Landwards

The Landwards Battalion is a Palleseen ground formation with a long and static posting in Southern Bracinta, present since the Palleseen-Lor war declaration and the forced reunification of Bracinta under the Loruthi Trade Missions. Under the command of Professor-Invigilator Scaffesty, the battalion functions as both a conventional infantry unit and an unusually sprawling administrative and occult apparatus: it maintains a Logistics Department that invents and imposes bureaucratic requirements on allied units, a Field Necromancy department deploying ghost-chain sabotage, and a hidden Zenotheus murder-cult embedded within its Accessory complement. It is, in short, a unit that has sat in one place for so long that it has grown institutions the way a still pond grows algae-quietly, opportunistically, and with no particular oversight.

Throughout House of Open Wounds, Landwards begins as a senior static garrison whose primary contribution to the southern campaign is a right-of-way to lead an unopposed assault, then transitions into a partner formation sharing a conjoined camp with the newly arrived Forthright Battalion, generating friction through invented paperwork and resource demands. Its necromancy department expands, its magical supplies degrade toward exhaustion, and its internal cult activity operates unchecked. The book closes with the unit in institutional reorganization: officers are repositioned, Prassel is confirmed in command of the Experimental Necromancy department, and Scaffesty presides over the machinery of occupation in a Bracite city. In Pretenders to the Throne Of God, the battalion's command staff is subjected to show trials presided over by Professor-Inquirer Fowlett and Prassel herself, an event after which Fowlett banishes Prassel with the intent that she never return-a coda that reframes the bureaucratic and occult infrastructure built up in the first book as something that, once the war's emergency justification evaporates, becomes prosecutable.

The Group

Composition

The Landwards Battalion is a Palleseen regular formation whose named leadership consists of Professor-Invigilator Scaffesty as commanding officer and a complement of Accessories, Cohort-Monitors, and Cohort-Inquirers attached to its camp administration - House of Open Wounds, ch 20, ch 23. Among its embedded Accessories is a group of Oloumanni conscripts under the command of Accessory Pirisytes, who double as a hidden Zenotheus murder-cult operating in the countryside outside the camp - ch 24. The battalion's necromancy operations are headed by Stiverton and Killingly in a commandeered Bracite townhouse in Uptown Magnelei - ch 27. A Company within the battalion operates with its own sub-unit supply structure, including baton charges for artillery support - ch 42. Prassel is confirmed into the officer corps of the battalion's Experimental Necromancy department following the war's close - ch 48. The roster is not exhaustively named; the books present the battalion as a large, layered body whose lower ranks and attached personnel are encountered only through their paperwork, their work crews, or their presence at ceremonies.

Purpose & Method

Landwards exists as a static defensive and then active-offensive ground formation on the southern front, initially holding hills in southern Bracinta against the Loruthi and later participating in the advance on Bracite cities and the siege operations at Magnelei - House of Open Wounds, ch 20, ch 45. Its distinctive methods go beyond conventional infantry: the Logistics Department generates cross-battalion administrative instruments-excursion permits, "idiot passes" for Accessories entering cities-that extend its bureaucratic reach into allied units - ch 23, ch 26. The Field Necromancy department deploys ghost-chain sabotage by throwing spirits contained in copper jars behind enemy lines for host-possession, rather than animating corpses - ch 27. The embedded Zenotheus cult within its Accessories practices survival, hiddenness, and the breeding of chaos through garotting and burying priests of other gods in consecrated hollows - ch 24. The battalion also conducts military shows of force for political ceremonies, such as a coronation - ch 48.

Standing

Landwards holds seniority on the southern ground over the arriving Forthright Battalion, a precedence that grants it the right to lead assaults and that produces administrative asymmetry between the two units - House of Open Wounds, ch 21, ch 23. It answers to the Palleseen military command structure and operates under the Loruthi Trade Missions' reunification mandate, but its internal governance-the Higher Orders meetings, the command tent repositionings-functions with considerable autonomy from external oversight until the post-war inquest - ch 48. In Pretenders to the Throne Of God, that autonomy collapses: the command staff is tried before Fowlett and Prassel, and the battalion's senior officers are subjected to a proceeding that Fowlett uses as part of a broader pattern of institutional adjudication and exclusion - ch 31. The arc moves from entrenched garrison authority to post-war institutional reckoning.

Known members

• Ollery - chief accessory
• Pirisytes - accessory
• Scaffesty - commanding officer
• Tunly - cohort-monitor

History

House of Open Wounds

The Landwards Battalion is a Palleseen ground formation stationed in Southern Bracinta throughout the book, having sat in the hills there "for bloody ages" since the Palleseen-Lor war declaration and the forced reunification of Bracinta under the Loruthi Trade Missions - ch 20. Its commanding officer is Scaffesty, known to his soldiers as "Old Eyeball," a Professor-Invigilator with one functional eye and a leather patch over the other - ch 48. In the early chapters the battalion is a static defensive presence on the southern front; when Forthright Battalion arrives by sea and disembarks, Accessory Pirisytes and his Landwards work crew slam gangplanks into place while regulars and Whitebellies unload cargo, and the two battalions' officers engage in what is described as "a fine old pissing competition" - ch 20. Landwards retains seniority on the ground and "won the right to lead the assault" when a field clearing is prepared for an advance on a Bracite city; the assault proceeds with no opposition, the gates are opened by a welcoming populace, the Loruthi melt away before superior numbers, and the day passes without a single shot fired - the only casualty being a soldier who tripped into a rabbit burrow - ch 21.

The battalion's relationship with Forthright Battalion is defined by shared infrastructure and administrative friction. The two units occupy a conjoined camp with no marked boundary, an arrangement justified as preventing unhealthy rivalries - ch 23. The Landwards Battalion Logistics Department generates cross-battalion paperwork: excursion permits, a document invented by Landwards and unknown to Forthright or any other unit, are demanded of a Forthright man, Accessory Masty, by a drunk Cohort-Monitor, Tunly, who attempts to drag him for flogging; the duty Cohort-Inquirer Megget flatly informs Tunly that the permit is a Landwards invention and identifies Masty as a Forthright man, telling Tunly he is "the prick" - ch 23. Ollery vows to ask Prassel to issue something so that Landwards "don't get fresh again" - ch 23. Similarly, "idiot passes," an additional document required of Accessories entering a city, are a Landwards institution; Palleseen Regulars and officers are exempt - ch 26. Banders notes that his group carries these passes because they tie the Accessories to Landwards's administration - ch 26.

Embedded within the battalion's Accessories are Oloumanni conscripts who operate a hidden murder-cult of Zenotheus, sacrificing priests of other gods by garotting and burying them in consecrated hollows in the countryside outside the Landwards camp; Accessory Pirisytes commands them, and the cult's tenets are survival, hiddenness, and breeding chaos - ch 24. In Uptown Magnelei, Landwards maintains a Field Necromancy department (also called the "Necromantic Science department") in a commandeered Bracite townhouse, headed by Stiverton and a colleague, Killingly - ch 27. The department's work is ghost-chain deployment: throwing spirits contained in copper jars behind enemy lines to sabotage via host-possession, rather than animating corpses - ch 27. The department solicits resources from Forthright's experimental hospital, and Prassel attends a meeting there on two days' leave, struggling to maintain composure as Stiverton and Killingly exchange side-eying against her - ch 27. An open question remains as to how many "mad and angry ghosts" have already gone loose in the Landwards camp due to temperamentally unsuitable subjects - ch 27.

As the campaign progresses, Landwards and Forthright march together and the Loruthi withdraw to their side of Magnelei, setting up a siege if either side suffers a defeat - ch 45. Prassel rides with Landwards's necromancers, beside copper vessels and seated corpses, in a newly decorated uniform, meeting Accessory Tallifer's gaze with visible unhappiness - ch 45. A Company within Landwards is "almost completely out of baton charges," and Scaffesty is frantically draining assorted trinkets into tablethi during an artillery bombardment against the Loruthi - ch 42. Scaffesty becomes the target of a Zenotheus forgery - ch 46.

The book closes with institutional reorganization at Landwards. In Scaffesty's command tent, a ceremony of repositionings and promotions takes place; Prassel is confirmed as an officer in command of the Experimental Necromancy department at Landwards, having been promoted from Fellow-Inquirer to Acting-Sage-Inquirer, and she reveals she killed Stiverton by cutting his tablethi belt - ch 48. Scaffesty presides over a Higher Orders meeting, deals with a Bracite delegation, and orders a military show of force for a coronation - ch 48. At a hall gathering, Scaffesty represents Landwards and asks how officers can function if they cannot give orders; he is told to order retreats - ch 50. Across the book, Landwards shifts from a static occupation force to a formation whose Logistics Department generates bureaucratic apparatus for allied units, whose necromancy department expands under new leadership, and whose supply lines degrade toward exhaustion of magical resources.

Pretenders to the Throne Of God

The Landwards Battalion is identified as a Palleseen battalion whose command staff was subjected to show trials, a proceeding presided over by Professor-Inquirer Fowlett and Cohort-Inquirer Prassel - ch 31. Fowlett's involvement in these trials is recalled in the context of his broader institutional history of adjudication and exclusion: he and "the Commission" had employed Prassel during the war and on the Archipelago, and after presiding over the Landwards proceedings alongside her, Fowlett banished Prassel "with the very clear intent that she never come back" - ch 31. The notes specify no further detail regarding the Landwards Battalion's operational history, composition, or the charges and outcomes of the show trials beyond the fact that they were conducted under the supervision of Fowlett and Prassel - ch 31.

Relationships

• Forthright Battalion - Rival ground formation; their officers engage in "a fine old pissing competition" upon Forthright's arrival, and Landwards retains seniority and the right to lead assaults while Forthright remains idle - House of Open Wounds, ch 20, ch 21. The two units occupy a conjoined camp with no marked boundary, an arrangement justified as preventing "unhealthy rivalries," though in practice Landwards's Logistics Department imposes invented paperwork on Forthright personnel - ch 23. Landwards's necromancy department solicits resources from Forthright's experimental hospital - ch 27. The relationship is one of senior junior-senior friction resolved, ultimately, by shared campaign movement and a common siege posture at Magnelei - ch 45.

• Scaffesty - The battalion's commanding officer, known as "Old Eyeball," who presides over all internal governance: the Higher Orders meeting, the repositioning ceremony, the handling of Bracite delegations, and the draining of personal trinkets into tablethi during bombardment to keep a Company's baton charges functioning - House of Open Wounds, ch 42, ch 48, ch 50. He becomes the target of a Zenotheus forgery, indicating that the embedded cult operates even against its own commanding officer - ch 46.

• Prassel - A Fellow-Inquirer who initially navigates Landwards's bureaucracy from the outside, attending necromancy meetings and vowing to counter Landwards's administrative overreach, then is promoted to Acting-Sage-Inquirer and confirmed in command of the battalion's Experimental Necromancy department at the close of the war - House of Open Wounds, ch 23, ch 27, ch 48. She later rides beside Landwards's necromancers during the campaign and meets Accessory Tallifer's gaze with visible unhappiness - ch 45. In Pretenders to the Throne Of God, she co-presides over the show trials of the very command staff she joined, and Fowlett banishes her afterward - ch 31.

• Accessory Pirisytes - The "life and soul of the work crew" who, within his Landwards Accessory role, commands the hidden Zenotheus murder-cult - House of Open Wounds, ch 20, ch 24.

• Banders - Carries "idiot passes" on behalf of his group, tying them to Landwards's administration as a matter of institutional obligation - House of Open Wounds, ch 26.

• Maserley - Serves within the battalion's structure; his Company runs nearly out of baton charges during the bombardment - House of Open Wounds, ch 42.

• Professor-Inquirer Fowlett - Presides over the show trials of Landwards's command staff in the post-war period, alongside Prassel - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 31.

Notable Quotes

"a fine old pissing competition" - narration, describing the officers' greeting between Landwards and Forthright, House of Open Wounds, ch 20

"don't get fresh again" - Ollery, vowing to ask Prassel to issue a counter-document against Landwards's invented paperwork, House of Open Wounds, ch 23

"for bloody ages" - narration, describing how long Landwards has held its position in southern Bracinta, House of Open Wounds, ch 20

Tags

1. military-unit · #battalion · #palleseen