BGFW Fan created background. The Men of Hawkshold

Second installment featuring the Men of Hawkhold. Sorry for my English.

I will appreciate your comments though.

Here we go.

Men of Hawkshold

In the beginning

All the races appeared simultaneously in the world but not all of them followed the same progress rate. Humans seem to be the slower ones, being mostly like pack animals until one day something happened. A new breed of humans appeared; smarter, faster, better in all respects but physical prowess.

For the most time of the Human race, the humans lived under the command of the High Elves and they were just treated as another life form, not too bright, not too dangerous. After the appearance of the new breed, the Elves started looking the Humans in a different perspective. They took many under their guidance and helped the race to evolve with really fast rates.

However, some tribes of the Humans grew overconfident that they can overthrow their “masters” and make progress themselves. This led to conflicts with the High Elves, conflicts that helped the creation of the Orc nation, conflicts that weakened the High Elven nation and moved many human tribes in the Orc lands or the harsh lands of the North.

The history of the Hawkshold nation starts after the first rebellion of a small port city against the Orc nation. The whole movement started after the high Elves supported the future King Renta Kosten to start a rebellion against the Orcs and get all the profits of the Hawkshold port for himself and his tribe. The main gain of the elves was that they would gain again a foothold in a port city of the inner sea.

Society

Renta was raised and trained by High Elves so the training and the efficiency of the High elves in the field of combat was in part infused to the human soldiers. Since Renta could not make the humans more agile or faster, he tried heavy armor and a high sense of courage and motive to his troops. He often lead the battle himself just to make his men more brave. He also passed a decree that every human male more than the age of 12 must train 2 hours every Sunday at the use of the Longbow. In the beginning, not a lot of humans followed him but after the first wins against the orcs and the successful use of the longbow against them, more and more humans came to his side.

Whatever the successes against the Orcs, Hawkshold remains a small nation against a giant. Every human male must fight for his country, at every opportunity, without further fuss. The feelings and pride of the humans for their country are very strong, greatly supported by the wellbeing of every human in the nation due to the money coming to the imperial coffers from the port city and the merchants. Even the peasants earn good money and live a good (although hard working) life.

The Religion is a strange mixture of the old pagan religion of the first tribes and the new monotheist religion forced by the Elves and later evolved and supported by King Renta. The old religions live in many customs and festivals and are tolerated by the church.

Look to the World

The Kingdom of Hawkshold tries to be in good terms with all the known races except the Orcs. They have merchant relationships with all the colonies and settlements in the inner sea and try to expand even further by establishing colonies of their own. They cannot expand to the south due to the strength of the Orc nation but with the help of the High Elves, they expand in every other direction.

Their continuous expansion is viewed suspiciously but the Dwarves but since most of the Human colonies have nothing to do with mining, for now anyway, the Dwarves are not openly hostile against human ships.

Humans believe that the time for their race is now. They want to learn and conquer everything, but they don’t like war. War is only accepted when used for defensive purposes. This is the view anyway of the common people. In theory, many wars have started because of the new Hawkshold colonies all over the world. However, most of this news never reaches the Kingdom of Hawkshold.

Army of Hawkshold

The army of Hawkshold is based on defensive formations with the use of their expertise on ranged weapons. Since the main use of the army is for defense, very few war machines are used and practically no siege weapons.

The borders of the Kingdom of Hawkshold are patrolled by brigades of light cavalry and mounted scouts whereas the main body of the army utilizes masses of common folk trained for battle and heavily armored professional foot soldiers.

The courage of the Hawkshold soldiers is further bolstered by the knowledge that in case of their death, their family will be looked after the state and will be respected by the rest of the people. It truly is an honor to die for your people.

Knights. The order of the knights is drawn from the merchant families since each knight has to pay for his own armor and retainers. Since they are not easy to gather and organize, many knights lead troops from the top of their horses but is not very usual for a full unit of Knights to be seen on the field.

Longbowmen. The most elite soldiers of the Hawkshold army are drawn from the common folk. All of the people in the Hawkshold kingdom know how to use a bow but the best in a village form together a band and are trained in the use of the longbow, a special bow made with two types of wood used together and needing more strength and practice to use properly. The evolution of the bow and longbow has gone a long way and specialized tips for the arrows are used against different types of troops and armor.