Graymane campaigns

[Jose]

Hello everyone, 

Does anyone know how this guy lead his campaigns against the holy country? 

Did he use a lot of warbands? Various groups at regiment level? A couple of armies of legion level... Maybe a mix of everything... It seems odd speak of an ambush in "lion feast" Battle. A lot of calvary maybe? 

And how, in Solara's name, did he manage to keep together all that people? 

Thanks. 

[metcalph]

2 hours ago, Jose said:

Hello everyone, 

Does anyone know how this guy lead his campaigns against the holy country? 

Did he use a lot of warbands? Various groups at regiment level? A couple of armies of legion level... Maybe a mix of everything... It seems odd speak of an ambush in "lion feast" Battle. A lot of calvary maybe? 

And how, in Solara's name, did he manage to keep together all that people? 

Thanks. 

Greymane has always given me the impression of personal leadership.  He isn't a wise general commanding from a distance but someone who gets out and fights.  His troops are clan and tribal contingents and he probably knows their leaders by name, rewarding them with plunder from the battlefield etc.  .

His troops would be a mix of light infantry and raiding cavalry.  The Trader Princes under his sway might have a couple of heavy foot regiments but they wouldn't be the mainstay of his forces.  For the ambush, one could always copy Hanibal at the Battle of Lake Trasimene for tactics.

 

[Eff]

10 hours ago, Jose said:

Hello everyone, 

Does anyone know how this guy lead his campaigns against the holy country? 

Did he use a lot of warbands? Various groups at regiment level? A couple of armies of legion level... Maybe a mix of everything... It seems odd speak of an ambush in "lion feast" Battle. A lot of calvary maybe? 

And how, in Solara's name, did he manage to keep together all that people? 

Thanks. 

I've spent a little bit of time thinking about Greymane as part of running a game that started in Esrolia. So none of this is "canon", of course. I think that my intuition about Greymane is that his ability to present a united Solanthi/Ditali front against the Holy Country and then Esrolia and Caladraland derives from him being outside of the traditional hierarchy- he's not a Trader Prince, he's not a tribal king, and he makes use of tactical polygyny as well. So his agenda is not one which benefits one group of Wenelians at the expense of the others, it's an "apolitical" commitment to extracting wealth from the Holy Country to restore the glory days of the Manirian Road. 

I've assumed that part and parcel of this is that he's officially detached from the Trader Princes, so the Holy Country can't respond simply by strangling the Ditali cities one by one and plundering and devastating the cities to keep Greymane in line. I think his main advantage at the operational level is thus that he can give way against expeditionary forces- his strongpoints are in Solanthi country, and in order to engage in reprisals against individual tribes and clans, Holy Country armies need to scatter, where they can be defeated in detail. 

The Lion King's Feast I don't know the details of, but I do think that the notions about "Lunar agitators" driving Solanthi and Ditali raids are a political cover- Greymane can always order the "agitators" expelled if and when the Holy Country delivers on bribes and thus reconcile. This is in keeping with him playing both sides right up until the Battle of Pennel Ford, where his attempt to keep Esrolia and Caladraland weak and divided runs directly into Harrek. 

And overall, Greymane kept all those people together because he succeeded. Following the old lion meant Esrolian finished goods and Caladraland raw materials flowed westward. 

Addendum: I think Greymane's run of victories happen in large part because the Holy Country is dealing with pressure from Wolf Pirates and Lunars simultaneously, and thus faces three "fronts". If they could concentrate force against him, things would be different, but at the same time, Greymane enters the field because there are clearly opportunities. I think his early reputation was built in intra-Manirian wars, perhaps winning some victories against the Pralori. 

Edited October 11, 2022 by Eff
adding additional thoughts

[Joerg]

12 hours ago, Jose said:

Hello everyone, 

Does anyone know how this guy lead his campaigns against the holy country? 

A towering reputation as an extremely successful raider, with the charisma  of an alpha-lion and the magic of Orlanth. He seems to be a bit of an analogon to Ariovist, the Suebi leader that caused Caesar quite a bit of trouble with his Gallic allies, or to the leaders of the great Danish army/fleet collecting the Danegeld from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom for years.

 

12 hours ago, Jose said:

Did he use a lot of warbands? Various groups at regiment level? A couple of armies of legion level... Maybe a mix of everything... It seems odd speak of an ambush in "lion feast" Battle. A lot of calvary maybe? 

As far as I know, tribal warbands plus adventurous "knights" from the Trader Prince castles seeking loot and maybe some glory. The Solanthi are happy to follow his summons, and the Ditali prefer following him to raid Esrolia over his raiders looting their lands rather than just requisitioning their food on their way through.

 

12 hours ago, Jose said:

And how, in Solara's name, did he manage to keep together all that people?

The promise of the big loot from temples and cities too large and too well defended for lesser alliances to overcome.

Don't expect much organisation or cohesion while on the march, these will be a lot of disparate war bands following the signals of one of Greymane's lieutenants as promptly as they feel like. The need for cooperation against the hard targets is what keeps cohesion, the same way Jaldon leads disparate groups of Praxian raiders into Dragon Pass and beyond.

Hiring out as mercenaries takes a little more coercion and cohesion, but nobody expects the western barbarians to behave in any other way than as barbarians, and woe to the natives that they take up quarters with.

 

 

There is a good reason why there are hardly any scenarios where player characters join one of these raiding ventures. A big raiding army like this will commit atrocities along their way. The leaders will be happy if they can avoid bloodshed between the disparate bands, protecting the farming population that they rely on feeding the troops is well beyond the control even Greymane can command. Check these excellent three blog posts on ancient logistics:

https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-i-the-problem/

https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-ii-foraging/

https://acoup.blog/2022/08/12/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-iii-on-the-move/

 

Greymane is a raider, not a major campaigner. His warriors will be mostly self-sufficient warriors, with rather few noncombatant supporters, and porters captured during the plundering as human chattle is one of the rewards for plundering overpopulated Esrolia.

[Jose]

20 minutes ago, Joerg said:

A towering reputation as an extremely successful raider, with the charisma  of an alpha-lion and the magic of Orlanth. He seems to be a bit of an analogon to Ariovist, the Suebi leader that caused Caesar quite a bit of trouble with his Gallic allies, or to the leaders of the great Danish army/fleet collecting the Danegeld from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom for years.

 

As far as I know, tribal warbands plus adventurous "knights" from the Trader Prince castles seeking loot and maybe some glory. The Solanthi are happy to follow his summons, and the Ditali prefer following him to raid Esrolia over his raiders looting their lands rather than just requisitioning their food on their way through.

 

The promise of the big loot from temples and cities too large and too well defended for lesser alliances to overcome.

Don't expect much organisation or cohesion while on the march, these will be a lot of disparate war bands following the signals of one of Greymane's lieutenants as promptly as they feel like. The need for cooperation against the hard targets is what keeps cohesion, the same way Jaldon leads disparate groups of Praxian raiders into Dragon Pass and beyond.

Hiring out as mercenaries takes a little more coercion and cohesion, but nobody expects the western barbarians to behave in any other way than as barbarians, and woe to the natives that they take up quarters with.

 

 

There is a good reason why there are hardly any scenarios where player characters join one of these raiding ventures. A big raiding army like this will commit atrocities along their way. The leaders will be happy if they can avoid bloodshed between the disparate bands, protecting the farming population that they rely on feeding the troops is well beyond the control even Greymane can command. Check these excellent three blog posts on ancient logistics:

https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-i-the-problem/

https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-ii-foraging/

https://acoup.blog/2022/08/12/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-iii-on-the-move/

 

Greymane is a raider, not a major campaigner. His warriors will be mostly self-sufficient warriors, with rather few noncombatant supporters, and porters captured during the plundering as human chattle is one of the rewards for plundering overpopulated Esrolia.

I wonder if being orlanthi those raiders don't have big troubles with their ernaldan rituals for spoiling the earth in those raids. 

[Joerg]

6 minutes ago, Jose said:

I wonder if being orlanthi those raiders don't have big troubles with their ernaldan rituals for spoiling the earth in those raids. 

They might be experienced in directing the avenging god pigs to some of the prominent cities in the region, like happened with Gouger, the God Pig slain by Aram ya Udram. Other than the lion-descendants of Greymane and his immediate family, a lot of the Orlanthi in Maniria are descendants mainly of the Entruli, the ancient pig-totem cousins of the Dawn Age Aramites.