[RS 2.1a Roman (Auxiliary) AAR] Serving Your Oppressor [COMPLETED]

[McScottish]

Authors Note: This is going to be a prose-based AAR with lots of writing and little to no pictures, please do not ask me to put pictures in...because I won't...but feel more than free to comment, ask questions, and so forth if you wish.

(Credit to the VRoma Project)


Prologue

What is it to be in the service of those who kill your kindred, who take your land and your freedom and to serve them as if they were your own chieftain? What manner of resentment, bitterness and thoughts of vengeance must we harbor towards them?

These things and more you, reader, will find out in this account of my life and my travels in the service of an empire of which I was no part. I write, yes I can write, in the language of those who took me away from my homeland and which I was forced to learn to progress in the ranks so that I may be understood by upper and lowers classes, younger and older citizens, and anyone else who may have the time and ability to pick up this volume and find it of interest.

Let me begin, therefore, by introducing myself in the only way I know how and that is in the manner of names.

My name is Marcus Laenas, named for the cloak I so commonly employ in times of heat and times when there is a lack of it, a cloak I was given in my younger years and never discarded. This, of course, is not my true name, my birth or given name, but is the name by which I am known. Names are an odd thing, I often thought, they can make things seem harmless or more terrifying and I was not greatly mistaken. Why, would anyone have feared the Persian Immortals if they had been named otherwise? Well, perhaps, they did exude a fearsome reputation but without the name it would not likely have been the same, do you not think?

Anyway, before I become diverted from my true purpose, and the purpose of these prose, I will continue on with the tale of my life and hope that you take from it what you can, learn from it and, in doing so, avoid mistakes that I made...beginning with one when I was only sixteen years of age.

- M. Laenus