They can hit several bird with one trip, then.

Especially since Ani is by then ready to catch a ride to go join Wyld and Luc'.

(She's a bit restless. Almost jittery. But - this is important.)

She won't be going alone.

That helps; her worries feel far less present when Occlus is around.

Still, it's just Ani and Occlus for now - Luke's staying in their home universe.

She lets Occlus take the lead when they're dropped off, of course.

Naturally.

Who is in charge here, aside from Wyld?

A man named Lingering Orchid - though Wyld insistently calls him Ling - seems to be Wyld's second in command, supported by a cast of officers militarily and governors politically. His official title is 'Grand General Lingering Orchid;' most just call him 'the Grand General.' He's not present when they arrive, though a young officer is, who bows deeply to Occlus and apologizes for the Grand General's absence; he did not know exactly when his most esteemed guests would arrive, and is awaiting them in the command center.

(Wyld's command center has been upgraded from a near-permanent encampment, lately, and is now being hosted in the central castle of the recently conquered city. The agreed on arrival point is a rather nice plaza surrounded by gardens to its side.)

Well then, they had best be led on to the command center proper.

The castle is more practical than ornamental, but also clearly expanded over the years, and some of the additions have different design aesthetics.

Ling stands when they enter, and inclines his head to Occlus in a shallow bow.

"You would be Darth Occlus and Ani?" he confirms. "I'm Grand General Lingering Orchid."

"A pleasure to meet you, Grand General. Have you been informed of our purpose here?"

"The pleasure is all mine."

"The Lady Wyld said you intended to assist with our war effort, including and perhaps especially logistics. She said that your nation might be sending drill instructors and assorted civilian relief, but not right away."

"She also identified you as alternate universe versions of Luc' and her."

"That is correct. We would like to assess the state of your territories and armies, to more precisely identify what your needs are."

He has a very full briefing on that - their territory is large for the Hundred Kingdoms, small for Creation as a whole. Wyld's been taking territory rapidly, but she's been hampered by not having enough loyal soldiers drilled to her standards - the slaves she's released are eager, certainly, but Wyld demands an exceptionally thorough level of discipline. Which does mean their troops are a significantly higher quality than the village militias they're steamrolling, and they've been able to open multiple minor fronts... Still, their major operations - especially sieges - have been constrained by Wyld's availability, as have much of their efforts to rapidly drill soldiers... (Her usual strategy is to turn into a small animal or a known member of the target, get close to the guards, and then turn into something big and dangerous. She's usually then able to get the gates open without significant injury to her. Still, it's an unideal strategy, for several reasons...)

Currently newly occupied territories are kept under martial law; still, Wyld's strategy has involved carefully managed transitions to local power answerable to her empire. This has only panned out fully in a few places, but has been successful so far. She doesn't assign soldiers to their home region - or any neighbors they'd have history with - if she can help it.

None of their neighbors will trade with them right now - not openly - so they're forced to be mostly self sufficient for food and commodities...

Their major bottleneck in his estimation is actually the ability to effectively hold and govern territory they've taken - which a larger army would help with, as would logistical support. They can win most arbitrary local fights; if Wyld just wanted to burn everything down, she'd probably have reached the Realm by now. (And lost; the Realm isn't an arbitrary local fight in the slightest.)

(It's somewhat clear Ling has a far more classically militant background than Wyld, who still fundamentally thinks like a guerilla fighter.)

Taking territory is always easier than holding it.

Still, not the largest front she's overseen. Low technology level, which works both for and against them... Communications are the low-hanging fruit here. Perhaps transportation, but that's more vulnerable. A single hardened relay can more than cover the area of interest.

Better coordination and faster communication will make a huge difference - they already have better communication than most of their enemies, because Wyld has intelligent birds among her scouts, but that's still fundamentally a courier system.

Holocomms are instantaneous. A spysat would also be useful, but perhaps impractical given the nature of the world. Still, there are several famous thought experiments regarding orbital mechanics and an infinite flat plane. This is an opportunity to put them to the test.

It's not even slightly infinite - the borders fade off into the wyld, where physics stops pretending to work, distance is fake, and everything runs on stories. 

Presumably the part that's past the actual proper gate of the world - which is itself farther out than where you can reasonably expect to still be made out of biology - is infinite, but also possibly it's somewhere math is fake and therefore so are concepts like 'infinity.'

Still, if something could move in a circle - or if Lady Wyld could petition the goddess Luna to let them have a satellite orbiting her moon palace - then it'd probably work.

Interesting. Options, then. They shall see.

Options, at least, are good to have.

Quite. They'll also need to see a typical training regimen and go over favored tactics and command styles.

He has documentation on that, both for the forces trained by Wyld using a charm, and for the forces trained more conventionally, and for forces trained in a blend of both, and he can arrange for them to watch some training. Tactics and command styles vary a bit between differently specialized forces, and with whether Wyld can be present... (But are, mostly, actually fairly sophisticated, especially given their low technology level.)

Occlus takes notes on her datapad.

And eventually he wraps up the meeting, setting in place times for them to observe the various troop training regimens. 

Excellent.

The next thing is to talk with Wyld.

She's available - she's been getting caught up with some of the rest of her command structure, but can really easily get free to meet with Occlus and Ani.

"Everything going okay so far?"

"Quite so. I believe it will not be difficult to arrange for your time away."