The Tenets of Tykonus

It is said among the Runesmiths of Wintermark that Tykonus transcends mortal flesh and becomes
immortal. So to must a General seek to aspire to such immortality in their strategy if they wish to
preserve the mortal lives under their command and the Empire within their charge.
It is further said that Tykonus cares not for morals, only that the battle is won. That what matters is
the victory and the triumph; that you have won and that your enemies have lost. It is said mercy is not
a matter for Tykonus, but neither is cruelty. A General of the Empire must act with Virtue to further
their own passage through the Labyrinth. But without an Empire the Way of the Virtue will be lost,
perhaps for all time. It is therefore wise to arm yourself with knowledge, to seek out new knowledge
and to use that knowledge to better ensure victory for yourself and the Empire.
What follows are intended only as a guide to the Wise. A General must be flexible and adaptable to
each and every situation that is presented to them.
I do not claim credit for all the wisdom contained within this document, much has been adopted from
earlier military thinkers and from the works of the eternal Zakalwe, General of Day.
All warfare is based on information and deception.
From leading a force of heroes through the Sentinel Gate to planning grand strategy in the Military
Council, a General will find themselves hampered by a lack of information. You may know the
disposition of the enemy forces and your own objectives, but not their objectives, or you may find that
a fellow General pushes for what you perceive to be an unwise strategy, but not why. You must be
vigilant to uncover what you can of strategic or tactical situation, while also accepting that it is
impossible to know everything in war. You must learn to trust your instincts and to come to a level of
personal decision-making that allows you to interpret situations swiftly based on limited information,
while not making incorrect assumptions. Information paralysis kills soldiers and destroys armies.
Equally, you must be aware your enemies cannot know everything about you and your own plans.
From rivals on the council to enemy generals on the battlefield or on campaign, they too operate in the
same word of shadows and facts. You should make every effort to hide your intentions from all your
foes, to reveal to them only falsehoods regarding your plans and goals.
In this true strategic planning approaches the formless. If your plans cannot be perceived, the enemy
may not react to them. Even better, if you can leak false intent then your enemy may react to that,
which allows you to position your own forces with now complete knowledge of what they will do, as
they are doing what you want.
Do not become blinded by your own mind, a General must fight the war they find themselves in, not
the war they wish to be in.
All warfare is very simple in concept, but very difficult in execution.
It is very easy for even a General or other military expert to make broad and sweeping statements, to
outline strategic goals that are almost perfect in their simplicity. Instructions and strategic goals to
‘hold that flank’ or to ‘crush the Druj’ are almost childlike in their simplicity. They are also perfectly
valid goals, do not look for deeper hidden meaning. A simple plan is a good plan.
But it is important not to forget all the hidden obstacles of war, from insufficient information to
insufficient resupply, from the presence of enemy armies to the absence of allied ones due to political
machinations. This is why plans should be simple, because despite their simplicity, no one said they
would be easy to achieve. You must expect struggle and hardship to enact even the simplest of
strategic plans.
Do not become caught up in any individual battle, remember your goals and the war you fight.
Know your skein, know your enemies’ skein and you will be victorious.
If you know yourself and your own capabilities, then you will win numerous battles. If you know the
enemy and their capabilities, then you will win numerous battles. But it is the synergy of these that the
true victor is born. Understand your own limitations, understand the path that you alone walk through
this world. Then look at your enemy and understand them, understand their society, understand their
hatreds and their path. With this information held in balance in your mind, you will not make
mistakes.
Do not assume this advice applies only to the individual. Consider the skein of the Military Council,
of a unit, of an army, of an Empire or nation. We are all tied together by bonds of loyalty and we walk
on our chosen courses in these groups, when planning grand strategy it is often more advantageous to
understand the totality of the enemy nation or tribe than to understand merely one General, unless the
reactions of that General are crucial to the outcome of the conflict.
Do not underestimate the value of estimation of forces. To know the strength of your enemies requires
accurate estimation of the force they can bring to bear in any aspect of the conflict. At a strategic
level, this often relies upon Day magic, in other arenas there may be less accurate measures, but
weigh them none the less. A well prepared set of estimates can allow you to determine the enemies’
plans or intentions, even without direct evidence of them.
The voices of the birds can be worth a thousand victories.
It is said in Wintermark that the wise listen to the birds, for they carry many hints as to the virtues. A
Stormcrow or an Icewalker will value the information the birds bring them as unseen wisdom.
As a General you must learn to value those who bring you the unseen wisdom of operational
intelligence or who hide your information from the enemy as much as you value each and every
solider under your command or hero who fights alongside you. You must cultivate a personal
relationship with these people, who will vary wildly depending on their place in the world. Seek out
those Generals with scouting armies, those covens who perform scrying rituals for the Empire, the
ambassadors for foreign nations and your friends around Anvil itself.
It is better to attack plans than armies.
The pinnacle of military victory is not to destroy the armies of your enemy, this is second best. It is
best to destroy your enemy without conflict. To do this you must foil your opponents plans, to prevent
them achieving their goals until such a time as they abandon the battlefield altogether.
As deployment approaches the formless, you should strike where you enemy cannot respond. You
should hold fast where you enemy cannot assault. Do not permit them the luxury of carrying through
their plans against you, instead turn their plans against them. When you do so, the enemy will fall
before you with little challenge or loss of life.
Wars are won and lost before battles even take place.
If planning and deployment approaches the formless and the goal of a General is to attack the plans of
the enemy, then it follows that the war may be won or lost before the first battle even takes place. This
is doubly true for the Empire, the strategic scope of our engagements span hundreds of miles and it
takes seasons for armies to cross from one side of the Empire to another.
It does not matter if your engagement is tactical or strategic, regional or Empire-wide, an ill-
considered war can be lost before it has even been begun if the correct armies are not in place, if the
correct logistical support has not been arranged, if the magical support to enchant the armies is not
ready and the political will does not exist to support the conflict.
Each of these things can prove difficult to arrange in Anvil and you must be certain they are in place
before you commit to a conflict, or lives will be lost.
You can always take steps to make yourself unassailable, you cannot always take steps
to make the enemy assailable.
You and the Empire have a vast array of resources available to yourself in every area of conflict. You
can control your weaknesses and your strengths and with proper planning, expose only your strengths
to the enemy. You cannot force the enemy to expose their weaknesses as a counter. Therefor you
should plan with your own strengths and a rational estimation of the enemies’ exploitable weaknesses
in mind. If there are no exploitable weaknesses, there is no shame in defending in a theatre or against
a foe. But equally, the true strategist exploits the weaknesses of their enemies without mercy, do not
defend in a theatre when it is acceptable to attack, particularly if you do so in order to commit to a
weaker attack elsewhere.
Military conflict is expensive for the Empire
This is a rule of thumb, if the Empire is engaged on two fronts then roughly sixteen of its armies are
engaged at any one time against up to eighteen enemy armies or fortifications. A rough estimate of the
effective casualties in maimed and dead comes to 6750 effective casualties. The remaining armies can
be assumed to resupply approximately 2750 effective casualties. This leaves 4000 effective casualties
to be resupplied using other means, this comes to 200 wains of mithril or weirwood. A conservative
estimate of three thrones per wain gives us a total cost of 600 thrones per season.
Leaving aside the humanitarian cost in lives, families and wrecked homes from those dead and
wounded soldiers, any rational assessment of the situation shows that as a General you must work to
avoid unnecessary conflict, to preserve lives and to advance the strategic situation of the Empire
without conflict.
There are three battlefields in which a General must fight: through the Sentinel Gate,
across the Empire and within the Military Council.
It is common for those who are not Generals to see the role as one of focus on military objectives in
one arena or another, either past the Sentinel Gate, on the Empire as a whole or as a political battle in
the Military Council. To be truly wise you must look past any of the individual components to oversee
the whole role and understand how to fight on each battlefield.
Each General approaches their time in Anvil differently, some prefer to lead on the field as opposed to
in Council. You should know yourself and not become tied up in the concerns of a single battlefield or
of a single. There are many other people seeking to help and to prove themselves at Anvil, rely on
these people to take up the roles you seek assistance in.
The major conjunctions at Anvil are the pivot points of theatre campaigns and ensuring that a form of
adequate tactical leadership is present is the responsibility of a General. Do not neglect your nation’s
presence through the Sentinel gate.
The grand battle for the Empire is what draws the attention of most who seek the Council and much of
the advice in this document applies most readily to it. But do not let others dictate your strategy for
you, take the time to produce estimates and to plan your own strategy, so that you might become
better aware of the situation and more able to speak up.
You must not neglect the political battle within the Military Council. It is a wise form of government
that has achieved much for the Empire and grants each nation pride and strength through direct
control over their armies, but it means that the process of arranging grand strategy is as much of a
battle – abet a political one – as any battle on the field. A General or nation who neglects this battle
will find their strategy suffering.
Do not neglect the hidden routes to victory.
The battle that is won best is won without ever being fought. A victory so complete and total that your
opponent cannot even contest it. To reach these victories it is important not to overlook the hidden
routes to victory.
Do not be afraid to talk and consider approaches outside of your area of expertise, the wise consider
all the ramifications of these approaches before they act upon them, but through seeking a the wider
opinions of others beyond your sphere of conflict you may uncover completely unexpected lines of
assault.
Reach out through diplomacy to your neighbours and make them your allies, even those who may
disagree with you. We were all strangers once, we are an Empire now.

Attack where the enemy cannot resist – through indirect assaults into unguarded or unprotected
territory. Do not permit the direction of the engagement to be dictated purely by your opponent.
Explore and support the possibilities of minor conjunctions, for their results can be anything but
minor if used correctly.
Do not be afraid to sue for peace with an honourable foe – for a time when a battle is not being fought
is a victory for the wives and children of the Empires’ soldiers and a respite for its armies, permitting
a wise General to turn their attention elsewhere.
You are not alone.
When standing on a battlefield making hard decisions over the lives of the heroes of your nation or
when standing front of the Military Council arguing against a course of action you consider foolhardy
it is easy to forget that you are not alone. You stand with twenty one other Generals and their
Adjutants, the Warmage and any of those interested Priests. Further afield, there may well be
individuals in your nation who seek to help and there are the Senators and Priests of the Empire. You
are not alone in your struggle. To not make use of those individuals is both unwise and shows a lack
of loyalty to them. Sometimes it helps to have someone to stand beside you and support your point, at
other times you need messages run, intelligence reports collected or you simply someone to talk to.
Find those people who you can rely upon for their specific talents.
Equally, there will come times when the unity of the Empire seems close to fracturing, when your
allies and your circumstances seem torn apart by their differences rather than being brought together
to create a greater whole. Do not despair in those situations. Use the strength of the bonds you have
forged to ride out the situation and sail through the storm to your advantage.
The value of ritual magic.
The value of ritual magic to a strategist and General cannot be underestimated. From the scrying
rituals of Day to the husks brought forth by Winter magic, the Empire expends hundreds of mana
crystals over a season to bolster its forces. You should not try to become an expert in the field of ritual
magic – that is the duty of the Warmage, but it is wise for a General to understand the overall
strengths and limitations of ritual magic as well as the effect the most commonly used enchantments
have on their armies. It is also wise and loyal to seek out those covens who assist or who wish to
assist in these matters within your own nation, to ensure they know who to speak to and to ensure
their efforts are acknowledged. Pride is a powerful motivator, as well as virtue.
Particular note should be drawn to the timing of ritual magic – only a certain amount of magic may be
performed each day by a coven before the mystical bonds that unify them become strained. It is
therefore important that rituals be scheduled well in advance where possible. On a wider scale, it
should be noted that scrying rituals are needed early in the equinox in order to provide correct force
estimations, while enchantments and curses are required once strategy has been decided upon.
The axioms of strategic engagement.
The following axioms concern themselves with the overall strategic battle for the Empire, while many
of them are easily applicable to any form of conflict, they are tailored to this battlefield.
One front is barely a war, three fronts is a disaster.
Strategy takes time.
Engage in strength.
Preserve your resources.
Consider your objectives.
Preserve the lives of your soldiers.
Ensure sufficient resupply.

The axioms of tactical engagement.