Hecatoncheires
un jour je serai de retour près de toi
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"Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
- Harry Lime, 'The Third Man'
Picture a land not unlike Italy, a jutting peninsula on the southern end of a continent with beautiful, sweeping landscapes and a temperate climate. Good. Now imagine an Empire ruled there in ages long past. Not a human empire, oh no. Mash the Roman Empire together with the Tuatha De Danann - a realm of inhuman lords and ladies, terrible magics and grievances that can stretch back centuries. Imagine humans as a subject people living under the thumb of these beautiful, terrible Alfir, bound to their alien whims and forced to serve at their leisure.
Grand. Now just think what it might be like if those Alfir just up and left one day.
No explanations, no 'back soons'. One day the Alfhaim Empire just recedes back to a remote corner of the world, taking their imperial majesty and their magic with them. Receding and leaving their human servants behind in all those lovely cities they just abandoned. Surely those humans would think to themselves, "well, if those guys aren't using them anymore it'd be a shame to let it all go to waste, right?"
Thus the Stolen Lands are born, a patchwork of City States occupying the urban centres left behind by cruel masters. Centuries pass, human civilisation flourishes. Not just in the Stolen Lands, but elsewhere in the continent - everywhere humanity advanced to fill the absence left by the Alfir. Yet the Cities rapidly become an anomaly, distinct from the rest of human society: they zig where everyone else zags. No military class evolving into a feudal elite, instead a class of nobility more akin to a vastly powerful family business develops instead. A system of government that stays small and lean, yet wielding significant power due to trade power and cultural influence. All that power in the hands of such small cities, seemingly with no military to defend it. Someone is going to get jealous, right?
Well, you'd indeed be right. That someone is the Kingdom of Capetia, a powerful feudal neighbour to the north of the Stolen Lands that crosses the Guglia Mountains with a vast army one year with the express intent of seizing the City States for their own. For a moment it looks as though the game is up for this strange outlier in the post-Alfir world. Desperation makes for strange bedfellows, and many rival cities band together in the face of a common enemy. They rally militias, and they put out the call: any freelance soldiers and warriors willing to fight under their banner shall be rewarded handsomely. More than a few such sellswords are willing to take up such an offer, but no-one is expecting much. A herd of milita and mercenaries against the great feudal army the continent has seen? A foregone conclusion, surely.
Except the mercenaries and militias win.
It is a brutal battle. The stuff legends are made of, though the legends tend not to mention the thousands left dead on the field, the thousands more maimed. Yet when the smoke clears and the blood stops running, it is the hastily organised armies of the City States that are still standing.
A new era begins. The era of the Free Companies, mercenary armies that will fight for the highest bidder. An era of great military innovation and terrible military applications as an entire region of the world comes to grips with the fact that the battlefield has changed forever. And also to rapidly be forced to understand that mercenaries do not always make for the greatest of heroes.
That is the Stolen Lands, in a nutshell. Welcome to the chaos. -
"A battle that you win cancels any other bad action of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain."
- Niccolo Machiavelli, 'The Art Of War'
The era of the armoured knight and the glorious cavalry charge, supported by masses of levied infantry, has come to an end. It did not die a natural death: it was murdered. Murdered by the pikes and muskets of mercenaries and militias, the prototypes of the Free Companies that now rampage across the length of the Stolen Lands and beyond. This murder heralds a new era, and a new kind of warrior has emerged - the professional soldier, men who have made a career of war, loyal only to those who can promise them glory and coin.
- 'Knaves!' takes place in a time analogous to Europe in the late 1400s to the mid 1500s, with the military technology being broadly summarised as early 'Pike and Shot'
- Within the Stolen Lands, pikes in the hands of professional soldiers have become the dominant piece of military hardware on the battlefield - massed formations can fend off everything from cavalry to other guys with long pointy sticks
- New technologies, emerging from the underground halls of the Dvergar, include the cannon and early forms of musket - these too have made significant changes to the way battles are fought and wars are won
- Cannons are notoriously difficult to build, use and maintain, requiring specialists to ensure their good working order - there is no standardised pattern to their creation, with each piece representing the quirks and preferences of the master gunner that made them
- Muskets are slightly less challenging to create, but still require skilled engineering and are produced in many different styles (depending on the engineer making them) - they are used to augment a pike square with some ranged offence
- Though the bulk of forces used in standing armies and mercenary companies are pikemen, specialist roles still exist
- This is where your two-handed swords, halberds, skirmishers and other assorted battlefield roles come into play
- All of this requires funding, skill and experience to put together and use successfully
- And there's a saying in the Stolen Lands: why do something difficult when you can pay someone to do it for you?
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"Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm gettin' paid - mostly only when I'm gettin' paid."
- Jayne Cobb, 'Serenity'
The Free Companies of the Stolen Lands are an anomaly, an anarchic puzzle that confounds any attempt at lumping them all into a single, easily digestible definition. A mix of professional soldier and borderline bandit; an honour-bound warrior who will keep their word even if it means death, yet also a crooked degenerate who will break their contracts at the slightest opportunity. It all varies from company to company. Broadly they follow a similar structure, several thousand men divided into 'lances' that fight under a common banner. Broadly they have the same goal, to get rich off the profits of war. And there is always a war to be found in the Stolen Lands.
- Free Companies are the primary fighting force seen within the Stolen Lands, groups of several thousand freelance soldiers who have banded together to sell their fighting skills to the highest bidder
- These "highest bidders", more often than not, are the nobles and powerful families of the City States
- Each company has fostered its own reputation, culture and specialisation in warfare
- These mercenaries, once seen as heroes and saviours, have spent the last century or so developing a reputation for unpredictable, wild and often dangerous behaviour - they have subsequently earned the less than complimentary nickname "knaves"
- Not all of them are as raucous and dangerous as the stories told about them suggests, but shit has a way of sticking to everyone
The Life of a Knave
- At the head of the Company is the Captain, a "first among equals" who may or may not have been the one to found the group and provide the initial funding to hire on men - they are responsible for negotiating the Contracts that the group will carry out, decide on strategy, and some will take an active leadership role on the battlefield
- Beneath them are the "Doppelsoldato" (or 'Double-Pay Men'), the experienced fighters and soldiers who make up the backbone of the company's forces - these Doppelsoldato commonly lead, or act as figureheads of, the 'lances' of soldiers that the company can be broken down into
- Your characters, in other words
- The men and women drawn to the life of a Knave are extremely varied - former men-at-arms, out of work guildsmen, hedge knights and impoverished nobles can all be found within their ranks
- Wearing their wealth in the form of bright clothes, jewellery and fine equipment, knaves dress loudly and live even louder - theirs is a bon vivant approach to the world, for they never know which day might be their last
- Free Companies are the primary fighting force seen within the Stolen Lands, groups of several thousand freelance soldiers who have banded together to sell their fighting skills to the highest bidder