Elven Noble Households....

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Amornar
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Oct 09, 2008 4:36 am
Location: Northern New York

Elven Noble Households....

#1 Post by Amornar »

My fellow Asur,

I have been thinking hard about rewriting some of my army's fluff lately which has got me thinking about my prince and his household. Combining this with a little too much Skyrim has got me thinking about the household makeups and positions that the game includes (based on historical noble households). What positions would exist within a typical elven noble household? Would a noble/prince have something like a housecarl (personal bodyguard), what would said person's title be? What about a steward? I feel like I have heard this term and position used before in the Warhammer world. Do you think on the battlefield a noble's steward would be tasked with carring their banner into battle as their herald or do you think these would be two different positions? Do you think many princes outside Saphery would have some sort of court wizard on staff? Are there any positions you can think of from old fluff sources or maybe a Black Library book that would be applicable to this topic?

Curious as to what you guys think.

Cheers,

-Amornar
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Francis
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Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2011 10:27 pm
Location: Rebuilding Tor Elasor

Re: Elven Noble Households....

#2 Post by Francis »

The elven Kingdoms are a mix of Feudalism, Byzantium state organization and ancient greek democracies. As such you could incorporate almost anything you feel like. I think it is a given that a noble has a steward however that steward would most likely not fight a lot since his responsibility would be managing the estate.

Also a note on the term Housecarl, Skyrim has played a bit loose with the term since historically it doesn't refer to a specific position a single warrior would have been nominated to. The housecarls (the Hird in ancient norse) were the sworn soldiers or heartguard of a given norse lord. Literally the soldiers who lived in the house, these were men who would never back down and who associated all of their prosperity and their future with that of their their lord. As such there could be a from a few dozens to hundreds of housecarls under the command of one lord. The position of main bodyguard would go to the commander of the housecarls, in addition to this commander there would often be a dedicated standard bearer. I also see no reasons why your prince should not employ a hired mage of some sort, since early norse lords often brought shamans and bards (skald) with them.

To give you an example of how to organize the warband (I say warband because a force of a 100-300 warriors is not an army) of your prince, take a look at how I built the fluff for my second helf army.

My prince is a chracian prince who lives in the colonies, from home he has 32 Chracians (2 rides a lion chariot) who funtions as his Heartguard. These are commanded by one of his brothers while his other brother carries the standard of their house (both of these are nobles). These two also rides with him as bodyguards when he fights mounted (they all use Griffons).

He also employs 4 mages as he is rather rich (1lvl 4 and 3 lvl 2s), the final mage in my force is an old friend from his adventuring days who got a penchant for burning stuff, preferably to the ground, and particularly those barbaric humans (mix between a lvl 4 with fire or a dragon mage depending on said mage's mood (his dragon is a huge conjured flame pillar)).

Since his time at the Tower (studying fighting with the swordmasters), he also employs 30 swordmasters as a secondary elite unit.

My 24 archers are the professional sailors of his eagle ship, while my 65 Lothern seaguard are the mainstay of the army and those who does most of the fighting at sea (55 on foot, 6 on bolt throwers and 4 on Scy cutters). All of these are commanded by a seahelm.

Since he sails an eagle ship he doesn't have a lot of cavalry but his 5 dragon princes are vassals, lesser nobles who have sworn fealty to him. They each bring a squire which gives me 5 reavers as well.

Finally I have 15 shadow warriors or sea rangers commanded by a noble (lady) who acts as my master of scouts.

All in all my Crew and warband numbers 186 elves, which I think is about right for the crew of an Eagle ship and a moderately powerful noble from the colonies.
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Amornar
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Location: Northern New York

Re: Elven Noble Households....

#3 Post by Amornar »

Francis,

Very interesting food for thought. I was thinking so much about trying to find possible references to these sorts of positions (like the huscarls) or already created positions that I seem to have forgotten one of the biggest strengths of working with warhammer fluff for your own army...you can pretty much do whatever you want. Your description of your army's fluff has given me lots of good ideas to start working with, the biggest being creating my own uniquely named bodyguard unit and like you said, fluff-wise their captain would be the primary personal bodyguard for my lord. I would love to hear others examples of these sorts of positions they have within their own armies or instances of them coming up in BL books or WFRP sources.

-Amornar
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