Princess Sita

Type

Infantry

Faction

Armortype

Unarmored

'

Base

Health

500

Purchase costs

Iron
280

Oil
30

Population
3

**Reinforcement costs (per Soldier)**
Iron	Oil

"An eagle-eyed sniper and leader of the Free Tribe. She is accompanied by her falcon Haytham.'" ― Codex

Princess Sita al Hadid is a hero of Arabia who she assists the armed forces of Usonia. She leads the roaming Bedouin tribes in a fight for freedom from foreign powers that see her home as a prize to be taken.

Overview[]

Sita herself is far from an imposing figure, being an average-sized and slender woman, but she makes up for it with passion for her people and their sovereignty. She wears a white jacket of sorts over a purple robe, with a headdress that can cover most of her head and face inlaid with intricate gold detailing. She has a number of small facial tattoos common to people of the Bedouin. She wears an ammunition bandolier and a powder horn for her rifle.

Her falcon, Haytham, is a small bird of prey little larger than a crow, but like his master it is not his size that makes him.a valuable battle aid but rather his incredibly sharp sight. He is not able to be seen in close detail in the game, but is likely a peregrine falcon.

Although a sniper hero like Anna Kos of the Polania Republic, Sita is focused less on combat and more on scouting. She is fast on foot and her rifle packs a punch at long range, allowing her to pick off infantry with relative ease and fleeing if the enemy brings too much force. She can assign Haytham to tail enemy units of any kind, revealing them and their immediate area on the map if they go into the fog of war, and any unit watched by Haytham can be targeted from father away by Sita herself. She can also summon a group of stealthy Hashashin warriors directly on her position for a pop and resource cost who can tie up enemy infantry in melee and cut them apart.

Like Anna, her rifle's low rate of fire and her lack of armor make dealing with groups difficult, but even more so as she does not have Wojtek to run interference for her. If the enemy counterattacks or catches her by surprise, her only option should be to flee.

Pros[]

Long range and heavy hitting, can one-shot infantry units
Fast, excellent scout and can capture buildings
Can tag units for surveillance
Hashashin can protect her in close quarters
Haytham is invulnerable to attack and invisible to enemies

Cons[]

Low rate of fire, poor against groups on her own
No armor and low health
Animal companion provides no protection
Poor against armored units

Iron Harvest[]

Sita was born into Arabian royalty with two brothers, their father being the Sultan. She was well educated in her people's history, as well as astronomy, and became a competent rider on horseback. She soon longed for Arabia to become the proud and wise nation it had been in the past before the Europeans came. At some point, the Saxony Empire occupied Arabia to control its vast oil reserves for their war machines, and continued to do so even after the death of Kaiser Friedrich, when his son Wilhelm took over.

One day, Nikola Tesla himself contacted Sita's father, offering to help him oust Saxony in exchange for access to the oil reserves to prevent any major European powers from gaining control of them, fearing that a shadowy organization named Fenris had their eyes set on Arabia's resources. However, the king's brother, Khalid, learned of this and preferred working for Saxony. In exchange for the support of Saxony's powerful military, he had his brother and both of his nephews murdered, taking the throne for himself. Sita, devastated, decided to lead the Bedouin tribespeople in an armed revolt against her uncle who had, in her eyes, sold out her homeland to the Empire. Rallying all the people she could into a ragtag force called the Free Tribe, she engaged in guerrilla warfare where she could, as without outside help she could not hope to match the military might of Saxony, who kept their interests heavily guarded.

Operation Eagle[]

Despite the hopeless fight, Sita led repeated raids against Saxony wherever she could, becoming such a significant thorn in the Empire's side that the acting Governor, von Schlongheim, grew concerned with her influence, and advised her immediate death or capture, although he understood that her removal may indeed only make things worse.

During a raid on a train station, she inadvertently helped Captain Willam Mason, a Usonian military officer, save a number of his men who had been captured and were due to be shipped to Saxony aboard a train. She later found Mason and his men wandering in the desert without water, saving them from heatstroke and thirst by bring them to her camp. When William asked to talk to her uncle, she explained the situation to him. William had originally been sent to speak to the new king, but decided to aid her instead by promising military support for her cause. Little did she know that, at the time, William was being manipulated by Fenris and his father into calling for a full Usonian military intervention.

Uncertain of William's intentions, she gave him a chance to prove himself by helping her free a number of European dignitaries being held in a prison nearby; these turned out to be Gunter von Duisburg, his mechanic Frieda, and Polanian cavalryman Michal Sikorski who had all been sent by Tesla to speak with her father but had been ambushed and arrested by her uncle. Gunter explained that Tesla could only offer weapons and training to help the Free Tribe, but William convinced her to instead take bold steps to gain the support of the Usonian people who would call for an intervention to aid her. Together, they planned to size the Saxony-controlled city of Aqaba.

Gunter, well-aware of Fenris' influence in Usonia, tried repeatedly to convince William and Sita to abandon their course lest they fall into Fenris' plan, but William's earnest promise to withdraw Usonian troops from Arabia once Saxony was repelled convinced her to continue. However, William's father, Admiral George Mason, frustrated with William's plan and in Fenris' pocket himself, went behind his back to speak to Khalid and offered him a better deal than Saxony, and aided the king in arresting the Europeans and Sita, who was furious thinking that William had double-crossed her. The Admiral and Khalid plotted to use her execution by Saxony to spark a revolt against the Empire, allowing for a full Usonian intervention and standing military presence to "protect" Arabia.

Fortunately for Sita, William was no double-crosser, and refused to leave his allies behind. Going rogue, he landed forces loyal to him and busted them all out of prison. Sita, still misunderstanding William, ordered his immediate arrest, but Gunter vouched for his honesty, and together they repelled a massive Saxony counterattack. She was deeply moved by William's return with so much risk on his part, and asked him to stay rather than return home and be potentially hanged. When he held out his hand to shake hers, she instead hugged him.

Although the Usonian intervention efforts were sabotaged by William blowing the whistle on the event back home, and Saxony still not repelled, Gunter and company decided to stay and go forth with Tesla's plan to provide aid as well as teaching the Free Tribe in the use of advanced weapons. When Sita voiced concern for William's return to Usonia, Gunter comforted her with his optimism that his heroism and honesty actually gave him a fair shot at winning the Presidency. She resolved to educate her people as well as lead them in battle, aiming to elevate her people to be intellectually on par with Europa as well as militarily.

Weapons[]

Princess Sita uses an old musket, specifically a Jezail, a common type of black powder Firearm originating from the Middle East. As to be expected from a musket-like weapon, it takes a long to reload but even at low veterancy can kill a man with one hit.

Abilities[]

Surveillance : Sita lets loose her falcon, Haytham, to follow and keep a sharp eye an enemy unit from above. Granting vision of the target and the surrounding area for a duration.
Shadow Strike: Summons a squad of Hashashin
Hawkeye: Sita gains additional vision and weapon range while Haytham is with her.

Trivia[]

Sita has some passing similarities to Princess Zehra from the Crimean Khanate; born into her country's royalty, an avid rider of horses, skilled in the use of cavalry and fast attacks, and her companion animal is a bird of prey that acts as a scout for her.
Jezails like the one Sita seems to carry were heavily customized, often homemade muzzle loaders with long barrels and elegant curved stocks which allowed the user to secure the stock against the side of their torso with their arm, allowing them to aim and fire it with one hand while on horseback or riding a camel.
Her hawk is likely named after Ibn al-Haytham, a Muslim Arab mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the late 9th century. Known as "the father of modern optics", he made significant contributions to the principles of optics and visual perception in general; a very fitting name for a bird of prey that acts as Sita's sharp eye in the sky.
She wears a bandolier full of bullets with brass casings, yet her weapon is muzzle-loaded.
Sita is the second hero unit to not be from her faction's homeland, serving as Usonia's infantry hero despite being Arabian. The other is Janek Kos, serving Rusviet but being from Polania.