The Most Fearsome Foes

Essay by Maitland “Brig” Werg, Military Strategist, Institute of Martial Practice

What makes a foe fearsome?  What could we, as adventurers and strategists endeavor to imagine as the most fearsome foe?  When a party of experienced mercenaries, soldiers, or bounty hunters crosses the threshold from the safety of an outpost or town, they enter a grim landscape where every new being one comes across and the environment itself may be a deadly threat.  Each party member is reminded to be wary of the Krink Vorpide;  mimicked humanoids whose every observation of the party strengthens their ability to better mimic similar beings.  Also, they each have experienced some past unpleasantness or trauma resulting from plant, fungi, spore, or mold.  The conditions in their realm, in certain fringelands, are ideal environments for aggressive Rootforms to thrive.  While out in the Fringeland, it is wise to be vigilant, prepared and suspicious.  Each territory or zone crossed into or trespassed upon leads further into a possible hostile region controlled by desperate wartribes, thievers, or cults.

The adversaries one understands, at least enough to deal with them as opponents on a combat field, are not the foes one should truly be concerned with.  Those enemies who endanger more than just one’s mortal life, who seek to do harm to or possess an aspect of a being beyond flesh and blood, who would alter a being’s will and turn it to acts of evil and malice; these foes are the older, greater challenge.

The Party may be comprised of beings from far-separated worlds and realms, species and background. Each party member may possibly have training in fields and tactics that are quite different from one another.  Those successful adventuring parties who have taken up a common cause or signed onto a mission or bounty have typically put aside small divergences of custom, tradition or character among themselves to make survival and success a priority, the well-adapted parties at least.  Division and mistrust within the party may be used as a tool against them by those who understand the intricacies of group will, social dynamics and psychology.  Those who have interests in division and the turning of wills are the foes who would have our own assets wage war against our own assets.  The foes we are concerned with are the bureaucracies and systems that are always watching, always monitoring and insist on sealing numbers and identifications into those they manipulate.

Compartmentalize, track, monitor.  Those workers who are tasked with compartmentalizing, issuing numbers, badges and trackers are themselves tagged and monitored and above them as well, each sector in the stack partially unaware of the identity of those who give them orders, eliciting promotion or punishment.  Once this kind of system has been started, it becomes quite easy for a powerful concern to assert authority and wield the system as a weapon against whomever they wish.  This is what we see happening currently within the Strand of Saint.  Who asserts authority at the top of the Stack, and to what ends is that authority wielded?