Yashima Chronicles Prologue: Out of Time, Out of Place (Patreon)

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Ota Nobunaga looked every inch the god of war as he surveyed his troops from horseback. He was young for a daimyo, but after he had settled the battle for control of the Ota clan decisively the year prior, none dared gainsay his military expertise. His troops, too, had been honed in those internal conflicts, shaped by experience into a formidable tool for battle. In the war torn island nation of Yashima, he was a force to be reckoned with.

Perhaps it was confidence in his troops that led Nobunaga to take three thousand men and mount an attack on an enemy eight times their number. It was a testament to his own reputation that his men followed him into such an uneven fight. The aftermath of the battle would see whether his reputation would be cemented for good or whether it would be tossed onto the trash heap of history, together with his corpse.

The bulk of his forces were his own peasant levy. They numbered a few thousand, give or take, and were armed with a mix of traditional spears and decidedly non-traditional matchlock muskets. The guns had more than proven their worth on the battlefield. When he was not on the battlefield, Nobunaga spent much of his time working to secure the supply of ever more firearms for his troops.

The backbone of his army were his fellow mounted soldiers. These were mostly small landholders, trained in horseback riding, archery, and swordsmanship. Besides their own martial prowess, they also provided the leadership and inspiration that turned a group of men from an armed mob to a proper army.

If the peasants were the body and the mounted soldiers the skeleton, the strong right hand of the army was made up of his sword saints. These men could call upon supernatural powers to outrun a galloping horse or cut through solid metal. 

They made for a motley sight, each wearing personally decorated armor and often carrying totems to enhance their magical power. The other members of the army kept their distance, regarding the magical swordsmen with wary respect. Nobunaga would hardly begrudge them their eccentricities. No daimyo could go to battle without making a careful assessment of the balance of magical forces. Nobunaga boasted almost a hundred of these fearsome warriors.

Standing in the midst of those sword saints was a young woman, clearly visible in the center of the front line. Dressed in a simple white kimono, she looked out of place among so many rough and tumble soldiers. Yet none of them strayed close to her, leaving a bubble of personal space as they regarded her with wary respect.

That would be me.

Those looks would be a lot more incredulous if any of those soldiers suspected the truth. If they knew that I had originally been born in a country that did not exist yet. If they knew I had been born centuries in the future. If they knew that I had lived my life faithful to the principle of non-aggression.

How did I end up here? How did I end up out of time, out of place, on a foreign battlefield?

It's a long story. One thing that I ought to emphasize, though, is that every decision that I made was reasonable based on the information available to me at the time.

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