Tear Jerker / Sabres of Infinity

Sabres of Infinity

• If the Player Character decides to explore Noringia instead of going to the officer's club, he can see what the battle has done to the city and its inhabitants.
• Lanzerel explaining what happened; the army didn't lose that many men because of some stratagem on the enemy part. It was simply the citizens who fought to the bitter end to defend their home:
  Lanzerel: "No soldiers, just folk, like the ones back at home. Tapsters, bakers, tailors, smiths; them and their wives and their children. Half the bloody town turned on us as we came through. They shot at us with heirlooms and hunting pieces, they hacked at us with saws and dirks and saintsdamned eating knives. They threw stones and bricks and cobbles and anything else they could lay hands on"
• When talking to Elson before the battle of Blogia, one can realize just how broken he is. The last four years were just a long Trauma Conga Line for him, as he realized that people do not behave honorably in war and that he only rose to the rank of Captain because his father used his connections to help his son get promoted faster. It's no wonder he sounds so eager to fight during the battle; to him, it's his last chance to die in glory and prove his worth.
  • Elson's reaction if a friendly MC refuses to counter-charge the Antari cavalry. Poor guy was already a Death Seeker before, but now he has to deal with his best friend leaving him in his time of need.

Guns of Infinity

• The crippled Duke of Cunaris. Any scenes which highlights his disability is tough to read especially if the reader knows and cares for someone in the same position.
• Coupled with being a CMOA, the last stand of the Experimental Corps as they face down a full force of Antari Hussars.
• The simple fact that no matter what the MC does, a major character will die by the end of Second Kharingia. A sobering thought that in war no one gets out unscathed.
• A ruthless MC can induce this after killing Lady Aleksandra. The group of Church Hussars which escorted her starts mourning and just... Stays there. The MC can then order them shot, until no one is left standing.
  • Alternately, if the MC captures her, it costs him the majority of his men, potentially including two of his Lieutenants.
• If Lefebvre is reported to Major Hunter in the first game, one will discover that it ended up being All for Nothing because not only Lefebvre used his connections to avoid his punishment, he also managed to get offical sanction for his actions. The Dragoon Officer can do nothing but call him out on it.

Lords of Infinity

Given that Tierra is on the brink of collapse, it might be easier to write down the scenes that are not Tear Jerker...

Never mind, it is even harder to write things that are hardly exist.

• We get to finally meet Baron Hawthrone, Elson’s father. He had been looking for news of his son ever since Battle of Blogia. Imagine a grieving father going through files of missing soldiers for six years, hoping to find where his son went if alive, and body if dead, only to get neither in the end. Keep in mind that Elson is still officially declared MIA, meaning that although he should be considered dead, his family cannot claim his possession, or even selling his commission for money.
• The roadmen you encountered are not just common thieves or bandits, but retired veterans from the war. They are robbing people on the road not because of the looting habits they “picked up” during the war, but because they are unable to survive by doing honest work, assuming anyone want to employ them. The roadman in chapter 2 give you an idea of what life is for an impoverished veteran.
  Roadman: Honest work? Let me tell you what I know of honest work, milord. For eight years, I fought as a soldier in Antar. I lost my brother at Blogia. My sister's husband shat his guts out on the march to Solokovil. A cannonball cut my best friend in two at Kharangia. I spent eight bloody years baking in summer, shivering in winter, and with naught to eat most times except wormy biscuit and ration beef hard enough to shingle a temple roof with. I did it because I believed home was a place worth fighting for, and I kept believing it until I got home and my officers sent me away without even a 'thank you'. Until I had lodging houses close their doors to me because of my uniform. Until men chased me out of the village with dogs because they did not want a soldier to steal their jobs. So you tell me, milord, what choice do I have?"
  • While the roadmen on chapter 3 are less sympathetic, they are no less the victims of the post-war era. Its leader was a soldier in 1st battalion of Grenadier Guard(aka, the King’s bodyguard), who participated in Januskovil and played a crucial role in securing Tierra the victory against Antar, only to get retired when he lost his leg for serving his country. This man had a promising career as the King’s bodyguard and could live comfortably and proudly in Northern Keep, and he was rejected like a broken toy for being loyal to his country and duty. Now, he was breaking the King’s Law to meet his end.
• Evicting the Antari refugees out of your land can also be counted as this, especially if you had housed them in the first place. Their number already whittled down by a quarter due to starvation and cold, and you had almost seal their fate by refuse them to live on your land. Even Loch could not stand to see these serfs dying in a foreign land without food and shelter, and decided to left immediately and join the group, hoping to find a place that is more accepting to these people.
  • Even if you decided to house all of the refugees, you cannot save all of them. Some of them are already in the brink of starvation to be saved. One girl, however, died of burst stomach from eating too much after months of starvation. Most of these deaths are children, to the point where the main character himself is getting used to the news that another children died when he wakes up.
• When the harshest winter hits Tierra, the road are filled with corpses of evicted tenants and improvished families. The number was so enormous that the bodies are blocking the road and when the snow melts. It is no small wonder that the Order of Blue is describing the situation in Aetoria is similar to what Kharangia looks like after it was sacked.
• It turns out the secret of the close relationship between Cazarosta siblings is an absent father and an abusive mother.
  Katarina:When we were children, our situations were much the same. When my father was in Leoniscourt, he would do all in his power to ensure that we were treated well, Caius and I both. But as the years went on, he came home less and less. When he was appointed head of the Foreign Office, he almost stopped coming home at all.

  My mother was a terrible woman. She hated us both equally. Him for being a bastard, and me for not being a male heir who could be what he could not. She sought every excuse to punish us when she could. That was when I learned to lie, to smile and to curtsey and to answer every question with an impossible answer because it hurt too much to tell the truth and it huxrt too much to stay silent. But Caius could never lie like I could, not so easily. It hurt him to do it, deeply. Late at night, he would tell me every single lie he told that day. At first, he would weep as he told me, but as the years continued, he grew... harder, I could say. The weeping stopped, but he still told me every lie. He still does.
• Cassius opening up to you about what he do as a diplomat to Tierra: Nothing. It turns out Cassius being assigned to the post is the combined efforts of his father and rivals. Cassius father send him to Tierra so that Cassius wouldn’t cause a scandal big enough to damage the family’s political influence in Varsovia, while rivals put him on the post so that he would. Essentially, Cassius’s job as a diplomat is taken up by his subordinates, leaving Cassius no different from a rubber stamp. It is no wonder he is so care-free about his behavior, because no one care much about him growing up or take him seriously, not even his family.
  • Adding on to that, Cassius’s father death. While we never met the elf in person, and said elf does a rather poor job as a father, Cassius is distressed by the news. The jolly, care-free attitude of Cassius we are so easily associate with him is gone, taken up by his uncertainty regarding his future. Cassius had always hoped to find a way to prove his father that he can live up to him and his family's reputation and winning his father’s approval. He could not do so before because his father does not care much about him, and he could not do so now because his father is not alive to care for anything at all.
    • Worse, Cassius’s father died of an assassination planned by his political rivals and make it appears to be an accident. Unlike Tierran, a Takaran couldn’t afford to avenge his father in the field of honor, and must take the official investigation at face value. The fact that Cassius inherits the family’s title is not a comforting news for him, as he half-seriously remarks that he is too useless to get killed.
    • At this point, Cassius wanted to hear from MC about his honest opinion about him, and he takes both compliment and criticism gladly, because compliment from you is so sincere that he is comforted by someone that he is more useful that he thought to be, and your criticism reminded him of his father, and treat it as you being honest to him.
• The Kian Treaty has caused an uproar among the residents in Aetoria, thanks to the power struggle between Wulframites and Royalists. After the treaty votes was over, the population become furious and starts to smash anything that is Kian. Warehouses, shops, cargos, and perhaps the merchants as well, if King does not send grenadier guards to quash the uprising “by any mean necessary”.
  Reyes: Officially, 853 dead. Unofficially, thousands, with hundreds still missing, and not all the bodies are found.
• The arson of Wulframite printing house is a tragic event that has no resolution. While the husband and wife are alive, their two daughters and house maid are kill by smoke while they are asleep. This Aetorian middle-class was having a promising prospect for the family’s future, and blown apart by the bundled grenades tossed by a royalist over their political belief. Moreover, you and your men are unable to hunt down the suspect in a city of half-million population, and had to drop the cases due to lack of lead. No one is happy about the outcome, not you, not Cunaris, not the city, and certainly not the parents who lost their children. This is one of the few events in the series where there is nothing you can do to resolve the problem to a successful end.
  • There’s more, the above mentioned circumstances may be sad, but at least you are genuinely looking for the suspect. What if you are not? Well, there is always an option to forge the suspect. It takes nothing more that finding a poor vagrant with the description closely fitting to the description of suspect, put the charge on him, and be done with it. No one will second guess your decision, and the innocent man you accused is hanged immediately with no question asked. The only cost you pay is your conscience, which even a ruthless MC is troubled by his action that he could not go to sleep the night he made the decision. Practically, this is the best thing you can do with no lead towards the suspect, but do you have the heart to do so?
• None of these moments mentioned above will ever top the fire of Wulfram’s house, killing everyone in Wulfram’s family save Wulfram himself and Brockenburg, who are elsewhere when it happened. If you are playing as a royalist, you cannot help but to sympathize the poor man for losing everyone he cared about within a night. If you are a wulframites, you are most likely swearing to tear down the Northren Keep and overthrown the Queen. If Wulfram had been crusading for greater good before, it is definitely personal this time.
  • It hits even harder because you had just been invited to a dinner in Wulfram house a couple of months ago, seeing living characters, who had been talking with you about what is best for the country in their opinion. Who would have thought this is the last time they ever spoke to them?
  "The Duchess, and her children. We had it covered to spare His Grace the sight of it. The Aetorian Queen has a great deal to answer for. If not before His Grace, then before the Saints themselves."
  • Cunaris also took a heavy blow on losing his daughter. The old duke had never been in his best since he lost his leg during the war, and peace had make him depressed over his crippling states. Losing his daughter is the last blow that drove whatever willpower left of him out of his mind. Although this means leaving you at the command of the only army in the city with a disadvantage and in danger of the final reckoning, one cannot help but sympathize his condition.

Shadow Regiment

You thought the League of Antar was bad already? Well, in the Shadow Regiment timeline things get even WORSE.

• You'd think that after a dozen years of war against Tierra, the deaths of untold thousands and displacement of countless more, and another defeat, the Antari might finally get a chance to catch a break and heal from the wounds. And they do.... for a few years. Then Mikhail takes power....
  After four weeks at sea, he turned around. On a rainy spring day in 629 OIE he landed his troops at the Congress city of Octobirit, broke into the Congress at the head of three thousand of his best troops, declared the League abolished, declared himself King, and had anybody who dared speak against him unceremoniously bayoneted.

  Khorobirit was now King Mikhail I, of House Khorobirit, High King of Antar. His plan was simple, and still demanded the ultimate destruction of an increasingly powerful Tierra, both for pragmatic reasons as well as for pure vengeance. However, the new king knew full well that the old League could not face down Tierra’s powerful fleet and battle-hardened army, especially now that Tierra itself was undergoing a massive industrial revolution. Thus, he conspired to unite all of Antar under him, so that he could use his homeland’s prodigious resources and manpower to turn Antar into the most powerful nation in the north and crush Tierra entirely. For more than ten years now, Mikhail of Khorobirit, White King of Antar, has sat on the throne of Saint Stanislaus. While his reforms proceed apace, his reign is marked by brutal repression and held together only by the heavy shackles of despotism.
• It can't really be said to be a Start of Darkness because Mikhail of Khorobirit was already a bad, bad man even by Antari standards, but it is easy to see why he got so, so, so much worse in the Shadow Regiment timeline.
  > Lady Anna and thirteen year old Aleksandra were caught in one of the castles in the way of the Tierran army. After a three day siege, the Tierran guns battered down the walls and stormed the keep. Through a feat of heroic bravery and skill, young Aleksandra’s three dozen bodyguards were able to fight their way through the Tierran army and escape in the chaos of the assault. Lady Anna was not so lucky. She had ordered her own bodyguards to hold the keep at all costs, and fought alongside them herself, even as a company of elite Tierran grenadiers blasted open the doors to the inner keep.

  > She did not survive the assault.

  > Mikhail was nearly destroyed by the news. The normally taciturn lord locked himself in his fortress headquarters for three days. His guards heard nothing but angry sobs and the sound of breaking furniture. When he emerged, his aides would write that the tranquil, cold expression on his face was more frightening than anything they had seen on the battlefield. Mikhail’s love for his lady wife had turned to hate for the Tierrans who had killed her and the incompetent Antari generals who had let it happen. The first of these hates he stoked immediately, marching his entire army south. The Duke of Havenport had nothing to do with Lady Anna’s death, but he was a Tierran and he had an army, which was enough. The Duke of Havenport was also not an idiot, when Mikhail reached the Tierran army, it was dug in along well-prepared positions on the banks of the River Kharan. For two weeks, the Antari army was thrown against those positions, for two weeks the Tierrans held. Worried by this new instability, the Congress demanded, and got, Mikhail’s removal from command. For the few years, he would sit in his castle, doting on his teenaged daughter and watching helplessly as King Miguel held the Congress at bayonet-point and dictated the terms of a humiliating peace.