The Royal Fadath Army
Melas Royal Guard
When the city of Melas fell to the Belgians a small group of city troops who survived the bloodbath volunteered their services to the Princess are her private bodyguard. Though technically part of the Royal Army they only answer to the Princess.
The Royal Guard make up about 1% of the whole army
Melas Freedom Guard
These are volunteers who escaped the
fall of Melas and are forming a new force that’s hopes one day to free Melas
from the Belgians. They are equipped with mixture of Fadath weapons and old
Fadath armour. This force is currently commanded by a former junior officer who
escaped the fall of Melas. He is an able and brave officer but has never
commanded a major force, and he fears that he may never get the chance to free
his homeland.
The Melas
Freedom Guard make up about 3% of the whole army
1st
Fadath Foot (The Freeman of Fadath)-Freed Slaves
The army has
changed dramatically since the recent war with the Oenotrian
Empire. Its need for troops forced them to arm slaves on the promise to free
them. Most of those not from Fadath have remained in military service.
Commanded by their own officers or human mercenary officers. Equipped with a
mixture of Martian and human weapons and style of clothing.
Rifles unit-Proto-Marines
Edited:30/04/14
Edited:30/04/14
The Guards
The 2nd ,Rifled Muskets unit
The 3rd ,Spears man unit
1st Fadath Field Artillery
They make up about a 70% of the whole
army.
Mercenaries
Hesperian Free
Company (Command Ground) Part of the Hesperian Basin Trading Company
Merryweather's
Scouts
Ivan's Cossacks
School of Artillery
The Training Corps
Acting as military
advisors, instructors as well as elite infantry units guarding key positions
such as the city armoury, the gas works , the Royal palace and the landing fields.
Groups of mercenaries such as the Grovener's Rifles , Nash Merryweather’s Scouts , School of Artillery, Cpt./капита́н Ivan’s sharp shooters are based in the city. All are employed by the Hesperian Free Company a military wing of the Hesperian Basin Trading Company who has negotiated a contract with the city to provide training and provide military support to the ‘new army’. Many European nationalities are employed in this work each with unique skills and equipment. The current CO is Colonel Frost (British Army retired) .
Groups of mercenaries such as the Grovener's Rifles , Nash Merryweather’s Scouts , School of Artillery, Cpt./капита́н Ivan’s sharp shooters are based in the city. All are employed by the Hesperian Free Company a military wing of the Hesperian Basin Trading Company who has negotiated a contract with the city to provide training and provide military support to the ‘new army’. Many European nationalities are employed in this work each with unique skills and equipment. The current CO is Colonel Frost (British Army retired) .
Hill Martian Cavalry
They make up the bulk of the mounted
Fadath forces.
Mercenaries make up about 1% of the
whole army but punch well above their weight.
Fadath Regulars
These are mainly infantry units consisting of swords men (armed with the regional weapon the Fadath Glaives), Archers and Rifled Musket men. The regular army replaced its smoothbore muskets with rifled before the late Prince died. Archers are still used and trained for frontline duties and the trend for fazing these out for black power weapons hasn’t reached the conservative Fadath Army.
These troops are suspicious of the better equipped of the human’s mercenaries and look down on the freed slave units. A number of senior officers are loyal to Prince Hastuun. A larger number of officers feel the city is going in the wrong direction and the Princess (not Fadath by birth) is striking at the heart of Fadath’s way of life.
These troops are suspicious of the better equipped of the human’s mercenaries and look down on the freed slave units. A number of senior officers are loyal to Prince Hastuun. A larger number of officers feel the city is going in the wrong direction and the Princess (not Fadath by birth) is striking at the heart of Fadath’s way of life.
Most officers are drawn from the families of the Merchant Princess & the establishment and see their position of the elite at risk and favour a return to the old ways. But the rank and file currently support the Princess but are unhappy at the suggestion of allowing foreign freed slaves into regular army units.
Regular troops make up about 25% of the whole army.
Prince Daanyo’s Command
Swift Death (Archers) Fiercely Loyal to
Daanyo and in turn his sister inlaw
Dooms
End (Choppers) Loyal to Fadath
Kristyanna Shield (Choppers) Formally
called Gisra’s Shield and the Royal
Bodyguard. Loyal to Fadath but unhappy about being replaced by foreign Melas
troops.
Canal Watch Cavalry (Carbines)Loyal
to Fadath. They don’t spend much time in the city so don’t get mixed up in its
politics but are important to the power game
as they are one of the few Fadath cavalry units.
City Levy (Smoothbore Muskets) Loyal
to Fadath unhappy about losing their slaves in the recent emancipation. Militia
troops so not full time soldiers. Their weapons are stored in the Royal armoury.
Rural Levy (Smoothbore Muskets) Loyal
to the Princess as she has helped the rural poor. Militia troops so not
full time soldiers. Their weapons are stored in the Royal armoury.
Prince Hastuun’s Command. Either inherited through his family line or
won in the field of battle.
Deadly Sting (Rifled Musket s) Loyal to Prince Hastuun. (They are currently restricted to barracks while under
investigation for some of their fellow band members treasonable actions against
the 1st Fadath Foot. These investigations are being carried out by
cadet officers from the Army & Fleet Academy appointed by Prince Hastuun)
Palace Guard (Choppers) Loyal to Prince Hastuun. They guard the
perimeter wall around the palace complex and all entrance points and exits. The
often come into verbal conflict with the Princesses Royal Body Guard though no
blood has been spilt between them......yet .To add to this tension are human
mercenaries which hold the interior entrances and exits.
City Guard (Choppers) Loyal to Prince Hastuun. They are responsible for
the defence of the city walls and gates.
Royal Armouries Loyal to Prince Hastuun, Responsible for the production
of all Fadath’s powder and weapons.
Army & Fleet Officers Academy Loyal to Prince Hastuun. Native officers to Fadath , bands and fleets are
trained here. Prince Hastuun is its Principle and head tutor of military
tactics and strategy. No former slave has been allowed entry.
Hastuun's Body Guard Fiercely Loyal to Prince Hastuun. Picked from the
deadliest bladed weapon fighters in
Fadath. All officers in the own right and veterans of many battles all
followers of the Mrohzanji sect.
Sorry for the low quality of the charts Picasa won't let me put any better pics on. :(
I've put them in a colour code to show who controls what and who is neutral within the politics of the city.Edited 04/02/13 sorry if you've seen some of this before from earlier posts but I just wanted to flesh it out bit more.
Re-edited 30/04/14
The addition of the "Guards" to the Fadath first foot.
The Guard
The 2nd
The 3rd
1st Field Artillery
Below some 'new' pics of the units of the 1st Foot
Oh, another nerd like me! lol
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately my poor eyes cant make it all out - even if I download it - but I can't see any mention of a wet navy. Did I just miss it?
I reckon that states would really need to control the canals; to keep trade flowing, suppress piracy, move military supplies and also prevent enemies doing the same. Cloud navies are all well and good, but they can't carry all of the materiel an army needs, and they're just to valuable to waste on standard supply runs. They might be able to get supplies into a besieged fortress, but I can't see it being done as a daily chore.
Anyway, that's my 1 cent, and keep up the fluff!
Clive G
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteand yes guilty as charged ....I'm a nerd.:)
ReplyDeleteHi Clive,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feed back and thoughts ,always welcome.Sorry about that it didn't seem to work when loading it.I'm no computer wizard but will see if I can improve it somehow.
No I haven't given Fadath a wet Navy.From what I understand the traditional Martian view is defence from above.I have given my Brits small surface patrol boats however they have a different military tradtion.
I've seen surface merchant ships if well crewed as having armed men on board.Either sailors or mercs with their biggest threat from the skys.Or if they are unlucky from assults from the banks of the canals from raiders.I don't really see many Martian on Martian canal battles by boat.
I can see the Martian military escorting supply boats with cavalry and infantry if its a large force unless they have troops barges,which I haven't got yet.Ref.my latest Fadath game.
Your right to point out the weakness of supplies by air because of their weight. So bulk supplies really still have to travel by water.
We haven't unless I've missed in one of the original works had a 'sea battle' on the canals.Though these my of happened in the past.
While some cargo ships have artillery onboard but they aren't really warships.Plus to get a steel hulled ships to Mars isn't easy,though not impossible.Though we see most resources going into ships of the sky when it comes to humans.
A screw galley could hold a canal from above with some else.Though it would bring local sky forces in a hurry.It would most likely happen in a full invasion with fleet support.
The only written canal based battle so far I've read was a swamp pirate attack on a vessel with small boats.That isn't to say people can't game what they want.
So to sum up for me I don't see canal battles as common as sky battles or land to canal battles.Having said that a small British cruiser could bring a Martian city to its kneels.As long as it didn't get stuck in the canal locks ;)Edited 04/02/13
Yes, there's not too much "canon" on water-borne vessels, which is odd given the central nature of the water cycle and canals!
DeleteI take your point about land escorts. I think this might work for much of the year. I'm less certain that it would be effective at high flow, when a canal is a 1 mile wide stretch of water. That's perhaps the only time that a "sea battle" might take place as otherwise you are in a fairly narrow channel, with little room for maneuver.
I don’t really see much scope for Trafalgaresque sea battles, if only because of the lack of sea room (canal room?). I was really thinking of a wet navy being a number of fast galleys, with marines and cannons, that would act as a customs force in times of peace and escorts in times of trouble. I don’t see massive waterborne invasions happening either, but the supplies that follow the army would go by canal, and close protection by the armed galleys would make a lot of sense as they’re bound to be so much cheaper than liftwood ships. Politically, they are more likely to be under the control of the land army rather than the sky fleet. I’d imagine that the guy running the land campaign would want his own resource; one that won’t disappear when the fly-boys go chasing off into the blue yonder (again)!
Just thinking aloud here, but could a screw galley really “hold” a canal? They could certainly monitor traffic, and they could harry boats, but the small ones are very fragile compared with a large barge. Lob a few rockets its way (and I’m convinced Martians should have that technology) and the screw galley would likely have to pull out of range. A large screw galley is horribly expensive and unlikely to be involved in routine patrol work (both for economic and political reasons). I guess I just feel that liftwood is too expensive to “waste” in what will often be routine customs searches. By all means have a Clearsight monitoring the traffic, but it is more likely to send a signal to the nearest warboat/customs launch than attempt to stop and search on its own.
On second thoughts, a small cloudship - a Bloodrunner perhaps - might be a better bet for monitoring as it can loiter and drift/glide more efficiently. It still doesn’t have any marines though.
Looking at the numbers, say you need one or two small cloudships to patrol each canal branch. That's actually quite a lot of liftwood tied up in very humdrum tasks. I would suggest that they would be better used for patrolling land borders and monitoring air traffic. For canals all you need are some fast ships, and relatively inexpensive ones. Add some marines (which are lacking on smaller sky vessels) and a couple of light guns and make sure it’s a fast boat - think trireme. Hmmmm ... on second thoughts, I wonder if a screw-driven water propellor would be more efficient that oars?
Anyway, I don't want to hijack your blog any further, but fluff like this is great food for thought.
Clive
More Tales from the Ether has an appendix with some data on canal "wet combat". Plus you can extrapolate from Soldier's Companion, where there is data on water-bourne shipping toward the back.
DeleteJust a guess, but I suspect Frank just decided that them what wanted canal boats would put summat together themselves, or not.
Looking at the campaign rules, logistics are very important, and the canals make supplying the troops easier - twice the effort is required to supply troops off the canal area.
Yaay, now I can read it, Thanks :-)
ReplyDeleteOnly the author could answer this fully but I'd think one of the main selling points of the game was Cloudships of one sort or another and water-bourne vessels weren't really on the horizon.The difference is a better catch for the reader/gamer?
ReplyDeleteSome good points Clive and I fully agree the March Master or higher would have over remit of a "wet navy",the Sky Lord/Admirial is for the birds as it were ;)
Maybe with the introduction of steam engines patrol boats make more sense to the Martians?I don't see Fadath as a major force so it is limited in air power and other heavy support.I've put their hope in the new branch of the army.You can't hold a city for long without controlling the ground itself.
Yes things can change during the seasons with canals.A lot depends on where and the state of the canal.I've only built a secondary one off the main canal.Though you can turn around a medium sized flat bottomed boat in it.Doubt a galley or large barge could though.Looking at the barges from the source books they are very much like low sided ferries.
Hands up,I may of got the ship type a little wrong ;),its a weakness I still have in the canon, though I've lots of stats on them.I need to brush up.As some will know I'm well behind on my aircraft for Mars.One thing I've thought about though is as liftwood gets weaker over time ,doesn't it make sense to keep them operating rather than keep them all bottled up on the landing fields?
Your not hijacking the blog at all.Always up for ideas.Its also good to know someone is reading the blog ;)