Warfare and strategy

Since describing the entire history and all the intricacies of warfare would require volumes, this is a brief overview of the the forces used by the great powers, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and how they interact.

1. The Fey Court

Dominated by the Elfin lordships, the Fey Court is coming off of a long period of military dominance, their power beginning to decline relative to their great rivals as they are pushed onto the defensive. Although masterful in their element, the Fey Court is slow to adapt to changes in technology and strategy, disdaining new types of weapons and stubbornly refusing to adopt a more professionalized model of army. They still maintain the traditional structure whereby there is no formal central commander; everything is arranged through a complex, organic web of oaths, relationships and unwritten understandings. Training is done only on an individual master-to-student basis.

Although Elfin lords often express concern that they are being "outbred" by humans, dwarves, orcs, and goblins, this is a bit of a phantom concern: in actuality, the elves and their allies have the strongest demographics by far, which helps to prop up their inefficient and outdated systems. Satyrs reproduce quickly, but the short, harsh lives they live means that their numbers are actually declining relative to the elves. Although elves have smaller numbers of children on an individual level, their long lifespans more than cancel this out. The true problem for the Fey Court is that their elfin lords have become more and more decadent and listless over time, so they find a harder and harder time filling their ranks with warriors even as their absolute numbers grow: the youth would rather become poets, bards and dilettantes than risk their long lives in war.

In terms of pure natural fighting prowess, elves could perhaps be seen as the 'ultimate warrior race', even moreso than orcs. A species that is so long lived enjoys compounding advantages in warfare: the longer an elf warrior lives, the more his or her skill grows, and the more likely they will survive any given battle. In pure expertise, the elves are a terrifying opponent to go up against. Although they are physically weak compared to the likes of orcs or dwarves, the advantages they enjoy in superior eyesight, hearing, and manual dexterity more than compensate. However, elves are also extremely concerned with aesthetics and history. If a weapon is not beautiful, and if it doesn't appear in their ancient sagas, they want nothing to do with it. Their artisanship is beautiful, intricate, of the highest quality... and also extremely slow and inefficient, meaning that they suffer from chronic shortages of arms and armor. Because of the influence of the tree-men, it is a difficult political feat to open up a new mine or construct a new town.

On the level of individual tactics, the warriors of the Fey Court are masterful. Each unit commander delights in having his own unique, personalized methods of war. Fighting styles and tactics are seen as as much a matter of self-expression and aesthetics as they are of winning battles. In small clashes and raids, the Fey excel. But in large battles, over the last half century, they have found themselves getting humbled and humiliated again and again. While they can wreak absolute havoc with hit and run tactics, if an opponent pushes ahead and forces the Fey Court armies into a pitched battle, their weak command structure becomes apparent; the **** or wounding of a charismatic leader will shatter their morale and send their entire **** routing. Even when things are going well, both elfin and satyr commanders are absolutely terrible at cooperating; every elf warrior or satyr buck sees their allies as rivals to be outdone rather than comrades in arms pulling towards a common goal. The humans, orcs and dwarves have discovered that the weak point in elfin-led armies is their morale; both elves and satyrs simply lack courage compared to the shorter-lived races and will always retreat or surrender rather than fighting to the end. Aside from raiding and skirmishing, Fey Court armies prefer dramatic open-field battles, the better for poets and artists to immortalize their deeds: they routinely fail to take advantage of enemy weakness and ignore opportunities to accumulate small victories, merely harassing small enemy units rather than wiping them out, since crushing a much smaller **** is 'anti-climactic'. The Fey Courts absolutely detest siege warfare and are terrible at it; they never **** or defend fortifications unless given no other choice, and prefer to poison wells and infiltrate. This works fairly well against the Kor'ghal horde, but falls short against the Allied Coalition, whose mastery of magic makes their castles almost impossible for the Fey armies to crack.

In terms of actual combat groups, the elfin lords use three main types of units; elfin light cavalry and dragoons ('mounted infantry' who move swiftly on light steeds and dismount to fight on foot), skirmishers (who mix elves and satyrs and use bows and javelins), and satyr spear-walls. Although elves are excellent individual combatants, they generally refuse to serve in the dense spear-and-pike blocks that modern fighting requires, so they must lean on the satyrs... and unfortunately, satyrs are among the lowest quality troops in common use out of any empire. Although satyrs are good at foraging their own food and marching long distances, as infantry, they are terrible; badly equipped, undisciplined, unskilled, and not very bright. Now they are beginning to rely more and more upon the treemen; traditionally reserved for defense, the constant setbacks of the elves and satyrs has motivated the treemen to begin fielding large, offensive formations. Although treemen are terrible at cooperating or communicating with allies, they have given the Fey armies a much-needed source of heavy shock units, and the other empires are finding them a struggle to deal with.

1. The Allied Coalition

Although it includes several diverse kingdoms among the dominant human population, the Allied Coalition has become much more centralized as of late. The Shi'qae Sultanate and Northalkin Tribe-states contribute little to their main military efforts; though both of these sub-empires do have their own military forces who perform well enough in their element, they are outclassed by their main enemies and mostly relegated to defending their own homelands. The only real contribution that the Shi'qae make to modern Allied armies is their hieroglyphic magicians and the specially-trained spies and assassins they produce, which give the humans an answer (albeit a mediocre one) to elven and snake-folk superiority in 'wetwork'. The Northalkin contribute a few units of beast cavalry, but everything they can do, the Kor'ghal Horde does much better, so these tribesmen mostly function as wilderness scouts and foragers. The main body of the armies are overwhelmingly made up of humans from the Griffinwald Theocracy, with dwarves and daeva making up strong secondary components. Humans, dwarves and daeva are, physically speaking, less naturally adept combatants than their rivals. Humans and daeva lack the strength of orcs or the nimble hands and keen senses of elves. Dwarves are tough and hardy, but their natural disadvantages are very bad: a combination of short limbs and poor eyesight means that they have a disadvantage in actually hitting their opponent in both ranged AND melee combat, and are the slowest moving variety of sentient to boot.

The Allied Coalition has the strongest, most modern and most sophisticated economy of any of the factions, bolstered by the tireless craftsmanship of the dwarves. However, they suffer chronic demographic issues. Daeva and dwaves reproduce almost as slowly as elves, but compared to elves they are a lot less shy about getting themselves killed in pointless fights or quixotic labors, even off the battlefield (dwarves, for one, regularly work themselves to **** after over-promising to their families or business partners while being too proud to ask for a reprieve, whereas daeva are known to drop dead from starvation or sleep deprivation by constantly putting the needs of other races above their own). Humans reproduce and grow to maturity more quickly than elves or dwarves, but slower than orcs... and unlike the Kor'ghal horde, human cultures venerate the aged, crippled and infirm, diverting great deals of resources to care for them where an orc or beastman would simply abandon them or kill them for being useless.

However, the excellent battlefield performance of the Allied Coalition covers over these flaws in the near term. They are lavishly equipped; their equipment isn't quite as high quality as what the elves make, nor quite as abundant as what the orcs churn out, but on balance, it is the best. Over the past century, the Griffinwald Theocracy has largely moved beyond use of maile for armor, as new technologies such as casting and trip-hammers make it economical for them to equip large numbers of knights and men at arms in full plate armor. This profusion of full-plate armor is a struggle for the elves in particular to deal with: it doesn't matter how accurate elf archery is if their target has no weak spot bigger than a half-inch-wide eye slit. Dwarven equipment enhanced with runes is, quite simply, the best in the world, unequaled by even the most legendary elven craftsmen. A common tactic for dwarves is to simply keep clashing weapons and shields with the enemy until their inferior equipment breaks.

Compared to their opponents, the strong sense of honor and piety running through the Allied Coalition makes them put a much heavier emphasis on melee combat compared to the Fey Courts or Horde. Knights and dwarves disdain ranged weapons as cowardly. Bows and crossbows are de-emphasized, and seen as a weapon only fit for being given to cheap levy and auxiliary troops (peasant militas from Griffinwald, and mercenary companies made up of bastard sons who have no honor to begin with in the case of dwarves). However, they have proven able to nearly match the Kor'ghal horde's use of artillery weapons. Allied Coalition armies excel at close quarters and are decent at **** range, but they suffer at medium range combat, especially if they have to stand on the defense, where they can't make shock charges with heavy cavalry and must hold position while enemy archers and skirmishers pick off their **** auxiliaries and mounts.

A sophisticated and highly formal military doctrine, written down in volumes and treatises, is both the strength and the weakness of the Coalition. It serves them well in large battles and sieges, but it also makes them inflexible in smaller or more fluid combats... those who learn their methods are able to exploit their weaknesses. In particular, they are prone to rash acts of self-sacrifice, throwing their own lives (and the lives of any under their command) after being baited by an insult to their gods or a threat to one of their sacred places. They are mediocre at offensive siege warfare, but thanks to the efforts of the dwarves, their castles tend to be the largest and best defended. Compared to the pragmatic efforts of the orcs, humans and dwarves much prefer to build one huge grandiose castle rather than a number of smaller temporary ones. They have won many decisive battles against the Fey Courts in recent years, but their fight against the Horde is showing their weakness to being ground down by attrition and overwhelmed by multiple-pronged offensives, and deploying new siege weapons that break the proud walls of human and dwarf-made castles.

The Alliance method of war involves making a detailed plan before moving and then following it to the letter, which means that they often lack initiative, especially compared to the aggressive and opportunistic Horde. In contrast, it is especially effective against the armies of the Elfin Lordships, since the diffident, aesthetics-obsessed and glory-hungry elves chronically under-plan their battles and seldom have contingency plans. A battered Alliance army will make an organized withdrawal back to a pre-prepared defensive position. An Elfin army for whom things are not going well will scatter and disintegrate.

The three main types of units which lead the way in their wars are human heavy cavalry (the famed knightly orders of Griffinwald), dwarf heavy infantry (who are very **** to ranged or cavalry attack but excel at pushing their way into enemy pike formations or storming a breach in castle walls) and engineers with artillery. Most field armies now include engineers and artillery pieces as well: scorpions are the most common but they are starting to use cannons more frequently as well.

Of course, the military capability of the Allied Coalition cannot be discussed without mentioning their mastery of magic; they make the heaviest use of magicians in direct battlefield roles, especially compared to the Fey Courts who use almost none. The sophisticated and formalized forms of religion that the humans and daeva have developed makes their divine magic stronger and more reliable than anyone else's. Because most of their spellcasters are priests and adepts using holy magic from their gods, the main use is to heal and defend (or, in the case of dwarves, to enhance weapons and armor with runes) rather than disrupt or attack, but they can compete with the Horde even in offensive magic thanks to the Shi'qae, even though pious commanders are often too proud to permit "sorcery" in their ranks. On those times that hieromancers are allowed to participate, they prefer magic which disorients, stuns, or deceives opponents rather than killing them outright as Horde magicians prefer to do. Since the Allied Coalition does not have manpower reserves as deep as the Fey Courts or Horde, they are very reliant on their skilled healers to stop them from suffering crippling losses. However, this also makes their armies very brittle: an Allied army can endure heavy fighting and push through it so long as they hold the field, as the wounded are recovered, but if they are routed - and especially if they lose their precious priests and magicians to the enemy - then it can be years until they can raise another army to replace it, since levying new troops risks over-stressing their agricultural or industrial labor ****... their advanced economy is more productive than their rivals, but also less flexible.

Kor'ghal Horde

As a faction, the entire purpose and sole organizing principle of the Horde is "war". The idea of a long-lasting peace is absolutely abhorrent and incomprehensible to them. Both in their mythology and in practice, orcs and beastmen (and, to a lesser extent, their client races such as goblins, ogres, etc.) are bred for battle. Although the advantages of the physical strength of orcs, to say nothing of cyclopsi, minotaurs and other huge brutes, might seem to be limited to melee combat, that could not be further from the truth. In actuality, their superior physical strength gives the Horde an advantage in nearly EVERY aspect of warfare. Not only can they hit harder, but they can also carry more: their armor does not need to be carefully wrought to minimize weight allowing crude riveted plates to be used, and each soldier can carry more of their own supplies rather than relying solely on baggage trains. In siege-works, orcs and their allies come into their own, loading and using the heaviest, most powerful siege weapons and even tearing down stone walls with nothing but picks and mauls.

Although humans, elves and dwarf civilians often picture orcs and beastmen as wild savages making headlong charges into wild melee, this is a half-truth at best. Members of the horde, especially beastmen and large creatures like ogres, do most definitely relish the opportunity for a charge, but they actually rely more heavily on ranged combat than their foes when in large battles. Unlike the Fey Court, who struggle at ****-range combat, or the Allied Coalition, who fall short in medium-range combat, the Horde is able to fight effectively at every range: at long distances with artillery, at medium range with bows and crossbows, and at close range with throwing axes, javelins, slings and darts. Their upper body strength means that they can use heavier bows and crossbows with larger projectiles. Rather than worry too much about accuracy, they fill the air with missiles and assume at least some of them will hit. Elf arrows are highly accurate, but also expensive and carefully crafted. Orcs and goblins churn out cheap arrows by the thousands and spray the battlefield with the indiscriminately.

More so than any other faction, the Kor'ghal Horde has enthusiastically embraced gunpowder, using it heavily in cannons, petards, and even heavy grenades for giants, trolls, cyclopes and so on to hurl (being none too bright, trolls and especially minotaurs have a bad habit of blowing themselves up with such weapons, but the orcs and goblins find this to be more amusing than problematic, and the thick-skulled minotaurs never get wise to the problem... the cleverer cyclopes are less likely to accidentally kill themselves, but their lack of depth perception often results in more casualties to their allies than their enemies, so they usually aren't given explosives).

The guiding principles of the Kor'ghal Horde in war are, 1: Offense over defense, 2: Quantity over quality, and 3: Now instead of later. Instead of carefully rehearsed massed attacks against a key objective or symbolic edifice, they prefer constant medium-sized attacks against any target within reach. Instead of a warrior elite, they prefer a 'warrior society' where every individual is a laborer or a soldier as needed from one day to the next. Instead of finely wrought blades that might be passed down from father to son, they prefer 'good enough' weapons and armor that you use until it breaks, then scrap it and replace it cheaply.

Lacking the sophisticated forging techniques of the Coalition, the Horde uses low-quality metal laden with impurities, made in vast quantities by clear-cutting whole sections of forest for charcoal. Instead of the beautifully embossed full plate used by humans and dwarves or light, silk-smooth maile and supple leathers used by elves, orcs mostly use scale, lamellar or brigandine. All of their equipment has a very crude, unfinished look (at least to the eyes of their foes). Beastmen rarely use any armor at all and rely on simple shields of wood and leather. Goblin-made arms and armor are cheap and shoddy even compared to what the orcs produce, but the goblins are utterly indispensable, since they do so much of the non-military crafting and all-around support work that keeps the armies marching... in particular, goblins are avid and enthusiastic builders of towers and small forts, giving the Horde much-needed staying power in long campaigns. Just like their hand weapons, the Horde builds many cheap, low-quality forts so they'll always have another to retreat to if one falls.

Whilst the Horde is not much for sophisticated strategies, their natural aggressiveness and low cunning makes them just as effective on campaign maneuvers as their enemies, if not moreso. While a human or elf commander might pause to deliberate and contact his lord to approve an **** on an enemy position, an orc or beastman leader will simply launch a crude but effective attack with whatever they have on hand, wasting no time in capitalizing on any momentary weakness before their victims can cover it.

The exception to the generally straightforward, anarchic and blunt nature of the Horde's armies is the snakefolk, who are able to field disciplined and organized formations. However, the cold-blooded nature of those soldiers is a terrible hindrance, and mostly relegates them to a defensive role, since if they get caught and **** into battle during the winter months they will be sleepy and exhausted and struggle to fight. Beastmen are good at springing ambushes, but in large set-piece battles they are relegated to serving as expendable fodder to distract elite enemy units while the orcs, goblins and trolls do the real work.

The horde is especially effective on the offense against the Alliance. Their expertise at sieges breaks down stately castles. Their numerous armies wear down better-organized alliance forces like the tide, pressuring them until their inflexible doctrine stumbles and then sweeping through them. However, they have suffered many embarrassing defeats in attacks against the Fey lands. Without the organized troops, doctrines and shock cavalry of the alliance, Horde armies tend to lose battles of attrition against the elves, who pick off their armies and soldiers piecemeal by leveraging their superior quality in small units against the disorganized horde, and the Horde's blunt **** tactics struggle to bring the nimble Elfin armies to a decisive battle until the elves have gathered a favorable balance of forces. Lacking the magical healing that human and daeva priests provide, the Horde can't compensate for the damage they take from elven hit-and-run attacks and eventually find themselves wiped out.

In summary, the Alliance performs well against the Fey courts but struggles against the Horde. The Horde excels against the Alliance but grinds to a halt in the face of the Fey Courts. The Fey Courts hunt the Horde with aplomb but find themselves on the losing end of great battles against the Alliance. This creates a cyclical strategic situation where the advantage shifts from one faction to another in a round-robin fashion. Since even a temporary alliance between any of the three is unthinkable, this seems likely to be the status quo for some time to come.