480 BCE, Greece
I think..I may have bitten off more than I could chew...but I guess it's too late to regret this now.
Considering all of the drawbacks I took, I shouldn't really be surprise that I am immediately thrown into battle, of course due to suddenness of the situation, I died the first time, the second time was no better, I died with a spear to the gut but like they say, the third time's the charm so, after surviving for god knows how long; I fucking survive!
Thanks to the multiple stacks of perks, some of the drawbacks were thankfully mitigated, along with my martial skills, I manage to survive the battle long enough for the army to gain a pyrrhic victory.
After the combat, I manage to sort out my Origin memories, and fuck does it feel like the world is against me-well I did choose the drawback 'Escalation is the name of the game', which basically says "everything" will escalate one way or another so...yeah I'm fuck!
Firstly, I'm in Ancient Greece circa 480 BCE, joining the war against the Achaemenid Empire. I partook in the Battle of Thermopyle except that we, 500 Athenian soldiers were ordered by King Leonidas himself to withdraw from the war to reinforce the ongoing evacuation of the civilians in Athens.
The our coward commander back then, took it as a reason to run the fuck out of battle which was totally-not-cowardice-because-King-Leonidas-ordered-it.
Since I'm part of their army, it didn't really take long for shit to go down. Three days after we arrived in Athens, we've received news of Leonidas' downfall and of the Persian(Achaemenid) invading force heading towards Athens. The council then ordered us to delay the Persians to give more time for the evacuating people, basically they're saying that we should go sacrifice ourselves.
The commander died not long enough by an arrow to the back as the idiot, seeing the massive advancing army of a thousand men; tried to run away from battle. In some dumb luck though, we -five hundred men of Athens- survive the engagement long enough for the Persians to rout BUT! It only left us with two hundred or so capable men with multiple injured soldiers. The shittiest part was that, I was the next in line to lead them.
I was left staring at more than two hundred men expecting me to shit some miracle and lead them to victory, which to be honest perks or not is completely impossible to do so without Divine intervention.
We knew that, it was not the full bulk of the Persian army and more will follow soon. If we retreat now, the evacuation may be jeopardized and we, branded as cowards and I know for a fact, base on my pre-existing memories that this men would rather die than be branded with cowardice, especially; since one each of their families was part of the evacuation.
Welp! since I came here for experience, might as well employ some of what I have learned. It's not like, Death here means failure so I really have nothing to lose.
So I fought them then died, fought them again and then once again died but everytime I enter the battle I gain experience and knowledge of their tactics. I rinse and repeat, dying who knows how many time. Like a fuck up, Ground hogs day I mapped out every fucking moved they would make until I could suitably predict their every move.
A few more rounds of dying and I was confident enough that I could end this battle in one loop so back when it all started. I gathered the remaining men leading them to the forest five km away from the towers, serving as the Capital's buffer and planned on recreating, one of the most brutal tactics that cause so much PTSD for Americans.
I employed scouts to get an estimate of the incoming enemy lloking for deviations and got a brief respite of a week same as the last before the slowly advancing twenty thousand Persians arrived. So with that said, we booby trap the hell out of the forest. We also had help from the remaining civilians by scattering feces all over the forest to attract flies and hopefully spread diseases in the area.
I employed everything, I can remember from the History of the Vietnam war even to the point of using this era's superstition to engage in psychological warfare. Heck, I even hanged some of the enemy corpses and various areas of the forest.
I had my men disguised as various mythological creatures to scare and throw off the enemy. Even made use of stormy nights to make them think we have the gods on our sides.
It's not all grimderp though one time when we were having a supper, one crazy enough soldier suddenly pitch in an idea about about putting insulting words around the forest to which everyone replied with "Yeah, that's a good idea, we're going to die soon anyways so might as well do this as a last fuck you to them" -okay, it may have not been worded like that but still it's the essence that matters.
The next day, we raided Athens for writing materials and littered notes of insults all over the forest, as with my contribution, I wrote off; almost a hundred "Your momma" jokes in Ancient Greek edition and left them all to the forest.
Imagine a translator translating them towards their leaders, it would be fucking hilarious!
When the day finally arrived, I looked at my men, sporting bloody grins on their face despite their grim situation. In trying to light up their mood, I loudly quoted one of the most badass warcries in science fiction (or was it historical?)
"Come on men! Do you wanna live forever!" "Cue resounding roars of approval" before we each divided our selves into ten man groups.
The Persians confidently march into the forest, when suddenly howls and screams of agony echoed throughout them. One by one, they were being trap in horrible contraptions, some so horrible that it may as well have been designed by the monsters themselves. It was truly the start of a massacre some even routing because they saw monsters in the woods.
By my estimate, a few hundred men died just through the bobby traps alone. They tried sending multiple parties to try and mapped the area. They became easy pickings for my men, sniped by archers hidden up in the trees and stab by spearmen down bellow the ground, a few of the teams were task to do a hit in run tactics on the enemy, using hidden stations, scattered in the forrest to stage their attacks. I tasked a few teams to grab a hold of some of the dead bodies to be scattered in areas without traps to give that illusion that there was. while the rest were assigned to cut trees for phase three.
When sunset arrived, most of the bulk of the Persian enemy, had rout back to the entrance of the forest, reporting back to their superior of the horrible situation.
Overall we manage to kill around maybe a thousand men with five of my men dead and four injured, a fair trade but still an unfavorable one in our situation. We immediately proceeded to phase two after it became dark, In which, ten men including me are going to infiltrate the enemy at night, dress with the clothes of their dead and since the Persians was too afraid to enter the forest. It made our job easy, since they started camping outside.
Now, I said ten but in all honesty it was only me, whose going to infiltrate tonight. the other nine were already inside, using the confusion early on of routing soldiers to insert themselves in the army, their job? To assassinate any high ranking official they can.
Inserting inside the army was harder than I thought even with James Bond's memory but I made it through and unlike the others my job was different, I was to apply Ancients Greek's equivalent of laxative into any water or food that I can find.
I was mostly done when the whole camp was immediately alarmed, letting me know that one of my men have been caught, which also signal me to bail out. Fortunately enough, I manage to arrive safely back in the meeting point but only seeing two of my men informed me that our victory claimed its due.
The second day was probably the most miserable day yet, as disorganization plague the army due to the deaths of high ranking officials, while a lot of the soldiers was too tired to function due to the lack of enough sleep alongside their nonstop laxation. This complication alongside the still effective traps made it hell for the Persian army, killing off a lot of them, while injuring the a lot more.
Night came and they still wasn't anywhere close to entering the forest, they again opted from going in at night so it gave me and my men time to stock file their dead around to up the psy war even the wounded that was left behind were not spared.
Me and my men wounded them with various cut strategically put in places that will maximize agony but prevent them from truly dying before wrapping them with salt water soaked bandages to make them howl more in agony.
The third day, the persian seems to wisen up as they thread carefully through the forest using tactics that is usually associated with the Romans; turtling, basically soldiers with shields and longer spear would serve as pathfinder by poking the ground, while archers in the middle would watch out for the trees, it made it hard to attack them but you can see as much that the psy war was getting into them as even then their comrades still howl in agony, so they still did a lot of mistakes to which we capitalize in great efficiency.
By the end of the day, the Persians made progress but they were also losing numbers. The fourth day was no better for them, with stories of banshees, ghost and demons, the Persians were losing their minds. They haven't had a good sleep since the beginning of their campaign and it only made worst by their commanders pressuring them into attacking.
Only four days passed and they were down to an estimated Fifteen thousand men. It was a legendary achievement for us, Mythical even, as two hundred men basically halted the advance of Xerxes' Twenty thousand strong men and manage to reduce them to a size of fifteen thousand with a fourth of them being injured while the majority was demoralized due to the Psychological warfare. We literally have fifty or so Persians wailing everynight to demoralize them even more.
Finally the fifth day, the commander in charge seems to have lost his shit because Xerxes seems to be arriving with the entirety of the army, he then ordered a mass charge into the forest hoping to drown out the traps with bodies in which, kinda work albiet with a large casualty to them, to counter this mass charge, we proceeded to phase three.
Phase three involves fire, a lot of Greek fire and a lot of smoke. We completely abandon our usual tactic and instead started a controlled forest fire that'll consume a fourth of the forest's dimension, this will surely kill and if not rout the rest of the enemy, giving us time to escape.
I then ordered my men numbering only in one hundred nine, with half of them being injured one way or another to retreat back while leaving behind Jars with elements easily aggravated to create fire, our version of IEDs. I would have like to burn Athens as a scorched earth tactic but I am unsure my fellow men would allow it, I still don't know if this world had god's that may take offense so better safe than sorry.
******
"War makes even the lively, weary.."
I might be getting philosophical here but everything I said was true. Right after we caught up with the evacuees, the council was so impressed with us that he gave me the title of Athenian Strategoi/General and task me with reclaiming Athens.
It was the start of what they call Callimachus Polemarch Campaign, in honor of the polemarch who voted to fight against the Persians. It was a campaign to reclaim Athens.
The council choose nine more to serve as the Athenian Strategoi/General from the council. while I, as the first of the chosen, was at first given the reigns of the overall command of the campaign but knowing the difficulties and my short timetable, I decline and instead nominated Themistocles, which If I remembered correctly, was one of the renowned General in the Classical Greece during the Greco-Persian war though I do not know if History still mattered here as I think, I have butterflied everything from day one.
I instead requested an army to harassed the Persians and to keep them unbalanced till the Athenians were able to muster enough military strength to retake Athens in a frontal war, which was immediately approved by Themistocles because of the sound logic and his nomination by yours truly.
Gathering the best Naval Architect, We designed a ship capable of ferrying soldiers, from one shore to another in greater speed, while also taking account for naval warfare. It turned out to look almost like a trireme except with a few extra sails along side extra storage space for rations.
They made eight prototypes and were all given to me, to test its capabilities to the limit. This afforded me to have a fleet base soldiers of a thousand strong men with one ship capable of carrying up to a maximum of 200 men, that will have a portion of it be rotated back to provide trainers and experience way to new bloods.
I then started my campaign by attacking Persian outpost, supply routes and even smaller fortified fort, which not only increase my Infamy with the Persians but also Fame with the Greek-city states.
My fame even went as far as start a humor that I am a Favored son of Athena, which not only increase my fame even more but also help me in gathering support and create propagandas to incite rebellion in states under the Persian rule.
To prevent being trace back to the Athenians, we named ourselves Argive. Confusing Xerxes and his Generals enough to stun them in inaction since naming ourselves Argives would point that our origin was Argos, the useless Ally of Sparta and Athens. Who, after the war started, declared themselves Neutral even though Xerxes would not exempt them from his wrath though, If Xerxes did attack them, they'll have no choice but to fight back. A win-win situation for the Athenians.
The skirmish completely rage on until a year passed and I started to regret my action in picking those lot of drawbacks as all throughout the entire year. I died so many times than I can count that I am starting to get tired.
The drawbacks never did fail to remind me that they were there. Everytime we entered the battle, things go from mildly irritating to HOLY-FUCK-IS-THAT-A-FUCKING-8-FOOT-GIANTS! Yes, Xerxes somehow found a bunch of Goliaths in some backwater place, enough to form a whole regiment with them, Like what the fuck! Ahem...sorry about that..carry on.
I'm really thankful for getting the free perk that gave me the Enduring mind since I don't think, I would be able to survive anymore wars with odd always seems to be stacked against us. I know..I know...it was because I took the drawbacks...but still the veterans in my five hundred men, who weren't part of the rotation are so good at fighting with odd stack against them that it wasn't even funny anymore, they're all like mini Herakles now.
Speaking of Herakles, I kept hearing stories about a guy killing a Namean Lion, which sounded BS since if that was true then it would also give credence to the Greek gods being true which I am hard pressed to believe since I still haven't found traces of them or any supernatural. Xerxes' giants doesn't count since I have a hypothesis about them being Neadenthral, who survive now but didn't manage a few millennia into the future.
You know the tiring part about this though is the thought that this is still my first year and there's still nine more to go with maybe the same intensity if not much more.
Now it was the time of my end here and the area I'm currently at should be a good place to have a grand speech. Scattered around were bodies of the slain of which would be my last mission in this reality as Athens is now ready to face Persia and this being my last day.
He turned to his men, Disciplined as ever as even with just a look, they formed into formations. They strengthened their poise, straight as a pillar like a good foundation should, foundation of Athens future, they are Athenians, They are Hellenic, Wisen Veterans of a hundred wars, favored sons of Athena.
"Hear me men! Sons of Athena! Defenders! Warriors! Guides! I, Diomedes the cunning, Favored son of Athena; I stand to honor you! Followers of mine to the deepest hells of material realm, My mortal soldiers turned immortal, respected! Immortalized! Immortalized through me and I, through you! as you are my arms and legs in this realm, You, My favored brothers! Fellow sons of Athena! And just like I promise! For your trust, I bring glory! For your loyalty, I give you VICTORY!
And then my time in the world end.