The soldier graciously unslung the rifle from his shoulder, presenting it to his peers as they made their way down a slow-going mountain path.

“Nagant. Perfect condition. Never used.” The soldier threw the rifle back over himself and reached into his pockets to retrieve two magazines of ammunition. “I’m not sure what these are, but they go with the rifle. Perfect condition. Never once have I fired a bullet like this.”

The listeners rolled their eyes. Some of these volunteers were utterly ridiculous; bringing their own firearms that they had collected from god-knows-where on a mission that, like all other expeditions so far, had been met with absolutely no resistance whatsoever. Sure, some volunteers weren’t reassured by the fact that this was technically Chinese territory, and that the Tibetan banditry wasn’t there to back them up from whatever may come their way, but this was Fugong County, not Peking. Anyone who lived here probably had no idea what a Chinese nation even was, let alone that the occupying force wasn’t Chinese. The eager and armed militiamen stuffed the bullets back into his two pockets and unstrapped two revolvers, accidentally unloading their contents in the process.

“American-made, I hear,” Said the soldier as he scrambled to collect his precious antiques. “I hear it was used in some civil strife they had over there some hundred years ago.”

Some men regretted signing up for the militia, as had they known gun-toting maniacs like these were to be their comrades, they would have opted for a more well-paying job. Hell, even being a farmer was preferable to this. Other volunteers wished that they could have been stationed in Tinsukia, not this hellhole of a region. Bhutan was better than Burma, many decided, though none had traveled there for an extended period of time; it was rumored, though, that they would be eventually, as the expedition into Bengal proved to be a diplomatic issue for the Emperor since some king in India declared half of Burma his, and expected even more from the Empire. Many of the soldiers wished for a vacation off the Andaman; it was certainly preferable to walking up and down the mountains of Yunnan, at least.

The Thunder Dragon Empire annexes LH076, LH073, VN093, and VN089

Province borders were incredibly ambiguous so I did my best to correct them