Our friends in the South

[Vaquero Free State]

A handpicked team of officers was being assembled, most were Llanero or Moradores, this had been a conscious decison from high command, it was felt that the Mazidian natives would be more receptive if they saw the Vaquero Free State as Natives and Europeans working as one towards a common goal, Also it was hoped that a the Llanero as a similarly warlike people might find common ground with the jungle dwelling natives

The UNI had been working at cultivating relations with several of the regionalist and dissident movements within the Mazidian Dominion and luckily it would seem that these relationships were bearing fruit. A meeting between one of the larger rebel groups had been arranged, provided the meeting went well, the Vaquero Free State could commence with its plan to undermine the Dominion.

Oscar Montalva had been chosen to lead the operation and it was him who would be meeting the rebel representative, after all he was the one who had come up with the whole operation.



@Mazidia

 

[Mazidia]

Mazidia was a vast land with many more disparate ethnic and religious groups than most outsiders were prepared to believe.

Indeed, the very name "Mazidia" was one forced from above. Before the Dominion, even the much vaunted Lords of the Intirru had not truly ruled the entire region. There were many who still clung to simpler times, or were displaced refugees and settlers from other regions, trying to find some scrap of their former freedom in the wild, abandoned, overlooked corners of the Sun Empire.

The Rebel groups formed, likewise, did not get on well with one another. Secretarian and splittism was rife. Their division was almost as big a weakness as their lack of everything.

The Tegu Cell was the first to meet with Oscar Montalva. They were mostly made up of the highland people known as the Roraima, a sub-group of the Marapa-Ariyama and Guarani peoples who made up the bulk of the interior native populations. However, unlike other cells, the Tegu sold their services to the cartels and other crooks looking to profit from their stealth and jungle-craft.

The men Oscar met, in the foothills of the great Frontier Plateaus, covered the lower-half of their faces, and wore their hair in top-knots bound with flashing gold-striped lizard-hide. They wore thick, camouflage-painted cloaks, and carried heavy bandoliers and long air-rifles, which they loaded with poison-tipped darts. Their leader, He-Who-Eats-Frogs, or Jui for short, clapped the Free-Stater on the shoulder.

"Welcome to the High Lands. Here, the earth is broken, and we must slither like snakes from rock to rock. We move only at night, and sleep during the day. You have a long way to go, outsider, before you enter the Green Hell."

As they crossed the high, wind-swept, broken rocky-ground, using the stubby, desert-like scrub to hide their passage, Oscar saw them approach a berm of rock, impossibly sheer and vertical cliff-faces rising a good five hundred feet in the air, tiny slithers of waterfalls running down from cloud-shrouded tops.

"We go, up there. The eyes in the sky cannot see, and they dare not land." Jui put a scarred hand on an almost-invisible handhold. "I will go first, and lower a rope to you."

In amazement, Oscar watched as the snaky natives free-climbed an almost sheer wall, rising into the mists, leaving him alone with a handful who stood guard.

"Don't be fooled, outsider. We are all more criminals than rebels. If you want to fight the Sun..." one soldier removed his face-mask, revealing a mouth broken and toothless. "You must prepare to eat shit."

 

[Vaquero Free State]

Oscar was thankful for the many vaccines he had been subjected to, He had hoped to encounter noble savages instead he had found gangsters and mercenaries he could not help but feel a little disappointed by what he saw. He was not an unfit man, despite being in his mid forties he led a spartan lifestyle and exercised daily, even so he found himself struggling at times, while his guides, half-starved and barefoot seemed to possess near limitless amounts of energy as they clambered over the mountains towards this " Green Hell" where his real mission would begin.