AAR: Journals of Vladimir Bittersteel

Table of contents:

Part 01: Nadir
Part 02: Tides of War
Part 03: Fortune Favours the Bold


Part 01: Nadir


From the journals of Vladimir Vlanovich:

22 Jan 1258

Free at last! Marnid tells me I have only been imprisoned for about a week, but one loses track of time in the dungeons of Curaw. Of my companions only Marnid has managed to escape the destruction of my warband. He tells a harrowing tale of being pursued through the city alleys and being rescued at the last instant by an old friend. He has been laying low since the fall of Curaw, but linked up with me discreetly outside the city walls. With him was the local guild master, one Grigor of Sumbuja. Grigor is a timid man who steered clear of any political involvement, but he owed me a personal favour for rescuing his daughter from a dastardly band of kidnappers a while back.

As I was escorted out of the dungeons I did spot a number of my men languishing in the dungeons. There was nothing I could do for them, but I also noticed how undermanned the garrison was. This impression was confirmed to me by Grigor, who put the exact number at less than fifty men. Fifty men! If I could bring a warband before the walls of Curaw, I bet I could incite the Vaegir townsfolk to throw off the Nordic yoke. With my release they probably expect me to run back to my castle with my tail between my legs and cower there. What a surprise they will get! No doubt it would have been the 'honourable' thing to do, but as they say bastards have a certain base cunning.1

To their credit the Nords had left my possessions mostly unmolested. I had been ordered to leave Curaw immediately, but with Grigor’s discreet help I was able to bring a half-dozen hired blades under my employ. They were expensive, every one, but they were hardened professionals all, and well-equipped in the Swadian style.

I have some hundred and fifty men at my castle at Nelag, and another hundred garrisoning Ichamur, but I don’t want to have to draw too many men out – the war against the Khergits was over but I have no doubt the horselords will pounce at any sign of overt weakness. I will have to raise an army of fresh recruits from the countryside, and do so with great haste, before the Nords decide to fortify Curaw.

The Nords won’t know what hit them.

1 Historian’s note: It is not a fact often remembered today, but Vladimir Vlanovich was not born legitimate. Later records would claim that Vladimir was borne of his father’s affair with a noblewoman of Reyvadin, but it is more likely that his mother was one of the many tavern wenches or grocers’ daughters the Boyar Vlan bedded in his youth.


29 Jan 1258

As I scoured the countryside for recruits these past few days, it struck me again just how badly we were losing our war against the Nords. There were signs of devastation everywhere, the aftermath of casual destruction and deliberate pillaging both. At places like Slezkh there was barely a soul left in what was once the village.

Thankfully, after crossing the northern Curaw River and traveling further east the tendrils of war became less pervasive. Most villages still showed signs of having been looted – I rarely passed a hamlet of any note that did not have sooty marks on the walls of their hovels – but at least some semblance of ordinary life was present. Ironically, the pervasiveness of roving bands of sea raiders in this wilderness has kept the Nord jarls from looting the countryside in earnest. The sea raiders may hate us (and me especially, I think), but there was certainly no love lost between them and their cousins in the Kingdom of Nords. The raiders were perhaps almost as bad in terrorizing the peasants, but at least they were never organized enough to pose a serious threat to local Vaegir hegemony.

Without Borcha’s cunning pathfinding, dodging sea raiders and the occasional party of taiga bandits was doable but difficult, and I was glad when the walls of Khudan finally appeared over a hill crest. In Khudan I recruited another five professional hired blades from the tavern there, though I had no luck finding out the whereabouts the rest of my companions. In my heart of hearts I know they probably died on the walls of Curaw with so many of my men, but I had to try.

From Khudan I crossed the river to Tismirr, and made my way east along the southern bank of the Uslum River, recruiting as I went. At the headwaters of the Uslum I struck a southeastern route, eventually reaching my stronghold atop the Nelag Pass with around forty men – ten hired blades, thirty recruits, Marnid and myself. Despite the news of my prior defeat my marksmen volunteered enthusiastically for going on the march. I handpicked ten of them to come with me. Together with the hired blades they form the elite core around which my new warband will be built.

On my way back I was able to recruit an additional dozen youths from Shulus, bringing the number to perhaps sixty-five. Although I was fairly competent in training and drilling the recruits, I found myself missing Lezalit’s firm discipline and expertise in training techniques. During the march one of the peasants also died of a concussion from a snowfall that I’m certain Jeremus would have prevented.

Near Khudan I spotted a band of taiga bandits about fifty strong. After some consideration I ordered my men to intercept the bandits. From previous experience I knew that the taiga bandits were fond of bows and javelins, so I expected to lose maybe ten of my green troops, but it was a price I was prepared to pay. With my strict insistence on drills they would toughen up with the passage of time, but I had no time to lose. I needed to blood them fast in case I had to mount an assault on Curaw.

The battle went better than I’d dared hope. I had set up my marksmen on a low hill, with an infantry line screening them with the bulk of my recruits stiffened with the hired blades. The bandits, taken by surprise, charged my position. Apparently they realized who they were up against when they saw my marksmen pelting them with deadly arrows, for they broke instantly when I ordered my infantry to charge. The bandits, who had run uphill against my hail of arrows, were cut down by my well-rested men. Even those who had broke early did not escape as I rode ahead and ran those them down like animals. I did not lose a single man.

Truly, at times I think I was born to hunt bandits! Alas that my duty to liege and realm requires me to engage in the blood sport that is war.


[A/N: So I've been meaning to write a Warband AAR for some time, Warband is just such a perfect platform for roleplaying that it's like acting out an epic every time I play it. I got completely butchered at this particular point in my latest game, so I figured that this was a good place as any to start. I have no concrete plans past the first few 'chapters', hence the generic title. Hopefully this is sufficiently interesting regardless. Comments and criticism most appreciated!]

OK, this is so cool. Blackfish, I was hoping you would start an AAR. Very nice so far.

[Thanks, Lord Brutus! Appreciate it. ]




Part 02: Tides of War


From the journals of Vladimir Vlanovich:


3 Feb 1258

The tides of war are ever changing. Two weeks ago, a combined force of Nord jarls under King Ragnar wrested Curaw from the Vaegir Kingdom1, only to leave the city with a skeleton garrison while the jarls pillaged the Curaw Delta of its remaining wealth. It sours my spirit to admit, but in the interest of retaking Curaw under the noses of the Nords I left the peasants to their own devices even as I slipped past the Nord war parties.

It was late at night when I arrived back under the walls of Curaw. The Nord garrison of Curaw was, thankfully, still as small as it had been when I departed, and I ordered each of my men to light two torches to give the illusion of numbers. The garrison, probably taken aback by my sudden appearance, surrendered on the spot, on the condition that they be allowed to leave unmolested, keeping their flags and colours. I was only too happy to grant them safe passage, as I had serious doubts about my ability to take the city, despite my astonishingly bloodless victory over the taiga bandits. The look on their faces when dawn broke over my ragtag warband is one I will cherish to the end of my days.

In the dungeons I was able to free a large number of Vaegir troops, most of whom volunteered to join me in gratitude. My own men, however, were distressingly few, and among the paltry handful none of them knew what had happened to my companions. Marnid advised me to let it go, but it is advice I take with a grain of salt, as I overheard him grilling the horse merchant about Borcha.

I was informed that the Nords burned the men that fell in the siege, Nord or Vaegir, in a massive pyre the day after the city fell. It saddens me that my fallen ravens2 were not able to be buried in the Vaegir custom, but I took solace in the fact that the Nords gave them proper warriors’ rites as they would their own fallen.

I have sent word to King Yaroglek about the capture of Curaw, and requested immediate reinforcements. As a temporary measure I garrisoned the city with twenty-five archers and half again as many newly-levied footmen, and set out with eighty men – about twenty infantry, thirty archers, five cavalry and twenty-five raw recruits.

Now we shall begin the arduous task of retaking our hinterland from the Nords.

1 Surviving tracts of the Vladimir journals does not describe the ill-fated defense of Curaw in the winter of 1258 except in passing, but it is vividly dramatised by the poet Nizar in his wildly popular ‘Vladimir Romance’, as well as by contemporary enginer Artimenner, who covered it with some detail in his ‘On the construction and defense of walled fortifications and various engineering principles regarding masonry’ (better known to modern readers as ‘On Walled Fortifications’). At any rate the facts of the siege are well-known, from the tragic Charge of the Boyars and the last minute arrival of Vladimir’s Bloodravens to the berserker endurance of the royal huscarls who eventually wrested the city wall from the Bloodravens. This historian will not burden the reader with them here.

2 In his journals Vladimir often refers to his famous marksmen as ‘ravens’, alluding to the name of the mercenary company he formed and led before being anointed as a boyar by Yaroglek II. Though all his men wore a red raven on their breast Vladimir appears to have reserved this term of endearment exclusively for his archers.


6 Feb 1258

Today I encountered the Swadian Count Despin’s war party near Sumbuja. He was ill-prepared, and his militia and footmen wilted under the rain of arrows from my archers, though the mounted men-at-arms punched through my infantry line and slew some five or six archers before they were cut down. He surrendered to me when I shot his horse from under him, but I let him go on account of our friendship. I can only hope he will do the same for me, if the time comes that our positions are reversed.

Count Despin’s party was not the first Swadian war party I had encountered, though it is the only one I have decisively defeated recently. Depsite the shattering of their armies a stone’s throw from Tilbaut Castle and losing the entire Dhirim Plateau to us the previous year, the Swadians have benefited greatly from the Nord-Vaegir war, allowing Harlaus to recover from his defeat and piggyback on the Nords’ massive success. From what I hear, King Yaroglek is eager to pursue a peace, but Harlaus hopes to take advantage of the Vaegir Kingdom’s weakness to reverse some of Swadia’s losses of the previous year. Or, judging by his inactivity, merely dragging the war out in hopes of a more favourable peace settlement.

Either way, the time will come in the near future when the Kingdom of Vaegirs is ascendant again, and Harlaus will rue the day he decided to bait the bear.


8 Feb 1258

My faith in King Yaroglek has been deeply shaken. When I arrived in Reyvadin, my heart was initially buoyed to see a vast host girding for war. A different picture quickly emerged when I approached the king in the Great Hall of Reyvadin. Although he commended me on my audacious capture of Curaw, he declined to march on Curaw to free the delta from the Nord infestation. The vast host I had seen camped around Reyvadin was, in fact, marching south for the Nord-held Dhirim Plateau. He claimed to want to strike at the Nords where they were weakest, but I saw a different reason in his eyes.

The king is afraid.

He is not the imposing man I grew up revering. The king has a host equal in size to that of the combined war parties of the Nords, but he is afraid of the Nords. More to the point, he is afraid of another major defeat against the Nords, which he cannot afford. Already a few of the boyars are muttering the name of Valdym the Bastard in the shadows of the Great Hall. The king hears the whispers, and fears that he will lose his kingdom if he leads his army to another major defeat. So he leads his host to easy victories in foreign Dhirim, while the Vaegir heartland is stripped bare by the Nords.

The boyars are no better. Most of the Curaw Delta boyars that survived the suicidal charge of the boyars are broken men, resigned to reversing their fortunes elsewhere, away from their ancestral fiefs. It disheartens me to find out that my father the Boyar Vlan is among that number, though at least my legitimate half-brother Boyar Kumipa is full of fire as ever. The boyars of the Reyva Plains, on the other hand, secretly rejoice at the downfall of their rivals. Though the war has affected the prosperity of the entire kingdom, the war has left the Reyva hinterland comparatively untorched, and therefore proportionally more influential. They have no problem adventuring in the Dhirim Plateau, waxing in wealth and influence while that of the Curaw Delta boyars ebb away. The boyars of the Rock3, meanwhile, are largely absent.

It is while sounding out the various boyars that I receive the news that Curaw is under siege once more. My half-brother Boyar Kumipa offers to join me in defending Curaw, but I counsel caution. Curaw is lost, and we will do the realm more good as able-bodied field commanders than as prisoners in a dungeon awaiting ransom.

I do not share my concern with even my half-brother, but I fear for the realm.

3 Rock of Rivacheg

Very well written

Good job dude!

[Glad you like it, Bernard and killer110. ]

Part 03: Fortune Favours the Bold


From the journals of Vladimir Vlanovich:

11 Feb 1258

Even as a page and then a squire in service to King Yaroglek in Reyvadin, I favoured archery instinctively, while most of my peers preferred the more traditionally knightly lance, shield and morningstar. I think my preference first arose as childish defiance of a society that looked down on natural children. To a child in early adolescence, adopting the bow, with all its unchivalric associations, must have seemed like a jolly good way to spit the ‘real’ nobility in the eye. Whatever the reason, I displayed a natural flair for archery that escaped most of my contemporaries, and soon became very good at it.

Thus when my mother passed and the time came to strike out on my own, it seemed a matter of course for me to join, and then start, a company of archers. It was hard, and I had a number of false starts and close shaves, but eventually I began to make a name for myself as the bane of sea raiders and taiga bandits everywhere from Wercheg to Khudan.

But archers, even my ravens, are not versatile. This was something I had noticed as far back as my campaigns against the Khergit tribes of the Tulbuk Plateau. Archery could be uniquely devastating against bandits on foot, or defending a wall1, but I took heavy casualties whenever Khergit heavy cavalry outflanked my battle line or simply plowed through my shield wall and into the ranks of my archers. I faced a similar problem fighting against the Swadians and Rhodoks during the conquest of Dhirim. My ravens were unparalleled archers, but against other more heavily protected bowmen such as the crossbows of the Rhodok Kingdom, I took disproportionate casualties unless I could claim the high ground.

I had thus far organized my warband around my ravens, with Nord and Vaegir infantry screening them from close combat. Out of necessity, I added a cavalry wing consisting of Vaegirs and allied Khergits for my second Ichamur campaign in the autumn of the previous year, where I was usually the sole cavalryman in the warband. The cavalry proved their worth considerably in that campaign, breaking the combined strength of the Ichamur noyans near Dirigh Aban. I hold a particular affection for the bow, but I have to admit that cavalry is infinitely more versatile.

I have thought of employing horse archery tactics as I have seen in my Tulbuk and Ichamur campaigns, but the only horse archers of note in Calradia appear to be the Khergits, whose loyalties are fickle and can be turned with a single catastrophic defeat, which is when I can afford such treachery the least. This is not to say, of course, that all Khergits are stamped from such a mold – my companion Baheshtur was as loyal and fierce a warrior as any I have seen – but I am wary of relying too much on Khergits.2

I have been studying the lengthy military treatise known collectively as ‘De Re Militari’ in the weeks since my release, and a solution, I believe, has presented itself. Near the end of the chapter detailing Swadian cavalry tactics there is an anecdote detailing the career of one Brynden Sunspear, a Swadian sellsword captain who led a mercenary company called the ‘Winged Men’ that consisted entirely of heavy cavalry in the Sarranid style. His company met with great success against numerically superior forces, but his impetuousness led him unwisely into a ravine, where the horsemen were ambushed by Rhodoks and wiped out to a man.3

It was an abrupt and inauspicious end, but that was the fault of Sunspear’s hotheadedness rather than an indictment of the viability of such a doctrine. I have already seen the damage and disruption even a handful of horsemen clad in plate and mail can inflict. Although the Swadians and Sarranids are renowned for their heavy cavalry, we Vaegirs have a tradition of horsemanship that is at least as pedigreed as theirs. What if I tried to emulate this Brynden Sunspear? I am a cautious man – no commander of archer warbands can be otherwise – but it seems that I must take this gamble. I hesitate to admit this as it would seem tantamount to a defeat in itself, but I cannot hope to fight the numerically superior Nords with my ravens without every battle turning into a bloodbath.

1 Artimenner recounts one particular episode where Vladimir stationed his Bloodravens all along a curtain wall at Ichamur and shot a numerically superior host of besieging Khergit to pieces before the siege tower even reached the walls.

2 Here Vladimir reveals a prejudice against Khergits that would stay with him for the rest of his life. There has long been much scholarly speculation as to what could have caused Vladimir’s lifelong contempt of Khergits, but no definitive answer, as Vladimir was otherwise remarkably cosmopolitan by the standards of the nobility of the era.

3 There is no extant record of this Brynden Sunspear outside this one mention in Vladimir’s journal, as only disjointed fragments of De Re Militari survive today.


13 Feb 1258

Yesterday I encountered a band of Nord deserters along the lower Curaw, near the village of Ismirala. They had left their posts at the nearby castle for a life of banditry, ever a profitable profession in times of war.

Despite this, I might have made common cause with them, as the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but for an incident that revealed their rank villainy. I was riding into Ismirala to attend to some personal business, when a handful of them ambushed me on the outskirts of the village, probably thinking to overwhelm and ransom me back to the Vaegirs for a fat purse. I was dismounted, but even so once the element of surprise was gone I made short work of the fools, and when the last one turned to run I put an arrow in his back.

I borrowed a mule from the villagers and made haste back to camp, where I rallied my men and led a charge on the deserter camp. Caught off-guard, the deserters failed to close ranks before my horsemen crashed into them. To their credit not all of them turned to run, but enough did to doom the rest. Those that remained fought with the bitter resistance of the doomed, but were quickly overwhelmed.

Marnid brought an interesting rumour to my attention earlier today. One of the surviving deserters recalled a prisoner captured after the siege of Curaw who managed to steal a horse not once but twice, though the swaybacked sumpters he stole were no match for the prized hunters captured in Curaw. Since the siege, Marnid has taken to questioning every prisoner and passing traveler for news of Borcha. Truth be told, I have given my companions up for dead, but I could not fault the merchant for trying.

Questioning the villagers confirmed that there were indeed a number of prisoners from the siege of Curaw holed up in the dungeons of Ismirala Castle, including a noble boyar. I cannot hope to take the castle by storm. It is too well-garrisoned for that. Instead I have ordered the villagers to start a large fire in the Ismirala forest at midnight. With the distraction I am going to sneak into the castle and see about freeing the prisoners.

May the heavens protect us.


14 Feb 1258

Fortune favours the bold! I had to sneak into Ismirala Castle under the guise of a pilgrim traveler, but once I got past the drawbridge the plan unfolded without a hitch. I had to knock out the prison guard to get the keys to the dungeon, but the courtyard was otherwise blessedly empty, the garrison being either asleep or off to extinguish a fire that had conveniently started up at the stroke of midnight.

Inside the dungeon I found not only Borcha but Nizar, Rolf and Lezalit4 as well! They were blessedly not worse for wear except for looking thinner and more haggard. They tell a miserable tale of being dragged along the Nord host, witnessing firsthand the wake of the havoc the Nords wrecked upon the Curaw.5

The identity of the mysterious boyar surprised me as well. It was Boyar Gastya! As a squire, he was one of the reasons my life as a page in Reyvadin had been exceedingly miserable. Hearing him fall all over himself in gratitude was extremely gratifying. I suspect I have made myself a firm ally, though only time will tell if his goodwill was temporary.

4  Interestingly, in her ‘Lives of the Companions’, Lady Ymira identifies his place of birth as Ismirala, though this view has fallen out of favour among historians, since ‘Lezalit’ is a distinctly Geroian name, common among Geroian nobility of the thirteenth century. See ‘The Geroian Diaspora in Calradia’ by Herennius the Younger.

5 Contemporary historian and polymath Jeremus records the testimony of a captured member of Vladimir’s warband (traditionally assumed to be Rolf) that recounts in heart-wrenching detail the depredations of the Nords in his ‘Historia Populae’.

I'm glad your still working on this, I was afraid that due to the limited attention it had received thus far that you would give up on it.

I'm looking forward to the next chapter

Carry on, Vladimir, with renewed vigor!

Nice writing skills. You should apply to be a writer for Lueii's mod.

Exellent! I love the way this is written, with the sort of history book feeling. As immersive as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I'll be reading often.

Thanks for the kind words, all. Was a nice surprise to see that this is still being read, by two people at least. I haven't actually touched this in a while, but someday I'll get to concluding this properly.

Until then you shall be known throughout Calradia as Monnikje Jr.