The Raptor of Spain
- Thread starter MNP
- Start date
Basically unexplained gastro issues have resulted in chronic nausea so heavy I'm struggling to eat enough more than 1000 calories a day. If they can't figure it out with the tests I just took it's time to start putting me under for future tests. Fortunately the tests I have taken have mostly ruled out anything life threatening but I just don't have much energy anymore. I appreciate the concerns! Means a lot. At least it gives me time to read stuff.
Anyhow, I am re-reading and re-organizing the last 30 chapters or so to make sure the tone is reasonably consistent with what I wrote last summer.
ED: Also re-reading past comments... my laptop broke again and had to be sent out for a new power supply and case, but I got a Nexus 7 with bluetooth keyboard. Love it! Perhaps my next update will be from the tablet. Tablet also allows for easier browsing on bad days when I can't get out of bed much.
Anyhow, I am re-reading and re-organizing the last 30 chapters or so to make sure the tone is reasonably consistent with what I wrote last summer.
ED: Also re-reading past comments... my laptop broke again and had to be sent out for a new power supply and case, but I got a Nexus 7 with bluetooth keyboard. Love it! Perhaps my next update will be from the tablet. Tablet also allows for easier browsing on bad days when I can't get out of bed much.
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Eeek, sounds a bit awful. I had a year or two of malnourishment due to stomach condition that took a long time to be diagnosed, so I feel your pain
Bleah. I had hoped that your wording implied you we doing better now. Condolences.
My son's had a nasty gastro thing that started with neuro causes and then caused gastroparesis. So, ya, unexplained gastro stuff is something we're too familiar with.
I also thought you were better. Hope you can recover quickly.
And.... we're back! Episode 2.83
Their swords rang sharply as they clashed. Jalal could see a flicker of surprise in the pale eyes of his enemy, narrowed against the sun. Swords almost never made that sound. Fully in the moment they strained against each other, swords locked, breathing hard, standing almost as close as a lover. On opposite sides, both of them shared fear of death and desire for life. Nothing was more intimate than combat.
With a grunt Jalal Altuni shoved the man back and the cacophony of the battle swirled into the air between them, swallowing up that beautiful sound as if it never was. The momentary connection, the sense of shared struggle vanished. The imperial soldier was slower to recover his balance, and Jalal seized the advantage. lashing out with a kick between the legs. In the instant before the pain hit, the other man had a chance to recognize his doom. Jalal slammed the hilt of his sword into the other’s shoulder and hooked his leg out from under him and when the imperial crashed to the ground Jalal buried his sword into the space just under the other’s helmet and into his windpipe.
Even now the man did not give up. A quick pull on the blade did nothing, and Jalal realized it was lodged in the dying man’s spine. Putting a foot on the man’s chest for leverage, Jalal wrenched the blade out and grimaced when he saw a notch.
Looking around, he saw one of his bodyguard, Afdal, and two other men he did not recognize nearby finishing off another imperial soldier. After taking a deep breath he strode over to them, doing his best to project an aura of vitality despite the weariness that was left behind as the battle lust trickled away. They were all dirty and their weapons blooded but none seemed to be injured. Looking down he delivered a casual kick to the body of the man they slew.
“Bastard notched my sword,” he said. “These imperials are good at taking a blow, but they need more training on how to deliver them.”
The two soldiers grinned, appreciating the casual insult, but Afdal snorted.
“Better than Spaniards, my commander, better any day.” Jalal nodded and did not rebuke him for contrariness. Afdal had been with him a long, long time. He was a minor son of one of the Arab scions who had surrendered to Jalal’s father. Spaniards might die a little more easily, but they’d hurt you even as they did. Many of them truly believed in their kingdom, which Jalal found strange and a little disquieting. A man should not feel that way about anything but the Most High.
“Afdal, spyglass.”
Taking the proffered instrument, Jalal observed the imperial forces falling back down the gentle but rocky slope. While he and the other man had been engaged in their own private contest, the larger battle had gone his way. Even as he watched, a stray arrow struck an enemy cataphract in a weak spot so horse and rider slammed into the rocks with a wet crunch that was clearly audible even at this distance. While there were no more fortunate turns like that, he estimated well over a hundred enemy dead on the field. Not bad against a frontier moira[1], if he judged the banners right. More important than the enemy dead was denying the empire the use of the biggest of the local wells. He sent one of the men off to find the commander of the unit and congratulate him while he and Afdal and the other man took some of the enemy’s horses to return to his main camp.
It was only happenstance that Jalal had been there when the imperials struck. His habit during this campaign was to visit the strategic camps in the area on inspections. It kept the men attentive without feeling oppressively watched, while also providing a way to rest more exhausted units. As they rode back, Jalal reflected that he had better take along more than two bodyguards next time. Still he was not ill disposed to seeing some action in a campaign that was shaping up to be a test of endurance for his young empire.
When he set out in 1218 hopes were high that he could inflict the kind of humiliating defeats he’d visited on the Spaniards and Sicilians in the west. Jalal himself was more cautious, being better informed about the state of things in Syria and the north (that is, the Armenian plateau). Things began excellently with the swift capitulation of Askalon after only minor skirmishes, mostly intended to affirm their importance when they surrendered rather than offer real resistance. Taking Askalon gave him a chance to blood his army and provide him a welcome naval base for the future of the campaign.
It had also panicked Nasir Al-Matin into action. Given charge of the southern Levant like a mere vassal and still smarting from bending knee to the Damascene, Nasir hurried down the coast to challenge him before he could get settled. Jalal suspected a trap—not even Nasir could be that much of a hotheaded fool. Confident that any siege of Askalon would favor him, Jalal began to scout the surrounding area intensively with his own men and hired locals. He was half-right. Nasir was trying to trap him, but had done so in a way that could only charitably be termed slap-dash. The renegade had hired some of the Arab tribes from the desert to cut off Jalal’s route to Askalon and come on him from behind when he faced Nasir. Acting quickly as was his nature, Jalal stripped wealth from a number of Christian churches[2] and quickly offered the Arabs a counter bribe. Because the tribes were more disposed to hunting baggage trains than men, Jalal was able to convince them to wait until after his confrontation with Nasir. After all, they already had Nasir’s money along with Jalal’s and all they had to do was nothing.
Jalal met Nasir Al-Matin at Al-Amnia[3] late in the campaign season of 1218. Believing the Arabs shadowing Jalal were the men he contracted, Nasir was delighted to see Jalal thunder straight at him, headless of his surroundings. He obligingly gave ground to Jalal, pulling his men back while waiting for an attack that never came. When the Arabs finally did move, they bypassed Jalal’s men to fall onto the army of Nasir, already disordered from retreating. This surprise broke the northern army, but Jalal had little interest in harassing them. Instead Jalal made for Nasir’s banner and in a desperate chase, ran him down as he tried to retreat inland.
Taking the captured Nasir with him, Jalal made all possible speed for Jaffa which he laid siege to.[4]The rest of his army spread out inland south of Jaffa to secure Jalal’s hold on the land and open negotiations with the governor of Jerusalem. While sitting outside Jaffa with Nasir in full view of the city, he also captured the small units that were returning home from the battle around Al-Amnia. This greatly discouraged the loyalists in Jaffa, and he offered them terms similar to those of Askalon if they would turn over the top officers to him. Unlike Askalon, Jaffa vacillated about his offer until Jalal’s ships came from Askalon. While giving the appearance of being packed with soldiers, the ships were actually manned by small crews because Jalal simply did not have the money or manpower to equip them not with extending his hold across the southern part of Palestine. Never the less the ships were enough and after a sharp fight in the night and a few small fires Jaffa turned over its officers and opened its gates to Jalal. The captured officers of Nasir’s army were taken back to Egypt where they were housed in relative comfort as a message to any holdouts that Nasir was the one truly at fault.
After toying with ransoming Nasir or even simply delivering him to the Damascene, Jalal ended up executing him for disloyalty to the true caliph in the largest square in Jaffa.
“You should never have tried to ride ahead of your place,” Jalal told Nasir just before the execution. “Look at yourself, going from crisis to crisis. You were much better when someone could tell you how to think.”
Between campaign seasons that year Jalal made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem praying at the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa. While he did not pillage any part of Jerusalem, he did demand a one time payment from the cities who had surrendered which he distributed to his army. Placing half in the garrisons in the land, the other half were sent home. He would need them next year, but for now they were merely a drain on his resources.
If 1218 was an easy year thanks to his cunning, the next year had to be won by force. Nasir Al-Matin’s former seat of power in Caesarea did not submit to Jalal. The remaining officers there played Jalal and the Damascene off against each other as best they could trying to remain independent. Jalal began to feel the pressure as he prepared for its capture. Damascene raiding parties attacked his new territories to remind the populace that conceding to the lord of Egypt had consequences. This was merely a delaying action, but Jalal could guess the next steps.
The rumors of an imperial army were rumors no more. Almost 30,000 troops of the Eastern Empire were now in Syria backed by a sizable fleet to supply them and support their existing coastal enclaves at Acre, Haifa, Sidon and Tyre. Even if Jalal could have brought all of his army to bear, he could not have matched them, not when added to the forces of the Damascene. While he did what he could to remind people of the scandal of an Islamic ruler allying with the eastern emperor against another Islamic ruler in a dispute over who the “rightful” caliph was, the plain truth was Jalal was making an empire in the east and the Damascene was not going to allow it.
Reluctantly Jalal sent his messengers north and west.
For his part the Damascene was waiting for his ally to get ready before he moved. Alone he did not have as many men as Jalal and while he was accounted an able soldier, his talents lay more in administration and economics than war. It was more important to achieve ultimate victory than to come to grips with Jalal soon, especially once Jalal began the siege of Caesarea.
From the beginning it was a difficult undertaking. The lands to the south were not perfectly pacified and Jalal was struggling to amass the funds he needed to maintain his conquests peacefully while guarding his flank from opportunistic tribes and conducting the siege. He had gambled on demanding a single tribute from the captured cities and only light taxes after. This succeeded in as much as the populace acquiesced to his rule which freed up soldiers otherwise stuck in garrisons, but also meant that he was still using Egypt’s resources to pay for the campaign rather than local ones.
In the west his humiliation of the Sicilians had embittered them against him and they harassed both the Zarans and his own Egyptian merchants whenever possible from their far flung ports. Always they explained this away as pirates and even strung up a few people to keep up appearances but diplomatic niceties aside, the Sicilians were gambling on his defeat. As he’d thought, the Spaniards in Tunis had retaken Kairouan and Shahid had not been able to stop them. What Jalal had not foreseen was Shahid being utterly annihilated by whoever Toledo’s commander in Tunis was. Reports were incomplete but they told of a rather depressing tale. Tripoli was in no danger, but that was more because its distance made it an unprofitable target. He had made someone on the other side very angry.
All of which meant he needed a new victory to keep his position and that meant crushing Caesarea. Unfortunately Caesarea did not want to be crushed and to his fury, imperial ships were now supplying them. They interdicted some, but enough got through to give the defenders hope and neither side could gain a decisive advantage.
As the siege dragged on, Jalal diverted some of his men inland to occupy local strong points and encourage the local towns to come over to his side. His target was ultimately Nablus to give him another solid stretch of land, but he also had vague ideas of bypassing Caesarea entirely and going on to Haifa or maybe Acre if he could trick the imperials. It was during these missions that Jalal encountered small contingents under the banners of Damascus and of the Eastern Empire. His enemies had the same idea to secure territory in preparation for the march south and skirmishing began across a broad arc from Qaqun to Bethsan. Meanwhile the main imperial army met up with the Damascene’s troops near Baniyas and prepared to march south with a truly enormous army half again as big as his own.
Jalal’s men began to whisper. The empire was coming. They would be trapped. In response Jalal pushed the siege even harder, launching attacks at night and completing his siege artillery to batter at the walls. Then finally, the news he had been dreading and hoping for came. The imperials had abandoned the Damascene and headed north as fast as they could march. A more urgent concern had suddenly appeared in an all too familiar form.
Once again, Persia had invaded the Eastern Empire.
___________________________
[1]Moira - Imperial frontier detachment of about 500 men
[2]Under the various rulers of the Levant since c. 1040, Europeans can easily now donate money to eastern churches as long as a tithe is paid to the Islamic rulers. This is both faster and more prestigious among men (and God!) than building a church at home and has the added benefit of not having to give up taxable land to churches, the Christian churches in Palestine have become fairly well off. In response the number of relics from the east in Europe has gone up significantly. Notably, the wealth has to be displayed inside. The outsides have to be drab with worse facades than mosques.
[3]Ibelin
[4]This is actually a tiny siege, maybe a little over a thousand troops overall.
Author's Notes:
-I don't think the 1218 campaign requires a map since it's basically a line from Ascalon to Caesarea, but if anyone has a good map of the area I can make one. I am pretty sure the year is 1218, but I might be wrong on this one since it's been a while.
-The Arabs that attack Nasir aren't the guys Jalal bribed. They're Jalal's own troops that he set out with in 2.82 from Egypt. Unreliable but they're still good at attacking men who are already running away.
-We'll see the empire's special weapons in 2.84
2.83 - DECEPTIVE APPEARANCES
Their swords rang sharply as they clashed. Jalal could see a flicker of surprise in the pale eyes of his enemy, narrowed against the sun. Swords almost never made that sound. Fully in the moment they strained against each other, swords locked, breathing hard, standing almost as close as a lover. On opposite sides, both of them shared fear of death and desire for life. Nothing was more intimate than combat.
With a grunt Jalal Altuni shoved the man back and the cacophony of the battle swirled into the air between them, swallowing up that beautiful sound as if it never was. The momentary connection, the sense of shared struggle vanished. The imperial soldier was slower to recover his balance, and Jalal seized the advantage. lashing out with a kick between the legs. In the instant before the pain hit, the other man had a chance to recognize his doom. Jalal slammed the hilt of his sword into the other’s shoulder and hooked his leg out from under him and when the imperial crashed to the ground Jalal buried his sword into the space just under the other’s helmet and into his windpipe.
Even now the man did not give up. A quick pull on the blade did nothing, and Jalal realized it was lodged in the dying man’s spine. Putting a foot on the man’s chest for leverage, Jalal wrenched the blade out and grimaced when he saw a notch.
Looking around, he saw one of his bodyguard, Afdal, and two other men he did not recognize nearby finishing off another imperial soldier. After taking a deep breath he strode over to them, doing his best to project an aura of vitality despite the weariness that was left behind as the battle lust trickled away. They were all dirty and their weapons blooded but none seemed to be injured. Looking down he delivered a casual kick to the body of the man they slew.
“Bastard notched my sword,” he said. “These imperials are good at taking a blow, but they need more training on how to deliver them.”
The two soldiers grinned, appreciating the casual insult, but Afdal snorted.
“Better than Spaniards, my commander, better any day.” Jalal nodded and did not rebuke him for contrariness. Afdal had been with him a long, long time. He was a minor son of one of the Arab scions who had surrendered to Jalal’s father. Spaniards might die a little more easily, but they’d hurt you even as they did. Many of them truly believed in their kingdom, which Jalal found strange and a little disquieting. A man should not feel that way about anything but the Most High.
“Afdal, spyglass.”
Taking the proffered instrument, Jalal observed the imperial forces falling back down the gentle but rocky slope. While he and the other man had been engaged in their own private contest, the larger battle had gone his way. Even as he watched, a stray arrow struck an enemy cataphract in a weak spot so horse and rider slammed into the rocks with a wet crunch that was clearly audible even at this distance. While there were no more fortunate turns like that, he estimated well over a hundred enemy dead on the field. Not bad against a frontier moira[1], if he judged the banners right. More important than the enemy dead was denying the empire the use of the biggest of the local wells. He sent one of the men off to find the commander of the unit and congratulate him while he and Afdal and the other man took some of the enemy’s horses to return to his main camp.
It was only happenstance that Jalal had been there when the imperials struck. His habit during this campaign was to visit the strategic camps in the area on inspections. It kept the men attentive without feeling oppressively watched, while also providing a way to rest more exhausted units. As they rode back, Jalal reflected that he had better take along more than two bodyguards next time. Still he was not ill disposed to seeing some action in a campaign that was shaping up to be a test of endurance for his young empire.
--------- >>|<< ---------
When he set out in 1218 hopes were high that he could inflict the kind of humiliating defeats he’d visited on the Spaniards and Sicilians in the west. Jalal himself was more cautious, being better informed about the state of things in Syria and the north (that is, the Armenian plateau). Things began excellently with the swift capitulation of Askalon after only minor skirmishes, mostly intended to affirm their importance when they surrendered rather than offer real resistance. Taking Askalon gave him a chance to blood his army and provide him a welcome naval base for the future of the campaign.
It had also panicked Nasir Al-Matin into action. Given charge of the southern Levant like a mere vassal and still smarting from bending knee to the Damascene, Nasir hurried down the coast to challenge him before he could get settled. Jalal suspected a trap—not even Nasir could be that much of a hotheaded fool. Confident that any siege of Askalon would favor him, Jalal began to scout the surrounding area intensively with his own men and hired locals. He was half-right. Nasir was trying to trap him, but had done so in a way that could only charitably be termed slap-dash. The renegade had hired some of the Arab tribes from the desert to cut off Jalal’s route to Askalon and come on him from behind when he faced Nasir. Acting quickly as was his nature, Jalal stripped wealth from a number of Christian churches[2] and quickly offered the Arabs a counter bribe. Because the tribes were more disposed to hunting baggage trains than men, Jalal was able to convince them to wait until after his confrontation with Nasir. After all, they already had Nasir’s money along with Jalal’s and all they had to do was nothing.
Jalal met Nasir Al-Matin at Al-Amnia[3] late in the campaign season of 1218. Believing the Arabs shadowing Jalal were the men he contracted, Nasir was delighted to see Jalal thunder straight at him, headless of his surroundings. He obligingly gave ground to Jalal, pulling his men back while waiting for an attack that never came. When the Arabs finally did move, they bypassed Jalal’s men to fall onto the army of Nasir, already disordered from retreating. This surprise broke the northern army, but Jalal had little interest in harassing them. Instead Jalal made for Nasir’s banner and in a desperate chase, ran him down as he tried to retreat inland.
Taking the captured Nasir with him, Jalal made all possible speed for Jaffa which he laid siege to.[4]The rest of his army spread out inland south of Jaffa to secure Jalal’s hold on the land and open negotiations with the governor of Jerusalem. While sitting outside Jaffa with Nasir in full view of the city, he also captured the small units that were returning home from the battle around Al-Amnia. This greatly discouraged the loyalists in Jaffa, and he offered them terms similar to those of Askalon if they would turn over the top officers to him. Unlike Askalon, Jaffa vacillated about his offer until Jalal’s ships came from Askalon. While giving the appearance of being packed with soldiers, the ships were actually manned by small crews because Jalal simply did not have the money or manpower to equip them not with extending his hold across the southern part of Palestine. Never the less the ships were enough and after a sharp fight in the night and a few small fires Jaffa turned over its officers and opened its gates to Jalal. The captured officers of Nasir’s army were taken back to Egypt where they were housed in relative comfort as a message to any holdouts that Nasir was the one truly at fault.
After toying with ransoming Nasir or even simply delivering him to the Damascene, Jalal ended up executing him for disloyalty to the true caliph in the largest square in Jaffa.
“You should never have tried to ride ahead of your place,” Jalal told Nasir just before the execution. “Look at yourself, going from crisis to crisis. You were much better when someone could tell you how to think.”
Between campaign seasons that year Jalal made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem praying at the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa. While he did not pillage any part of Jerusalem, he did demand a one time payment from the cities who had surrendered which he distributed to his army. Placing half in the garrisons in the land, the other half were sent home. He would need them next year, but for now they were merely a drain on his resources.
--------- >>|<< ---------
If 1218 was an easy year thanks to his cunning, the next year had to be won by force. Nasir Al-Matin’s former seat of power in Caesarea did not submit to Jalal. The remaining officers there played Jalal and the Damascene off against each other as best they could trying to remain independent. Jalal began to feel the pressure as he prepared for its capture. Damascene raiding parties attacked his new territories to remind the populace that conceding to the lord of Egypt had consequences. This was merely a delaying action, but Jalal could guess the next steps.
The rumors of an imperial army were rumors no more. Almost 30,000 troops of the Eastern Empire were now in Syria backed by a sizable fleet to supply them and support their existing coastal enclaves at Acre, Haifa, Sidon and Tyre. Even if Jalal could have brought all of his army to bear, he could not have matched them, not when added to the forces of the Damascene. While he did what he could to remind people of the scandal of an Islamic ruler allying with the eastern emperor against another Islamic ruler in a dispute over who the “rightful” caliph was, the plain truth was Jalal was making an empire in the east and the Damascene was not going to allow it.
Reluctantly Jalal sent his messengers north and west.
For his part the Damascene was waiting for his ally to get ready before he moved. Alone he did not have as many men as Jalal and while he was accounted an able soldier, his talents lay more in administration and economics than war. It was more important to achieve ultimate victory than to come to grips with Jalal soon, especially once Jalal began the siege of Caesarea.
From the beginning it was a difficult undertaking. The lands to the south were not perfectly pacified and Jalal was struggling to amass the funds he needed to maintain his conquests peacefully while guarding his flank from opportunistic tribes and conducting the siege. He had gambled on demanding a single tribute from the captured cities and only light taxes after. This succeeded in as much as the populace acquiesced to his rule which freed up soldiers otherwise stuck in garrisons, but also meant that he was still using Egypt’s resources to pay for the campaign rather than local ones.
In the west his humiliation of the Sicilians had embittered them against him and they harassed both the Zarans and his own Egyptian merchants whenever possible from their far flung ports. Always they explained this away as pirates and even strung up a few people to keep up appearances but diplomatic niceties aside, the Sicilians were gambling on his defeat. As he’d thought, the Spaniards in Tunis had retaken Kairouan and Shahid had not been able to stop them. What Jalal had not foreseen was Shahid being utterly annihilated by whoever Toledo’s commander in Tunis was. Reports were incomplete but they told of a rather depressing tale. Tripoli was in no danger, but that was more because its distance made it an unprofitable target. He had made someone on the other side very angry.
All of which meant he needed a new victory to keep his position and that meant crushing Caesarea. Unfortunately Caesarea did not want to be crushed and to his fury, imperial ships were now supplying them. They interdicted some, but enough got through to give the defenders hope and neither side could gain a decisive advantage.
As the siege dragged on, Jalal diverted some of his men inland to occupy local strong points and encourage the local towns to come over to his side. His target was ultimately Nablus to give him another solid stretch of land, but he also had vague ideas of bypassing Caesarea entirely and going on to Haifa or maybe Acre if he could trick the imperials. It was during these missions that Jalal encountered small contingents under the banners of Damascus and of the Eastern Empire. His enemies had the same idea to secure territory in preparation for the march south and skirmishing began across a broad arc from Qaqun to Bethsan. Meanwhile the main imperial army met up with the Damascene’s troops near Baniyas and prepared to march south with a truly enormous army half again as big as his own.
Jalal’s men began to whisper. The empire was coming. They would be trapped. In response Jalal pushed the siege even harder, launching attacks at night and completing his siege artillery to batter at the walls. Then finally, the news he had been dreading and hoping for came. The imperials had abandoned the Damascene and headed north as fast as they could march. A more urgent concern had suddenly appeared in an all too familiar form.
Once again, Persia had invaded the Eastern Empire.
___________________________
[1]Moira - Imperial frontier detachment of about 500 men
[2]Under the various rulers of the Levant since c. 1040, Europeans can easily now donate money to eastern churches as long as a tithe is paid to the Islamic rulers. This is both faster and more prestigious among men (and God!) than building a church at home and has the added benefit of not having to give up taxable land to churches, the Christian churches in Palestine have become fairly well off. In response the number of relics from the east in Europe has gone up significantly. Notably, the wealth has to be displayed inside. The outsides have to be drab with worse facades than mosques.
[3]Ibelin
[4]This is actually a tiny siege, maybe a little over a thousand troops overall.
Author's Notes:
-I don't think the 1218 campaign requires a map since it's basically a line from Ascalon to Caesarea, but if anyone has a good map of the area I can make one. I am pretty sure the year is 1218, but I might be wrong on this one since it's been a while.
-The Arabs that attack Nasir aren't the guys Jalal bribed. They're Jalal's own troops that he set out with in 2.82 from Egypt. Unreliable but they're still good at attacking men who are already running away.
-We'll see the empire's special weapons in 2.84
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Nice to see you back in the saddle, MNP. 
Must admit I went back and read a couple of the previous chapters just to reacquaint myself with how things currently stand in the world.
A friend of mine had some similar sounding gastric issues. After two years of investigation, it became apparent that he is allergic to dried pasta. Not gluten, or even pasta. Just dried pasta. Something changes in the drying process, and that change declares war on poor Will. If it's not resolved yet, I hope it can be done quickly, and without too much stress for you and yours.
Must admit I went back and read a couple of the previous chapters just to reacquaint myself with how things currently stand in the world.
A friend of mine had some similar sounding gastric issues. After two years of investigation, it became apparent that he is allergic to dried pasta. Not gluten, or even pasta. Just dried pasta. Something changes in the drying process, and that change declares war on poor Will.
If it's not resolved yet, I hope it can be done quickly, and without too much stress for you and yours.