The Retinue

The footmen who follow the lance.

For every towering knight there are a dozen ordinary soldiers — the retinue. Footmen with spear and shield, archers and crossbowmen, light horse: the common men and women who march behind the golem-knights and do the unglamorous work of war. A unit of retinue is reckoned not as a single warrior but as a body of up to ten figures, and its losses are counted in figures fallen rather than wounds taken. They do not suffer the crippling critical wounds a knight can — they simply hold, or they break.

Against a Palatine Knight, retinue are nearly powerless; a single armored golem can wade through a company of them. So they are seldom the deciding force on a battlefield. Instead they are the empire’s constables and skirmishers — they hold the towns, walk the roads, escort the caravans, scout ahead of the knights, and harass an enemy the knights have not yet reached.

But retinue are not static. Soldiers who survive enough hard fighting, and who are re-armed and re-armored as their company prospers, grow into something more than footmen — heavier, deadlier, and proud of the name they have earned. A warband’s true wealth is not just its knights, but the seasoned spears who have lived long enough to become veterans.