Commander Cordelia Jadefist
It can be easy to forget that Daring Heights maintains a standing army, and has for a few years now. The fort along the city's walls is a relatively quiet affair, and while the soldiers certainly interact with the townsfolk, their operations are generally outside of the city and so rarely intrude on people's lives. What is noticeable however is the relative peace that Daring is experiencing - even on its outlying farms and properties. This is the work of the First Batallion of Daring Heights, and the determined efforts of their leader, Cordelia Jadefist.
Cordelia hails from a clan of mountain dwarves up in the Icewind Dale peas at the top of the Sword Coast. Her clan struck upon a particularly valuable vein of jade, hence their name, which has seen them largely enter the luxury goods sector. The halberd she has wielded since leaving her family is one of the finest they had made - a jade end to the haft with a traditional dwarven pattern wrapped spiralling up. It was given to her as Cordelia set out on the life she had chosen for herself - as a mercenary.
The mercenary life is a little different from an adventurer, and it takes a different mindset to choose it. Adventurers will take any contract and charge headlong into a cave of gnolls or whatever and despite what people may think, most don't make it back from their first adventure. Those that do can go on to become great and celebrated heroes, for sure, but the mercenary believes that surviving to spend the coin is more important than earning it.
Cordelia joined a small band of roving mercenaries called Adler's Aegis, run by an older human who could personally attest to the survival rate of his troop. Being a practically minded sort, Cordelia found this the ideal group to join. She had been trained in the art of dwarven combat from a young age like her siblings, but she had taken to it with a passion and a dedication which far outstripped them all. As they stopped their training to work more on accounting, trade, mining and in her brother Klad's case - winemaking, Cordelia kept training in weapons. By the time Adler came along, she was a strong enough fighter to earn her place in the troop with ease.
The Aegis also took contracts to clear out caves of gnolls and orcs and such, but when they entered, they swept through with a plan, with precision, and they left no one alone or out of sight. Clearing their first such encounter without losing a single member of the team thrilled Cordelia, and from that point on she lived to study battle tactics, wider strategy and group discipline.
The company got caught up in a Cormyrian border war a few years later, and they were drafted in to the main army formally. This meant working in larger numbers than Cordelia had dealt with before, and when she was given an officer's rank, she worked hard to instill in the soldiers under her command the same regimented discipline and mind for watching out for each other.
She stayed with the border guard for a few years after the war, letting Adler's Aegis carry on without her, and years and promotions later she left the guard too to found her own mercenary band - The Jadebacks. They made a name for themselves all over the western side of Faerun, and Cordelia took her hiring seriously, making sure her troop was balanced with healers and a few mages to deal with some more unusual or dangerous situations.
It is hardly surprising then that when Daring Heights needed an army in a hurry, the Jadebacks were at the top of the list. By this point they were nearly 500 strong - a true army, usually split between 5 to 10 different jobs at any given time. Cordelia gathered them all together for this - incredibly lucrative - contract and brought them to Daring Heights through the portal to 'provide defence against local orcish forces.'
What they faced was an army 6 times their size, in a fortress improperly placed for town defence by a panicking archmage. They had a militia in Daring, and numerous adventurers, but no real soldiers. The most disciplined group - the City Watch - were being tasked with guarding the civilians as they evacuated. The Jadeback's policy of living to spend the coin was also curtailed because the only way back was via the portal that Aurelia Archselon controlled. So Cordelia focused their efforts on what they knew best - killing the enemy faster than they killed you.
Of course the battle was eventually lost. Their best efforts could not hold back a force of that size and ferocity, but they did grant time - time enough for the city defence to stop the Xvart's corruption of the portal, and for Aurelia to stop it from falling into enemy hands (see The Unravelling of the Portal). Cordelia, the Jadefists, and a number of militia and adventurers spent several horrific days in an orcish warcamp as prisoners. Suffice to say that it was the worst time of any of their lives. Before the end of the week however, other survivors of the battle, plus an army of bearfolk, charged into the camp and freed them all, telling them that they had reclaimed Daring Heights again with the help of the lesser archfey the Bear King.
Once her band was re-established and a headcount was taken, Cordelia stormed back to find the leadership of Daring, and instead found the mayor missing and the kindly but clearly out of their depth wizard Aurelia in charge. She demanded their payment in full for the contract plus compensation for being put in an impossible situation without the possibility of retreat and, to her surprise, Aurelia agreed immediately, and paid out of the town treasury (secured before the invasion) without question and with sincere apology. Caught off guard, Cordelia looked at the town's defences and knew that they needed a force to defend them.
Several hours later, she re-emerged from Aurelia's house with a new contract, and laid it out for the rest of the Jadefists to see: they would become the standing army of the town - she would have full oversight of the town's defences and general protection of the local area. Cordelia would also have a seat on the City Council which was in the process of being established, as the representative of the armed forces. They could train the militia into an actual fighting force, request supplies and hire more forces from the continent with a reasonable budget - though most in the first year would have to go towards the rebuilding efforts. And Aurelia would construct a new keep for them - better than the haphazard one she had built in a hurry before the battle which now had vanished as if it had never been there, now as an integrated part of the city's design. It was a good offer, and though they had just seen a terrifying loss and been through a horrible ordeal, Cordelia could see and convinced as many as she could that the only reason they lost was the poorly structured defence they had been tasked with staffing - and that was against one of the largest fighting forces in the region.
Commander Cordelia Jadefist has since turned the lands of Daring Heights completely around. Where at the founding of the city, adventurers needed to clear out local caves of goblins and tackle low level banditry on the roads, the First Battalion (as they were now called, still using the Jadeback insignia) patrol the road to and from the stone quarry to the west and Port Ffirst to the east. They also do regular patrols around the surrounding farmlands and local areas and investigate small issues readily dealt with by a sizable force. Law within the city still falls to the City Watch and Captain Thundercog, but physical security is completely in the remit of Commander Jadefist and the Battalion, now based in Fort Daring, built along the city walls and tailored to her own design.
Following the reclaiming of Daring from the orcs and the reconstruction, many people were reluctant to return, and new investment was initially very difficult to come by. Many on the council would agree that Commander Jadefist's steadfast and resolute approach to securing Daring and the surrounding area piece by piece and with absolute clarity was one of the main reasons that Daring has reached the new heights that it has done. Though not one to give speeches or give away security details, she makes regular time to give short briefings to those interested in the town hall about the state of the city defences and what problems they have dealt with recently. There hasn't been another significant military conflict, but when one comes along, the First Battalion will be ready, and Commander Jadefist will be there to ensure that everyone comes back alive.
Comments