Furry Napoleonic Wars

📅 11 October 1805 | 🕐 06:15 | 📍 Road to Ulm, Bavaria | 🌦️ Cold fog, drizzle, mud to the ankles

Dawn comes grey and wet. The fog lies so thick along the Danube road that the column ahead seems to vanish into nothing, though you can hear it: ten thousand boots sucking at the mud, the creak of gun carriages, a drummer boy tapping a tired rhythm, and somewhere a hare corporal swearing in three languages about the missing bread wagon.

The Grande Armée has marched for weeks, faster than any army should. Soldiers of every fur and feather trudge side by side: wolves with rifles slung, stags in muddy shakos, boars hauling cannon wheels, small otters and rats carrying more kit than their own weight. Nobody has been paid. Nobody has eaten properly since Strasbourg. And yet, along the whole line, there is a restless excitement, like the air before thunder.

By the roadside, an old sow in a patched shawl guards a cart of brandy and tobacco, calling out prices to anyone who slows down. "Mother Brigitte's finest, mes enfants! Warm your bellies, loosen your tongues!" Nearby, a snow leopard sergeant in a mud-spattered blue coat leans on her musket, tail curled around her boot, watching the fog with narrowed eyes.

Then, far ahead, a dull boom rolls through the mist. Then another. Every ear along the column turns.

Ulm is close. The Austrians are close. And whatever you are in this war, the day has already begun without asking your permission.

Who are you in this story? Choose a path, or invent your own:

• Ensign or lieutenant in a line regiment, a Voltigeur company, or the 95th Rifles
• Cavalry trooper: Cuirassiers, Carabiniers, Hussars, Lancers, or Cossacks
• Gunner or horse artillery crew
• Polish legionnaire of the Legia Nadwiślańska
• Civilian: courier, merchant, nurse, smuggler, innkeeper
• Spy, deserter, or mercenary

Tell me your species, your name, and your role, and the story begins.

📅 21 October 1805 | 🕐 06:40 | 📍 Off Cape Trafalgar, Atlantic coast of Spain | 🌦️ Pale dawn, light westerly wind, long heavy swell

The deck is still damp with dew and sand. Gunners have scattered it across the planks so that boots will not slip in what is coming. The ship rolls slowly on the swell, her sails slack and grey, her gun ports open like a row of dark eyes.

Then the lookout's cry rings down from the masthead, and every ear on deck swivels upward. "Deck there! Sail to leeward! Many sail!"

Through the thin morning haze, the horizon slowly fills with pale shapes: topsails and royals, thirty-three ships of France and Spain stretched across the sea in a ragged crescent. Among the officers on the quarterdeck, a lioness in a lieutenant's blue coat lifts her spyglass, her tail lashing once against the rail.

"Cádiz sent them out at last," she murmurs, her voice low and steady. "Well. Nelson will be pleased."

Along the gun deck, the crew move in quiet, practiced haste. A burly boar hauls a powder cask. A pair of young otters, powder monkeys no older than twelve, dart between the cannon with bags of cartridges, whiskers twitching. An old grey wolf bosun checks every rope and gives each gunner a gruff nod. Someone starts humming a sea shanty and is told firmly to stop.

A marine drummer taps the call to quarters. The ship wakes fully now, ears pinned and tails tucked, and the hush that settles is the hush of a hundred creatures who understand that by nightfall, many of them will be gone.

The lioness lowers her spyglass and turns to you. "You there. Stay close, and keep your head down when the guns begin. They will begin soon."

Who are you aboard this ship? Choose, or invent your own:

• Midshipman, a young officer in training, with a dirk and a long way to fall
• Gun crew sailor, working a cannon on the lower deck
• Royal Marine, rifle or musket, posted on the quarterdeck or in the rigging
• Surgeon's mate, waiting below in the cockpit for the wounded
• Something stranger: a pressed man, a smuggler in disguise, a spy

Tell me your species, your name, and your role, and the battle begins.

📅 2 May 1808 | 🕐 08:50 | 📍 Plaza de Oriente, Madrid, Spain | 🌦️ Clear and warm, dust in the air

The morning is bright, and the city should be quiet. It is not. A crowd has gathered outside the royal palace, thick with shawls, straw hats, and clenched paws: bakers, water-carriers, seamstresses, students, priests. Word has spread that the last of the royal family is being carried off to France, and the whole plaza hums like a hive about to split.

French sentries stand along the palace wall in blue coats and tall shakos. A young hare among them keeps shifting his grip on his musket, ears flicking toward every shout. Across the square, a squadron of Mamelukes in turbans and baggy red trousers sits on restless horses, their jackal captain watching the crowd with hooded eyes.

On the steps of a church, a vixen in a black shawl tears a strip of cloth into bandages, glancing between the soldiers and the crowd. Beside her, an old mule priest murmurs a prayer under his breath. Someone in the crowd begins to shout. Another voice joins. A stone arcs through the air and cracks against a shako.

A single musket shot cracks across the plaza.

For one heartbeat, nobody moves. Then the whole square erupts.

Who are you on this day? Choose, or invent your own:

• Madrileño civilian: baker, student, muleteer, innkeeper, printer
• French soldier or officer ordered to hold the plaza
• Mameluke trooper in the Imperial Guard cavalry
• Spanish artillery gunner at the Monteleón barracks
• Priest, nurse, or smuggler caught in the middle

Tell me your species, your name, and your role, and the uprising begins.

📅 17 March 1813 | 🕐 11:20 | 📍 Market square, Breslau, Silesia | 🌦️ Pale sun, patches of old snow, cold wind

The royal proclamation is nailed to the town hall door, and half of Breslau stands in the square to hear it read aloud. "An mein Volk." To my people. When the clerk finishes, there is a silence so complete that you can hear pigeons shuffling on the rooftops. Then somebody cheers, and the square erupts.

Within an hour, the lines at the recruiting tables stretch around the fountain. Blacksmiths, students, clerks, bakers, farmers in their Sunday coats, boys who lied about their age, fathers who left their wives weeping at the door. A broad-shouldered boar in a leather apron hefts an old musket he doesn't know how to load, grinning like a man who has waited ten years for this.

At a table near the fountain, a she-goat in a plain gray schoolteacher's dress checks names off a list, her pen scratching steadily, her ears twitching at every shout. "Name, trade, age," she says, never looking up. "Can you shoot? No? Then you will learn. We do not have much time."

On the far side of the square, a hawk in a Prussian staff officer's coat watches the crowd with narrowed eyes, taking notes. Behind the church, a few French informers, a rat in a merchant's coat and a thin weasel clerk, slip away down a side alley, heading for the garrison.

The winter of Russia has broken the Emperor's army. Now Prussia has decided to remember what it is.

Who are you in this crowd? Choose, or invent your own:

• Landwehr volunteer: farmer, smith, student, clerk, or father of three
• Veteran officer drilling raw recruits
• Jäger or Lützow Free Corps volunteer
• Civilian caught between loyalties: merchant, printer, innkeeper, informer
• Spy, deserter, or foreign agent watching the town

Tell me your species, your name, and your role, and the uprising begins.

📅 18 June 1815 | 🕐 10:30 | 📍 Ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean, south of Brussels | 🌦️ Grey sky, mud from last night's storm, steam rising from the fields

It rained all night. Every soldier on the ridge woke soaked, stiff, and half-starved, with powder damp and boots caked in thick clay. Fires smoke weakly in the wet grass. Men scrape mud from their muskets, share dry biscuit, and listen.

Across the valley, the French army is forming. From the ridge it looks like a painted picture: columns of blue, lines of red-plumed cavalry, rows of cannon glinting dully in the grey light. Drums roll. Bands play. Then a great roar rises, "Vive l'Empereur!", rolling across the fields like surf, and every ear on the British ridge flattens.

In a sunken lane behind the line, a Highland stag in a green rifle jacket checks the flint on his Baker rifle, his antlers wrapped in sacking. Nearby, a grey wolf sergeant of the Coldstream Guards sharpens his bayonet without looking at it. A young hare ensign tries and fails to hide how badly his paws are trembling. A cantinière, a calico cat in a faded apron, hands out thin coffee from a battered tin pot, calm as a church mouse.

Far off to the right, a single cannon booms. Then another. Somewhere near the farm of Hougoumont, smoke begins to rise.

"Here it comes," the stag murmurs, never lowering his gaze. "Steady, now. Whatever you are, whoever you were yesterday, today we stand."

Who are you on this ridge? Choose, or invent your own:

• Infantry officer or ensign in a line regiment
• 95th Rifles skirmisher in the orchards
• Scots Greys, Life Guards, or cuirassier trooper
• Gunner serving a battery on the ridge
• Courier, surgeon's mate, camp follower, or spy

Tell me your species, your name, and your role, and the battle begins.

📅 2 December 1805 | 🕐 07:10 | 📍 Foot of the Pratzen Heights, Moravia | 🌦️ Thick ground fog, bitter cold, frost on every musket

The fog lies in the valley like spilled milk, and the whole of Marshal Soult's corps waits inside it, silent. Up on the Pratzen Heights, above the mist, you can hear the enemy: Russian drums, shouted orders in Russian and German, the clatter of columns marching down the slope, straight into the gap the Emperor has left open for them.

A red-brown fox in a plain grey overcoat once told his marshals that the enemy would attack the right flank, and now the entire plan depends on the Russians believing it. Men crouch in the frozen stubble with ears pressed flat. A stout badger sergeant passes a canteen down the line, whispering, "Quiet, mes gars. Quiet. When the sun comes up, we climb."

Near you, a vixen in a Voltigeur captain's coat checks the priming of her pistol, tail wrapped tight around her boots. "They think we are weak," she murmurs, amused. "Let them. It is the cheapest mistake in Europe."

Church bells ring faintly somewhere behind the enemy lines. A horse whinnies. A cannon fires once, far to the south, where the Austrians have met the French right wing.

Then the fog above begins to glow gold. The sun is rising over the Pratzen, and the whole army holds its breath.

Who are you in the fog? Choose, or invent your own:

• Infantry officer or ensign in Soult's corps
• Voltigeur or light infantry skirmisher
• Gunner hauling a cannon up the frozen slope
• Russian or Austrian soldier on the heights, unaware of what is coming
• Courier, spy, or surgeon's mate

Tell me your species, your name, and your role, and the battle begins.

📅 7 September 1812 | 🕐 05:45 | 📍 Fields before the Great Redoubt, Borodino, Russia | 🌦️ Cold grey dawn, mist over the Kolocha river

The proclamation has been read to every regiment: "Soldiers! Here is the battle you have so desired." Now the sun rises red behind the French lines, and the whole plain smokes with campfires, thousands upon thousands of them. Two armies have marched for months across a burned and empty country to reach this one morning.

On the Russian side, priests carry an icon of the Virgin along the ranks, and soldiers kneel in the dew. A huge brown bear in the green coat of the Preobrazhensky Guard crosses himself, then checks his bayonet. Beside him, a she-wolf nurse in a grey apron arranges rows of bandages on a cart with steady paws. Somewhere beyond the trees, Cossacks are singing.

On the French side, a great battery of cannon sits wheel to wheel, gunners in powder-black shirts, a lynx lieutenant counting shells in silence. Nobody laughs. Even the veterans of Austerlitz and Friedland have gone quiet. A redoubt on the hill ahead looks small from here. It will not be small by noon.

A single cannon shot sounds at dawn, then a hundred more. The earth shakes. The mist is gone in seconds, replaced by smoke.

Which side are you on at Borodino? Choose, or invent your own:

• French or allied infantry officer, soon to charge the redoubts
• Polish lancer of the Vistula Legion or Imperial Guard
• Russian infantry, Guard, or militia (Opolchenie) defender
• Cossack scout riding the flank
• Gunner, surgeon's mate, or camp follower

Tell me your species, your name, and your role, and the battle begins.

📅 27 November 1812 | 🕐 06:00 | 📍 Banks of the Berezina river, near Studienka | 🌦️ Heavy snow, ice on the water, black sky

The bridges are ready, or nearly. All night, Dutch pontoniers in tattered blue coats stood to their chests in freezing water, hammering trestles into the riverbed. Many did not come out again. Now two thin spans of timber stretch across the grey ice floes, and on the near bank, forty thousand starving soldiers stare at them in silence.

It was a grand army once. Now it is a river of ragged coats, bandaged paws, borrowed furs, and empty eyes. Hares with frostbitten ears. A grey wolf leaning on a rifle used as a crutch. A cat vivandière carrying a baby otter in her shawl, her tail frozen stiff. The Old Guard still marches in order, bearskins white with snow, because someone has to.

Not far away, a huge shaggy bear in a Cossack's sheepskin coat peers through the trees on the far bank, grinning. Russian cannon are coming up behind him. His sotnia waits for the order.

A pontoon cracks. A wagon tips sideways into the ice. The crowd surges, and a hundred voices cry out in French, German, Polish, and Italian.

An old engineer, a weary badger general, turns to you with wet fur and shaking paws. "Nobody stops," he says. "Nobody. Not for the baggage, not for the wounded. If the bridge falls, we all fall with it."

Who are you at the river? Choose, or invent your own:

• Pontonier or engineer working in the icy water
• Veteran of the Old Guard keeping the column in order
• Straggler, civilian, or camp follower trying to cross
• Polish lancer, Vistula legionnaire, or rearguard soldier
• Cossack or Russian soldier hunting the retreating army

Tell me your species, your name, and your role, and the crossing begins.

📅 18 October 1813 | 🕐 15:30 | 📍 Fields near Paunsdorf, east of Leipzig, Saxony | 🌦️ Overcast, cold drizzle, smoke hanging low

It is the third day of the greatest battle Europe has ever seen. Half a million soldiers, thirty-odd nations, and every language from Russian to Portuguese are packed into the fields around one city. The French line has shrunk to a ring, and the ring is shrinking.

In the middle of the line stand the Saxons, loyal allies of the Emperor, hungry and exhausted, stuck between their old oaths and their burning homeland. A stag colonel in Saxon white pulls his horse to a stop and stares across the field at a column of Prussian Landwehr advancing through the drizzle, singing. He has heard that song before. It is the song of his own people.

Nearby, a Silesian Landwehr boar in a patched coat marches with a rusty musket and a grin, his old blacksmith's hammer tied to his belt. Next to him, a she-goat sergeant counts the beat out loud, calm as church. Further back, a Russian bear and an Austrian stag share a flask in the mud as if they had been friends all their lives.

A French marshal's aide, a fox in a bullet-torn coat, gallops up to the Saxon line shouting orders. The stag colonel does not even look at him. He looks at his officers. He looks at the Landwehr.

Then, to the astonishment of two armies, the Saxon artillery turns around.

Who are you at Leipzig? Choose, or invent your own:

• Saxon, Württemberger, or other allied soldier torn between sides
• Prussian Landwehr volunteer or Jäger
• French infantry officer holding the ring, or Guard veteran
• Russian, Austrian, or Swedish coalition soldier
• Surgeon, courier, civilian of Leipzig, or spy

Tell me your species, your name, and your role, and the choice is yours.

📅 [Your choice, 1805-1815] | 🕐 [Your choice] | 📍 Europe | 🌦️ [As the story demands]

A map is pinned flat on a candlelit table, its corners weighed down with a pistol, a brass compass, an inkwell, and a half-eaten ship's biscuit. Ten years of war are drawn across it in smudged ink: arrows crossing rivers, little flags on cities, black crosses where armies broke.

Outside the tent, the world goes on without you. Drums, hooves, church bells, the cries of sutlers and sentries, and in the distance, as always, the low grumble of guns.

A voice speaks softly from the shadows, belonging to no one and everyone: the war itself. "Europe is on fire, and every fur and feather in it has a part to play. So. Where does your story begin?"

1. Pick a moment:

• 1805: Ulm, Trafalgar, Austerlitz
• 1806-1807: Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Tilsit
• 1808-1811: Spain and Portugal, the guerrilla war, Torres Vedras
• 1812: Borodino, burning Moscow, the retreat
• 1813: Landwehr, Lützen, Vitoria, Leipzig
• 1814-1815: the fall of Paris, Elba, the Hundred Days, Waterloo
• Or name any date and place you like, and I will build the scene

2. Pick a path:

• Soldier: line infantry, light infantry, Landwehr, guard
• Cavalry: cuirassier, carabinier, hussar, lancer, Cossack
• Artillery or navy: gun crew, horse artillery, midshipman, marine
• Irregular: guerrillero, partisan, smuggler, free corps volunteer
• Civilian: merchant, nurse, innkeeper, printer, courier, vivandière
• Shadows: spy, deserter, mercenary, double agent

3. Tell me about yourself:

• Your species (any species can serve any nation)
• Your name and gender
• Your nation, regiment, or allegiance
• Optionally, a secret, a debt, a rival, or a lost home

Not sure yet? Say "random" and I will choose your moment and your role, or say "surprise me" and I will drop you into the middle of something.

The candle gutters. The map waits. The war does not.