hilltops themselves almost seemed to burst alight as the canons, ancient but still perfectly serviceable, fired almost point blank into the army camped right in front of the hill.

As the republicans turned in a desperate attempt to deal with the horde of locals descending upon them in a wave of sharp metal and gunpowder, from the trees thundered the last attack. A thousand horsemen roared across the field in a charge the likes of which had not been seen in an age. From the saddles came the ancient hollering war cries of the Minga, and streaming from poles some carried was the phoenix banner, snapping madly in the wind.

The republicans opened up with machine guns, but even as the first ranks began to stumble and fall, the charge kept on. They were buoyed up by the ancient blood in their veins that cried out to run down the enemy, and by the flashing sword of their leader who rode among them, sword upraised to catch the sun and crying words of encouragement and glory in the old Minga tongue. 

Then Huojin and his riders were on the enemy’s front line and through it, hacking and firing upon everything that moved. The front line quickly bucked and broke, the men in it fleeing backwards in a desperate attempt to escape the oncoming tide of horses. And from the sides, the army began to be pressed inwards, the rage and numbers of the locals allowing them to ignore those gunned down and keep pressing on, into the enemy.

The republican commander ordered his mech forward from the rear guard position they had been holding. No matter how fierce a horseman was, he could never defeat the sheer might of the mech. And he was right. But none of the mechs reached the frontline.

As they marched forward, uncaring of the fact that their own men had to scramble to get away from the mechs or be crushed under their weight, the one furthest at the back swiveled it’s guns and opened fire on it’s fellows. The attack sent the mech force reeling, and as they turned to attempt to deal with this traitor, another mech opened up on the side, and then more in the middle of the formation.

The mechs descended into an inscetious orgy of destruction, not knowing who the enemy was they began to simply fire indiscriminately on each other, desperately trying to stay alive. All the while, the heavy machine gun and cannon fire of the mechs ripped into the surrounded republican forces which quickly shattered in their desperate attempt to get away from the rampaging warmachines.

With a seemingly unending tide of locals to the sides, unstoppable horsemen to the front, and rampaging mechs inside their formation, the republicans broke. It wasn’t fast, or all at once. It started at the back, as the men from the front reached them, bringing their fear with them. The men at the back took one look at that, and decided that their ideals or pay weren’t worth dying for, and began to flee in the one path Huojin had left open for them.

From there, it spread through the enemy ranks. Groups threw down their weapons and fell to their knees and begged for mercy. Mercy many of them got, roughed up and dragged off with rough-spun ropes, but alive.

By sundown, the battle was over. Huojin had sent Cai to accept the enemy general’s surrender, an honor he had more than earned with the steely eyed resolve he had pulled off his section of the plan and ensured his victory could come around. The man had returned soon after with the enemy commander’s sword wrapped in his banner. The commander himself had apparently commit suicide rather than face the shame of his defeat.

In the end his small force of ten thousand, mostly untrained locals, had defeated a hardened army six times their size with greater technology and training. And only thanks to those locals. The same peasants that the high ranking nobles who had refused to send aid all looked down upon and saw as nothing by resources to be expended in the quest for more power and prestige.

He knew that when the relief force arrived and he left, he would be taking many of these locals with him. So many had nothing to go back too, having lost everything to the republicans deprivations. And he would welcome them gladly, because here and now his views were vindicated.

The commanders back up north would hate it. But here, in this brief moment he allowed himself to enjoy his victory he did not care. He wondered, idly, what his beloved sister would think of his success. And if his drunkard father would crawl his way out of the bottle long enough to congratulate him.

Then he turned away from such idly fancies, and from the battlefield, and rode off towards his men. He still had much work to do.

|Their darkest hour:|

Huojin could smell the fire before he could see it. The stink of the flames licking at the walls of a house he knew so well. Curling and blackening grass he had rolled in as a child alongside the two young men that even now rode their horses to the brink next to him. The sound came next, the roar of the inferno, the shattering of glass that warped under the heat, the crack of old timbers breaking under their burning weight.

He and his closest allies rounded the lane and saw the fire in all it's terrible glory. The flames crested the top of his childhood home, covering the walls and blanketing the sky in a haze of brightly lit smoke. And all around the fire were the assassins sent by Colonel Hunzuo. A cry sounded from somewhere, and a gunshot rang out. With a start Huojin realized that it had been him who had cried out, it had been his pistol that had spoken. One of the assassins fell to the ground as blood spurted from his neck to cover the ground, standing out black as pitch in the orange firelight.

With a surge his friends took up his cry and charged at the assassins, and he realized what it was he had called out. "Duìyú méiguī!", For The Rose! Huojin re-holstered his pistol and unsheathed his saber, charging in behind his men. They spread out and fell on the assassins, cutting them down with the brutal skill and efficiency that a thousand survived battles had given them. Huojin himself charged straight ahead, his saber flashing bronze in the light as it split one man's head open, and then he was there.

The fire roared ahead of him and his horse reared up in fear at the sight. But Huojin moved with instinct and was already out of his stirrups, bringing his legs up and leaping forward off the horse. The door, already weakened by the fire, splintered under his weight and he went tumbling into the flaming ruins of his old home. He was up in an instant, ripping the shoulder cloak off his uniform and holding it up to his face to keep the smoke from his mouth.

The front room was empty, so he charged beyond it. The next room was also empty, as was the next. Then he found them, huddled together in the back room. Fire raged around their still forms and Huojin forced away the fear that clawed at him at the sight. He crossed the room in three quick strides, ignoring the way his clothes had started to smolder in the heat, and dropped down next to his family. 

His hands shock as he reached for Li-Wei's neck, searching desperately for a pulse. After what felt like a lifetime he found it, faint but undeniable. He allowed his control to slip long enough to let a single greateful sob slip out that his beloved sister had survived. Then he brought himself back under control and did the same for his father.

He found no pulse. 

From what felt like very far away, he pulled his hands back and slipped them underneath his sister, hoisting her up and against him in a perversion of a bridal carry. Then he turned, and ran. Away from the flames. Away from the collapsing remains of his childhood home. Away from the body of the father he hated and loved.

He crashed through the flames back into the clear night's sky surrounded by a roiling wave of fire, almost seeming to carry them with him. Around him were arryed his men, his allies, his friends. He could see Jun and Lian collapse in relief at seeing him and his sister, and the rest of the men look at him with what looked like almost reverence in their eyes.

He turned from those eyes, and from the fire, and walked off into the darkness with his sister's unconscious form still in his arms.

|Other Important People inside the Clique:|

Major Aiyan Jun - The Flaming Left Hand - The more militant of the two brothers, Jun has often been the first into the fray and the last out of it, sword flashing and pistol roaring. He is highly skilled in all forms of combat, from riding to small unit tactics. He acts primarily as Huojin's personal bodyguard and champion. He is an aggressive man who often argues for a more lethal approach to their enemies, military and political. However, he always in the end defers to Huojin's judgement, holding complete loyalty to his commander and lifelong friend.

Lieutenant Colonel Aiyan Lian - The Phoenix's Right Palm - The more diplomatic and tactical of the two brothers, his is Huojin's primary adviser and second in command. He has over the short years of his service become adept at manipulating the ever swirling currents of noble politics to his and Huojin's ends, helping bring many sympathetic ears to his commander, who is able to convince them to join his cause. He is also the possibly Huojin's equal in command, though he rarely gets the chance to show off his skill as these days he rarely sees combat far from his friend. However, whenever Huojin needs to ensure a battle goes well and he cannot command himself, Lian is always his first choice.

Colonel Zheng Cai - The Twin Stars - The second son of a major noble house, Colonel Cai was a late addition to the Phoenix Movement, but a major one none the less. Having spent his entire life in the shadow of his older brother he was forced to live in indignity, often suffering abuses for his 'deformity'. Cai had been born with heterochromia, one eye a cool blue, and the other a burning red. Some claimed it was proof that his mother had slept with a foreigner, others that it was poof that he was a demon. Perhaps from a desire to flee this he defied his father's wishes and join the army, achieving his own meteoric rise alongside his friend and companion Sun Rah. 

However, in a tragic twist, his friend was cut down in battle with the communists, who Cai hates even to this day. He carries the moniker given to the two of them alone now. He soon made contact with Ayian Lian, and through him Huojin to who he pledged his loyalty. He serves as Huojin's top general, a genius in his own right. However, he has never sat as comfortably in his role as the twin Ayian brother's did.

Lady Yanshe Wai
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