Drunkard's Walk Forums

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Well, I put this original fic thing up on my livejournal, hoping for enough responses to act as a sounding board for my working the universe out and keep my own interest in it rolling.
No dice.
So, I'm inflicting it on everyone before I admit defeat and give up. ^_^

"Who are they?" she asked, keeping her voice low and stepping up beside him with a quiet that was surprising in someone wearing nearly a quarter her own weight in linked steel plates.
"Trouble," the captain answered wryly, and handed her the telescope.
The first part of the answer was obvious at a glance; the single-piece helms were unmistakable. Probably about two-thirds of the men she was seeing were probably even the usual sorts of pirates she would have expected, but the rest were outfitted with the lamellar armor, huge round shields, and fifteen-foot pikes of a full Islander war levy.
If the raiders were using the usual sorts of organisation, that'd give them a three hundred pikemen and maybe five hundred of the jackals against a hundred and sixty of the Royal Guard and her.
Watching her face and knowing what she was seeing and having been the head of her bodyguard since well before she'd come of age three years ago, the captain was well able to follow her thoughts. "This isn't our land," he said, in the same gentle-but-firm tone she distinctly remembered hearing just before all of the several times she'd found herself hauled over his shoulder and dropped in front of her father for an exceedingly uncomfortable conversation. "These aren't our-" He cut the words off at her hiss of surprise.
They were, without a doubt, the largest dogs she'd ever seen, four feet at the shoulder and massively built, probably more than five hundred pounds each... more than enough to carry the weight of the unarmored men walking beside them in the wake of the rest of the Islander group. "Cavalry."
"What?" Dogs large enough to carry a person were expensive to feed, which was why the Dynasty didn't use them. They needed more meat, proportional to their size, than smaller breeds, and the mountains her family ruled were too short of farmland to afford that. Even the River Kingdom, with its endless miles of farmland, couldn't afford to keep more than a few thousand beasts for its military. The Islanders' fishing fleets were enough to support about the same, but keeping them fed aboard ship would be an entirely different order of nightmare.
"For them to go to that effort..." she mused aloud, then lowered the glass and handed it back. "We're leaving. That's not a raid, that's an assassination, and I don't mean to be caught."
"Yes, Highness." He didn't ask why she'd concluded that, not out loud - it was, as the saying went, above his place on the table - but she heard the wondering in his voice and explained.
"The flatlander king has three nephews, none married more than once and the youngest not at all," just as she wasn't, "and I don't think anyone has any illusions about why he asked that I be the envoy. If that goes through, what happens to our garrisons at the Brothers? More importantly, what happens to theirs at Raventree and Broken?" She had to break off and focus on her footing to scramble down the side of the gully that led back to where the rest of the Guard detachment waited.
Her captain just jumped, and landed with a thump that impressed deep footprints into the dry gravel of the creekbed. In full armor. Like it was nothing. There were days that the Royal Guard scared her a little. "They split up and go to work on road maintenance. Bandit hunting. Something like that."
"And the Islands are the biggest bandit haven in the world."
"Oh," he said, and nothing more.

Anyone with any kind of question or concern, please, feel free to speak up.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

I'm gathering that the Royal Guard are fairly elite if they're wearing 'full armor', but even so they're not going to have fun running away from lightly armoured men, much less dog cavalry. And being outnumbered 5-to-1 I doubt that the Captain is liable to like the idea of standing and fighting without a formaidable terrain advantage.
Interesting that pikemen would be characteristic if these Islands are a bandit/pirate haven. Pikes aren't terribly handy onboard ships, or in anything but formation fighting (boarding pikes are somewhat smaller) which doesn't seem too plausible, particularly if cavalry are less of a threat.
Thus far I'm seeing three or four factions: the mountain kingdom of your protagonist (the Dynasty?), the Islanders and the River Kingdom (I'm not clear if they're the same as the 'flatlanders'). I'd be interested in seeing how your geography works out if islanders are a threat as a source of bandits to a mountain region - usually mountains are far enough inland that islands wouldn't be much of a refuge, but I supposed that there are exceptions.
You do seem to have a couple of strong characters established, and some sort of politics in mind so I'd be interested in seeing where you'd be going with this.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

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I'm gathering that the Royal Guard are fairly elite if they're wearing 'full armor', but even so they're not going to have fun running away from lightly armoured men, much less dog cavalry. And being outnumbered 5-to-1 I doubt that the Captain is liable to like the idea of standing and fighting without a formaidable terrain advantage.

Elite? Ohyeah. The members of the Royal Guard are selected from the regular military branches on the basis of height and reflex speed. Then they spend several years training, not just as a Praetorian guard but as battlefield shock troops, too.
The princess didn't want to back off not just for moral reasons, but because leaving that kind of raiding party loose near a major - and almost undefended - town would not be likely to endear them to the hosts they'd been sent to make a treaty with.

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Interesting that pikemen would be characteristic if these Islands are a bandit/pirate haven. Pikes aren't terribly handy onboard ships, or in anything but formation fighting (boarding pikes are somewhat smaller) which doesn't seem too plausible, particularly if cavalry are less of a threat.

In a lot of ways the Islands are closely modeled off of the classical Greeks. So, yeah, at sea, you're a lot more likely to see two scraggly little guys in breechclouts going at each other with boarding axes, but for actual warfare (rather than the casual piracy that's just considered a matter of opportunity and a fact of life), you'll see each city-state raising its citizen militias and fielding them in phalanxes.
And, without cavalry, I'd actually expect a phalanx to be more dangerous, rather than less - since there are, as I understand it, exactly four ways of dealing with the things.
1. Get a phalanx of your own. (none of the other four factions in this world have any)
2. Shoot the shit out of it with missile weapons. (takes a lot of time and effort, and only works if you have maneuvering room and aren't pinned down defending something)
3. Flank it. (Which becomes much more difficult without cavalry)
4. Find a few fighters so good or so well armored they can survive having that many spears aimed at them, then throw them into the teeth of the thing and have them hack the poles off and open a gap for the rest of your army. (This was why medievel doppelsoldiers were paid what they were - it's dangerous.)

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Thus far I'm seeing three or four factions: the mountain kingdom of your protagonist (the Dynasty?), the Islanders and the River Kingdom (I'm not clear if they're the same as the 'flatlanders'). I'd be interested in seeing how your geography works out if islanders are a threat as a source of bandits to a mountain region - usually mountains are far enough inland that islands wouldn't be much of a refuge, but I supposed that there are exceptions.

'Flatlander' is a derogatory for the River Kingdom, yeah. But there are actually going to be five factors in the long run.
The Mountain Kingdom is very strongly associated with its ruling family, for the same reason that they're referred to as the Dynasty by, well, everybody, rather than just their own subjects. They're directly descended from the last survivor of the ruling family of the state that, by the time the story's set, is only known as 'The Old Empire', which, up until its collapse, ruled - not just reigned over, but actively controlled - pretty much the entire civilised world.
The Old Empire fell apart for, mm, three reasons. First, its outlying territories hadn't had time to fully assimilate when everything went to hell. Second, there was an invasion - your classic 'steppe nomads descend on civilization' scenario - that overran about the northern third of the Empire and shattered the better part of its military strength in the bargain. Third, power hungry elements in the imperial capital (noble families, the three major churches, the old praetorian guard, etc) kicked off a civil war when the external fighting killed off most of the Dynasty's clearer successors.
The civil war eventually ended when one of the surviving frontier armies returned home and slapped down the various factions, but by that point the only survivor of the blood royal was, not to put too fine a point on it, a slimy little toad of a man who had headed for the hills (literally) to try and raise an army of his own.
In short, a vice-ridden coward who the army's general would rather die than put on the throne. Since, by that point, most of the outer regions were lost causes anyway, he shrugged and put on the crown himself.
Geography - the rivers that give the River Kingdom its name are not minor ones; even the smallest is the size of the Ohio, and the largest is more comperable to the Amazon. The three middle ones in size aren't connected to each other except for each flowing into a lake called the Jewel, which is drained by the largest one that is, in turn, joined by the smallest. The Jewel, by the way, is an impact basin of dinosaur-killer proportions, and young enough to be absolutely unmistakable as such.
The land gets higher and hillier as you head north (and keeps doing so until you hit the polar icecap), but the headwater zone that's ruled by the former invaders - whom I've still yet to come up with an apt name for - is still mostly open plains.
The ranges that give the Mountain Kingdom its name run north and south along the eastern border of both of the other described nations, and are built by the same sort of volcanic activity that's responsible for the Andes, the Cascades, and the entire Japanese island arc. The vast majority of the population lives in one of seven major north-south valleys - hence, 'Kingdom of the Seven Vales'. The Brothers mentioned in the dialog are the forts responsible for defending the only two passes into the first vale low enough to get an army through.
The continental boundary that's building those ranges keeps going past the end of the landmass, though, and starts to curve off to the west - which is where the Islanders live.
Culture tidbit - the Old Empire and the invading nomads were both matrilineal. The mountain tribes that the Dynasty built their new kingdom off of weren't, and neither are the Islanders or the new invaders who're the fifth faction.
See, the landmass these people are living on extends from the pole down to the northern tropic, and all the civilisation is in the southern parts... so they don't really know that the tundra zone wraps around and connects to two more landmasses. The old invaders came north, then west, then south to arrive from one; the new are coming east.
...
It would probably help if I mentioned that Creative Assembly's Total War games were a major, major influence on this setting's formation.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

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The first part of the answer was obvious at a glance; the single-piece helms were unmistakable. Probably about two-thirds of the men she was seeing were probably even the usual sorts of pirates she would have expected, but the rest were outfitted with the lamellar armor, huge round shields, and fifteen-foot pikes of a full Islander war levy.

This is where I get technical:
1. What type of armor? Bronze or iron? Possibly even armor like the lorica segmantata?
Light armor? For a raid/reconnaissance, I'd say yes.
Phalanx? Yes, given those 15 foot pig-stickers.
Level of training? Do they know the cadenced beat? (Hup, two, three, four ) Which means that do they know how to march in formation as a single cohesive unit, or are they just a gaggle? As for as i know, only two classical armies used he cadenced beat...the late republic to early imperial romans and the Spartans.

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They were, without a doubt, the largest dogs she'd ever seen, four feet at the shoulder and massively built, probably more than five hundred pounds each... more than enough to carry the weight of the unarmored men walking beside them in the wake of the rest of the Islander group. "Cavalry."
"What?" Dogs large enough to carry a person were expensive to feed, which was why the Dynasty didn't use them. They needed more meat, proportional to their size, than smaller breeds, and the mountains her family ruled were too short of farmland to afford that. Even the River Kingdom, with its endless miles of farmland, couldn't afford to keep more than a few thousand beasts for its military. The Islanders' fishing fleets were enough to support about the same, but keeping them fed aboard ship would be an entirely different order of nightmare.

You channelling Bellevue? If you got a cultivated plant to produces legumes or something close to soya, you got a protein substitute there. Soy mash, mixed with offal.

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Her captain just jumped, and landed with a thump that impressed deep footprints into the dry gravel of the creekbed. In full armor. Like it was nothing. There were days that the Royal Guard scared her a little. "They split up and go to work on road maintenance. Bandit hunting. Something like that."

Can't be full plate armor, it's be too tough to walk around. Half-armor, I can see.
BTW, where are the missle troops for this merry bunch? You got infantry and you got cavalry...no way they'v forgotten the light troops.
I'v played almost all the Total War series and I'm also playing Warhammer Acient Battles. So, I do have some knowledge.
__________________
Into terror!, Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

Other thoughts...
- Pikes are designed for large, set-piece battles over mostly open terrain. Their largest advantage is that they enable a set of men on foot to successfully oppose mounted, armored men (pike in the middle ages). They're also good for when your overall weapon tech is limited - spears are quick, easy, cheap, and reasonably effective (greek phalanx). In both cases, the first especially, they do better in large, blocks of inherently poor maneuverability, marching in cadence. If it breaks down to a skirmish fight, the pikeman becomes far less effective, as he is effectively unable to defend himself - pike blocks work by defending each other.
Tactically speaking, if she can get into broken terrain, then the phalanxes will either slow to a crawl or break up and become far less of a threat.
More than that, though, this basically doesn't make sense as an island army. The fact that we don't have much cavalry -and that the cavalry is by nature lightly armed and armored, means that long pike isn't all that effective to begin with. Islanders would tend to have small stretches of land with ample cover - their biggest landblocks are likely volcanic - and thus would not be able to defend effectively with pike, and would have difficulty training as well. Long pike aren't all that useful on a boat either, because you can't spare the manpower to have a phalanx standing by, you hardly have space to form a proper one up on ship, and you don't have the time to form them up in the space between giving in to the inevitable and actually being boarded. The less said about the idea of trying to prosecute a boarding action with long pike, the better.
So...dogs...
Actually, wardogs as you're describing would make sense as a bandit resource. A small group of raiders, who wouldn't be all that inclined to armor anyway, could make good use of the overwhelming mobility advantage, the tracking, and the extra threat. Feeding them would be a problem, but if you were successful enough, evil enough, and reckless enough, you could feed them on fallen foes.
They *don't* make sense as an *islander* resource, given the difficulties that you yourself mentioned in making tactical use of them. They're not much good in naval combat, and they're too expensive over time to be worth it for defense. If you're breeding them, you're doing it for the raiding parties inland, and that runs into some serious supply chain issues. For that matter, supply chains aren't going to be real friendly to the islanders in general, if they're intending to punch all that far inland. You don't usually want to invest too much of your precious hold space on chow-wagons. If it's an islander assault, then either it's pretty close to the water to begin with or they've managed to get some local supply source. Raiding local farmland works, though it does tend to get you noticed pretty quick.
Then there's the other problem - marching. Transporting hundreds of men across country in that sort of a tech-level generally involves days of marching. Being able to march for days and then fight involves a training regimen of, well, marching for days. Where, when, and why would an islander army train in such a thing. Why would the islanders even bother with an army in the first place, when Marines are far better suited?
I like the writing so far. The microplot, the characters, it works well. It's the exact nature of the opposition that baffles me.
Thoughts on quick fixes:
- Have the road they're on be within a days march of the water.
- Have the wardogs belong to some other nation with which the Island Nations have some sort of a working reationship, that lives halfway across the globe. You still have the dogs, it still would take a lot of resources to bring the things in a boat, it would take even more resources for their original owner to part with them, and you don't have to explain why the islanders are breedign wardogs. A bit of livery or an obvious difference in ethnicity will make this one easy to introduce.
- Have the islander Canonical Weapon be something other than a pike. Was ther some reason you wanted pike? I could probably come up with a good way to cover that reason.

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Of course, in the time it took me to write that, new response has come in, so... response to response...
- If you're going with Ancient Greek, then that answers some of the phalanx issue. Phalanxes are still poor at anything other than Flat, though, and most island combat will be in the form of establishing beachheads, unless the islands in question are Quite Large. (if they're large enough that one island might have two different, potentially mutually hostile armies, that works. If they're large enough that you could sail in on one of them and land an invading force before the ruler got defenders in your way, that kinda works. If not... not so much. Having massive protein surpluses does mean that you *could* have wardogs, but I still don't see why you'd bother.
In terms of the fearsome fighting potential of phalanxes, you can skirmish them effectively enough with just about any sort of light troops. Running a phalanx properly means that you have a Very Large Spear (one-handed) and a Very Large Shield (the greek plan) or you have an Even Larger Spear (two-handed) with a modest shield. Tack on the traditional armor beside that and you just aren't going to be moving very fast. Even without cavalry, or even chariots, you can flank them pretty well with light infantry.
Beyond that, though, phalanxes just aren't that hard to put together. You need the armor, shiled, and spear, but a basic version of those is pretty easy to make - certainly well within the skill of any civilization capable of forging decent swords. You need a decently well-fed soldier, who you can train the dickens out of, but this seems to be a world with a moderate food surplus. You need a soldiery who will stand and fight and die in preference to running away. That's it. If phalanxes are so overwhelmingly powerful by comparison with everything else, why isn't anyone else using them?
For that matter, why are semi-piratical island nations so focused on dominance in set-piece land battle anyway?
Okay, growing late by internal clock. Coherence failing. Just a few concerns to throw at you.

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1. What type of armor? Bronze or iron? Possibly even armor like the lorica segmantata?

Iron, possibly steel. The time frame should be about equivalent to 500-1000 AD, not ancient period. Also, I chose their armor preferences on the idea that it'd be too easy if they were completely Greek - so, something about like Japanese or Byzantine gear, though probably styled differently.

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Level of training? Do they know the cadenced beat? (Hup, two, three, four ) Which means that do they know how to march in formation as a single cohesive unit, or are they just a gaggle? As for as i know, only two classical armies used he cadenced beat...the late republic to early imperial romans and the Spartans.

A unit good enough to be chosen for this mission would; on a larger scale, Islanders'd vary according to experience, level of training, etc - a crapshoot depending on what sort of unit you were talking about it. The Old Empire knew it; the successor kingdoms know it; the Riders might have known it if their infantry were more than skirmishers and rabble-in-arms.
The River Kingdom's armor is almost exactly the same design the Empire used - chestplate, helmet, and sixteen linked half-cylinders of varying sizes over a padded undergarmet and held in place by leather straps. What it's made out of is laminated wood with steel strips reinforcing the outside... well, the helmet's completely metal. The only change they've made is extending the rerebraces rather than using seperate shoulder-guards; a choice made because it lets them raise their arms over the head and their founding general brought back a useful innovation from the backward, isolated islands he had been assigned to - the atlatl.
Or, as he thought of it, a way to give a javelin the range of an arrow and more striking power than either. And, since a soldier in the field who was getting his darts from the supply train didn't need to worry about making the things, that was pretty much the size of it.

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You channelling Bellevue? If you got a cultivated plant to produces legumes or something close to soya, you got a protein substitute there. Soy mash, mixed with offal.

A-yup, that was the inspiration. These critters are a lot smaller, though - their masters were walking because, well, five hundred pounds per dog means that an adult human will have them carrying about a third their own weight on their back, in the middle of a fight. Needless to say, Islander cavalry is essentially unarmored.
The River Kingdom gets around the weight problem by using chariots, which works because of their terrain.

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Can't be full plate armor, it's be too tough to walk around. Half-armor, I can see.

My sources disagree. Seriously; full plate weighs, what, forty, fifty pounds? No more than a large hiking pack, and much more conveniently distributed. Granted, wearing it for a long-distance march in what's supposed to be friendly territory is a little odd, but that's a matter of psychological warfare - 'We're the Royal Guard. We're so tough this doesn't bother us. How do you think you rate?'.

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BTW, where are the missle troops for this merry bunch? You got infantry and you got cavalry...no way they'v forgotten the light troops.

They're mixed in with the boarders; their equipment isn't different enough to tell easily at a distance.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

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- Have the road they're on be within a days march of the water.

They are, now that I think about it. The Dynasty's capital is in one of the easternmost vales, making the shorter path in real terms going over to the seaward side and taking ship down the coast.
Yes, the Dynasty has oceanfront property; nothing really important, but enough to find pirate raids annoying.
The reason she doesn't stay on the ship is that one of the lesser powers, the small breakaway states, is situated right smack dab on the mouth of The River, and has absolutely no desire to see the River Kingdom freeing up troops that might be used to break their control of that kind of economic resource.

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- If you're going with Ancient Greek, then that answers some of the phalanx issue. Phalanxes are still poor at anything other than Flat, though, and most island combat will be in the form of establishing beachheads, unless the islands in question are Quite Large. (if they're large enough that one island might have two different, potentially mutually hostile armies, that works. If they're large enough that you could sail in on one of them and land an invading force before the ruler got defenders in your way, that kinda works.

They are indeed Quite, Quite Large. Think Kyushu or Crete, not Hawaii or Manhattan. There's also a situation where a phalanx is strong that you've missed - if it's your city and you know where all the gaps are, you can fill them with spearpoints that don't have any open flanks.
Good luck taking that

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In terms of the fearsome fighting potential of phalanxes, you can skirmish them effectively enough with just about any sort of light troops. Running a phalanx properly means that you have a Very Large Spear (one-handed) and a Very Large Shield (the greek plan) or you have an Even Larger Spear (two-handed) with a modest shield. Tack on the traditional armor beside that and you just aren't going to be moving very fast. Even without cavalry, or even chariots, you can flank them pretty well with light infantry.

Heh. ^_^
Anyway, yeah, you've got a point about their movement speed, but they've got the Marines to cover their flanks, which makes up for a lot.
Not that any of them wouldn't be dogmeat if the Guard got in among them, but there really aren't any troops in the world that can say that they'd do better.
My vision of their equipment, BTW, is that they have a Very Large Shield that's set up to rest its weight on the shoulder and cover to about the knuckles of the left hand - which in turn leaves both hands free enough to be useful with an Even Larger Spear.
Why bother with something that awkward? Because they're set up more to fight each other than close melee troops, and having a longer stick than your opponent is an advantage in that situation.

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For that matter, why are semi-piratical island nations so focused on dominance in set-piece land battle anyway?

Because they're independent city states who are stuck sharing relatively small landmasses and find piracy a very useful strategic tool. The Dynasty's a land power, the Delta Dukes are busy milking their cash cow, and the River Kingdom's fleet is penned away from the ocean - as things stand, their biggest threats are each other.
Besides, most of the raiders are doing it on their own time and for their own profit - ie, they think of 'merchant seaman' and 'pirate' as being pretty much synonymous.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

Regarding the steppe nomads, the classic layout was handled pretty well by Robert Adams in the Horseclans books (although you probably wouldn't want the telepathic set). However, if you don't have horses then they will have more difficulty.
On that basis, have them be the ones who introduced riding dogs to this part of the landmass. If they're still pretty nomadic then clans of a hundred or more with maybe fifty combatants, their best being 'dogriders' who have considerable social prestige. Probably each clan has it's own pack of dogs and breeding them is one of the major ties between the clans as they compete over who has the best dogs, with the best being put to stud for high fees.
Physically they probably tend to be quite small, since this is an advantage on dogback. Probably a distinct ethnic group (whereas the islander/mountain/river grouping would presumably have been either intermixed for generations or the same basic group anyway).
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

one thing to consider is the relative cost of archers.
Archers take a long time to train and use many arrows which are expensive.
In greek times the archers where one of the most expensive units.
In medival times production techniques where good enough that they where cheap.
Consider where in the range your archers fall, if it's towards the medival group then longbows might be possible, but that makes archers expensive again (at least a decade of training is needed for the longbow)
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Alternately, if you're a relatively enlightened mideival and have yeomanry, you can go the English route and make longbow the national sport. Handing out prizes to the best local longbowmen every month or so and offering a decent wage in time of war will get you a fair block of people who train *themselves*.
Still, the point of longbow was that it could punch through heavy armor (especially cavalry) at range. If you don't have the heavy armor to deal with so much, it's just not as big a deal.

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1. What type of armor? Bronze or iron? Possibly even armor like the lorica segmantata?
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Iron, possibly steel. The time frame should be about equivalent to 500-1000 AD, not ancient period. Also, I chose their armor preferences on the idea that it'd be too easy if they were completely Greek - so, something about like Japanese or Byzantine gear, though probably styled differently.

Okay, to make iron (or steel) you need 4 things:
1) Ready access to ore (which means you need mines (which is another layer of infrastructure)). Access to iron ingots made somewhere else will also do, but the costs go up.
2) Ready access to fuel. That means forests for charcoal or if you're really lucky..coal.
3) Skilled craftsman in sufficient quantities...remember, it'll take a craftsman at least 3 to six months to turn out a footsloggers armor.
Now, making steel is another layer of difficulty. And it's extremely difficult to make it. And even more harder to fashion armor and weapons out of it.
4) Last, but not least..money..lots of it.
So...you need an island at least with the resources of England to make a decent arms industry..or at least close and easy access to it. Which means either river/close sea travel. forget roads. Unless you're within 5 miles of everything you need.
Putting all together..you have two possibilities....a state-owned enterprise under control of the monarch, which what happened to Sung China when the iron industry developed there. The beauracrats took over everything. The 2nd alternative is either an independent city/city state that is neutral, like Sakai in Sengoku jidai Japan or Limoges in the Netherlands. Now why wouldn't someone decide to grab this place? Simple...if he does, he'll find out that he won't be getting the arms he needs in the quantityand quality he needs and prices you can afford.

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A-yup, that was the inspiration. These critters are a lot smaller, though - their masters were walking because, well, five hundred pounds per dog means that an adult human will have them carrying about a third their own weight on their back, in the middle of a fight. Needless to say, Islander cavalry is essentially unarmored.
The River Kingdom gets around the weight problem by using chariots, which works because of their terrain.

Feh, give them 20 years or so and you'll have doggies two or three times the size of the one your talking about. Now..does the cavalry have stirrups? Very important..if you know the difference between melee and shock cavalry.

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Can't be full plate armor, it's be too tough to walk around. Half-armor, I can see.
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My sources disagree. Seriously; full plate weighs, what, forty, fifty pounds? No more than a large hiking pack, and much more conveniently distributed. Granted, wearing it for a long-distance march in what's supposed to be friendly territory is a little odd, but that's a matter of psychological warfare - 'We're the Royal Guard. We're so tough this doesn't bother us. How do you think you rate?'.

Also remember, you're going to be in an iron cocoon with no ventilation, save a few holes in the visor. You're not going o place ventilation holes anywhere else unless you want a dagger or a spear thrusted into it. The few times knights in full plate armor dismounted and marched..they didn't walk no more than a football field, before collapsing from heat exhaustion and dehydration. In cool weather.
So if they can do 10 miles a day with full armor and gear...and make camp at the end of it...they're supermen!.
__________________
Into terror!, Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

First, somehting I should have addressed earlier:

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If phalanxes are so overwhelmingly powerful by comparison with everything else, why isn't anyone else using them?

The Riders are cavalry. The new invaders are barbarians - like, berserkers and axes and hewing and such. The Dynasty doesn't have any open land worth speaking of - theirs is all up and down and stuff. The River kingdom has to cope with all of the above, and finds the logistical advantages of uniform equipment are worth more than raising special units to deal with the Islanders when things like field artillery and their own cavalry can do almost as well.

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Putting all together..you have two possibilities....a state-owned enterprise under control of the monarch, which what happened to Sung China when the iron industry developed there. The beauracrats took over everything. The 2nd alternative is either an independent city/city state that is neutral, like Sakai in Sengoku jidai Japan or Limoges in the Netherlands. Now why wouldn't someone decide to grab this place? Simple...if he does, he'll find out that he won't be getting the arms he needs in the quantityand quality he needs and prices you can afford.

Hmm.
1. Ore - The mainland mountains have plenty, the lowland states have some. The islands trade for it, though even so it's still cheaper than either tin or copper... which, until steel became overwhelmingly common, was the appeal behind iron tools.
2. Fuel - The lowlands have coal - plenty in the south, but enough in the north. The islands have forests, mostly in the mountainous interiors. The mainland mountains have both, but bad, bad transport issues.
3. Skill - Yes, there are armoror's guilds. And?
4. Cash - Ah, here's the rub.
Rivers - The pay's lousy and the equipment's cheap, but the benefits are good: basic living garanteed, for you and your immediate family, for the length of your contracted hitch, whether or not you actually survive. Since the standard hitches are three, nine, and twenty-seven years, that's not a small promise.
Mountain - The Dynasty is always willing to spring for the best gear, but the pay ain't great.
Rider - Fuedal levy system; besides, armor is unmanly.
Islander - How much can you afford? Each man buys his own gear and takes it into the militia. Cavalry are going to be the younger sons of nobility - they have the money to feed their mounts, but don't leave the family short an heir if they catch a dart or a crossbow bolt. Marines are professional sailors... or rather, vice versa.

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Feh, give them 20 years or so and you'll have doggies two or three times the size of the one your talking about. Now... does the cavalry have stirrups? Very important... if you know the difference between melee and shock cavalry.

I'm much less assured of the ability to quickly breed for larger sizes than you are. For one thing, they've never heard of the kind of heavy cavalry you and I have, so they've no reason to think of it. For another, the larger a dog gets, the more likely it is to start showing serious health problems - even without the inbreeding issues you get in a serious breeding program. The current mount breeds don't show much of this because they're old - they've been around and stable since prehistory, having been originally bred to help take really large game - but it comes back real fast when you start messing around with them. And third, even once you've established the type, you have to get enough of them born and raised to adulthood to carry your troops - not a small number of beasts.
But, yes. Stirrups are known and used.

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Also remember, you're going to be in an iron cocoon with no ventilation, save a few holes in the visor. You're not going o place ventilation holes anywhere else unless you want a dagger or a spear thrusted into it. The few times knights in full plate armor dismounted and marched..they didn't walk no more than a football field, before collapsing from heat exhaustion and dehydration. In cool weather.

...
*headdesk*
Oops, dammit.
So, wait, how the heck do you define 'half plate', anyway? 'Cause, as far's I can find, the term has no definition.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

Not all that relevant, but amusing: after playing in a D&D campaign where our characters wound up on modern Earth, and having a close look at the game rules for bows and for firearms, we concluded that Earthmen invented guns because they have a deep racial incompetence with the longbow. [Image: smile.gif]

--Sam
"His therapist advocates the primal scream."

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Regarding the steppe nomads, the classic layout was handled pretty well by Robert Adams in the Horseclans books (although you probably wouldn't want the telepathic set).

Never heard of them.
Anyway, before I go on, I'll note that one of the aspects that'd been driving the differences between these nations was from a game design perspective - I wanted to make them as different as possible within the bounds of the Total War series hardcoded limitations, and had planned to model Rider cavalry off of the camel units, while Islanders had light dog (horse) cavalry, the Rivermen had chariots, and the... hell, call'em Vikings, for now... used elephants.
That said, the bit about their bringing the huge-breed dogs with them when they invaded makes sense. Hmm. Tempting.
The other misperception here is the idea that they haven't changed since they arrived. They've been ruling their current lands for hundreds of years, now - they might not look it, but in reality they're as civilised as any of their subjects or rivals. They've hung on to their tactics and skills as a concious choice and effort, rather than a consequence of their lifestyle.
Yes, they use the bow as their ranged weapon of choice. The River Kingdom doesn't have a seperate component of ranged troops; as already mentioned, their line units carry atlatls and so don't need the support, especially the long-service units who've had time to practice their aim. The Islands tend to grow the wrong sort of wood for bows or atlatls, and anyway are relatively poor - they make do with javelins and the occaisional unit of mercenaries. The Dynasty favors crossbows of varying sizes. The sling as a weapon of war (against anything larger than a rabbit) is unknown in the civilised world, and rare even for other purposes - that'll change when the Vikings announce themselves on the scene.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

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Never heard of them.

Horse nomads in post-apocalyptic North America, covering several centuries of future history and nation building. Featured telepathy among humans, horses, and sabertooth tigers (the latter resurrected by prewar genetic experiments).
--Sam
"One of these days, milkshake! BOOM!"

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Feh, give them 20 years or so and you'll have doggies two or three times the size of the one your talking about. Now... does the cavalry have stirrups? Very important... if you know the difference between melee and shock cavalry.
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I'm much less assured of the ability to quickly breed for larger sizes than you are. For one thing, they've never heard of the kind of heavy cavalry you and I have, so they've no reason to think of it. For another, the larger a dog gets, the more likely it is to start showing serious health problems - even without the inbreeding issues you get in a serious breeding program. The current mount breeds don't show much of this because they're old - they've been around and stable since prehistory, having been originally bred to help take really large game - but it comes back real fast when you start messing around with them. And third, even once you've established the type, you have to get enough of them born and raised to adulthood to carry your troops - not a small number of beasts.
But, yes. Stirrups are known and used.

The stirrup will push the cavalry in two directions. .. mounted archers (which your nomad types will be predominantly) and mounted spearmen..which will be shock cavalry, not melee types if you go by the clasical armies. Stirupless cavalry armed with spears have to thrust in the overhead fashion. With stirups, you can couch the lance and transmit the shock of impact into the lance. That's going to drive the development of the armored knight, which will drive the breeding of monster mounts.
How long to set up a breeding program..well, you need pastureland to do that, and a tradition of horse breeders.

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Islander - How much can you afford? Each man buys his own gear and takes it into the militia. Cavalry are going to be the younger sons of nobility - they have the money to feed their mounts, but don't leave the family short an heir if they catch a dart or a crossbow bolt. Marines are professional sailors... or rather, vice versa.

Which means they cannot afford a protracted war....look how fast the Romans became a professional army.

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*headdesk*
Oops, dammit.
So, wait, how the heck do you define 'half plate', anyway? 'Cause, as far's I can find, the term has no definition.

My loose definition, anything that allows you to move comfortably with some protection, definitely the chest plate and protection for the arms and shoulders...Everything else is negotiable.
__________________
Into terror!, Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

Valles Wrote:So, wait, how the heck do you define 'half plate', anyway? 'Cause, as far's I can find, the term has no definition.

Let's break down the definitions a bit.
Full plate is a full coverage of shaped plates of metal. It's not as limiting to mobility as many believe and could weigh as little as 45 pounds. However, it's obscenely expensive and wasn't developed until the fourteenth century.
Chainmail of equivalent coverage was much more common earlier - the Romans learnt how to make it from the Gauls. Typically it weighs about half as much as full plate and allows more flexibility but doesn't distribute the weight as well so wearing it for long periods is less feasible. It takes as much effort to manufacture but requires less skill and is better suited to mass production. It's less effective against piercing however.
Just to give a reference for mobility, someone in the sort of physical condition you mention for the Royal Guard could actually swim in either of the above.
Half-Plate or Three Quarter armour mixes chain and plate to mix the benefits of both. Alternatively scale armour of the roman pattern or lamellar armour of byzantine rome or japanese samurai gives formidable coverage.
Alternatively, simply have seperate plates covering parts of the body but no coverage on other areas. A cuirass, helmet, greaves and bracers would leave only upper arms and lower thighs vulnerable, somewhat equivalent to the greek hoplite armour.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

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Half-Plate or Three Quarter armour mixes chain and plate to mix the benefits of both. Alternatively scale armour of the roman pattern or lamellar armour of byzantine rome or japanese samurai gives formidable coverage.

This definition of half plate is actually almost exactly what I had in mind for them.
The standard gear for one of the Dynasty's ordinary line units would be a chain hauberk with a breastplate and helmet. The men expected to see a lot of close fighting - like, taking city walls or something - would add greaves and vanbraces and carry a sword and shield. Ranged troops would have a backup weapon like a short sword or a hand axe and their crossbow; and their spearman would trade in the last for something like a short-sword on a six-foot stick. The Guard? Besides adding plate protection for the upper limbs, they carry big swords.
The Rivers make their armor by taking laminated wood sheets, soaking them, and then forming them to appropriately shaped molds so that they dry into the desired shape. Once that's done, they glue then nail on a layer of high-quality steel strips - which, not having to be formed into a complete cuirass or whatever, are both simpler and cheaper than completely steel armor. Add straps and a leather layer on the inside to stop splinters and you're set.
...
The reason I'm being resistant to the idea of breeding the existing mounts up, beyond my doubts about the canine body-plan being able to support it, is that heavy cavalry was historically ubiquitous, and effective against almost anything else on the battlefield.
Also boring.
By strictly limiting the maximum weight their mounts can bear, I force these nations to come up with other, more interesting solutions to the problem, from both gameplay and story perspectives.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

So, before I go and dive into the short that got me started back up on this setting, I'll go back over cavalry.
Rider: Even the best-kept of their mounts tend to end up looking a little scruffy and hardscrabble - they're lean and even spindly, with long, sharp muzzles, like a cross between a greyhound and a coyote. They're fast, they're stronger than they look and their endurance is excellent; probably the only downsides are that their tempers can be uncertain and they're, ah, not the geniuses of the dog world. Still, they're better than anything the other nations've managed to breed, and the Riders spend a lot of effort protecting their bloodlines.
River: Broad and big-boned, with thick fur of varying length and a tightly curled tail - like a giant malamute or a steroid-abusing akita that's been crossed with a mastiff. Their most notable trait is that they're smart, to the point that many of their handlers will swear up and down that many individuals can figure out that, one, humans are smarter than they are but not nearly as strong, and two, that smarts are more useful than muscle, and therefore choose to obey. Their downsides are that, strong as they are for their size, they're rather smaller - and hence slower and weaker - than the breeds found elsewhere... which isn't so much of a downside when they're pulling something rather than carrying it.
Mountain: The Dynasty's cavalry forces are limited to whatever the local mercenaries' guild has on offer. Even their royalty march into battle.
Island: 'Ah ain' nuthin' but a hound dog...' ...yeah. Essentially a big frackin' bloodhound. In absolute terms they're the largest and strongest riding dogs, but their typical combat load is heavy enough that their battlefield endurance is lousy. The Deltans use a closely related breed that's a little stockier and not as jowly.
Viking: The Vikings have no tradition of using dogs as anything but scouts and emergency food supplies. What they do have as cavalry is probably worse - a truly domesticated pachyderm rather larger than the earthly elephant. Full war gear consists of enough chainmail to cover a largish room, selected metal plates over the most vulnerable spots, and three lightweight fighting platforms, one atop the back and the other two hanging down the beast's sides like saddlebags. Fighting crew, I'm not sure... besides the mahout, somewhere between six and ten; sidemen have axes and halberds, topmen have slings. The good news (for everyone else) is that they breed slowly.

The classical Rider 'saddle' is a complicated net of straps that has more in common with a seeing eye dog's gear than a war-horse's. Allowments for the rider consist of a thin pad along the top and four loops sticking out - hold two, stick your toes through the other. The stance is crouched, like a jockey or the rider on a crotch rocket, and there are no reins; a cooperative mount is absolutely required. The Islanders adopted it without modification, and the Riverine version is recognizably adapted from the same source.
How does one shoot from the saddle? Very carefully, and from a well-trained dog.
The modern Rider cavalryman goes into battle equipped much as his umpty-great grandfather was: bow, quiver, sword, loincloth, a few hawk feathers, and a shitload of chutzpah. His Islander counterpart ditches the feathers, has either a rack of javelins or a lightweight lance in place of the bow, and wears lightweight armor of laminated linen, as does his mount. A Deltan lord will be much the same, but his armor will be hardened leather. All three fix their gear to the harness, rather than their bodies - so that they'll be able to tuck and roll if they're thrown.
A River chariot is mostly heavy-duty wicker; only the frame, axle, and wheels are actual hardwood. It carries two crew, who maneuver by shifting their body weight and passing vocal instructions to their dogs; much more like a dogsled than what we think of as chariot. The men will wear the heaviest version of the standard River armor pattern; the dogs, still better gear fashioned by the same methods. Each crewman has a small sword or large dagger strapped to either thigh, and has a heavy lance (fixed to the car by a short chain), an axe, an atlatl and a plentiful supply of darts racked close at hand.
'Great Dogs' are almost always hand-raised by their masters; mostly this is a practical measure that pays off in increased coordination on the battlefield. The usual River team will have a noble-born driver who raised both of the dogs, and battle-tested veteran promoted out of the infantry as 'crew' and (usually) de-facto commander.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

For an overall guide to the size and contours of the landmass the 'civilised world' occupies, start with North America, then cut away everything south of the United States' southern border and drop an archipelago of really big islands where Mexico used to be - there should be about 8-10 major ones, ranging in area between a little smaller than Honshu and a little bigger than Shikoku, -each-.
Now squash the American Rockies west about three hundred miles; they should get narrower, but higher and more rugged. Broaden the Great Plains to cover the territory that used to be mountain.
Next, fill in the gulf between Texas and Florida, and do the same to Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with the appropriate sort of mountains in the latter. Scoot Greenland due south until it grinds up against Newfoundland and Labrador, then erase Florida and some of the gulf fill so that the line of the Georgia and Carolina coasts continues all the way south.
Then drop a gi-normous impact crater (about 340 km across) dead center on Kansas City before moving the entire bloody continent south about twenty degrees of latitude.
Fill in everything from the north edge of the continent to the far side of the arctic circle, then cover your most recent addition with an ice sheet.
Finally, flip the entire thing left from right, so that the Rockies are in the east.
Not very recognizable anymore, huh? Especially when you erase the old river courses and political boundaries.
Next for the differences.
Three of the Five Rivers start off at the icecap as large streams of meltwater and flow into the Jewel, the impact basin. The fourth drains the entire eastern half of the 'Appalachians', before turning east and joining The River, which drains the Jewel.
If I'm reading my meterological cookbook right, winter weather should be clear for all of the central plains thanks to the permanent cold high you'd see over the icecap; mild in the south shading to 'my snot has frozen' in the north. Summertime would suck in hurricanes on the monsoon, and since there's no landmass at the equator at all, they'd be real doozies. Like, 'hailing sideways with stones the size of your head', until they got far enough north to run into the icecap's cold zone, at which point they'd spin out and drop all their water in a real hurry. Along the eastern coast you'd get warm thunderstorms coming in off the sea from the southeast during the summer and cold nor'easter types in the winter.
Given the above, the size of its drainage area, and the summer melt off the icecap, I wouldn't be surprised if The River's peak flow turned out to be bigger than the Amazon. And, unlike that Earthly equivalent, it's got a well-developed delta.
The geology of the major mountains is also fairly at odds; they're younger, and they started as three or four volcanic subduction arcs that got jammed together by running out of ocean plate between them. The Vales are what's left of the sedementary fringes they built up during their time as independant islands. The westernmost chains are the most 'smushed', enough so to have piled atop each other like the Himalayas, and there's exactly two real passes over them - both of which lead from the River Kingdom to the same Vale.
Implications...
The River Kingdom is, in many ways, modeled on ancient Egypt, with a dash of Mesopotamia. Among other things, this leads to suggesting an extensive use of irrigation, which, combined with mild winter temperatures, would extend the growing season year round... although the summertime is limited to crops that can stand up to getting hurricaned repeatedly.
The Inner (ie, more westerly) Vales are surprisingly dry, to the point of being nearly deserts.
The Outer Vales are rainforests or close to it.
The Jewel isn't a lake, it's a freshwater sea.
Architecture in the River Kingdom, the Delta, and the various coastal realms is going to be designed to stand up to storms worse than anything Earth has ever managed to whip up; very thick, possibly sloping walls, few if any windows and those very narrow.

Things I missed? Things I got wrong? Things you'd like to know more about?
Say so!
Please?

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

Well, there's the question of exacly how long ago the impact happened. Given the size of crater you're describing, it sounds rather on the extinction-level event side to me.
Or did you say that bit already and I missed it?

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Well, there's the question of exacly how long ago the impact happened. Given the size of crater you're describing, it sounds rather on the extinction-level event side to me.

I figure that the impact was somewhere between two and five million years ago. Humans are either arriving or evolving in the immediate wake of it.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

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Humans are either arriving or evolving in the immediate wake of it.

Making a big difference. I'm uncertain about this -- my biology classes are more than a quarter-century behind me -- but I have a feeling that any population of creatures evolved enough that it'll become human "just" two to five million years later will be seriously hurt by an extinction event -- the more complex the biological structure, the more aspects of their existence that can go wrong.
And "arriving"? Then we have the question of whether there's any remnant of the means of arrival -- starship/shuttlecraft (a la Pern), space-time gate (Cherryh's Morgaine series), magic, etc. Potential for military use -- even if only as a bluff or psychological advantage? If they arrived two to five million years ago, "in the immediate wake" of the big impact, a purely technological means of transport is probably long eroded away, but how has all that time evolved the people since they got here? If the means was technological, how did they lose that knowledge and backslide to muscle power?
Sorry, I'm raising questions without proposing solutions.
-----
Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

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Making a big difference. I'm uncertain about this -- my biology classes are more than a quarter-century behind me -- but I have a feeling that any population of creatures evolved enough that it'll become human "just" two to five million years later will be seriously hurt by an extinction event -- the more complex the biological structure, the more aspects of their existence that can go wrong.

The angle I figure applies is that apes in general and hominids in particular are fairly well-suited to becoming the mamalian equivalent of cockroaches. 'This pointy stick I found' level tool use accounts for a lot of that, but mostly it's due to the fact that well-aged carrion is pretty much the only thing we can't eat. A proto-hominid would be able to find vegetative food when no carnivore of comparable size could ever hope to, and prey on other species when winter closed in and the grazing got even scarcer.
Remember that the type of extinction event we're talking about is known - several years at least of winter and winterer, so that the entire bloody planet turns into one huge arctic or tundra.
But humans can live on both of those biomes quite successfully, and I think that a proto-human would be able to manage to at least scrape by for the few decades that it would last, no matter how the rest of the food chain came crashing down around their ears.
Arrival hypothesis...
Well, first, I was speaking of the timeline in evolutionary terms; if humans and their immediately associated species aren't native, then I'd figure their having gotten there, oh, ten to twenty thousand years ago.
And, whatever it might have been, there's not even a mythic trace of their means of arrival surviving to the present day. That's just not one of the story focuses.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

Well...
One of the effects of a recent extinction level event is going to be on the animals/environment besides humans. 2-5 million years isn't an incredible length of time for stuff to bounce back and diversify - especially for the continent that the impact occurred on.
www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
indicates a 22 mile impactor to get a 335 km crater (about twice the size of Dino-Killer) - that would have sterilized pretty much that continent. Life would have returned, but it'd be unusually uniform in comparison to what we're used to - everything would be evolved out of the survivors of the impact (more diverse the further timewise away from the impact).
You're right on the omnivore/carrion eater hypothesis for humans precursors to survive - after the end of the Cretaceous, minimal to no purely vegetarian or carnivorous animals appeared to have survived. Unfortunately, the Cretaceous impact killed pretty much everything larger than a housecat/small dog planetwide.

RMH

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