re: If Tigerdroppings Had a Podcast...

Then do one.

I am not sure TD Brass want one TBH

They are pretty firm in what they want to do and not do with the brand, and they like to have control.

Kige!

I'll do a weekly consumer credit session: "Charging by the Füt"

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If Tigerdroppings Had a Podcast...

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It would be the most ADHD podcast ever.

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I'll do a weekly consumer credit session: "Charging by the Füt"

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I’m not gonna lie. It would be pretty awesome to deliver brutal historical POVs in my best podcast voice

I mean I have a couple in transcript form


WTH...TD deleted the threads. I put a lot of work into those and people were enjoying them. I got lots of requests.

Wtf

Here’s the transcript from the Cannae one


POV from Cannae



It’s August 2, 216 BC. You wake to the sounds of men and horses readying themselves for battle. You wipe the drunken sleep from your eyes and set about gathering your armor and weapons, still not quite sure what to think. You are 18, a green recruit in the greatest army Rome has ever assembled, and this is to be your first taste of battle.

You pull your tunic about you, over your chainmail, fasten your greaves and boots, and pick up your weapons. Your gladius hangs by your side, Spanish steel and wicked sharp, about 2 feet long and 2 lbs, ending in a diamond point. As a hastati or “spear-bearer”, you carried two heavy throwing javelins, pila, and the trademark Roman Scutum a rectangular shield a little over 20 lbs.

Carrying around 40 lbs of armor and weapons you join your comrades in the avenues of the Roman camp. Breaking your fast on a little bread and vino, you listen to the latest rumors from the scouts. The Punic army is barely more than half the size of the massive juggernaut the Republic has built. And the dreaded elephants that so terrified Roman troops at Trebia and Lake Trasimene were nowhere to be found. The Roman winter seemed to have claimed them, to your delight.

The drums sound in the warm dawn and troops begin to assemble in front of the hill that leads to Cannae, the Aufidus river to your right and the open plain to the army’s left. You are in the front lines of a massive force, by design. Though trained in formation and tactics, you are yet unbloodied, your only victims straw stuffed dummies used to train you on your weapons.

Today the army is under the command of Gaius Varro, and he had decided to mass the legions deeper than normal rather than wider. Ultimate command switches day to day between the two consuls, Varro and Lucius Paullus. Perhaps if the Roman army had given battle tomorrow things would be different, but today Varro decides to smash the inferior Carthaginian force with deep and concentrated ranks, flanked by the Roman and Allied cavalry.

You assemble next to your comrades on the Italian plain, the footfalls of almost a hundred thousand troops and horse kicking up dust that swirls in the air like devils. Today on the front lines, you will either win great victory against the enemy and come back blooded and experienced, or you will fall. You feel the sweat pouring under your armor as the hot sun is breaking into the sky upon you, causing you to raise your shield to shield your eyes. The cry goes up, the drums and horns sound, and the battle begins.

Your comrades begin to bang their weapons against their shield, a cacophony of death that filled your ears as dust filled your nostrils, and with that the charge begins. Battle fever in your heart you see the lines begin to charge and you start to run, heart pumping as one quick step leads to another and the charge ensues. The sun belches upon you and dust swirls in tornados, the ground between you and the Punic lines disappears before you. You can hear the blood rushing in your ears as you close the distance.

600 yards.
500 yards.
400 yards. Your heart is pounding in your chest, having covered a distance many times what men would cheer warriors closing thousands of years later on a different field of battle...but I digress.

TINK.
The sound of something hard striking your shield slows your charge.

TINK. TINK. TINK.

The sound of stones and lead colliding with shields.

All of a sudden men begin to fall in front of you, their faces disintegrating in clouds of blood as projectiles begin to pepper the lines.
Slingers.
Ancient ranged infantry take their toll, hurling lead shot and pointed stones up to 125 miles per hour. They took their toll on your comrades as they fell before you as you run headlong over their fallen forms.

Finally you close the distance and come in range of the foe, and with a mighty heave you throw your javelin as you come to a stop behind your shield. It flies deadly through the air and its wicked point pierces the chest of a slinger, blooming a bright pink flower in his tunic as he falls. You’ve drawn blood, but have no time to ponder over your slaughter as thousands of your brethren hurl their pilum at the enemy, a rain of death upon the Carthaginian lines, thin and bulging at the center.

You prepare to throw your spare javelin when a wicked shaft of iron pierces your shield, stopping inches from your face. You huddle behind your shield as a storm of javelins and stones come down upon your ranks, with deadly effect. You watch as shafts pin your fellows to the ground, spearing chest and flank and face. Blood soaks the ground beneath your feet. A spear falls next to you, stabbing the ground, shivering with the force that threw it.
Filled with rage you hurl your pilum at the enemy, not looking to see if it met its mark as you pull the spear from the dirt next to you.

You begin to bang it against your shield, looking into the eyes of your fellow surviving troops, screaming with bloodlust. You are ROMANS. These invaders must pay. The scream goes up amongst the lines, and you charge once again, hurling the spear and seeing it find its mark in the eye of a screaming Gaul, near naked, as he falls screaming. You draw your gladius and call to your comrades.

Closing in you reform your lines and charge at the enemy, a wall of spears bristling with a bramble of swords. The Punic lines charge as well, Gallic warriors swinging wickedly curved blades and stolen Roman swords. They are lightly armored but taller and filled with barbaric bloodlust. The lines clash among screams and dust and gouts of blood. Hiding behind your shield you thrust your gladius forth, piercing flesh and returning slick with crimson. You are truly blooded now, and smile.

The smile quickly leaves your lips as a fiendish Gallic blade finds a gap in the shield line and bites into the space between your helmet and your neck, cleaving deep. Your shield arm falters as blood gushes out of the wound, and you collapse into the bloody dust. Red ichor pools around you as the men behind you surge in to take your place, and your consciousness fades. As you die here on the sweltering plains of Cannae your spirit drifts upwards, and you are afforded a birds eye view of the battle.

Hannibal’s lines of Gauls and Spaniards are fighting fiercely to hold their thin line, arced in the shape of a drawn bow, against the massive battering ram of the Roman Legions, stacked nearly a mile deep. The Roman heavy cavalry engage the Carthaginian cavalry on the right flank, as simultaneously the light Numidian cavalry engage the Allied Cavalry on the left. You watch as the Legions begin to bend the Punic bow backwards in a slow retreat. Hannibal and his generals are there among them, rallying them to bravery, but seemingly in vain as the Gallic vanguard begins to inch backwards, giving bloody ground and turning the bulging bow into a U-shape. Surely the Legions will rout the outnumbered foe.

Your bones creak. Your back aches. Your steps fall slower, but just as sure as when you were a much younger man. But now, as a triarii, you had earned your place in the rearguard. You had proven your valor in the first Punic War, some 30 years before, rising through the ranks through bravery and sheer survival. You’d lost count of the men that had fallen beneath your blade and would have been content to live out your days in your villa, bought with the spoils of war. But the call of mother Rome proved stronger than the call of your orchards, and more insistent. And so here you stood, in your 50s, clad in the best armor and carrying a heavy spear and shield. You weren’t as good as you once were, with nature calling far too often and lacking the endless virility of your prime, yet you stood in the rear ranks, proud and ready.

The night before you had sat drinking with the younger men, swapping stories and glories of old, when one young pup, deep in his cups, had called you a liar when you regaled how you had bested a Carthaginian General in battle. Vino in your veins, you tore open your tunic to bare the scar on your shoulder where his blade had found you. The young man pressed his finger into the old wound, pushing you down as the crowd fell silent. “Then how did you slay him greybeard?”
With forgotten swiftness you brought your hand up between the greenhorn’s legs and grabbed him by the balls, pulling him to the ground. “Up through his nethers, little one.” The crowd had roared with laughter and your old bones had felt limber again. The mirth hadn’t lasted though.

Now, foolhardy confidence in the strength of the Roman juggernaut was beginning to fade and past bravery was forgotten. You watched as the cavalry to your right was routed, then the allies to your left fled in turn. A small cadre had returned to your ranks, among them the wounded Consul Varro. Surrounding him as he sat on a stone, the rear guard turned to face the Carthaginian cavalry that bore down upon them. They rode into the front lines of the triarii, veteran spears thrusting at the vulnerable spots of the horses, their training rusty but coming back in an instant. As the horsemen closed the gap some tried to flee. Most were cut down. On the flanks the Libyan spearmen closed in. Hannibal’s vanguard had held and now pressed forward into the crush of Roman soldiers. At the rear the Punic Cavalry slowly, methodically, encircled the army, cutting off any retreat. You realize your fate is here on this dusty field as you are pressed back into the mass of the doomed, wishing you were home again.

You can barely move, the crush of bodies around you, tens of thousands of men trapped on all sides. Spears thrust forward from the edges as men die, pincushioned. Legionaries on the outskirts fight to find an escape but are cut down by the Carthaginian encirclement. Slowly, methodically, with javelin and spear and sword, the Greatest army ever fielded by Rome is cut down.

The blood first soaks the dirt, then flows between your toes like a flooded street. Some men dig holes with their helmets, thrusting their heads into the crimson mud and suffocating rather than suffer the inevitable foreign blades. You watch the men in front of you skewered, and finally resign yourself to your grim fate. A final prayer to the gods leaves your lips as the point of a spear pierces your belly. Your bladder lets go, almost a relief. You’ve had to piss for over an hour. Another thrust stabs through your armor, into the old scar. You smile and draw your sword in defiance, letting loose a final, primal scream as a javelin finds your throat.

Long Live Rome.



There

Kige Ramsey. The man, the legend.