Sougualu

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Sougualu
Date recurring
Location The Green
Result Jingdaoese troops gain combat experience, the Jingdaoese Empire gains riches and extra manpower
Belligerents
Imperial Armed Forces Various tribes living in the unclaimed parts of Micras.

Sougualu, which is Jingdaoese for plundering the Green is a recurring exercise of the Imperial Armed Forces. The goal of the exercise threefold: to provide combat experience to all infantrymen, to plunder riches for the empire, and to capture new people for the working force. The practice goes back to the 1st Empire but was intensified during the reign of the Sheng Emperor who wanted to promote population growth by adopting the children of parents living in the unclaimed Green, this was known as the Zhengbing Programme. While most tribes encountered were willing to give up some of their children to the empire, others refused and became the target of punitive actions.

Jingdaoese recruits join one of the nine armies the empire fields. In the first two months they follow a recruit training program in which they are learned the common skills demanded of all riflemen and can also be trained into a specialty role. When the recruit training program finishes, the fresh riflemen are placed into special cohorts and are prepared for an assault on a hostile tribe. These cohorts are lead by officers (shaowei) who have participated in these assaults as riflemen themselves, and are given a chance to prove themselves to their superiors. Most assaults take place within a few hundred miles from the border between Jingdao and the Green, but assaults taking place on tribes living in the territory of the Purple Horde, previously known as Alexandria, in Cibola and Eura are not unheard of either. With most of the conflicts asymmetrical, the fights often end in bloodbath. In such cases, the shaowei and his platoon leaders (paizhang) make sure all the riflemen show an equal willingness to shed blood in the name of the emperor. When this primary goal has been accomplished, the troops will plunder the belongings of the tribe to bring it back to Jingdao.

While the Jingdaoese troops are usually in a position to accomplish their goals and defeat the tribe, there are rare occurrences where they lose the battle. In these cases, the shaowei has strict orders never to retreat, but continue the offensive. Cohorts or platoons that do retreat are hunted down by other cohorts of fresh riflemen and, usually brutally, executed.