“Intention”: War for the Han Frontier sample -- TPMThorne.com

“...Maybe there is,” Liu Bei sighed as he straightened his battle helmet. “Is there anything to laugh at, Xianhe...?”
“Don’t ask that clown!” Zhang Fei barked as all eyes turned to Liu Bei’s innocuous long-time friend Jian Yong. “He’ll just-!”
“Yide... stop it,” Liu Bei interrupted.
Zhang Fei harrumphed and glared at Jian Yong.
“I’m as sick of all this as you, Zhang Yide,” Jian Yong promised. “But then, one can’t help wondering how we ended up working side-by-side with them.”
Jian Yong gestured to one outer part of the hastily-assembled camp: a group of youths were stationed there, and they had one noticeable difference in their attire. Most of Liu Bei’s men were outfitted with simple robes, tunics, cuirasses, leather limb guards and simple leather helmets, while the officers were lucky enough to enjoy better protection; the majority of the people within this one outer camp, however, wore yellow turbans on their heads that were an all-too-familiar symbol of dissent against Han rule.
“Didn’t we chase them away?” Guan Yu said with surprise.
“No, because Xuande ‘doesn’t have the heart’!” Zhang Fei heckled.
“Don’t say it like that, Yide,” Liu Bei retorted. “I didn’t mean that I sympathise with their cause, because I’d be a fool to! I want to reach out to them, convince them that their beliefs are the product of a deceitful cultist, and-”
“Sixteen years ago, we were forced to kill hundreds of them because they couldn’t be reasoned with,” Guan Yu noted. “Fifteen and then fourteen years ago, we fought them again, and the situation was the same every time. Cao Cao was forced to come into Yu Province and quell them three years ago, but yet again they didn’t learn; when we were in Xiaopei, we had no choice but to kill the leaders of the White Wave Bandits that evolved from the Yellow Turbans, for they were still as opposed to order as they had ever been. Anyone that is still wearing that treasonous symbol after all this time is unlikely to be swayed, Xuande. Did you get anywhere with their leader, Liu Pi...?”

“...No, he was obviously lying when he said that he’d changed his mind,” Liu Bei admitted. “I suppose that I... ... ...but no, I am being conceited. If I could turn a hardened cultist into a model citizen, I’d not be stuck in the wilds with nothing to my name, would I...?”
“You’re being hard on yourself, Lord Liu,” the thin, frail official Mi Zhu suggested. “If there was even one of them, as you said, that could be swayed, then-”
“Might we perhaps return to discussing the letter...?” the middle-aged official Sun Qian - who most referred to as ‘Mister Sun’ - asked irritably.
“Ah, yes... the letter,” Liu Bei sighed.
“My lord, we should just refuse to answer this,” Mi Zhu said.
“How can I?” Liu Bei retorted. “We’ve given quarters to the messenger! Am I supposed to kill him and throw him in a ditch?”
“By ‘refuse to answer’, I meant that we should not take up arms against Cao again right now,” Mi Zhu explained. “Delay, say that-”
“He promises an army, a proper army, to fight Cao Cao in a pincer!” Liu Bei said excitedly. “If I refuse this, I will be a vagrant, wandering into Jing Province with little more than a band of-!”
“Accept, and you become Yuan’s vassal again,” Mi Zhu warned. “Taking the army obligates you, and then you will be told to-”
“But if our ultimate objective is to defeat Cao Cao, why refuse a perfectly good army and hide in Jing while Yuan dies alone, only to oppose Cao later with a borrowed army from Liu Biao and die alone as well?” Mister Sun asked. “If he’s learned his lessons at Guandu and now proffers a proper army to us, then we-”

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