Attack on the Rectitude
The attack on the Rectitude is a raid carried out by the Red Grieving Bat Society against a Palleseen supply carrack, referenced in Lives of Bitter Rain as an event already completed before the novel's narrative begins. The attack itself is never depicted on the page; it exists only as reported background, spoken of in - Chapter 3 as something that happened "the previous month." Its significance to the story is entirely causal: the goods seized in the raid are what drew Angilly's attention to Lasaret's meetings and set his surveillance in motion, making the attack the hidden origin point of one of the book's central investigative threads.
Across the single book in which it appears, the event has no present-tense drama, no on-page execution, and no further accounting of casualties or the carrack's ultimate fate. It functions as the kind of backstory a reader learns about in passing - a completed act of maritime raiding whose real narrative weight lies not in what it did to the ship, but in what it revealed to an observant Inquirer looking for patterns in Lasaret's conduct. For all its terseness, the reference anchors Angilly's entire surveillance programme to a single concrete incident rather than to intuition or institutional suspicion.
The Event
When & Where
The attack occurred approximately one month before the opening of Lives of Bitter Rain, placing it in the recent past relative to the novel's present-day timeline - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. The target was a Palleseen supply carrack - a vessel serving Palleseen logistical operations during the ongoing conflict - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. No precise geographic location for the raid is given in the text; the carrier is identified only by its Palleseen affiliation and its function as a supply ship - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3.
Who Was Involved
The raiding party was the Red Grieving Bat Society, which "struck" the carrack - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. The Palleseen supply carrack was the target. No crew, captain, or specific Palleseen personnel involved in the attack are named. Angilly was not present at the raid but learned of it afterward; the seized goods formed the evidentiary link he used to connect the attack to Lasaret's meetings - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. Lasaret appears to have been tangentially associated with the goods or their distribution, though the precise nature of that association is not elaborated - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3.
What Happened
The Red Grieving Bat Society struck the Palleseen supply carrack, seizing goods aboard - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. The text provides no account of the attack's execution, the violence involved, casualties sustained, or the eventual fate of the carrack or its crew after the seizure - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. What the narrative does record is the aftermath that matters to the present-tense plot: the specific goods taken in the raid served as the material evidence that alerted Angilly to a connection between the attack and Lasaret's meetings, prompting him to begin observing those meetings directly - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. Beyond this single thread of consequence, the event leaves no further trace in the book's account.
Causes & Consequences
The motives behind the Red Grieving Bat Society's decision to raid the carrack are not stated in the text - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. The attack is presented purely as a completed act whose antecedent circumstances go unexamined within Lives of Bitter Rain. Its principal consequence is epistemic rather than material: by creating a visible link between seized Palleseen supplies and Lasaret's meetings, the raid gave Angilly a concrete reason to start watching Lasaret, converting what might have remained a patternless suspicion into a targeted surveillance programme - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. Within the wider war, the attack represents one of the Red Grieving Bat Society's operations against Palleseen logistics, though the text offers no further strategic context for the strike - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3.
History
Lives of Bitter Rain
The attack on the Rectitude is referenced obliquely in Lives of Bitter Rain as a recent incident already completed by the time the narrative proper begins. In - Chapter 3, Angilly notes that the Red Grieving Bat Society struck the Palleseen supply carrack the previous month, and that the goods seized in the raid were what drew his attention to Lasaret's meetings, prompting him to begin observing them - ch 3. No further detail of the attack itself - its execution, casualties, or the carrack's fate after the seizure - is provided in this book's account; the event functions solely as the causal antecedent for Angilly's surveillance of Lasaret.
Relationships
- Angilly - Lasaret - The attack on the Rectitude is the sole event that creates the observational link between them. The seized goods from the raid gave Angilly grounds to attend and watch Lasaret's meetings, shifting their relationship from unrelated parties to one of covert observer and watched subject - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 3. No further evolution of this dynamic is traced back to the attack itself within the available text.
Notable Quotes
(No verbatim dialogue or quotation from the source text is available for this event; the reference in Chapter 3 is reported paraphrase.)
Tags
- raid · #supply-carrack · #resistance