Quinta Macedonica Legio - completed and retitled in honour.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

I am a ghost in the internet!

[Diocle]

Yes, yes o.c.! Master!

[Ybbon]

Well you can get a wedge formation RS2.5, but not as far as as I know, the fulcrum, the shield wall is part of the BI AI.

Magical, your prose simply transports us to that sandy hell.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Thanks, ybbon66 - tricky thing to write a night battle from a first-person POV! Especially one set in the hades that is the Nefud!

[Diocle]

Thanks, ybbon66 - tricky thing to write a night battle from a first-person POV! Especially one set in the hades that is the Nefud!

And using, with great reading pleasure for me, some very interesting Roman Formations like Fulcum and Caput Porcinum! ....You are a great history writer SBH!

Now, I fear for the other attack columns (sorry, the Napoleonic definition could be unappropriate, but in the end, even the Fulcum might be considered like a form of protected attack column!), where are the men of the V? Where is the Dux? Why he did not reached the centre of the camp of the Saraceni, and where is the group who should attack from the opposite side?......And He? Where is The Great Man?........Belive me Clarissimus, it is hard to wait!....

[Ybbon]

You're sounding like me, asking these questions I've taught you well...

[Diocle]

Yes thanks Master Ybbon! You are too generous with me....I'm only an humble disciple! .....

About Fulcum in RSII: IMHO the Fulcum might be used instead of the Testudo, the problem is the new animation, I thought that using the animation of the testudo it would be possible only to stop the animation after the first line has the shields lined the second has the shields raised, and now the animation should be stopped, the rear ranks remain as they are without doing nothing = Fulcum!
But the main problem is to find someone who knows how to change the animations of RTW!....and it is not an easy task!.....

[Ybbon]

I think the person who did the other formations was athenogoras, I can check, but I'm no modder so no idea how or indeed if it can be done.

[Diocle]

It would be one of the greatest thing in the History of RTW!...If Ybbon could explore the terrain..it would be magnificent! It could be like an optional sub-Mod, for those, like me, who do not use the Testudo (too slow and unable to fight)....what a dream!

My hope is that if the animator can only stop the movement of the first lines at the right moment...the solution might be easier, because he has not to build a real new animation from scratch.

The Fulcum could be more useful than the Testudo, because 1) It can move faster (Attack column). 2) Fulcum has firepower! In the Fulcum the rear ranks, after the firsts two or three lines, can fire they pila over the heads of the first lines. 3) Fulcum can fight like the shieldwall!

.....It could be the Secret Weapon for the Romans! It would be very useful to advance into contact with enemies like Parthians or Horse Archers' Nations without taking too much casualties! Finally the Romans could be able to counter attack the annyng Nomads!.....But it is only an old dream........because I think it is very difficult changing the animations like the Testudo in RTW....

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

And using, with great reading pleasure for me, some very interesting Roman Formations like Fulcum and Caput Porcinum! ....You are a great history writer SBH!

Now, I fear for the other attack columns (sorry, the Napoleonic definition could be unappropriate, but in the end, even the Fulcum might be considered like a form of protected attack column!), where are the men of the V? Where is the Dux? Why he did not reached the centre of the camp of the Saraceni, and where is the group who should attack from the opposite side?......And He? Where is The Great Man?........Belive me Clarissimus, it is hard to wait!....

Read on!

In The Folds Of The Night, Darker Shades Wait . . .

The boar’s head - a tight armoured and shielded knot of men pushing forwards into the enemy - a locked fist of overlapping shields, moving aggressively, never pausing, never halting. A punch of men hunkered down and focused on one thing: to hit anything in front and move over it until ordered to halt . . .

I pushed into the head of that little knot of seven men - the contuburnium of Marcellus, six remaining legionaries, and that rat-faced numeri, shoved into the centre like a precious wine-skin - and in an instant, I was locked in behind the oval shields. We squeezed in around each other and I felt the stifling wall of the acanthus flowers envelope me - darkness folded in upon darkness only now I was covered also in the dank sweat and smell of tired and bloodied men. Hot breath fell on me. I heard a low voice whispering over and over deus nobiscum in that harsh Illyrian accent these Danubian lads had. For one moment, I glanced down at the red sand of the Nefud and saw that it was slowly creeping up over my boots. In my right hand, I gripped the spatha even tighter. Through a chink in the overlapping rims, I saw Octavio gesture, once, in a savage chopping motion - and then turn to nod to me -

Although I could not see it, I knew that in a single moment of surprise and action, one small section of the fulcum peeled inwards, the legionaries stepping smartly backwards, so that a small gap opened, no more than two men wide - and then we were pushing forwards, our breaths tight and our feet shuffling through the sand in small controlled steps. In a heartbeat, I felt the world about us change. Gone was the short latin commands and expletives, the disciplined thrusts and blocks, the uniformity of armour and helmets - and we fell like some obscene swollen insect into a hostile world of confused shouts and chaotic blows. We pushed hard and forwards out of the men of the Second Maniple, all arrayed in that high circle about the draco, and into a hot place where men screamed and died, where bodies fell under foot in a soft pulped carpet, where dull blades clanged off our shields punctuated by oaths and curses. In a moment, we banged into the Saraceni all thronged about the fulcum and such was our surprise and aggression that we were a dozen paces free from that fulcum before these nomads rallied and fell on us with renewed anger . . .

That mound only lay some fifty paces from the dragon of the Second but it was fifty paces filled with a swirl of maddened warriors, all punctuated with riders, who rose above us, thrusting and probing with their long lances. Axes and swords hacked at the overlapping shields. Bruised hands tore at the rims. Bodies fell onto us hoping by their sheer weight to break us open. At the head, I hunkered down behind my shield and felt it shiver again and again. My arm was getting numb from the exertion of holding that shield forwards in the face of those blows. Behind me, in that tight dark cell of the boar’s head, men grunted and swore in short tight breaths. It felt as if the night, the world itself, and all the horrors in it were falling on us alone. Such a weight of doom seemed to press down on us that we laboured more than Hercules himself had ever done. Beneath our feet, blood, the dying, the fragments of battle - all were trampled down into that endless and awful red sand. That mound lay fifty paces away and each pace we covered was a labour unto itself.

Every third or fourth step I shouted out ‘forwards!’ through gritted teeth. Momentum was everything in the boar’s head. Always moving. Always punching through a disorganised enemy. And step by step we closed in on that low mound, muffled in darkness and sweat, our oaths low and hoarse. Again and again, I thrust my spatha out into that wall of flesh which seemed to net us all. I felt men grunt in agony and surprise. I saw a continuous stream of blood runnel my blade. I saw face after face fall back in agony - and still we pushed on, our feet shuffling forwards, our breaths hard and short. I heard a shield crack ominously behind me. A legionary spat out a dark curse and I heard pain in those words. Marcellus, next to me and on my right side, had a frozen grin plastered to his face. We forged on, remorseless, implacable.

Above and beyond that tiny dark place we all toiled in, I heard a sudden shift in the tenor of the battle falling on us. Angry shouts were being replaced with the cold harsh commands of Persian. A gleam and flash of mail followed by the thud of quick hooves told me that armoured cavalry were pulling up about us. A hard merciless thrust from above caught my shield rim. Hot pain flared up my arm. Behind me, a yelp of anger told me that one such contus point had caught flesh. The blows falling on us were coming from above now and were heralded by the scuff and tattoo of hooves all about us -

- and in that moment, my feet slid upwards on that sand, and I knew we had reached the edge of that low mound. It was now or never. I broke that boar’s head, thrusting my oval scutum up into the arching lance-point of a Persian rider, even as I shouted out ‘Break, break, for the mound!’

In an instant, we dissolved into a flurry of legionaries breaking into a run for the summit. Shields bashed out, swords struck, men thrust aside the startled horses of the Persians - and then we were free and all running like a mob up that slope, the little dirty figure of Delos bundled deep in us. We ran and stumbled through that sand, battering aside those Saraceni too stupefied to step back, stabbing hard into the flanks of the horseflesh which blocked us, pushing from the saddle the armoured riders reeling back - and by all the gods, we breached their encirclement of us and made that summit drunk on our little victory -

Three of the Danubian lads fell back wounded and stumbling. One tripped over a corpse and was impaled on a contus before he could rise. The remaining two were too slow and realised it, turning together to halt the flood that was pouring after us. They turned and raised their shields, spathas out, even as a horde of yelling Saraceni poured over them and dragged them down into a welter of blood and hacked limbs.

And then, in a moment of almost divine sanction, we stood on that mound, myself, Marcellus, his two remaining contubernales, and that copper-faced numeri. We stood there, fanned out in a loose circle with Delos in the middle, and it seemed to my mind as if the grace of the gods themselves revolved around us - for in that moment, as we arrived and stood to face our enemy, as we all turned out, spacing around that low summit, with that crossbowman centring us all, nothing moved and nothing stirred. Below us on all sides, ranged the Saraceni and their Sassanid masters, battered, bloody, panting, and all staring up at us. It was as if we stood on a little island above a sea of anger and fury and for one endless moment that sea hesitated in awe perhaps of our hubris and valour. That sea held trembling and we alone stood above it, our swords notched, our armour rent, our shield splashed, baptised even, in the blood of the enemy. And in that moment of suspension in which even breath itself seemed to halt, I saw the exhausted faces of the Romans about me, their last dregs of life fading, the stubbornness of them, and that dark metallic face of the arcuballistarius now all hollow and pale - and I whispered that word I had been holding back, that word I had been aching to speak, since I had first seen that flash of pearl in the flaming night -

‘Now!’

I saw Delos shoulder that tiny wooden toy of his, pulling it up tight into his shoulder, swivelling his hips in one smart move, pulling his head down along the angle of the crossbow so that his eye merged with it, and then that slight flick of his finger - and in a flash a dark bolt sped out from him, gone almost in a blink of an eye -

And I turned even as that sea roared and crashed up towards us, the spell broken, the sanction dissolved, the gods spinning away into whatever night beckoned them, I turned into that roaring mass now surging forwards up into us, the few of us who stood around that little summit, hate and anger consuming all their faces -

- and what I saw caused me to drop my spatha, to lower my shield, to fall to my knees . . .

A single voice - Marcellus, I think - breathed soft words so close it was as if he stood beside me though I knew he was apart from me, and those soft words carried me gently down into that red sand, cushioning me, holding me, even as the sword fell from my grasp and the shield tumbled away down that slope . . .

‘The stars, the stars are falling, Venus is summoning Her hosts to us . . .’

And above us all it seemed as if the stars were shaking themselves free from the night and falling like coruscating diamonds down upon this host before us. The stars fell from the blackness one by one in slow burning arcs and above them all stood Venus alone. She glimmered a solitary empress above us all even as Her endless retinue, Her sacred comitatus, fell from Her, each one carving a fiery path down to us.

‘The stars are falling . . .’

And I saw as if it was an inconsequential thing, a shadowed rider jerk backwards in alarm, to gaze up in horror and superstition, the light of the falling stars causing those pearls to flare up in brilliance, even as that black dart took him in the shoulder and lifted him clean from the saddle, jerking him about while on his face remained a look of such fear that even the pain of that hit did not register - and he span and fell while all around him fell such a panoply of stars that it seemed as if the heavens themselves crashed down upon them all . . .

. . . It was our stand around the dragon of the Second which had turned the tide. My order to hold that ground about the body of our Tribune had brought all the Saraceni about and onto us, as I knew it would, and in that moment of attack, all the other scattered Romans, the legionaries, the numeri, the Clibanarii, lost and struggling apart but forging on, had found a moment of relief. It was the gamble I had played. By making a stand alone in the centre of the Saraceni camp, in its heart, I had allowed these barbarians to find a moment of focus. It had allowed them to drive towards us in anger and hatred, ignoring all those other lost units. They had sought us out as the focal point of their battle. No longer were they chasing after ghosts and shades in the night. Now they had a target and they had made for it without let. And by making a stand, by dragging all these Saraceni and Persians onto us, we had allowed the rest of the Quinta, those exhausted irregulars under Aemilianus, and finally the cavalry under Cassianus, now bogged down in the endless sand and falling one by one, to rally and unite and turn after those Saraceni.

As we had dragged them onto us, so too had we given all the surviving Romans a target to make for. And they had come, maniple after maniple, ala after ala, struggling in the wake of the Saraceni, binding themselves back unto each other, standard joining standard, Ducenarii calling out to Ducenarii, until, hidden in the folds of the night, they had all re-emerged as whole. As we struggled and died about Angelus unseen, the Romans had re-formed to the sound of our dying and readied a final charge . . .

And to alert us that they were coming to rescue us, Cassianus had ordered a hundred fire-arrows to be launched into the night sky . . .

And the stars had fallen to save us even as that single bolt had plucked the Kalb from his horse and tumbled him into the sand of the Nefud, alone and forgotten, the stars had fallen even as the Saraceni trembled in fear from that glittering canopy, as the Romans charged, all marshalled in long lines and hard-edged angles, shouting out that eternal battle-cry, that latin word that is everything and nothing, that one word which saves and damns all who hear it . . .

And it was Delos who spoke first as we stood in awe of what we were seeing, the stars cascading down onto the startled faces below, the shout of my legion overpowering their awe, the first screams of panic and fear riding up high, he spoke first of us all who were left on that low mound, and what he said made me smile.

‘Four bolts left. Not bad if I do say so myself . . .’

He said afterwards that I hugged him and laughed like a madman but I remember no such thing and that I will swear to on to my dying breath.

[McScottish]

Was gonna use the boars-head in my own AAR, but after this masterpiece, I don't think I will.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Do it! I, for one, would enjoy reading about it. Besides, we have different writing styles and characters so your boar's head won't collide with mine . . . oops, that was a bit clumsy!

[Ybbon]

Mr Spielberg sir... I think I may have your next blockbuster. Epic story telling, the way the tale dragged you in to the centre of that boars head so that we forget everything except the maelstrom surrounding those few men.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

ybbon66 - don't you know yet? I AM MR SPIELBERG . . . (nooooo!!!)

[Ybbon]

oh well in that case can I have a few million for a "project" and get George Lucas to stop it with the Star Wars crap already.

[Diocle]

DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI


What I read is pure Glory!!!
It is Honour, sense of duty, it is Roma as the city was in the times of Furius Cammillus and Horatius Cocles, I saw all the Glory and Honour that had been Roma concentrated on those few men, incredible page!!

Ybbon is right I want a movie!
but I want Ridley Scott! He is the only one able to build a movie on this magnificent Story!!!!
......Again Giga-rep!!!

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Thank you again, Diocle - you almost embarass me with the riches of your praise (almost!) . . . I wonder if Edward Zwick also might be approached - 'Glory' and 'The Last Samurai' were great movies.

As a teaser for what is coming, I give you this picture which is on my desktop at the moment:

[Diocle]

It is a wonderful landscape Clarissimus but a little (only a little) worrying about the future...I see some ancient ruin, and high mountains and it seem an Ancient battlefield full of mistery and death!....Sorry for the unholy comparison, but it remind me some..cursed battlefield of WarHammer 40.0000...it is Epic!

I want to post an Italian Germanic/Barbarian interpretation of the Fulcum, they are Langobard reenactors from Italy, it could be interesting:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Like it - very atmospheric!

Hmmm, is there a Nowhere Legion in Warhammer 40,0000? A Quinta of the future?!

[Diocle]

Yes o.c!.........something very similar, but please Clarissimus, WH40k is a land for crazy and damned people, maintain your holy mind pure!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: