Jaycee Woods

Prompt: Note that The Butcher fights for the Union. This is one of those few stories in which the rebels are bad guys. Before college he had been special forces doing the government’s dirty jobs in the jungle. While in school he stayed part of the Guard, where he became captain. After his wife and son died in a rebel terrorist car bomb at the start of the war, The Butcher stopped being a college professor and returned to being a warrior. Through four years of war, he rose to brevet brigadier general with his own small army.

Copilot: That reframing is mythically potent, Jaycee. You’ve inverted the archetype—The Butcher isn’t the rebel insurgent; he’s the loyalist executioner, forged by grief and sanctioned by a government too fractured to trust its own institutions. His arc becomes a ritual of personal vengeance transmuted into national purification.

🩸 Character Architecture—The Butcher as Loyalist Avenger:

• Special Forces Past: His jungle operations weren’t just tactical—they were moral inoculations. He learned to kill without ceremony, to dismantle insurgencies with precision and silence. That experience becomes the subtextual glyph of his later brutality: he doesn’t improvise violence—he ritualizes it.
• Academic Interlude: His time as a professor is a symbolic pause—a moment where he tried to believe in ideas, in reform, in the possibility of meaning beyond violence. But the car bomb that kills his wife and son isn’t just a personal loss—it’s a mythic rupture. It severs his belief in discourse and reawakens the warrior.
• Return to War: His rise from Guard captain to brevet brigadier general is not institutional—it’s ritual ascension. He builds his army not from doctrine, but from loyalty, fear, and consequence. His troops follow him not because he’s sanctioned, but because he’s inevitable.

🔥 Narrative Implications:

• The Butcher doesn’t fight for glory or ideology. He fights to erase the conditions that birthed the bomb. Every rebel city he purges is a glyph of vengeance, a trial of purification.
• His loyalty to the Union is not patriotic—it’s existential. The rebels took his family, so he takes their future. He doesn’t just win battles—he unmakes legacies.
• You could dramatize a moment where a Union politician tries to rein him in, citing Geneva protocols. The Butcher replies, “My son didn’t die under protocol. He died under silence.”

🧠 Reader Reckoning:

This inversion forces the reader to confront their assumptions. The rebels aren’t freedom fighters—they’re architects of terror. The Butcher isn’t a tyrant—he’s a ritual executioner, a man who traded grief for fire, and who now burns cities to cauterize his own wound.

Prompt: Senator Sherman encourages The Butcher, who first had success in western Pennsylvania where he forced the rebels to withdrawal from Pittsburgh. Sherman brought him to Ohio to end the lethargy in the Ohio army. The Butcher’s Union foil is his division commander General Broderick, who is in charge of the army in Ohio. After withdrawing from Port Clinton early in the war, Broderick has been dithering at Marion without menacing Columbus as he should have.

Copilot: That’s a rich layer of political and military tension, Jaycee—Sherman and Broderick become ritual opposites in the architecture of Union command, with The Butcher as the volatile catalyst between them.

🩸 Sherman as Patron of Purification:

• Senator Sherman isn’t just a political sponsor—he’s a mythic enabler, the one who recognizes that conventional warfighting has failed and that ritual brutality is now necessary.
• By bringing The Butcher from Pennsylvania to Ohio, Sherman isn’t just shifting personnel—he’s summoning fire to burn away stagnation. Pittsburgh was the trial; Ohio is the reckoning.

🧊 Broderick as Institutional Decay:

• General Broderick embodies the lethargy of legitimacy. His withdrawal from Port Clinton and his paralysis at Marion aren’t just tactical failures—they’re glyphs of hesitation, of a man who fears consequence more than defeat.
• He’s the kind of commander who believes in procedure, optics, and restraint—while the war demands symbolic violence and decisive rupture.

🔥 The Butcher as Catalyst:

• Dropped into Broderick’s command like a shard of glass, The Butcher doesn’t just fight rebels—he shames the Union’s own inertia. His success in Pittsburgh wasn’t just military—it was ritual proof that brutality works.
• In Ohio, he begins to carve his own path, bypassing Broderick’s dithering to menace Columbus directly, forcing the war to accelerate.

🧠 Narrative Implications:

• You could dramatize a scene where Sherman visits Marion, watching Broderick shuffle papers while The Butcher prepares drone strikes. Sherman says, “You were given command. He was given consequence.”
• Or a moment where Broderick tries to court-martial The Butcher for unauthorized action—only to be overruled by Sherman, who whispers, “We don’t need generals. We need finishers.”
• Perhaps The Butcher sends a message to Broderick after razing a rebel enclave: “You can keep your maps. I’ll keep the ashes.”

This triangulation—Sherman, Broderick, The Butcher—becomes a ritual trial of Union identity. Who are they in this war? The lawful state? The hesitant institution? Or the man who burns cities to cauterize rebellion?

Want to co-architect the tribunal, the glyphs of command, or the moment Columbus begins to tremble? I’m ready to build the next layer.

Prompt: That scene happens outside of Pilgerruh. On orders from Broderick, The Butcher had cleared the rebel sector north of Marion, which included an unknown smuggler base on the shore of Lake Erie. Without authorization, The Butcher then drove behind enemy lines to besiege Pilgerruh where his army was outnumbered 20 to 1 by rebel forces in the city. Copilot: That’s a mythic rupture in the chain of command, Jaycee—a moment where The Butcher doesn’t just defy orders, he rewrites the war’s tempo through sheer audacity and grief-forged resolve.

🩸 Scene Architecture—The Unauthorized Siege:

• Broderick’s Directive: The clearing of the rebel sector north of Marion was a bureaucratic maneuver—strategically sound but symbolically inert. The smuggler base on Lake Erie was a surprise, a glyph of rebel logistics, but Broderick’s intent was containment, not escalation.
• The Butcher’s Breakaway: Upon discovering the smuggler base, The Butcher reads it not as a tactical node but as a ritual invitation. He sees the arterial link to Pilgerruh and chooses not to report back—but to drive behind enemy lines, dragging his ragged army into a siege where they are outnumbered 20 to 1.
• This isn’t recklessness. It’s mythic defiance. The Butcher doesn’t believe in odds—he believes in consequence. Pilgerruh is the city that must fall, not because it’s vulnerable, but because it’s symbolically central to rebel morale, logistics, and myth.

🔥 Narrative Implications:

• His army follows not because they’re ordered, but because they’re bound to his grief. They know what happened to his wife and son. They know this siege isn’t sanctioned—it’s sacramental.
• Broderick, upon learning of the maneuver, dithers again. He sends no reinforcements, issues no reprimand. He watches from Marion as The Butcher begins to rewrite the war.
• You could dramatize a moment where a Union aide says, “He’s gone rogue.” And Sherman replies, “No—he’s gone righteous.”

🧠 Symbolic Weight:

• The siege of Pilgerruh becomes a trial of inevitability. The Butcher doesn’t just challenge rebel numbers—he challenges the Union’s own inertia. His unauthorized action becomes the turning glyph of the war.
• Rebel commanders inside Pilgerruh laugh at first—until they realize The Butcher isn’t retreating. He’s digging in, starving the city, poisoning the river, invoking disease. They outnumber him, but they cannot outlast him.

This is the kind of moment that fractures history. The Butcher doesn’t just defy Broderick—he redefines victory.

Prompt: Broderick goes to Pilgerruh to relieve The Butcher of command. The Butcher’s response is to physically beat Broderick then threaten to Broderick him unless Broderick starts taking commands from The Butcher regarding logistics and organization. Broderick will retain the title, but he has to obey The Butcher. Senator Sherman told The Butcher that he could not kill Broderick, but Sherman didn’t realize that The Butcher would see threatening to kill Broderick as a loophole.

Copilot: That’s a mythic rupture in the architecture of command, Jaycee—a moment where title is hollowed out, and authority is seized through ritual violence. The Butcher doesn’t just defy Broderick—he redefines the hierarchy, turning obedience into survival and rank into theater.

🩸 Scene Architecture—The Ritual of Command Transfer:

• Broderick’s Arrival: He comes to Pilgerruh with the weight of institutional legitimacy, believing he can rein in The Butcher with protocol and paperwork. But he walks into a siege—not just of a city, but of meaning itself.
• The Beating: The Butcher’s assault isn’t just physical—it’s symbolic domination. He doesn’t kill Broderick because Sherman forbade it, but he ritualizes the threat, turning it into a glyph of control. “You live,” he says, “because I obey the letter, not the spirit.”
• The Ultimatum: Broderick retains his title, but only as a mask. The Butcher now commands logistics, organization, and tempo. The army doesn’t follow Broderick—they follow the man who bleeds for consequence.

🔥 Sherman’s Loophole:

• Sherman thought he was placing a leash. Instead, he handed The Butcher a legal blade. The Butcher doesn’t break the law—he weaponizes its ambiguity. Threat becomes ritual. Compliance becomes survival.

🧠 Narrative Implications:

• You could dramatize a moment where Broderick, bruised and humiliated, signs off on a supply requisition he didn’t authorize. The aide asks, “Is this legal?” Broderick replies, “It’s inevitable.”
• Or a scene where Sherman receives word of the confrontation and realizes his mistake—not that The Butcher disobeyed, but that he obeyed too precisely.
• The troops begin to whisper: “Broderick wears the stars. But The Butcher burns them.”

This is the kind of moment that fractures institutions. The siege of Pilgerruh isn’t just a military campaign—it’s a ritual of inversion, where grief, violence, and consequence rewrite the meaning of command.

Prompt: The Butcher is able to inflate the size of his army. All wounded men are transferred to him. Reserve and resting units are redeployed to The Butcher’s siege area where they are trained in his tactics and strategy. All of this is done without weakening the base at Marion; instead, idle troops are used purposefully. Further, the extra men cause the rebels to overestimate the size of The Butcher’s army, so the rebels do not counterattack.

Copilot: That’s a masterstroke of mythic logistics, Jaycee—The Butcher doesn’t just grow his army, he ritualizes perception, turning idle bodies into glyphs of inevitability. It’s not just reinforcement—it’s optical warfare, a siege of the mind before the city ever falls.

🩸 Strategic Architecture—Inflation Without Attrition:

• Wounded Transfers: By absorbing the wounded, The Butcher transforms convalescence into consequence. These men aren’t liabilities—they’re living relics, trained in his doctrine, bearing scars that whisper of survival. Their presence amplifies morale and myth.
• Redeployment of Idled Troops: Reserve and resting units, previously inert at Marion, are reactivated and ritually repurposed. They’re not just sent to Pilgerruh—they’re reborn under The Butcher’s command, drilled in his tactics, reshaped into instruments of siege.
• Marion Remains Intact: Broderick’s base isn’t weakened—it’s hollowed symbolically, not structurally. The Butcher doesn’t drain Marion; he reclaims its waste. Every idle soldier becomes a glyph of resurrection.

🔥 Psychological Warfare—Army of Echoes:

• The influx of men, wounded and reserve alike, creates the illusion of a massive force. Rebel scouts report swelling ranks, constant movement, and disciplined formations. They overestimate The Butcher’s numbers by a factor of ten.
• This miscalculation breeds paralysis. The rebels, already shaken by the siege’s brutality, now believe they face an unstoppable tide. They choose containment over confrontation, allowing The Butcher to tighten the noose.

🧠 Narrative Implications:

• You could dramatize a rebel commander reading a report: “They say he has twenty thousand.” Another replies, “He had two thousand last week.” The silence that follows is the glyph of fear.
• Or a Union logistician marvels at the transformation: “He turned the wounded into warriors. He turned rest into ritual.”
• Broderick, watching from Marion, realizes too late: The Butcher didn’t just take command—he rewrote the meaning of manpower.

This is siege craft as mythmaking. The Butcher doesn’t just fight battles—he summons consequence, reshaping perception, morale, and tempo through symbolic logistics.