Vanda Nosseo lands on a world that fights a lot of wars.
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"I'm optimistic that the Holy League will wind up rewriting its charter, since it's not really designed for the current situation! Anyway, if taxes go up I'd expect people to start leaving. They have to let them, that's a condition for joining. A lot of places don't have taxes at all."

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Leofe is really not that optimistic about 'maybe they actually DON'T want to conquer the world', and thinks that it would have been much more credible if they started saying it at any point when they were not being trounced.

She is also pretty sure she's not going to be able to talk these people out of it.

What goal does she want to achieve? She wants to take her army home, alive. She wants Montrege to stop trying to conquer the world. She wants what everyone wants, to preserve her honor.

And she wants adventure and glory and a chance to do something with her life and to not be stuck in a small town forever, but that's secondary.

What can she do to try to get it? Nothing. She's essentially powerless; people who don't understand her planet are making all the decisions.

She can't get onto the list of people making decisions. (And her first responsibility's to her army, the people who trust her, not to her country...)

The best move would be for Wolcyn would be to get Aputen to teleport her home instantly in a display of overwhelming force that she had done nothing to provoke; unfortunately Sergeant Arkwright made exactly the correct estimation for the level of dangerous Vanda Nosseo was without making the correct insight that they would not use that power.

Can she maneuver Marek Gerontmarkhen into getting the entire army teleported home?

... Does she need to maneuver Marek Gerontmarkhen into getting the entire army teleported home?

"I understand." She'll try a smile. "Well, theorizing aside, I'll want to consult with the army's commander-in-chief before making my decision."

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"Sure, I don't have anywhere to be and I can wait right here."

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And she will issue some orders and then go to meet Marek Gerontmarkhen, the Golden King, theoretically commander of the Coalition army because the army is fighting on what is theoretically his land!

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... And meet some of her people coming back with the news that he did not stop marching, and so the army is now Elsewhere. Probably back home.

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Hmm.

"Kosent Aputen, may I request a teleport for my force to a Coalition location that will have the supplies to feed us?"

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"I can't teleport, myself! I don't think the float I'd call in would take requests that were very specific about where to drop you, but anywhere with one of our shops will have plenty to feed you all, have you got one back home?"

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"If you could send us to the shop nearest my superior in the Wolcyn chain of command, I would appreciate that." She'll be happy to point out where on a map.

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"Mm-hm, just a minute!"

The float is there in less than a minute and can, piecemeal so they can make sure there's room for everybody, teleport the entire army to the area around that shop. The shop has been notified that it may need to feed an army.

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And Leofe Dunne and a small army will appear by the shop nearest the highest-ranking Wolcyn commander on the Continent, inside Coalition territory if not very far inside, having figured out the magic sequence of words to get Vanda Nosseo to move her regiment to Somewhere Actually Useful instead of shipping it back to Wolcyn, where a significant fraction of it would die of disease on the way back to the front.

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And quite a lot of other invading armies are also sent home, and Ljudizem's boundaries are secured! Some violence is aimed at the representatives of Vanda Nosseo, but given that it does not actually work, no actual harm is done to anyone.

Though Simolya needs its army to be teleported home and has so far declined any shops, since it chucked the representatives of Vanda Nosseo in prison when they showed up and has not so far released them.

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Well, they'll be teleported home and the teleporter will ask if the resulting supply line issue means they can open a shop or if they'd like some sacks of rice or anything.

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The general (now in the capital) ANGRILY PROTESTS this violation of their borders! He wants them to LEAVE!

(if he is not consulted, a large fraction of his army would like to desert and the rest would like rice, yes.)

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They will happily take deserters and supply rice! And then leave.

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There may, perhaps, be a few problems with their leaving, since the general attempts to reassert his authority (damaged by this miraculous teleportation) by ordering his army to not desert, backed up by the usual swift and terrible punishments that the army of Simolya uses to maintain discipline - as do most countries, of course, but Simolya does slightly more.

This does not, in the face of Vanda Nosseo, work. Since it does not work, the general will attempt again to reassert his authority, this time by ordering loyal troops to confiscate all the rice and put it in vast (and, with the war on, largely empty) central granaries.

As it happens, however, Simolya has been at war for quite a while! Taxes have been high! Famine has come very very close to occurring multiple times, and disease is rampant! Vast quantities of rice appearing out of nowhere is not something that you can just ignore, and this general's authority has just failed to be manifested twice in a row and he's not an ace, so he can't fly and hurl boulders at people all by himself.

If the city is engaged in a six-sided civil war between mutineers, mobs of urban rioters, forces loyal to the swiftly-deceased commander attempting to restore order, the Royal Guard, airmen and ethnic and religious minorities sick of persecution who usually get lynched every time there's trouble in the big city and have been storing arms to defend themselves Just In Case, does Vanda Nosseo still leave?

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They switch in a more durable teleporter to hang out accepting desertions. They put up a sign, DESERTIONS/DEPARTURES TO VANDA NOSSËO ENABLED HERE.

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It's amazing, how much smaller the population of the city is the next day.

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Fancy that. The diplomats are still in the dungeons, except for the Elf, if anyone wants to talk to them about this.

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By "talk to" you mean "blame them for inciting a riot, castigating them as foreign saboteurs and infiltrators," right?

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Well, they can do that instead, if they like.

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Are they still immune to execution?

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Yup.

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Grump. Simolya will throw them back in prison.

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They sit there boredly.

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Simolya attempts to invade Ljudizem again put down bandits and traitors in its rebellious southwest provinces! This goes about as well as you'd expect it to.

The King suffers an unfortunate fall from his horse and his son, while certainly no liberal, is interested in being bribed a lot to let Vanda Nosseo's ambassadors out of prison and allow them to set up a shop.

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