[center][img] https://i.imgur.com/5ILCycx.png[/img][/center]
[hr]

Éliane was uncharacteristically dressed. Instead of her usual, far more bombastically colored officer’s uniform, she had taken the unusual liberty to change into mission appropriate garb, donning a winter field uniform that was usually given to Skael’s alpine forces. As such, she actually blended into the environment for once, matching with the snow drifts that were common enough around Solitude nearly year-round. After confirming that short-range radio still worked, she even fitted herself accordingly.

The pre-mission planning aboard the airship ultimately hadn’t yielded too much given the sorry state of their intelligence even right in their backyard, and they didn’t have nearly the right numbers for this mission even with the reinforcements, but there wasn’t much else they could do but to scout it all out. 

It came without question that Éliane had the most tactical knowledge here, especially when it came to the environment around Solitude.
“As much as I dislike it, we’ll have to do this piecemeal,” she agreed. There was a map already in her hand, and she gestured for them to gather around, before pointing at the two positions nearest to the forest. “These two positions will be easy to approach from cover from the forest. If the barbarians are halfway competent, then they’ll have scouts themselves in the forest; we’ll have to maneuver with that in mind.”

She traced her fingers over to the farther two locations on the map. “These two are excellent forward positions on paper, but are easily buffeted under weather and when the drifts are high enough like this, plenty of blind spots in predictable places that any Solituder can exploit.” Pulling a pencil from a pouch, she lightly drew several paths towards the positions. “Scouting and hitting them like this, we should have the element of surprise.”