Zalesie

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Zalesie is a village and location in the Polania Republic.

A normally quiet and idyllic place, it is where the Kos family lived before the events of Iron Harvest.

History[]

Like many places in the Polania Republic, Zalesie has yet to see any major advancements within its boundaries and remains a largely rural and small community. It has a church, a market-place, and is built with easy access to a large river. Farming and hunting remain the dominant pass-times. However, not far to the northeast is a decent-sized train station and some attendant infrastructure with connects to distant major cities like Kolno. What technology the town does have comes in the forms of highly outdated agricultural mechs, old remnants of mining, and logging camps.

In 1905 after the death of his wife Liliana, Piotr Dybowski took his two children, his son Janek and baby girl Anna, from the Factory to live a quiet, hidden life in Zalesie under their new name: Kos. They lived here for about ten years, during which Janek grew to be a young man and Anna grew into a young girl. One day she got in a pitched snowball fight with a bunch of local boys in the crumbled ruins of a castle in the area, after which Janek took her to hunt her first deer in the nearby forest. It was in this forest she would meet her future companion animal: Wojtek the bear, who she would keep in a cave north of the village.

Great War[]

In the advent of Rusviet aggression across the border during 1915, the Polanian military called upon volunteers to fight the invaders. Piotr's brother Lech, a military officer, came to Zalesie looking for recruits, and convinced Janek to join. Despite their protests, Janek left Anna and Piotr in Zalesie, and never returned for he would be listed as a casualty in the Great War along with many other Polanian soldiers. During the fighting, the village seems to have avoided any of the destruction.

Post-war[]

Five years later, Anna and Piotr were walking in the forest towards a logging camp to fix a broken lumber mech when a messenger arrived telling Piotr that Polanian rebels wished to talk to him in town. Piotr returned and spoke with the men, who gave him a letter from Lech warning him that people were after him. Not long after, a force of Rusviet troops supported by mechs and weapon systems attacked the town, massacring civilians in their search for Piotr under his old name of Dyobowski. Anna gathered some farmers to fight off the invaders and repelled their first wave, but their leader Colonel Zubov arrived and scattered the defenders, capturing Piotr and leaving Anna for dead. Many of the villagers, destraught by the level of destruction and death, forced Anna and Wojtek to leave.

Zubov took Piotr to the train station to take him back to Rusviet, but Anna gathered a stronger force of soldiers with some mech support to take the station. Zubov ordered two waves in to retake it, but was turned back by reinforcements from the Polanian Resistance led by Anna's uncle Lech.

Joining up with the Resistance, Anna buried her father and, with Lech, would steal a train from a nearby depot to head to Kolno.

Trivia[]

Zalesie citizens have a habitational name: Zaleski, or those who live "beyond the wood."
There are over a hundred villages named Zalesie in modern-day Poland.

Lore

General

Factions

The Factory

World of 1920+
Airship