Lord General Johan Scarrim, the Eagleking, the red haired Dragon of Wyrmport, a man who will forever live on in history for thrusting both himself and his homeland of Astrarch out of obscurity and into the competition of great powers from the 17th to 19th Age's.
Johan was a product of a long standing edict that had been initiated more than 250 years before his birth, for after the Last War of the Wyverns, the lands of what remained of the Antramarian empire and their allies had begun to face a severe problem.
The Lesser Dragons which had been trained and bred in Drakespire had begun to spill out following the abandonment of Angbaland, and now they had started to migrate into the warmer climates of mainland Aphal, causing a tremendous deal of hassle for the people of the north.
As such, Emperor Barun Arcwin in collaboration with Archov sought to commission a group of specialists to begin to aid in the hunting of these pests in hopes of driving them off of the continent for good, and his natural choice for the warriors to undergo this task would be the men of Astarch.
For hundreds of years before even the foundation of Antramar, these northern warrior clans had been famed for their unique culture of breeding and then subsequently hunting matured lesser Dragons, and although their keeping of these Dragons was what was eventually led their kind to fall into the hands of the Wyvern Restorationists, they still were uniquely equipped to deal with them.
And so, Barun enlisted the 50 best Dragon hunters Darg and Wyrmport had to offer, and funded them so that they would become, what he called, the "NewAge Dragoons", a warrior order with the sole dedication of perfecting the craft of DragonHunting with imperial backing.
They would be granted permission by the Archovi to build a rudimentary keep that would directly abut the Soulyce lake where they could best spot the Dragons fleeing south and begin to track them, and then they would use weapons such as long pike's, powerful crossbows, and a number of minor drugs and alchemical enhancements to first bring down, and then hunt the Dragons, relying on teamwork on discipline above all else.
Killing these beasts proved extremely lucrative for the order of NewAge Dragoons, as not only would they get a sizable coin bounty for the Dragons defeat, but they would also often return to their keep with the corpse and sell off the Dragons valuable scales and bones to aristocrats hungry for such a luxury.
It was with the inflated coffers of the Order and a rapid increase in its prestige that Johan Scarrim was brought from Wyrmport, a prominent hunter back home in Astarch, he decided to try his hand at the profiteering in Aphal as many of his kin had.
After a great many years of lining his pockets and gaining valuable experience as a warrior within the ever expanding halls of the fortress of Drakkenwald, he ascended to the rank of Captain of his own squad of Hunters, and then soon enough he was elected by the council of Captains to become the esteemed Lord General of the Order.
It was at this point Johan began to voice his outward displeasure at the structure of the Order itself, and his plans for reformation. The Order, wealthy and powerful as it had become, still had little actual influence of its own, that was not to mention that during his time as Captain the steady work of Dragon Hunting had begun to dry up, more and more Dragons had begun to flee further North and East, soon enough they will have succeeded in the task given to them by Barun and driven the Dragons from the continent.
Johan knew that if the Order of NewAge Dragoons was to survive, it would need to begin to specialize in a new field, namely the repurposing of their pikes and crossbows from being hunting tools, to weapons of war.
With this, and the swelling of their ranks with non-Astrarchi, soon the Order under Scarrims leadership would become a veritable military power in its own right, with a small number of highly trained and efficient fighters. Johan would further improve the dynamic power of his limited force by pioneering formation-based mixed arms units, with dedicated front-rank pikeman meant to deter advances from cavalry (which the order lacked) guarding an interior line of dedicated arquebusiers that would constantly harass the enemy from range while supporting a steady advance.
This block of men would be nearly impenetrable on the field by any contemporary means, and was a tremendous multiplication of the usefulness of the well trained men he had at his disposal, who would very rarely break rank.
Under these reforms, soon enough the great powers of Aphal had stopped contracting the Order for the hunting of Dragons, but the bolstering of their own ranks. But even this was still not enough for Lord General Scarrim, he still craved for the Order to have greater influence in the politics of Aphal, to dictate terms rather than simply be a mercenary corps.
And so, using his connections to high ranking nobles in the court of Astarch he had paid off, he soon set sail with his men across from Drakkenwald, back home to Wyrmport. Upon his arrival he was greeted as a hero, as the man who's leadership had driven the Dragons from Aphal and brought pride and fame to Astarch.
He was granted as a token of his prowess for administration the honorary title of Governor General of Wyrmport, a supposedly symbolic role as advisor to the old and senile Astrarchi King in Darg, but in practice this new title had been the noblemen of Wyrmport handing the crown of Astrarch to Johan in exchange for his good favor since Wyrmport held far more political power.
With his home country at his back Johans eye's turned south once more, Astrarch was a fine Kingdom but it had always been relegated to its own affairs, never seen as a player on the stage of Aphal, and so when the Halasphoran crusades of the 16th Age began, Johan began to eye up the prize of the seemingly vulnerable Gimson.
Queen Eraine’s son Ethain had been but a pup during the Rothian wars, but he was an experienced commander and a shrewd diplomat, but now he was hundreds of miles away in the East, fighting with his old allies to reclaim lands on behalf of anxious zealots in his court.
Not to mention that Johan had not been the only one to begin to see Gimson as vulnerable, the city of Imro on the western coast of Gimson had begun to push for autonomy and radical parliamentarian ideals, and with their noblemen being most outspokenly against the Crusades in the east, these notions had proved to be the spark igniting revolution.
Charlin Davrilos, leader of the rapidly expanding Imronian seperatist movement, began to reach out and talk of collaborating with Johan, and Johan agreed to lend him a force of NewAge Dragoons and have them train his militia in their ways in exchange for a great deal of coin and an assurance of mutual goals, with Charlin stating that he would not impede Johans ambitions so long as Imro was independent.
With this they waited for the ideal moment, and soon enough that would emerge with the death of the old Queen Eraine. She had been Ethain’s representative while he was absent, but with her death there was now further chaos heaped onto the already confligrating pyre of homeland Gimsonian politics, this was the time to strike.
From here the records of the “Breaking Wars” is well known, Imro carved out local loyal towns to form the Imronian confederation under the lead of Charlin, and Johan, using Drakkenwald as a staging ground, pushed into Gimson, taking Norgos and Pririo with little resistance, firming these borders up before capitalizing on the weakened state of Archov following their civil war and seizing the Ryavi pass region as well as Dnedi.
Everyone on Aphal had begun to know and fear Johan even before the Breaking wars, but following this string of masterpiece victories, the Eagleking had not only reinvented warfare across the continent of Aphal, he had ascended his once unnoteworthy backwater of a kingdom into one of the greater Empires seen on Aphal.
From this point on, Johan would spend many of his later years focusing on integrating and securing his greatly inflated borders by reinforcing unique identities in Ryav and his Gailish provinces, dealing with the succession following the death of the old Dargian King by having himself declared Emperor and the Dargian Dynasty ended, and building and alliance with the growing rival to Gimson, the Rivea-Waven commonwealth.
Such was the life of Johan Scarrim, greatest hero of the Astrarchi, Lord General of the order of NewAge Dragoons, Governor General of Wyrmport, Emperor of Astrarch, Protector of Ryav and Dnedi, liberator of the northern Gailens, the Eagleking.
Johan was a product of a long standing edict that had been initiated more than 250 years before his birth, for after the Last War of the Wyverns, the lands of what remained of the Antramarian empire and their allies had begun to face a severe problem.
The Lesser Dragons which had been trained and bred in Drakespire had begun to spill out following the abandonment of Angbaland, and now they had started to migrate into the warmer climates of mainland Aphal, causing a tremendous deal of hassle for the people of the north.
As such, Emperor Barun Arcwin in collaboration with Archov sought to commission a group of specialists to begin to aid in the hunting of these pests in hopes of driving them off of the continent for good, and his natural choice for the warriors to undergo this task would be the men of Astarch.
For hundreds of years before even the foundation of Antramar, these northern warrior clans had been famed for their unique culture of breeding and then subsequently hunting matured lesser Dragons, and although their keeping of these Dragons was what was eventually led their kind to fall into the hands of the Wyvern Restorationists, they still were uniquely equipped to deal with them.
And so, Barun enlisted the 50 best Dragon hunters Darg and Wyrmport had to offer, and funded them so that they would become, what he called, the "NewAge Dragoons", a warrior order with the sole dedication of perfecting the craft of DragonHunting with imperial backing.
They would be granted permission by the Archovi to build a rudimentary keep that would directly abut the Soulyce lake where they could best spot the Dragons fleeing south and begin to track them, and then they would use weapons such as long pike's, powerful crossbows, and a number of minor drugs and alchemical enhancements to first bring down, and then hunt the Dragons, relying on teamwork on discipline above all else.
Killing these beasts proved extremely lucrative for the order of NewAge Dragoons, as not only would they get a sizable coin bounty for the Dragons defeat, but they would also often return to their keep with the corpse and sell off the Dragons valuable scales and bones to aristocrats hungry for such a luxury.
It was with the inflated coffers of the Order and a rapid increase in its prestige that Johan Scarrim was brought from Wyrmport, a prominent hunter back home in Astarch, he decided to try his hand at the profiteering in Aphal as many of his kin had.
After a great many years of lining his pockets and gaining valuable experience as a warrior within the ever expanding halls of the fortress of Drakkenwald, he ascended to the rank of Captain of his own squad of Hunters, and then soon enough he was elected by the council of Captains to become the esteemed Lord General of the Order.
It was at this point Johan began to voice his outward displeasure at the structure of the Order itself, and his plans for reformation. The Order, wealthy and powerful as it had become, still had little actual influence of its own, that was not to mention that during his time as Captain the steady work of Dragon Hunting had begun to dry up, more and more Dragons had begun to flee further North and East, soon enough they will have succeeded in the task given to them by Barun and driven the Dragons from the continent.
Johan knew that if the Order of NewAge Dragoons was to survive, it would need to begin to specialize in a new field, namely the repurposing of their pikes and crossbows from being hunting tools, to weapons of war.
With this, and the swelling of their ranks with non-Astrarchi, soon the Order under Scarrims leadership would become a veritable military power in its own right, with a small number of highly trained and efficient fighters. Johan would further improve the dynamic power of his limited force by pioneering formation-based mixed arms units, with dedicated front-rank pikeman meant to deter advances from cavalry (which the order lacked) guarding an interior line of dedicated arquebusiers that would constantly harass the enemy from range while supporting a steady advance.
This block of men would be nearly impenetrable on the field by any contemporary means, and was a tremendous multiplication of the usefulness of the well trained men he had at his disposal, who would very rarely break rank.
Under these reforms, soon enough the great powers of Aphal had stopped contracting the Order for the hunting of Dragons, but the bolstering of their own ranks. But even this was still not enough for Lord General Scarrim, he still craved for the Order to have greater influence in the politics of Aphal, to dictate terms rather than simply be a mercenary corps.
And so, using his connections to high ranking nobles in the court of Astarch he had paid off, he soon set sail with his men across from Drakkenwald, back home to Wyrmport. Upon his arrival he was greeted as a hero, as the man who's leadership had driven the Dragons from Aphal and brought pride and fame to Astarch.
He was granted as a token of his prowess for administration the honorary title of Governor General of Wyrmport, a supposedly symbolic role as advisor to the old and senile Astrarchi King in Darg, but in practice this new title had been the noblemen of Wyrmport handing the crown of Astrarch to Johan in exchange for his good favor since Wyrmport held far more political power.
With his home country at his back Johans eye's turned south once more, Astrarch was a fine Kingdom but it had always been relegated to its own affairs, never seen as a player on the stage of Aphal, and so when the Halasphoran crusades of the 16th Age began, Johan began to eye up the prize of the seemingly vulnerable Gimson.
Queen Eraine’s son Ethain had been but a pup during the Rothian wars, but he was an experienced commander and a shrewd diplomat, but now he was hundreds of miles away in the East, fighting with his old allies to reclaim lands on behalf of anxious zealots in his court.
Not to mention that Johan had not been the only one to begin to see Gimson as vulnerable, the city of Imro on the western coast of Gimson had begun to push for autonomy and radical parliamentarian ideals, and with their noblemen being most outspokenly against the Crusades in the east, these notions had proved to be the spark igniting revolution.
Charlin Davrilos, leader of the rapidly expanding Imronian seperatist movement, began to reach out and talk of collaborating with Johan, and Johan agreed to lend him a force of NewAge Dragoons and have them train his militia in their ways in exchange for a great deal of coin and an assurance of mutual goals, with Charlin stating that he would not impede Johans ambitions so long as Imro was independent.
With this they waited for the ideal moment, and soon enough that would emerge with the death of the old Queen Eraine. She had been Ethain’s representative while he was absent, but with her death there was now further chaos heaped onto the already confligrating pyre of homeland Gimsonian politics, this was the time to strike.
From here the records of the “Breaking Wars” is well known, Imro carved out local loyal towns to form the Imronian confederation under the lead of Charlin, and Johan, using Drakkenwald as a staging ground, pushed into Gimson, taking Norgos and Pririo with little resistance, firming these borders up before capitalizing on the weakened state of Archov following their civil war and seizing the Ryavi pass region as well as Dnedi.
Everyone on Aphal had begun to know and fear Johan even before the Breaking wars, but following this string of masterpiece victories, the Eagleking had not only reinvented warfare across the continent of Aphal, he had ascended his once unnoteworthy backwater of a kingdom into one of the greater Empires seen on Aphal.
From this point on, Johan would spend many of his later years focusing on integrating and securing his greatly inflated borders by reinforcing unique identities in Ryav and his Gailish provinces, dealing with the succession following the death of the old Dargian King by having himself declared Emperor and the Dargian Dynasty ended, and building and alliance with the growing rival to Gimson, the Rivea-Waven commonwealth.
Such was the life of Johan Scarrim, greatest hero of the Astrarchi, Lord General of the order of NewAge Dragoons, Governor General of Wyrmport, Emperor of Astrarch, Protector of Ryav and Dnedi, liberator of the northern Gailens, the Eagleking.
