The Musings of Captain Valentin Rosicrucio de Dagomor, Officer Commanding 1st Native Scouts
In regard to the Commanding Officers of the 22nd Regiment of Foot; for the Eyes of Commissioned Officers of the 1st Native Scouts ONLY - burn after committed to memory, not to be removed from the Office of Captain de Dagomor
Here, I describe in turn those of the regimental command I am myself familiar with, for the purposes of informing my staff as to my approach and understanding of my peers and superior officer. This is information I have compiled through no small effort of my own, in drawing on the military contacts I made in raising the battalion, and my officers would do well to treat it with a similar level of interest.
I begin with Colonel Horatio Fellus, Baron of Hevan, who commands line infantry known as the Acolytes and is our regiment's commanding officer. He is first and foremost a servitor of the Canon, and holds no particular interest to me besides what value is held in his commission. He strikes me as being primarily concerned with using his regiment as a captive audience for his battalion of hopeful clergymen.
Captain Ebenezer Paschalis, Baron of Escalis, commands the West Pfeiffer Imperial Carbineers. Our officers would do well to note he prefers to go by 'Eb'. His life is a tragic one, but we must take some perverse sense of appreciation that those tragedies have given us access to his considerable competence. Himself an experienced fieldman, with the scars and the drinking habits to show for it, it is surprising to most that his men show no particular love for him - perhaps this is a question that can be answered with the observation that he has relied on his personal connections to fill his roster of lieutenants.
Captain Virgil de Hohenfriedberg, who is from similar circles as I, commands the 1st Death's Head Hussars. We could not, however, be more different. Whereas I have come to Dagomor due to my virtues, he has been sent here for his vices. He an undisciplined boor in command of a reasonably organized and exceptionally drilled battalion - I, a reasonably organized and exceptionally disciplined boor. His battalion are as traditional a demesne as he is a noble; there are no surprises to me, although were I not permitted to wager on my own, I would put my entire savings and that of my men on the first of our lieutenants to be hung to be one of his, given that it was possible to both see and be appalled at the incessant self-aggrandization of he and his troops in Dagomor from my childhood home in the capital.
Captain Hugh Clay, the first commoner I mention. I am told he earned his commission from prizeshare, and married for love. He leads a battalion of natives from his homeland, the 2nd Battalion Wolves of Iron. A respectable man - I have no interest in involving him in the politics of the regiment, but only because I fear it would ruin him. He has a reputation for understanding the military in a practical sense - Eb may be a warrior, but Hugh Clay is the perfect field officer. A man who will achieve anything you want, without making you take responsibility for the pathway there, and who'll do it longer than the Empire will. I find it difficult to imagine him effectively representing his troops to officers he is neither equipped nor inclined to converse with. However, it will not be necessary - his soldiers are so immaculately behaved as to represent themselves, and his frankly draconian conduct has not as of yet given his men pause to reconsider their representation.
Captain Cibor Marczynski, commanding the the Cybulskan 'Blackfeet' volunteers. The battalion shows striking similarities with our own, using a folk tune as an anthem, and utilizing the hatchet as a melee sidearm - a decision I approve of, having far more general purpose than the bayonet and far better suited to the more extended, small-unit tactics both of our battalions are equipped for. Cibor seems uninterested in the Empire at large, and in everything from our nobility to our way of war, and his battalion's most significant distinction from ours is that his source of recruitment has given way to a significantly less motivated force than ours, given that they hail from his homeland rather than Dagomor. An excellent friend to make, as it is likely we shall be taking on much the same responsibilities and he has no overtly contrasting qualities to myself - with the exception that I believe my battalion is better suited to extended operations, if with a lesser eye towards martial accomplishment.
Captain Alastair Starachan is the Laird of Crask and commander of its Highlanders battalion. They are a penal battalion, a cruel fate only slightly declawed by the fact that they have been deployed so far from the frontlines. More uncharacteristically still, they show a surprising amount of discipline, all things considered, and are in fact content with their lives here. I have compiled multiple stories of his men winning drunken brawls outnumbered - one goes as far as to suggest that the publican ran to get another Highlander, believing that only a Highlander could defeat a Highlander hand-to-hand. This is excellent, as even our battalion could match them as a firing line. Alastair is a picture-perfect officer from the last century - he leads his men from the front, charging every-which-way in the hopes of reaching a distance where they can hit something. I am confident that they will all die stoically together - whether it is for, or against the Empire, I do not wish to provide conjecture.
Based on my documents, this is where I would list myself - I leave it as an exercise to the reader to fill in the comments, but for completion's sake, I say: I am Captain Valentin de Dangomor, of noble blood, and commander of the 1st Native Scouts Battalion, who have both the ability and the herewithal to get from any battlefield in the province to any regrouping, and precious little to make them useful at either end, neither of these things causing me any more pride or consternation than could issue from my expectation that they do so with balanced accountbooks at the end of the year.
Captain Carlington of Carlington, a man who says his own name twice, and then attached it to his battalion of Imperial Cuirassiers. My opinions on taking pride in family name are well known, and so I cannot even countenance taking it twice. Yet another nobleman in de Hohenfriedberg's ilk, but far more competent at the game of politics - he is here by choice, having come here to seek glory. The irony is clear, I know, but I hold that I came to Dangomor first, and then chose to find glory. An exceptionally useful ally for exactly the same reasons that I find him potentially the most detestable of my companions, save the Colonel, who I expect to see lead us to an early grave. His utter disinterest in producing a working military formation is obvious in his troops, who are the best armed thugs this side of the Palace itself. His social connections are useful, but I fear he is controlled by them more than he controls them - the same can be said of his Cuirassiers.
Captain Kasch Fletcher, of the 44th Farmers. He is quite comfortable in who he is, and who he is is a soldier. One gets the distinct idea that the ones he fights for are alongside him, rather than behind or in front. His approach to leadership is much the same, and his men are fond of him for the same reason. They are natives of the Western Reaches, and have built together no small level of comraderie on the basis of their joint distaste for the Empire's treatments of them. They have found solace in both bottle and billet, and are certainly disillusioned enough to be practical allies in case of more dangerous overreaches of the Canon's power - it is already known that Fletcher does not show an appreciation for theology that is altogether commensurate with our Colonel's. I am told they continue to farm; a useful skill to learn for those younger members of our battalion who have accustomed themselves to our service on solely the basis of my own teachings of military logistics. It may do him good to fall in with the right sort of company, having no noble blood of his own, but it may do just as much bad for him to be seen as too close to a man of my particular ill-repute. He reminds me somewhat of Hugh Clay, and their battalions are reasonably complementary.
Captain Altan Jalair brings his Jezzails to bear, a curious battalion indeed. They are armed, in part, with bowmen, and are potentially the battalion with the most complex standing orders I know of - at the very least, the most specialized companies. They show no particular collective speciality, though their bowmen seem rather more accurate than the average musketeer, as do their long-barrelled rifles. Altan is similar in capability to me, if not in character or upbringing. Where I learned my craft in the Corps, he learned it in the marketplace, and where my accounts are balanced by spendthriftiness and mutual social arrangement, he is a bargainer in the mercantile sense. Where we differ is that he is a man of many vices, and having done business with some of his partners in preparing to billet our battalion, I find that some of his stories do not quite correctly fit together - I have come to doubt everything I hear of him, and whilst the most egregious is his rich retelling of an admittedly impressive Altaian martial history, there is little I am willing to take at face value with him. Nevertheless, money is its own truth, and he makes enough of it to feed his men before his demons, which puts him considerably ahead some of the drunkards and zealots who hold commissions in this battalion.