Thursday 5 October 2023

Hex Crawl 23 #263: Punishment Fortress of the Fifth Maniple

Three hexes northwest, ten north of Alakran.

  

Another of the manipular legions of the Wahatti Army is stationed nearby, but this small brick oblong with only one watchtower is not its main fortress. This place is known only as Siptu, "Punishment," and holds five spearmen and five archers detached from the main garrison, along with a sergeant (fighter-3), the fearful ox-strong taskmaster Berabaku (barbarian-5), and four savage war dogs who obey only Berabaku. 

The twenty-odd prisoners are a mixture of disciplinary cases from all the maniples, and civilian malfeasors who stumbled into military justice. In Wahattu the military units are allowed to capture and try any criminal they catch in the act, with a judge borrowed from the civil courts. Wandering do-gooders may try to rescue these wretched ones from their daily diet of hard and pointless labor on the rocky slopes -- carrying rocks up, then rolling them down again. But they will find that most of the jailbirds are hardened and black-hearted ingrates, with only two or three good men among them.

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