Tag: vassalage

With my fiction writing, I coined a saying: “When a Muse comes upon you, you don’t ask which one.”

Once again, it is Melpomene (tragedy).

Clear a Path

The finale of the (someday-I-will-finish) Elmö’s Obligation story will lead to Xenograg recruiting a young orc martial artist as a henchman. He will then recruit others of his species into service with Xenograg, forming a small combat unit (~25). I had envisioned them as heavy cavalry, on horses, but willing to also fight on foot. Their primary duty was to be a bodyguard for Xenograg.

Then the Elmö’s Obligation story gained an unexpected detail while being written: the young bravo (to be named Ingraf) who Xenograg duels was originally to be human but is now hobgoblin. He, too, has a small following of his own people. While not a henchman, this hobgoblin will become a loyal retainer. He will likewise end up leading another small combat unit comprised of his people.

The usual depictions of these species is of hobgoblins being more disciplined than orcs; more soldier than warrior. So should Xenograg’s new heavy cavalry unit instead be the hobgoblins? Do I change the orcs to heavy infantry? Do I leave them both as cavalry, with the orcs being reduced to medium?

I forgot one detail: these orcs are unusual within their own people, specifically that they are martial artists, and are more disciplined from it.

For over a year, my attention on the Xenoverse/Rhydinspace has been on Xenograg rebuilding his depleted retinue. Not just rebuilding but expanding it to a size not seen since the Monastery of Arra.

Things are different now, though. Not so much with Xenograg as with me. The monastery-as-warband predates my getting married, buying a house, building a retirement nest egg, and being the primary breadwinner for a (very small) family through easy and rough economic times. My perspective has changed, and I regularly notice how different I see the matter of Xenograg’s responsibilities to his ever-growing extended family. Not just the St. Germain’s but a new generation of retainers.

I used to see these non-player characters (NPCs) solely through the lens of the Dungeons & Dragons rules. Primarily, via their weekly/monthly costs. I did not see the value for quite a long time. Then my game master gave Xenograg three henchmen, at once, to help him survive in what is now called a “duet” campaign. I quickly learned their value both mechanically (e.g., combat) and as a spur for actual roleplaying.

One thing that game master did not include, though, was logistics. Like many roleplayers, he was not interested in the realistic challenge of how Xenograg would manage with three more mouths to feed. His simple solution was ensuring Xenograg always had sufficient wealth to render the issue moot.

I kept that same conceit all the way through the Monastery of Arra. I paid lip service to the realistic necessities by including affectations in my roleplay: Xenograg commenting about being low on funds, regularly monitoring the monastery’s cash flow, fretting the cost of keep construction, needing to take a loan, et. al. But he always had enough.

Good times. Simple times. It is not that I want this gritty realism in my roleplay, now. I just feel that it needs to be there. And that it will have upsides, too, creatively.

Although the process is obscure, the result is quite clear. By 987 [C.E.] the soldiers of the West Frankish state were arranged in a feudal hierarchy bound together by oaths of vassalage. The king was at the top of the feudal pyramid: the suzerain of the land. A few dukes and counts were his direct vassals. They in turn had their vassals, rear vassals, and rear rear vassals. At the bottom of the pyramid was the simple knight with just enough land and peasant labor to support him, his family, and his horses. Now this structure was not all embracing by 987; in fact, it never was. As late as the latter part of the twelfth century the count of Dreux surrendered large allodial holdings to the count of Champagne and received them back as fiefs. A recent study has shown that large allodial estates persisted throughout the Middle Ages in the region around Bordeaux. But in comparison with the total area of the country these exceptions were of slight importance, and the principle beloved by feudal lawyers—no land without a lord—became essentially true. Thus all land was someone’s fief and every landholder except the king was someone’s vassal. The soldiers, the knights, held the land of France, and they were bound together by the feudal system.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 16-17

The origins of feudal institutions may be found in both Roman and German life. According to Tacitus, when a German war chief planned a campaign, he gathered about him a group of picked warriors which was called his comitatus. These men swore absolute fidelity and obedience to the chief in return for arms, food, clothing, and a share in the plunder. The German chieftains who set themselves up as kings in the Roman Empire had similar bands of sworn followers. The Frankish kings called the comitatus a truste and its members antrustiones. The Saxon kings were surrounded by bands of thanes. Thus the practice of a warrior binding himself by an oath to follow a chief in war was well established among the Germanic peoples. The Romans had a somewhat similar institution, the clientela. When a Roman freed a slave, the freedman usually remained a dependent of his former master, a cliens. Poor freemen might seek the protection of a senator by becoming his clients. In the latter years of the Roman Empire in the West the comitatus and the clientele tended to become merged into one institution. The great Roman nobles hired bands of German warriors to serve as their bodyguards. These warriors were known as bucellarii. Now the Roman senator may well have thought of his bucellarii as soldier-clients, but the Germans were more likely to consider themselves members of a comitatus. The bucellarii played an extremely important part in the wars of the fifth century [C.E.]: a large part of Belisarius‘ army was composed of his bucellarii. It seems clear that we have in these various Roman, German, and Romano-German institutions the prototype of the relationship between lord and vassal.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 12-13

Brandon Castellano:

…We can reduce costs, reduce manpower.

Don Raphael Aiuppo:

I’ve always measured wealth in the number of people loyal to me!

— “Squeeze” – Wiseguy, Season 1 (1987)

The phrase I drill into my student’s heads about the structure of medieval armies is that they are a retinue of retinues. What I mean by this is that the way a medieval king raises his armies is that he has a bunch of military aristocrats (read: nobles) who owe him military service (they are his ‘vassals’) – his retinue. When he goes to war, the king calls on all of his vassals to show up. But each of those vassals also have their own bunch of military aristocrats who are their vassals – their retinue. And this repeats down the line, even down to an individual knight, who likely has a handful of non-nobles as his retinue (perhaps a few of his peasants, or maybe he’s hired a mercenary or two on retainer).

…The average retinue…was five men although significant lords (like earls) might have hundreds of men in their retinues (which were in turn comprised of the retinues of their own retainers). So the noble’s retinue is the combined retinues of all of his retainers, and the king’s army is the combined total of everyone’s retainer’s retainers, if that make sense. Thus: a retinue of retinues.

— How It Wasn’t: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages, Part I – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

Author’s emphases both italics and bold.

See also:
Retinue Versus Followers

…There was desperation in the man’s face. Terror. And something else Sargon had had no hope of, which drove a common man to put a shoulder between his king and a door and argue with him….

— Legions of Hell, Chapter 11