Armies - and their mercenary bands

We’ve touched on this before, but the size of the standing armies in Fletnern is woefully small.  The reason?  An army doing nothing but standing guard is a huge drain on the community.

So how big are the armies?  Well, in theory, Garnock’s army is 60,000 soldiers strong.  That’s for a city with a population of roughly half a million (not including the vast farming regions around the city).  Brinston’s army is far smaller, but they do have an extensive navy.  Still, full numbers of their military personnel are in the 18,000 range for a city of maybe 800K citizens (not including farmlands).  Now this one does not include the armed and armored civilian policing units who often find themselves going to war when the army does.  But honestly - that’s not important.

What?  Knowing the size of an army isn’t important?  Nope!  Not in the least!  What matters is how many soldiers you can get to go attack someone else or how many you can get to defend your lands.  Attackers are tough to come by.  Defenders are relatively easy.

Let’s take the Wembic Empire for example.  Emperor Baratock has bragged that he has a million soldiers, and he might!  But even he cannot field an army of 1,000,000.  First off, he doesn’t trust anyone.  If he leaves with the army, he has no idea if there will be a throne for him to come back to.  He also needs to leave guys at home to guard the borders, so someone doesn’t take advantage of his absent army.  He also has a lot of guys who aren’t loyal enough - they may show up for the march to war, but they’ll be lost in the tree line before they get to the battle.  Lastly, if he wants these guys to go to war, he needs to pay them.  Now Baratock probably doesn’t need to do more than feed them while they are in the field (still an incredible effort), but he needs to offer them a chance to loot enough stuff that will compensate them for leaving their homes.  Prizes that big are few and far between.

Speaking of prizes - remember how the Roman Empire compensated its soldiers?  Typically, it was something like:  twenty years of service and we’ll give you 50 acres in a land that you just helped conquer, so expect constant attacks.  During the 20 years of service, it was more along the lines of:  how many slaves can you capture?  So, if you have an aggressive force of soldiers out in the field, how are they being compensated?  Soldiers may accept that they are paid a certain wage, but if that wage is similar to what a clerk or craftsman (or anyone else who is not risking their life) makes, the soldier is going to expect something more.

That “more” matters!  Both to the soldier and to the world economy.  If there are soldiers capturing slaves, then the cost of slaves is going to stay low.  But you have to factor the idea of slaves being sold in large numbers and then being shipped around the world.  If you bring 800 slaves into a community of 4,000 people, there is going to be an impact on the culture of that community.

 

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This post was written as part of The Legions of Garnock aka All About Fantasy Military Superpowers, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing one of the most powerful militaries and how they handle their strategies and their various equipment load outs, as well as artillery, armor, officers, and a whole bunch of other things that might give you great ideas for your campaign.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 93 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.