Recent content by Sea of Stars

Or as Nathan Bedford Forest put it: "Get there first with the most men." A lot of winning battles is being in the right place at the right time. But just being there, on the field is often right enough, another military maxim is "Better the wrong action right now than the perfect one too late."

Soldier is an elastic term, ranging from enforced levies to long service professionals. If the soldiers are professionals who do nothing but fight, they will likely be small in number (such as knights and men-at arms or Imperial Roman legionaries) but very well trained and equipped. If the...

My suggestion would be to find some nice military histories of the era you are seeking to emulate (Osprey's Essential History line is good starting point) and get a fell for how the wars were fought.

An internet video, making many of the points discussed here in a humorous way. Honestly, his sequences on various weapons and armor are well worth watching even if you do not agree with him.

I would think the new Shining City would try and reinvent itself as having been relevant in the past, dredging up (or inventing) a historical/mythic past that made them much more important than they really were. Probably stealing aspects of the major cultural players for their own purposes.

It depend a lot on the style of magic, if you have to poor over ancient tome in dimly lit libraries for years to learn magic, being a competent swordsman is going to be more difficult. If it is a natural talent, then being well trained in weapons as well as using magic makes more sense.

The army size depends a lot on the total population to draw from, obviously, the more people the larger the army can be. What sort of culture is fielding the army is also a consideration, an Italian city-state fielded a much different army from an English baron, for example.

It is my understanding that one of the 'rules' of the Greek gods was that one god could not undo what another did, this is why the curses leveled by the gods were so feared, only the goddess or god that you had offended in the first place could remove it.

The Franks used a throwing axe called the francisca which is suppose to be fairly effective. Thrown spears and javelins (along with axes) have enough mass to cause serious wounds, which throwing blades and knives lack.

Hello, Sean Holland here, writing, gamer, historian. Vaguely successful writer in the gaming community, you can see my resume here. Interested in all sorts of writing and storytelling, mostly fantasy of various stripes though I have some SF ideas floating around too. These days mostly...