| “ | If there was no choice but to fight, and to lead a nation, I was going to make demands. I was not going to let the Taglians put me in a position where they could second-guess and override my every decision. I had watched my predecessors get half crazy dealing with that. If the Taglians hooked me, I was going to hook them right back. We might call it something prettier, but by damn I was going to be a military dictator. Me. Croaker. The itinerant military physician and amateur historian. Able to indulge in all the abuses I’d damned in princes for so long. It was a sobering notion. | ” |
Liberator was the title bestowed by Taglian public acclaim upon Croaker, the Captain of the Black Company, after he was commissioned by the Prahbrindrah Drah – the Taglian ruler – to defend Taglios against the encroaching Shadowmasters. The Liberator, his wife Lady, and Mogaba established a desperate program of militarization to combat the dangerous threat from the south.
The actual name of the true title granted to Croaker by the prince and the high priests was an "archaic Taglian word meaning warlord" which he did not bother to specify in his Annals.
The title "Liberator" first appears in the available Annals in Dreams of Steel. When Croaker returned to Dejagore during the infamous siege that took place there, his trapped Taglian soldiers raised their "Liberator!" hail. He then met publicly with Mogaba and ended the siege.
Continuing as Liberator, Croaker led the Company and the Taglian legions in the last of the Shadowmaster wars. He had infrastructure built in the Shadowlands – most notably the paved Rock Road – to expedite the movement of armies, and he assembled vast amounts of materiel.
Croaker and the Company led the Taglian armies in battle southward, including dramatic victories at the Battle of Lake Tanji, the Battle of Charandaprash, and the final triumph over Longshadow at the the Siege of Overlook. When Croaker disappeared onto the glittering plain and was presumed dead at the end of She Is the Darkness, the title of Liberator vanished with him.
Although Croaker was not dead, and did in fact return to Taglios about 20 years after becoming one of the Captured, he did not consider himself to be "Liberator" anymore.
Mogaba, under Soulcatcher's Protectorate regime, became "Great General", which carried a significant (but comparably inferior) degree of military authority.