Preston M. Donners

*"For the honor of the emperor, and the salvation of humanity."* - Commander Donners

**Preston Malcolm Donners** was a highly influential commander in the Tallet Legion during the Great War. He was known as an inspiring and compassionate leader who commanded respect, and a shrewd tactitian. By the end of the War however, he was one of its many casualties, not in body, but in spirit...

## Military Career

A patriot, Donners enlisted in the Legion at a young age, eager to serve the Tallet Emporer. His combat skills were average, but his loyalty and charisma quickly stood out among the ranks.

### Legionnaire

Donners quickly rose to the rank of Legionnaire, and was well respected among both conscripts and commanders. Seeing his promise, he was groomed as a tactician, and was quickly pulled from the front lines to attend officer training.

### Early Command

Donners was one of the youngest soldiers in the Tallet Legion to reach the rank of Centurion, and excelled in a leadership position. As a centurion, Donners was said to be very considerate and aware of the morale of his troops. He'd spent half a decade onquering villiages and towns before rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by the time the Tallet's Southern expansion reached the Syndicate's borders.

### The Syndicate Campaign

Lieutenant-Colonel Donner was one of the first and most successful commanders to march in the Syndicate campaign.

Under the command of Colonel Adam Harbinger, Donner took several villages and towns, and his forces rolled over the under-prepared resistance of the Syndicate's forces. Donner saw the wise and honorable Harbinger as a mentor, and would fight to the death for him. Harbinger taught him that one can have an understanding of the enemy mindset while still knowing they must be conquered: it was important for a good commander to realize that the people they were fighting didn't know any better, and that they believed themselves to be defending their homes. The conquest was as much for their good as it was for the people they were keeping from the Empire.

During what was supposed to be a fairly straightforward capture of a small village, Donner's forces suddenly encountered heavy resistance: scouts began disappearing, supplies were looted, equipment was sabatoged, and officers were turning up dead and mutilated in the woods. At first, the Tallet believed this to be local resistance becoming more aggressive, but when officers began to drop from long-ranged crossbow-fire, and the small spears of scatter-ballista began to rain down on troop movements, it became clear that another factions had entered the area: The Unfriendly Forces. Eventual Technocracy involvement had been anticipated, but not the speed and aggression with which it came. It wasn't until the next meeting of the Council of the Undying, weeks after this battle, that the Technocracy stated publicly that they had sent troops to assist the Syndicate. When Donner's troops finally broke through the recently reinforced walls of the village, they found it had been completely evacuated and set on fire: the population had fled, taking any supplies or loot with them, and the Unfriendlies had made sure there was no infrastructure for the Tallet to use.

Donner would later learn that the enemy commander was Black Eyes the Traveler, a shrewd tactician leading the battle-hardened band of killers known as "Task Force:Nobody". Under Black Eyes, Nobody would continue to be a constant problem for the 5th Battalion for the rest of the conflict.

From that point forward, what had been a successful campaign became a slow slog through several factions, with reinforcements and supply lines slow and scarce. When Colonel Harbinger was killed by an Unfriendly sniper just before an attack on the capital of one of the northmost province of the Synbdicate, Donner took command of the other Lieutenants, continuing the assault. After a long and grueling battle against the Syndicate troops, now armed with guns, Donner's forces managed to break through the walls, topple the city's defenses, capture or kill all the Technocracy agents stationed there. Midway through the battle, Donner was given a field promotion by the overseeing general.

Colonel Donner continued to take new territory in the Northern edge of the Syndicate before news from the homeland reached the front-lines: the Broken Kingdom was attacking in full force, and the force in that region was to march on their homeland to draw their attention away. Donner was promoted to the rank of General, and put in charge of the attack on the Broken Kingdom.

### The Broken Kingdom Campaign

General Donner's forces moved slowly and carefully, wary of the events of the Mud Skirmishes. The point of this campaign was to destroy things until the Knights returned, not conquest. Donner had no qualms with killing the militias which rose against his forces and destroying their homes with artillery.

### Sandstorm Rebellions

When Donner's force had pulled out of the Syndicate, the Technocracy had taken the opportunity to move a large force north in what they called Operation:Sandstorm, which culminated in a large-scale attack on the Tallet's South Eastern front. They had used the opportunity to flood the country with covert operatives, who undermined the authority of the Emperor and stirred the people into Rebellions.

When Donner returned to the Tallet Homeland, his command staff was immediately shuffled to the Southern provinces, where a civil war was breaking out. Donner began to put down the rebellions with ruthless aggression, having become cold and battle hardened. It was during this time that he found out that the agents who had instigated the rebellions and were sabotaging the artillery lines meant for the Northern front were none other than Task Force:Nobody.

His old enemy, Black Eyes the Traveler, had returned for another round.

### Betrayal

During the rebellions, at the worst possible moment, General Donner was betrayed by Colonel Allbridge. Allbridge had voiced extreme discomfort with the operation, and had been increasingly distracted with personal affairs. In a decisive operation which would have been a major blow to the infiltrating force, Allbridge and a large section of the army defected to side with the Unfriendlies. The subcommander's daughter was dying of an illness which Tallet medicine could not cure, and Black Eyes had offered him safe passage for his family into the Circle, which had just pushed out the Goran.

The position where the Unfriendlies were operating out of was taken, but not without heavy losses, and it wasn't for several weeks that Donner finally caught Black Eyes, at which point, he had the first of two exchanges which would haunt him for the rest of his life.

> **Donner**: "So, here we are, the illusive Black Eyes, slaughterer of soldiers, instigator of rebellion, enemy of order, scourge of the Tallet Legion, at the end of his reign of terror. Tell me, how does it feel to know that two decades of fighting now ends with your death at the hands of your enemy? How does it feel to know that you have failed in your mad campaign to dethrone the Immortal Emperor of the greatest Empire the world has ever known? How does it feel to finally know that you have met your match and been defeated?"
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> ***Black Eyes** begins to laugh.*
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> **Donner**: "What's so funny?"
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> **Black Eyes**: "You are. You think that just because I've spent the past two decades making everything you do a living hell, that I'm supposed to care? I don't even know your name, commander. And I certainly don't care what you do to me. Your invasion has emptied your coffers, your country is in shambles, and your troops are leaving your ranks faster than you can replace them. I even got one of your own commanders to start a civil war. I don't care what you think your victory conditions are, commander, and I don't even feel the need to ask how you feel: I've already won..."
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Black Eyes was still laughing when he died, and had to be held still by soldiers as Donner performed a very unsatisfying field execution.

With Black Eyes dead, Donner's next priority was the commander who had turned the empire against itself: Redmond Allbridge.

> **Donner**: "WHY? Why would you do this? Our homeland is in ruins, and our"
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> **Allbridge**: "Don't you see? They're not destroying our homeland. WE are! "
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> **Donner**: "How dare you! How dare you insinuate that what we've done is not just! We're taking orders from a GOD!!"
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> **Allbridge**: "Preston... He's not a God. We all know that. You know that. Stop fooling yourself that what we're doing is right just because we're following a God none of us believe in anymore..."
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Donner never denied that what Preston had said was true. He just screamed. It was never clear what he believed, as he would never speak of this conversation again. He personally executed Allbridge on the spot and moved on to quell the rest of the rebellions with cold apathy...

> *"I've already won."* - Black Eyes the Traveler
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### Afterwards

By the end of it all, Preston Donner had risen to the rank of General, and had received several accolades from the Emperor himself. However, he was left bitter from the war and the betrayal of his friend, and eventually faded into semi-retirement: he was placed in charge of recruitment and never left the Tallet Empire again.