Alec (trouper)

Alec (believed to have been also referred to as 'Alec\_the\_Greatest') was an early Imperial fortress engineer, industrialist, infantry grenadier and later anti-war protest leader on Vel's SMP.

## Introduction to Vel's SMP

It is not well understood how he found the server, though records indicate he likely joined it through the Discord server for Project Delum, a Ravenfield mod project that was also being directed by Vel. According to current understanding, it is unlikely he ever joined Train Man Server, and as a result would have been very new to the political sphere and dynamics between the metafactions when he emerged on the SMP.

## Gabe's insurgency

Some time after first appearing on the SMP, he was recruited into Gabe's insurgency, an organization that had no official name and instead was often just given the title of the 'Forest Brothers' as it was based in the birch forests north of Gratland. Information on what exactly his role was and what he did with the organization is not clear, but apparently he constructed several small fortifications for the group, most being trench lines. He eventually left the insurgency as he was dissatisfied with what he considered to be poor leadership on the part of Gabe.

## Zhene and Gratland

After leaving the insurgent organization, Alec drifted around the map for an unknown amount of time before joining the Zhene, either stumbling upon Gratland or being reached out to by ArkySaw, the leader, as Alec likely had already built up some reputation as a skilled military defense engineer. Here he was quickly put to work in a position that gave a very good salary, being ordered to build several industrial and military improvements in the Greater Gratland region, most or all being west of River Honour. The more notable of these projects were the super-smelter, nestled somewhere in the industrial mountain region west of the Gratland urban area, and the most iconic Citadel within the center of Gratland. These preparations were made with haste, as even at that time war with Tsventai was considered to be on the horizon.

## War

Due to some string of diplomatic incidents, the exact nature of which is fuzzy, ArkySaw felt threatened by a possible future Tsventai invasion - the Tsventai were smaller in manpower but were significantly economically stronger and thus could afford high quality armour, Elytras, and the best weaponry along with a near undepletable amount of ammunition - and so thought the best action to take was to invade first and catch them by surprise, hopefully allowing an attack onto the Tsventai capital with nearly no resistance which would entail a rapid capitulation.

ArkySaw rapidly mustered a portion of his army and deployed them in Gratland right before invading, not waiting for the rest of the Army elements to join into the fray, as he believed the longer he waited, the higher the chance of the Tsventai noticing this movement and hastily deploying their forces into strategic positions too. This was ultimately a mistake, as the Tsventai clearly already knew of an imminent invasion, and had most of their units deployed along defenses on the edge of their hill country, already greatly outnumbering the initial Zhenish invasion.

Zhenish shock assault units crashed against the well-entrenched hill defenders - after capturing the flat land and whatever fortifications laid immediately east of River Honour - resulting in an extreme number of casualties within a short span of time (roughly a few minutes), forcing the invasion back and later to retreat to Gratland, ending the mission in a defeat. ArkySaw understood the Tsventai would not let this go unpunished, and so began the next few anxious hours deploying the rest of his Army units and reserves and conscripting a significant amount of the civilian population of Gratland, including Alec.

Alec was filed under likely an under-strength militia unit of some sort, and given a Carbine and a grenade launcher. From there, it is possible his unit initially marched to a forward position that would be among the first to meet an oncoming Tsventai reprisal attack, but later the formation was pulled from the frontline, as more skilled and better equipped Army units were organized. He and the unit he was with was pushed onto a rear-line defensive position, probably on or near the Citadel itself - a poetic turn of events.

As the Tsventai came in and the battle of Gratland started, his unit provided some form of overwatch and fire support, and he in particular was said to have spent nearly the entire duration of the battle persistently shooting grenades over into the direction of the enemy advance, though the effectiveness of this is largely doubted, as the range of the grenades meant that most would have likely fell harmlessly into the river. Though the Tsventai force effectively mauled the now horribly under-equipped, heavily attritioned Zhenish city garrison and Army force while not suffering from any equipment attrition themselves (due to the fact they had KeepInventory turned on for themselves alone), they were never able to breach the first line of defense, and Alec's militia unit incurred zero casualties.

The battle abruptly ended, hours into the fighting, due to the Tsventai working with how the Towny config was set up, tunneling into the home chunk of the town a hundred or so blocks below the actual site of battle, and managing to capture the home chunk without resistance, thus capturing Gratland. In the aftermath of the battle, Vel - the leader of the Tsventai - offered to end the conflict in a white peace, which was accepted by the Zhene though it is not understood why Vel did not keep with the offensive to conquer the rest of the Zhene's territory.

## Aftermath and anti-war sentiments

The battle of Gratland left the city in ruins. During the fighting, the Tsventai made use of airborne Elytra troops to drop lava onto the roofs of the overwhelmingly wood-construction city buildings. To what end this achieved military advantage during the actual conflict is unclear - perhaps it was an attempt at turning the urban area into rubble and thus destroying its defensive potential -, though it certainly added to the public unrest after the defeat in the war. Residential and the northern areas of the city were left the least damaged, as the lava bombings mostly hit the more southern portions, which included largely commercial regions. This fact did not stop a massive fracture in public opinion between anti-war and anti-Imperial protestors - led by Alec himself - and pro-Imperial loyalists, causing the city to be graffiti'd with various political slogans, ending in Alec moving a large distance west to found an independent settlement of his own, followed by a migratory wave of refugees and protestors who came to join him.

## Disappearance

Alec's relevancy slowly declined in the time after the end of the battle and his migration away from Gratland, and entirely faded when Vel's SMP finally closed operations some months or so after the war.

## Politics

Alec did not develop any significant political beliefs until after the conclusion of the war, where he became a vocal anti-war protestor.