Herald of Steel

Alexander's strategy to display the heads of his enemies was a tried and tested technique, with many examples not only in this time period but also in Alexander's previous life.

With perhaps one of the most seasoned practitioners of this tactic being the Mongols, who had most famously built a literal pyramid of skulls of 80,000 men, women, and children when they slaughtered the entire Khwarazmian empire to the last man,

 It was said that that pyramid lasted for nearly a century and the stink spread for miles.

And as horrifying as it might sound, Alexander's initial version of the message was indeed similar to that one, composed of trains of carts filled with heads of the entire city's population, intended to send a far bloodier message!

But since that grizzly fate had been thankfully averted, he settled for a far more 'softer' approach.

After making sure his prized propaganda piece was secured, Alexander then at last sat down to perhaps the thing he was most looking forward to, as Lapitus showed him all the maps and the various intelligence reports in his possession.

Lapitus had stayed up almost till morning yesterday, getting everything ready after the party, all so that they would be ready to be shown to Alexander by today.

Though for him the reason for his hard work was not because of his loyalty to Alexander, but felt that the faster he could show them to Alexander, the quicker he would be able to go see his wife.

The man was getting very restless knowing the love of his life was so close, yet so far.

And sensing such hastiness, Alexander decided to give the man a short leave for the day, feeling that since a day and a half had passed already passed, the shrewd woman surely had managed to erase almost all traces of their illicit act.

So as Lapitus went off to see his 'sick' wife back at the camp, Alexander and his military officers dove into the vast information presented to them.

And to go through all of it thoroughly, not only took hours but literally a few days, such was the sheer volume.

But over the following days, Alexander did manage to glean a lot of useful information.

Firstly regarding the maps, he found that the only large settlement nearby was this city, Thesalie.

Aside from this, there was nothing but a few scattered villages strewn about haphazardly

Normally it would be very weird.

Because alongside a city would always be several towns around supporting it, making up its suburbs.

For instance, there was Jabel who was kind of like a suburb of Zanzan.

But for Thesalie, this never happened.

And it was due to its geography.

Given the surroundings bordered Adhania, a country known to launch aggressive campaigns towards them, only the utterly desperate would choose to forego the safety of the huge walls and live in unprotected towns or villages, being subjected to frequent raids and robberies.

Hence the logical barrenness.

Reading the maps further, Alexander also found the resource distribution of the lands he conquered, and frankly, it was underwhelming.

Other than the presence of a few patches of land excellent for growing grapes, and plenty of fish to be found in the river, as a large amount of salmon tended to move upstream during winter, there was nothing of notable note.

Like Zanzan, the land was largely barren, possessing heavy clay soil that made it unsuitable for agriculture.

Expect that the soil quality was even worse here, so much so that even with Alexander's heavy plow and crop rotation, he guessed he would be able to get maybe half the yield.

As for ore or precious mines, only a scant few very small ones exist.

As a matter of fact, the reason Tibias wanted to conquer Zanzan was because of those resources, for the Cisran hills were full of such desirable products.

Alexander had not dived too deeply into those reserves due to labor shortages, but from records of previous excavations, there were huge deposits of iron, copper, gold, and silver as well as useful materials like coal, limestone and stones to be found there.

But though the Cisran hills ranged from Zanzan to past Thesalie all the way to the end of the peninsula, the Tibians got nothing, while Zanzan had it all.

They must have surely felt that Zanzan had gotten the stem of the sugarcane while they only got the root.

The maps also showed which nobles controlled which of the territories, its topography as well as the roads leading to them.

And it was the last two things that drew Alexander's attention, for given the hilly terrain, accessing each of these places was very difficult.

According to Lapitus, who was there to provide commentary as well as delineate on matters that Alexander found confusing, the roads to these close yet simultaneously distant nobles existed only on paper.

They were little better than the naturally flattened earthen roads, formed by the regular foot traffic of people and merchants, many times going through extremely stepped hills, torrential small rivers and forests which were so thick at some points that sometimes it seemed to be night even during midday.

And as Alexander heard, he found that though Zanzan too was hilly in itself, it was nowhere as extreme as this.

Attacking these nobles via such a route would be a nightmare, as sneak attacks and ambushes from these wooded areas would be almost impossible to counter.

So due to this strong field advantage, these nobles lived in relative seclusion, in a kind of mini Thesalie of thier own.

And Alexander could only thank his stars that when asked about the kind of man-made fortifications the nobles had, Lapitus replied it was nothing too fancy- generally a wooden rampant or at best a meter or two high stone wall.

"Since there is Thesalie, the nobles never bothered to build up their defense beyond the bare minimum. So most of their own walls are really meant to keep off wild animals and small bandits." Lapitus informed.

And this was totally logical.

Not only was building and maintaining a good, strong stone wall very expensive, especially for these poor nobles who could earn very little from their barren lands, but even if they did, what was the point?

It was never going to be as grand as Thesalie's.

Instead it made far more sense to seek shelter there in times of need and return to their estates when the danger passed.

But unfortunately, now that simple equation had broken down.

Thus Alexander ordered-

"Send one company(100 men - 80 soldiers, 20 servants), to each of these nobles."

"Tell them that they were to come to Thesalie before this month is over."

"Those who want to free their lords in our captivity are to bring the ransom funds."

"And those whose lords have died are to come to me so that I may choose a new one."

"And if they refuse, they will end up like Petrino and his goons before fall is over."

Given that Alexander had taken the city, it was only natural for him to take control of the surrounding areas too.

Thus this was the message Alexander decided to send.

The language he used in the letter was very aggressive, lacking any tact, almost like he was ordering them to follow him.

And this was very intentional as he wanted to assert his dominance.

Hence around one to two weeks from the day that order came out, around thirty of the noble houses would get a visit from nearly 100 soldiers, along with the ransom sum notice for their lord's release if they were lucky enough.

It had to be mentioned that due to the war and subsequent massacre by Lapitus, a lot of these houses's adult male population was almost cleanly wiped out, leaving mostly the women, the old, and the infants.

None of these people had neither the spirit nor the spine to fight.

It was because of that Alexander sent only a hundred men, even though this limited force could never forcefully take any of the noble houses.

So upon the order from Alexander, each household hastily worked to gather the funds for the ransom, or if that was not necessary quickly packed their things to go to Thesalie.

Of course, in all these cases the familiar family in-fighting over who should go and meet with the ruler of Thesalie, messages to the capital asking for aid, as well as disagreements over who should be ransomed and for how much caused much chaos.

There were even assassination attempts and even successes.

But Alexander could care less for these petty squabbles among these tiny players.

Instead, following the deployment of around 3,000 men, he then took a large part of the rest of his army- around 30,000 and put them under Menes, asking him to march along the Diannu River downstream and capture all the cities by its banks.

Lapitus had mentioned almost all of Tibias's large cities were situated along this river's banks including the capital, and even those that were not were almost always accessible through its tributaries.

So given these cities were now lightly defended, Menes was told to capture them cities immediately, carrying with him the same letter that the other nobles were given.

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