Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-24099618-20140114190300/@comment-112.205.1.171-20140516043207

I apologize for the lack of paragraph breaks. It was midnight and I ran out of coffee and only the need to respond to some earlier posts kept me going so you could say I was in rant mode.

Arannelya would have been hardpressed to aid Naarfin due to the "invalids" within Hammerfell that could have negated any gains she could have managed to take within Hammerfell.

The Maginot Line was not entirely apt but it was the closest reference point I could think of. However though the Empire prepared for the attack it is worth noting that the army under Arannelya bypassed the garrisons the Legion prepared within SouthWestern Cyrodill because she knew that the scattered and disparate garrisons posed no threat to her army which comprised of half the effective strength of the Dominion.

In a way she just plowed through the undermanned Imperial version of the Maginot Line and caught the Legion gathering in Hammerfell by surprise. If the garrisons had been able to coordinate they could have gathered to from a force large enough to delay Arannelya's advance but as far as they possibly knew the Legion guarding the SouthEastern Cyrodill could have move to intercept her, not knowing that Naarfin had already broken said Legion. By the time they realized what had happened and only they stood between the Thalmor and the mustering Legion in Southern Hammerfell Arannelya was already in the middle of the Forts holding the garrisons.

They could no longer march out of their forts in order to launch delaying operations because the Dominion was already marching pass their gates and any attempt to leave would only mean that each small garrison marching out to delay would be separated from each other and would be swallowed up by the Dominion Army.