Post by StaolDerg on May 29, 2024 2:10:57 GMT -5
General Zhang Feng Lai
"The fuel and kindling were laid a long time ago, and they swim in a basin of oil ever since. Even if I die- let me be the spark."
Considered a troublemaker by his family, he was sent to live with a local inselni elder, Sen Ye Yuan Tai, after a particularly rowdy incident at 13. The elder was a veteran of the late collapse of the Sanshan Empire, and among the last officers who was a senior alumni of the late Sanshan War Schools. Though Zhang’s family had only asked the elder to raise him with a touch more discipline, the elder was becoming old and wanted a student to pass on the legacy of the Empire before he passed on.
As a result, Sen Ye was not particularly conventional with raising and educating Zhang, and instead drilled him like a traditional officer cadet of the War Schools, responding to deviation and mistakes with “practical correction:” Breaking a bowl meant making ten new bowls that were the same quality, if not better, than the original, and being sloppy with drill meant continuing to march for hours on end until he was absolutely perfect with each step.
While he trained and drilled, the old inselni would lecture him on war theory and draw scenarios in the dirt, then force Zhang to solve them no matter how tired he was. They could be anything from entirely simple and easy skirmishes with encounters in his favor to long, drawn-out campaigns with unfair odds. If a single mistake was made, the elder would very pointedly illustrate just how badly things would go, then make him do the whole thing over again over a series of days.
The only times Zhang did not encounter such brutal trials was during meals and leisure time, where the elder would recount the glory days of the Empire and lament what he considered to be spineless and cowardly behavior by the remnants of Sanshan civilization. Though at the time Lai Zhang did not think much of the old inselni’s stories, he was made to write all of it down, along with the military theories that he had been taught, recorded into a large number of notebooks for studying.
Despite the harsh studying and training, Zhang came to respect the old inselni as a second father, and declined the opportunity to return to his home village, instead choosing to stay at Sen Ye’s homestead to continue learning. During this time he became increasingly close to the elder, absorbing his views and modeling himself after the proud and excellent officers of the Sanshan, much to the elder’s approval. The roles switched– now the Elder was the one being interrogated by the young man he considered more a surrogate son than student on the glories of the past, and Zhang’s notes and understanding of Sanshan war strategy expanded from battlefield tactics and personal regiment to lessons on theater and conflict-scale logistics, economics, social engineering, and even politics.
Unfortunately, Sen Ye’s physical state began to seriously deteriorate until he was bedridden in 1914, where he spent his last few years desperately recounting all the doctrine he could recall to Zhang over a period of three years, before finally becoming too weak to communicate effectively and passed away on the Ninth of Mynti, 1918. Of the four thousand, seven hundred and twenty-nine chapters in the Schools of War curriculum, Zhang had learned one and a half thousand of the chapters, six hundred in gross detail, with a further three hundred saved in notes.
Zhang found that his mentor had left him the whole homestead, but with his mentor gone, Zhang instead passed running the homestead to the rest of his community and joined the UST army. He would quickly find that Sen Ye’s teachings had been more thorough and effective than the boot camp he went through, and was granted candidacy for officer training at the UST’s primary officer school of Osena Lake.
He would emerge from Osena Lake with the rank of lieutenant, and was immediately assigned to a platoon of Bianjingren conscripts. Taking after his mentor, Zhang was immediately assertive of his role, but maintained dignity as a traditional Sanshan officer: he refused to attend officer functions with other officers who disrespected his men, ensured that supplies were always in a healthy supply at all times, and slept with his men in the same barracks. Though his troops were under strict command at all times, with time they became the most well-disciplined and trained platoon in the unit, even despite poor equipment.
The first action he would see would be in the UST-Kithium war, where his platoon was part of the 78th Southeastern Division’s Eighth Rifle Battalion, a unit that was majority Bian. While he would perform admirably in action, receiving a promotion to Captain and then to Lieutenant Colonel, he also witnessed the brutality and corruption of the UST’s forces and clashed often with his superiors from the treatment of prisoners to disagreements over tactical decisions.
The final straw came in an incident where soldiers under his command apprehended a number of UST soldiers looting a village under the pretense of searching for contraband. Furious that their commanding officer would not punish them for what Zhang viewed as dishonorable conduct, he had the offenders rounded up and forced to repair the property damage they had caused at gunpoint as well as return the stolen goods.
With this extrajudicial move, Zhang was nearly demoted to private, but a superior instead suggested that his unit be reassigned to the frontlines to participate in a hastily organized offensive as the first advancing unit. If his unit survived and performed admirably, he was promised that he would keep his rank, but failure would mean court-martial.
In the battle, UST forces would be defeated decisively and routed from the battlefield. Zhang’s unit wound up trapped behind enemy lines, but he managed to conduct a safe and orderly withdrawal back to friendly lines, where he was blamed for the failure of the offensive. In his trial, he would be sentenced to a garrison post in Pozhal as the newly-appointed commander of the local garrison.
The war had a profound impact on Zhang’s beliefs on politics, and as he came back into contact with his community, he came to despise both the established feuds between different communities and the stripping of privileges from the Bian people by the province’s governor. Nevertheless he continued his duty as military governor, though he would also ingratiate himself with his charged garrison and community when he mediated on behalf of the city, such as when the province’s governor raised taxes and ordered him to seize grain as payment.
In the course of his duties, he came into contact with members of anti-UST organizations like the revanchist Blacksmith Society and became sympathetic to groups who desired the return of the Imperial System under the Sanshan Empire. In politics, he only became more dissatisfied with the establishment with the observance of ethnic conflicts that had been largely absent in the Sanshan’s rule, and became convinced that the only way to restore peace to central Touli was to bring back the Sanshan Empire’s system of management.
With the eruption of the Tafatu rebellion, Zhang’s opportunity arrived to officially secede from the UST. With several months to prepare, he mobilized similarly dissatisfied and angry citizens and drilled them into what he considered a barely-passable fighting force. Defensive plans for the city were drawn up, as well as agents dispatched to surrounding communities to sound the general mobilization and agitate the Bian population into revolt once more.