Dawn Fairmane, General of the Andurian Army has way of commanding the attention of the soldiers under her and making her instructions very clear. She is also very good at getting her point across! In this case she was not drilling Andurian troops who have grown more accustomed to the idea of woman leading them, but instead was drilling some European mercenaries on the finer details of maneuvers.

Dawn has decided to model the Andurian Army organization on a mixture of Imperial Roman and English New Model. Yes she has access to modern history books and can now read modern english, and therefore she has adopted some customs from them. One is a modification of the Roman custom of carrying a grape staff as badge of authority. except in this case Dawn's staff is actually a hunk of ironwood which had found is excellent for denting the helmets of soldiers who are slow to carry out her instructions!