Prelude

It was a foggy night on the seas, the growing wind tells of approaching storms, the distant explosions tell of the war. The year is 1942, the grand Roman Empire waged war against one of her many rivals the Kingdom of Gaul, a large united confederation of "states" and "nations", but these were nothing more than tribes that learned to eat and shit in different places. The Romans started it with a surprise push from the province of Narbonensis, pressing hard against the middling defenses of the Gauls, pressing hard north along the Garumna River, looking to cut off the Main Gaulish force in southern Gaul, surround, then kill them with help from the Legions from Iberia. The Roman war machine moved quickly and efficiently, their armored columns cutting deep into Gaulish lines as the legionaries expanded the wounds and cut down all those who resisted. The Iberian Legions faced the most resistance as this was where most of the defensive forces were, the Gauls didn't think Rome would have her Italian legions back from Dalmatia so quickly, this mistake is one they paid for dearly as the defenders were pushed back and cut off, in but two weeks the defenders in Aquitania were pushed back to Lapurdum, a fortress along the Iberian border, and a thorn in the Iberian Legion's side as they pushed north past, having to leave significant forces behind to keep it besieged. But now with the forces either stuck around the city, slaughtered, captured, or among the lucky few that escaped, extensive forces were put to the siege, slowly chipping away at the defenders' wills. Roman Air Forces keeping away any attempts at aerial resupply, Gaulish land forces still in general disarray, the only option Gaul has to save over 60,000 troops now trapped in Lapurdum is to send a naval rescue. The Gaulish Navy had been diminished in the last reconquest war against Rome, of which they had lost half of their navy in the Straits of Gibraltar in the final major conflict of the war, but the true prize that the Romans sought to sink that day slipped from their grasp at the last moment, the most dangerous battleship sailing the seas, the battleship GNV "Vercingetorix", and she was sailing with the remains of the Gaulish Navy and many civilian transport vessels to Lapurdum.