Joheim awoke the next morning well rested, but with a strange itch. He was surprised to find himself still in the bed he fell asleep in, but more than that he had a strange inspiration that he just couldn't place. The whole of the morning he tried to grasp at the idea, but it was as fruitful as grasping at fog. While he peeled open a can of soup for breakfast he pondered what the idea could be. It felt like it had something to do with the war, that much was clear, and he felt it was something important, but beyond that the thought was formless with brief flashes of clarity interspersed with the vague feeling of it. Images of cannons and marches ran through Joheim's head as he wandered aimlessly about the manor muttering to himself. He was determined now to catch the pesky idea like a farmer taunted by a tricky rabbit, and so he laid his trap. A quill and paper were in his hand all day, the paper blank and ready to capture the thought, like a spring-loaded cage, now all that was required was the bait.

Joheim sat in his study, the blank pages sitting before him dry of all ink, and stared off into nothing letting his mind go blank. This was the bait for his elusive thought, a wide open mind for it to run wild inside. Joheim sat as still as he could manage and waited as if the slightest lapse could frighten it away. It was an odd thing to think so hard to think about nothing at all, but it seemed to be working as the idea formed a picture in his head. The images became clear; a cannon on a hill and men down below just as he had seen so many times. Men with smoothbores standing just behind the line of footmen fighting off the foe as the bank ranks fired. Each rifle firing once then reloading, each cannon trying to see its target to fire, and each footmen needing to be strong of mind and arm to fight. Something was missing, Joheim thought, something very key to it all was missing. So he sat, the imaginary battle unfolding, but instead of the usual sickness and horror Joheim found his mind filled with calculation. He began moving the pieces in his mind, where the footmen stood and where the rifles fired. Where the cannons sat and where the enemy attacked from, but he still felt it was all wrong. Suddenly, the trap snapped shut. There in one perfectly distilled epiphany was the idea that Joheim had captured: The empires of man did not know how to wage war.

The artillerist leapt from his chair and hopped on one foot to the desk where his pages lay blank. He quickly began writing with great ferocity as a torrent of thoughts flooded his head. He understood why he could not arrange the pieces properly because the pieces the empire used were built wrong. The machine had been made with poor instructions that were hastily prepared to fight the oncoming hordes. Everyone in the empire was so busy merely surviving that they had not stopped to try and refine their tactics. Joheim considered the Hochland long rifle and the hellblaster volley gun, two weapons considered great inventions of warfare to the empire, but Joheim now considered them backwards. A cannon should not be made to fire faster, but farther, so far it needn't even see the enemy to hit them and a rifle should be made to fire faster not farther, so fast that it could blunt a charge of any sized horde. The man was now drawing fantastical designs and writing theories on how best to use his new guns. The knowledge of gunnery from his youth kept his designs from becoming too outlandish and his experience as a cannoneer made his doctrine practical. Later on, after many hours of furious writing, Joheim looked over his work and came to a few core ideas about his theory. He decided to call his theory of warfare, "Nulnite Line Warfare" but the name did not strike him as anything permanent. The principle theory rested on these ideals:

1. Artillery should be able to fire at such a long distance that it does not risk any attack coming to it and it should be used to strike at enemy camps before the battle has even begun.

2. Rifles should be accurate and should fire more than once before being reloaded.

3. Footmen and Musketeers should be one type of infantry, as a handgun in melee is useless and a sword at range is useless. A unit of footmen away from gunner support is doomed and vice versa.

4. The empire cannot defend the whole of its border from all of its enemies if it can only fight one enemy at a time.

5. Warfare is not an art and it is not honorable, it is survival first and foremost.

6. Uniforms should not be a display of grandeur; they should be cheap and practical, the same going for weapons and tools.

7. Commanders should not lead a charge, nor should they fight on the frontlines. A headless army is a useless army.

8. Logistics and communications should be secured at all costs as wars can be won or lost by information of the enemy.

Joheim looked over the pages in his hand now deep in thought over his ideas. He had devised a design of cannon that he theorized could fire even farther than a dwarven cannon and a kind of round for a musket that held its charge inside a shell around the shot itself. This design, he hoped, would allow for rounds to be stored within the gun to allow for much greater firing speeds and no more packing of shots. This kind of round as well could be made larger to fit inside his new cannon design. He drew a new uniform, though his artistry was crude, that he felt was more practical than the current imperial designs. The man was baffled by some of the things he wrote and could not recall how he had thought of some parts of his theory, but just the same he felt he had made something truly revolutionary. Outside a raven cawed, startling him out of his thoughts. He looked out his window to find that much time had passed, days or weeks he wasn't sure. That night, Joheim dreamed of birds flying above a strange battlefield, one where lines of men stood huddled inside snaking ditches. A field where the ground was muddy and cratered as if an army of giants had stomped out all the grass. It was a terrible dream.