Forces of the Princedom of Varth

 With this blog post, we move into the western regions of the Gal Hadre sub-continent, starting with the north-western most nation, the Princedom of Varth.  Once under the rule of the Empire of Aclimdan, it has only officially been independent for about a half-century but was independent in all but name for centuries beforehand.  It is also the most sparsely populated nation on the sub-continent which significantly impacts how they fight.  Varth’s military planning is also informed by the reality that their nobility is a handful of Tund families.  As a percentage, Tund are most common in Varth of any of the “human” lands.

Varth relies on a series of strongpoints, a mix of castles and the few large towns, Varth has no true cities, to provide difficult locations to take.  The amount of isolation in most of Varth means that supplying a besieging army would be difficult and create long supply lines vulnerable to the rest of Varth’s defensive strategy.  Villages threatened by attack will empty as all those not preparing to fight will flee to the nearest strongpoint and remain there until the danger has passed.

The infantry of Varth are a mix of the household guards of the nobility, the Lastwall Watch and the levies called up if they ended up in an actual war.  The Household guards are equipped similarly to those of other human lands, some armour, shields, spears and in this case nearly universally bows.  Their task is primarily to hold strongpoints and their focus on archery can make any attempts to storm the walls of a strongpoint a particularly unpleasant experience for anyone who has not taken the time to prepare properly.  Unfortunately for Varth, most of its nobles can only afford a handful of guards as even most nobles in Varth are not wealthy.

The Lastwall Watch guards the Lastwall, the slightly longer than mile long wall at the western end of the great isthmus that separates Gal Hadre from the Wilds of the West.  A military order that owes fealty directly to the Prince, they are unlikely to get involved in any conflict that is not an attack on the Lastwall.  Though the Lastwall is attacked on a regular basis by the savage tribes that live beyond its gaze.  The Lastwall Watch are generally well armoured as their defensive role doesn’t require them to be highly mobile.  With one main fortress in the centre of the wall and towers every hundred feet or so along its length, the Lastwall has been designed to require an army to seize it from a few hundred defenders.

Given Varth’s sparse population, it should not be surprising that many of its peasants hunt regularly to augment the usually thin harvests they get.  They are used more as archers than as melee troops in a conflict, generally trying to strike at the stretched supply lines of anyone attempting to besiege one of the strongpoints.  Ambushes targeting foraging parties, wagon trains travelling to supply the army and scouts looking for other settlements around the strongpoint are all common in their strategy.  Varth avoids large field battles if possible, not wanting to risk significant losses among their low population.  But a force attempting to siege a well built castle while they are constantly low on supplies due to attacks on their wagon trains and losing a slow trickle of soldiers to raids is unlikely to remain in place long enough to starve out the garrison.

Varth doesn’t use cavalry in the same numbers or style as those of other human lands like Lothran.  While it has knights, the handful it has can’t create the crushing charges that hundreds or thousands can.  They often use their mounts mainly as transport, dismounting to actually fight.  Most of its house mounted cavalry is used as scouts and skirmishers.  Varth does have a small number of noble houses that have managed to somewhat domesticate a species of giant scorpion that is large enough to be ridden by one or two humans or tund.  Their small numbers are used as shock cavalry, usually as a small number in an ambush or sallying out from their strongpoints to attack the besiegers.  Their giant scorpion riders tend to use either bows, or curved blades to defend the flanks of their mount, the giant scorpions need no help fighting targets directly in front of them.

Varth has a higher percentage of mages than other human lands, mainly because the tund have more mages.  Unlike many other lands that have fairly balanced numbers of mages of the different paths, the majority of Varth’s mages specialise in either the path of stone awakened or the path of the manifest beast, with the path of life and the other elemental paths making up most of the remainder, shrouded path and path of death mages are nearly unheard of in Varth and are rare even as secondary paths.  Their mages are most often used to help groups of raiders avoid detection or adding their power to the first, unexpected blows of an ambush.  Many path of the Manifest Beast mages operate entirely on their own using their magic to shift and augment their form to survive in the wild lands between settlements.

Given their reliance on strongholds, Varth has a solid grasp of immobile siege weapons.  Nearly all members of household guards can operate the catapults and spear throwers that can be found in the towers of every castle and town across the land.  What they are not good at doing is moving them, any of their siege weapons would have to be disassembled into several awkward and bulky pieces for transport.

What do you think of the forces of the Princedom of Varth.  Do you think avoiding pitched battles is a viable defensive strategy?  How effective do you think giant scorpion cavalry would be?  Currently the plan is to get back to the path of stone awakened next week.