[puffyn]

---- Arcoscephale, Turn 1 ----

Pandokos of Pagasae here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvelous deeds may not be without their glory.

Spring, Year 12

The butter is missing again.

The locals in these parts insist that some mythical creature steals it away in the night, but I've found perfectly human footprints in the dirt around my stores on many mornings. When I catch the thief, he will pay. It is bad enough that I am thousands of miles from home in a muddy encampment at the foot of the mountains, surrounded by barbarians with no sense of propriety or reason. It is bad enough that our weapons, after years of campaigning, are dull, and that our armor is in such dire straits that yesterday I caught myself gazing enviously at the children in the street, clad in cooking pots too elderly to be trusted with the food anymore.

It is bad enough that I am forced to make do with these lousy local recruits, as the real soldiers, fellow citizens who have suffered together on this god-forsaken campaign, are stretched thin by the petty fighting we must do in order to keep the locals mollified with our continued presence.

But the worst of it - at least, that is how it seems now, facing my breakfast - is that instead of dining on fresh grapes and succulent olives, plucked from branches tossed in a sea breeze, I am forced to subsist on a diet of strange vegetables and rotten bread. And now I do not even have butter for it.

---