In which prejudice rears its ugly head again, a bold promise is made and A Most Cunning Plan is revealed.

Like every good mission, this one starts with a briefing.
The attack on the imperial encampments on the west bank provided a foothold for the Gallian forces, but now we have to act on it. We will suppot the army’s Vasel Battalion in Operation Cloudburst, acting as a combination of suicide attackers and meat shield.Because every imperial bullet soaked by the militia is a bullet the army doesn’t have to deal with. And that’s the real plan here. Lt. Landzaat asks what support the militia can expect from the army in its function as a spearhead, and the answer is: none.Use up the Irish. The dead cost nothing.
While the narrative reasons for this tactic are quite clear (the focus lies on Squad 7, not the army), the strategical decision made here is madness. “Let’s alert the Empire of our attack by sending a group of conscripts against entrenched positions”. Everything will be fine, of course, as long as we, the player, don’t fuck up.
But back to the matters at hand: Faldio shares my doubts about this mission, but Cpt. Varrot kindly reminds us that “risking one’s life” is part of a soldier’s job description. I still think that “running unbacked suicide missions” is something different from “tough and/or dangerous missions”. Good thing she didn’t call it “suicide”. That would have been a blow to morale.
Welkin asks for permission to scout around the bridge (and gets it) as Alicia storms the meeting room.Minions. Can’t let them alone for five minutes.
Alicia asks us to come and break up the fight – she tried, but they wouldn’t listen to her. Welkin is sceptical, he’d rather have the others to just fight it out. Alicia accuses him of ignoring fights in his unit, but Welkin disagrees:And Alicia really has a point here. Welkin can’t have petty fights about whatever breaking the squad apart, and he at least has to take a look at what this fight is all about.

And it looks like Rosie is taking on Isara. Upon Welkins inquiry what is going on, we get another good look at Rosie’s prejudice against the Darcsen. It’s either her or Isara on the squad.Isara has heard all this over and over again, and – probably against better knowledge – tries the old “I’m still a human being, regardless of my descent” argument. She also brings up another argument:So, there’s a legend about a Darcsen Calamity that happened at some time in history. The jews poisoned the wells and sacrifice christian children after all.
Rosie doesn’t take this argument too well: after all, a Darcsen just called her “too stupid to distinguish between history and myth.” At this point, Welkin finally steps up and stops the heated argument. This leads to Largo opening his mouth the first time since Welkin arrived. Here we have a professional soldier, openly threatening with mutiny. I’m pretty sure that there are better ideas. On the other hand, if Welking just drags him in front of a court-martial, he’s probably done for as a commander. So he does something either very bold or very stupid: He announces to get the Vasel Brigde back under Gallian control within 48 hours. Should he fail, he’ll resign and hand Squad 7 over to Largo.Largo takes the bet, laughing. We’ll see who gets the last laugh out of this.

At this point we’re introduced to sub-episodes, which give us some more story for free without being necessary to advance the story. Which at least this one really doesn’t.
We join Welkin, Isara and Alicia at the river bank, right after the fight, where Alicia lets her anger about Welkin’s promise run free. It is after all insane to promise to win a frontal assault on a bridge. Isara on the other hand feels guilty for all this: would she not have argued with Rosie and Largo, none of this would have happened.
Welkin wants none of this. Everybody is on edge, and the mission on hand surely isn’t helping to calm people down.
But there’s still the question how to take the bloody bridge……until Welkins sees something in the river, that is. We’re not being told what it is. We just see how he asks Isara and Alicia for a favour, then there’s a cut, then we see the two agree to do… whatever.
In my opinion, this sub-episode really did nothing to advance the story in any way. We literally learned nothing. I really hope that other sub-episodes deliver on the additional-narrative-promise better than this one. And it’s even called “The Plan”.

We learn about the plan in the following regular episode:Brilliant. Are you actively trying to kill everyone? As Rosie confirms, trying to breach the imperial bridgehead would be suicide. Which is the exact reason why we’re not going to do it. Instead, we’ll attack over the river.What could possibly go wrong? Everything. Getting a bunch of foot soldier across the river might work, but we’ll never take the imperial foothold without tank support. Which is why we take the Edelweiss with us.The water-resistant padding will only hold for a few minutes, but it should give us more than enough time to cross the river. Largo argues that the river, being used by ships, will be too deep for a tank – and now we learn what Welking spotted earlier.Mistlereed only grows in shallow water, and Welkin is confident that the water is in fact shallow enough to drive a tank across. And deep enough to allow for ship traffic. This in going to be interesting.