Warhammer: In the Name of Ashes

As winter passes and spring comes, the grass grows and the orioles fly.

This is the tenth year since the Tribal Selection Conference ended, and it is also the tenth year since Calvin began to take charge of tribal power.

Since he first took charge of this new tribe of 300 people, Calvin has made up his mind to adopt the military discipline of his previous life as the code of conduct for the new tribe.

The newly born tribes are extremely malleable, because their unbalanced population structure comes from the eldest and second sons of various families in the old camp tribe who have no inheritance rights. (In tribal culture, only the youngest son has the right to inherit.)

Their gender ratio and age gave Calvin the basic conditions for militarized management.

The only problem lies in the establishment of the initial discipline. In an era when even writing was not widely available, it is undoubtedly a challenging task to establish a universal standard among these people.

Being smart has its benefits, and being stupid also has its benefits.

The advantage of smart people is that they always ask why, while the advantage of stupid people is that they never ask why.

Since these people were uneducated, Calvin would have just taught them in an uneducated way.

Sticks and carrots, positive feedback and punishment mechanisms, these are Calvin's effective methods for tribal people.

He did not spend time trying to reason with these blank-eyed young people and present the facts, but chose to set rules roughly.

You see what I do, and you do what I say.

It's such a simple behavioral logic. If you do it well, you will be rewarded, and if you do it wrong, you will be punished.

No reason, no reasoning, just obedience.

Anyway, as the holder of absolute force, he never worries about anyone disobeying his orders.

In half a year, he customized basic discipline for this small army-like tribe.

Over the course of a year, the tribesmen who gradually developed a sense of obedience and disciplinary inertia began to have their own customs under Calvin's gradual strengthening, ranging from guard posts and daily hunting team marches to the placement of tents in the camp. behavioral inertia.

The ultimate in discipline is instinct, and the benefits of regulations are gradually discovered after they are implemented.

The tribal people may be ignorant, but they are not stupid.

Discipline does seem rigid in life, but it actually protects their lives during hunting and combat.

When the resistance stirred up by the harshness of these regulations was decisively suppressed, the subsequent benefits slowly made them fear Calvin's force and began to build trust in him.

It was also from here that Calvin watched his subordinates impose prohibitions, and finally the tribesmen had some military flavor. He knew that the foundation for general education had finally been achieved.

So in the winter of this year, the tribe unusually did not go out hunting.

Calvin, who had prepared winter supplies in advance, finally began to explain the meaning of these tactical regulations to them beside the roaring bonfire in the tribal camp.

It was also during this winter that these prairie men, whose bodies had not yet been cleansed from lice, watched Calvin point to the firewood under the campfire and say to them for the first time by the warm bonfire in the big tent:

"Our name is Ashes. Only in the place of ashes can we see rebirth..."

In the following years, this new tribe proved its strength with its own existence.

Every year, they paid the most furs to Lucas and asked for the least supplies. Except for the first winter, they never asked for a grain of food.

The leader of the tribe's main tent is very satisfied with them. Old Lucas is old and his desire for power is far less important than the survival of the tribe.

After the danger of having no successor was eliminated, old Lucas never worried about what happened after his death for a day again...

Powers are slowly transferring, and "excess" people are constantly being allocated to the main account of the old camp.

Whether it was really "superfluous", both Calvin and Lucas Sr. knew very well and did not reveal it.

The old man and the young man have a rare tacit understanding on this point. They rarely even meet each other, let alone have secret conversations in dark corners.

Once the seeds have been planted, some things will happen naturally.

This can be seen from Mars, who is always inseparable from Calvin and always stands quietly by his side.

And Calvin was never greedy. He insisted that the population absorbed at any time should never exceed one-fifth of the body. We would rather sacrifice the speed of expansion to ensure the enforcement of discipline and the transformation of new personnel.

Spring goes and autumn comes, and five years have passed before we know it. The camp in the valley has become a system of its own.

Whenever the light of a star rises in the east, this tribe wakes up very quickly.

Soldiers don’t go home while on duty. When the sun rose, they walked out of their exclusive camp.

After a brief assembly, they either walked to the checkpoint for rotation, or walked to the shooting range to start training.

The group on duty, after mounting their mounts, at the whistle of the team officer, rode towards the hunting ground outside the valley...

The women also hurried to the river to wash up. After receiving food from the canteen in the center of the camp, they also had to prepare for the tasks assigned to them.

As for the elderly and children, you can always hear their laughter and laughter in the sunniest place in the valley...

The people here live a fulfilling and prosperous life. They are building their tribes and running their own wonderful lives with an efficiency never seen in the tribal era.

"Hush!"

The deep voice penetrated the quiet forest, and the frightened birds on the treetops fluttered to the ground and flew away, carrying the news of the future people far away.

In an open space deep in the forest, Calvin took the lead and reined in his mount in a rare open space in the forest.

The tribal warriors behind him followed closely, quietly spread out behind Calvin to guard the two wings.

Raising his head again to look at the tilted sun, Calvin confirmed that his direction of travel was correct.

He turned over and dismounted, sat on a heated stone and waved the riding crop in his hand at Mars behind him.

"It's getting late, so let's stay here today."

Mars, who was already middle-aged, nodded, turned around, took two quick steps back and said to the young man behind him:

"Go down with the order and camp on the spot! One platoon will guard, the second platoon will build the camp, and the third platoon will go out to look for water! Do you understand?"

"Understood!" the young officer said nervously.

"Repeat it again!" Mars continued to exert pressure, not intending to let this newly promoted young man go.

"Camp on the spot! A row..."

The officer of the tribal warriors confirmed Mars' order in a low voice, and then left with the latter's permission.

The entire team separated under clear instructions and carried out their respective missions in an orderly manner.

"There's no need to make it so difficult for him. Little Mal did a good job."

This was the first sentence Mars heard when he returned to Calvin.

He shook his head and expressed a rare opinion that was different from Calvin:

"He was promoted too quickly. You shouldn't favor him, even if he..."

"Even if he is your son?" Calvin smiled, then he put away his smile and said to Mars:

"I have no preference for him. He is already good enough. As a father, you are always observing your son through your colored glasses."

"Colored glasses?"

Mars muttered words he didn't understand under his breath. This was not the first time. Calvin could always say something he had never seen before, but it still made sense...

"My fault, I said something you didn't understand again. Just think of it as prejudice. You know, at his age, you are not as outstanding as him..."

Old-fashioned words came from Calvin's mouth. But it seemed so natural against the backdrop of his wisdom and strength. At least Mars never had any objections.

He looked at the smoke and dust in the distance that was still visible hundreds of kilometers away, and his emotional fluctuations were rarely captured by Mars.

A low voice came from Calvin's mouth, and there was rare worry and uncertainty in the words of unknown meaning:

"Young people should exercise more. Otherwise, how can we expect them to grow up overnight when we old guys are not around?"

"You will not be absent! The Changshengtian and the sun will witness your eternity together!"

Mars looked at the man in front of him who had grown taller, but his face was the same as when he first met him and whispered.

More than ten years have passed, and the man in front of him shows no signs of aging except for getting stronger.

And this strangeness that transcends ordinary people is also spread throughout the tribe with his continuous victory and blessing.

Fighting without fighting is fighting.

Under his management, the tribe, which was weak at the beginning, expanded at a speed that was slow at first and then became more and more terrifying.

From the initial population of thousands inherited from old Lucas, to the current master of thousands of accounts.

Calvin's political processing ability is most vividly reflected in the development of this hegemony from scratch, from small to large, and finally across the northern ice sheet.

He didn't even use war, which he was best at, but relied solely on policy guidance and changes in diplomatic strategies to defeat most of his enemies with the economy.

Not without war.

The thirst for water and soil runs through the entire process of population growth, and war is naturally the last resort.

But no one could resist Calvin's power.

The organizational structure and intensity of his tribe, under his highly militarized and paramilitary administration, would have been ahead of its time.

Wherever the enemy points, those who stand in his way are invincible.

No tribe can survive a battle under the attack of such an army. Wherever the iron hooves of "Ashes" reach, no flag of resistance can be raised.

Today, he is the uncrowned king of the entire tribe, and the number of warriors under his command has grown from thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands.

Today's tribe can hardly be called a tribe.

The two terms "tribe" and "ash" have successively become concepts unique to Calvin, and have also become the spiritual totems of the nomadic peoples in the north of the entire continent.

All humans in the north of the continent know Calvin's name.

Whether they are nomadic tribesmen or border people in farming countries, they all know that a white giant is rising above the snowfields of Yangula.

Mars witnessed all of this happening, in just a dozen years of his life, in the hands of the man in front of him who looked like a young man but sounded old...

A night of silence. When the sun rose again the next day, the entire team headed towards the center of the forest again.

The exploring horses that went out sent back messages from time to time, confirming the roads that the horses could pass.

Everyone was pulled into a single file in the increasingly narrow forest road, and the packhorses at the back of the group could only be connected by ropes, meandering along the winding path in the forest.

The surrounding environment was dimly lit and extremely quiet, with only the occasional small animal being startled and hurriedly escaping into the distance.

The large beasts' sense of smell was even more sensitive, and they had already fled far away under Calvin's undisguised aura.

The trees in the forest grew taller as the team moved forward, and the sunlight from the branches of the coniferous forest shone thinly on the snow that had never been stepped on.

After more than ten days of trekking through mountains and rivers, Calvin's team was already deserted. The last time they saw traces of human activity was five days ago.

"Are we still going forward? Sir. If we go further, our supplies will not be enough..."

After whispering to the logistics sergeant, Mars rode his horse to catch up with Calvin and whispered to him.

He, like the guardsmen under his command, did not know the true purpose of Calvin's trip.

He didn't dare to ask, because Calvin would only explain when he felt it was necessary.

Most of the time, like the rest of his colleagues, Mars pursued his monarch's thoughts in silence.

This is the freedom given to them by Calvin, and it is also a means to test their character.

The former is regarded as life by these grassland men, and the latter is regarded as glory by those who become soldiers.

"Go on, don't worry. It shouldn't be far away." Calvin said in a low voice, looking at the haze still vaguely visible in the sky.

Ever since the earthquake that affected the entire northern part of the continent a month ago, Mars's eyes as a monarch have been looking towards this place.

He didn't know where the light that was as bright as day for three consecutive nights came from, nor did he know what the meteor in the sky was that first caught Calvin's sight.

But he knew clearly that ever since the meteor appeared, there had been an imperceptible haze on Calvin's face.

This is a detailed understanding that he only gained after serving for many years.

If it were other subsequent attendants, I am afraid no one would be able to understand the subtle changes in their monarch's heart.

"Report!"

The leading soldier from the front appeared quickly, and the expression on his face was as out of control as his voice.

Mars glanced at the young man, and considering that this was not his son, Little Mal, he swallowed the blame on his lips.

"speak!"

Calvin looked past Mars' figure and looked down at the soldiers in front of him.

The opponent's breathing rhythm is obviously disordered, and the contraction ratio of the pupils is also abnormal. This is a sign of excessive secretion of adrenaline.

Considering the astonishing physical fitness of these natives, Calvin made some calculations in his mind, and they should have seen something in the center of the shock wave.

Yes, at the end of everyone's field of vision, Calvin could already see the edge of the woodland.

Pieces of primitive giant trees fell there like radiating shapes, and their thick root systems were broken by the huge force. Calvin could smell the fragrance of tree sap at the break.

That is definitely not a product of natural evolution.

Calvin knew clearly in his heart that the purpose of his trip was already in front of him.

2-in-1, updated. Asking for votes.

As expected, I wasted on the name. It was so painful to think of the chapter name...