Shula

*"Who ya' be talking down to?"*

-  Shula, interacting with her Commander
## Tactical Analysis

* **The Blade of Zaria:** If the Mpiga Mishale and Amandla is tasked with denying the enemy control of the ground. Then the Shula is tasked with denying the enemies control of the skies with her use of SAM MRLs.

* **Set Fire to the Sky:** Though the Shula needs a few seconds to deploy her SAMs. Once done she can easily down any aircraft before they get a chance to see her due to the extreme range of her SAMs.

* **Ain't nobody got time for that:** However, her SAMs lacks the ability to target aircraft too close to her, her missiles often rely on its explosive due to a lack of accuracy and are prone to friendly fire, and the simple fact that she lacks any weaponry to protect herself from ground forces.

* **Now we're talking:** Veteran Shula are given the chance to test out a prototype load-bearing frame that lets her carry an additional mortar. Letting the Shula provide light artillery support.

## Background

The legend of Amina the Conqueror is one that endures the pass of time. The inheritor of a small city state in Western Africa, within a single generation she blazed through and marked the land with the fires of a conquering Princess. Within a Generation, the Zaria Empire was formed and every single city within its territory was walled to avoid another conqueror’s attempt to accomplish the same feat. Amina’s Divider indeed.

Though these events happened centuries ago, the annals of the Hausa People remember them, and the territory of Zaria indeed still exists to this day, a traditional state that vividly lives the legacy of the conqueror of yore. Celebrating her memory as a warrior and powerful figure within the now decadent state. Nonetheless, as decadent as it may have been, Zaria still was and is one of the most powerful member states of the African League, holding an incredible amount of economic and human power, not to mention vast amounts of raw resources to exploit. This sense of nationality and the memory of a warrior culture means that a disproportionally large amount of soldiers in the many wings of the Panafrican Divisions have certainly come from this place, and more than that, a disproportionally large amount of female soldiers are the ones who compose these numbers of Zarian battalions.

This martial pride has also led them to be particularly skilled fighters, an issue that brings great deals of discontent amongst the ranks given the nature of the League’s Doctrine. Theirs is the glory of battle, the idea of fighting and dying atop a pile of cadavers from those who’d slay them, to test their mettle in battle and see the white in the eyes of the enemy when they finally put the bullet that’d see their enemy finally be laid to rest.

Siege warfare simply doesn’t bring this pleasure. The truth of warfare, long hours of staying in position doing nothing, missiles and rockets crisscrossing the sky, trying to cow the enemies into surrender, aimlessly seeking to bring down an enemy that more often than not is not even within sighting range, there’s no glory in that, no feeling of triumphant victory nor the sight of an humiliated enemy.

Regardless of this small upset, there’s a certain element that infuriates them the most, aerial warfare. Distant are the days of elegant dogfighting in the sky, of the pioneers of aeronautics and close combat in the skies. Now these are the days of jet fighters, things that zoom through the battlefield and blast everything below them without care for interception nor fear for retribution, far too many locales had been defeated by the cowardly attacks of strategic bombers, ornithopters too slow to be able to deal with those dastardly birds of destruction. The rules of warfare were changing, but they would have none of that.

Setting up a very specific military school within the confines of the very city of Zaria, the newly christened “Shulas” or Flames as the word goes in Arabic, would have a final word to say in this new paradigm, specializing themselves in surface to air combat, the Zaria battalions wouldn’t just be particularly skilled, if unremarkable, warriors filling up the ranks of the Panafrican Divisions, now they would be a fundamental asset in every force that could and would expect aerial combat, for they now were the bird hunters, the bolt of retribution, the flame that shall bring down the enemies of the League.

Shulas are not entirely content with their new role, still preferring to take on hand combat if the opportunity arises, not to mention probing the full capacity of the female gender over their male brothers in arms as soon as the occasion arises, but nonetheless they at least can be content in the idea that, at least for now, the rules of combats can be written and carried on on their terms, not in the ones of the enemies.