Heroes | Factions (Kingdoms (Empire (Southern | Northern | Western) | Vlandia | Battania | Sturgia | Khuzait | Aserai) | Minor Factions (Bandits)
Besides the Kingdoms, there is also minor factions through Calradia, each one with its own history, ideologies, objectives and troop trees. Mechanically they act as indepedent clans, who can either act as brigands or be hired as mercenaries by the kingdoms, much like players in the early game.
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Brotherhood of the Woods
The Brotherhood of the Woods started out as a Vlandian peasant movement, hiding out in the forests, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. However, they encountered the usual problems that any long-running rebel movement might face - they needed to ensure a steady supply of food, and also ensure that none of the poor would dare earn a bag of coin by informing on them. Slowly but surely, the movement began to make use of extortion, terror, and corrupt deals with the local authorities to survive, becoming little different from any other organized bandit group in Calradia.The Brotherhood of the Woods as a group:
- Motive Decay: Started as a Robin Hood-like group to protect the peasants from the aristrocacy, but soon became a group of brigands.
Company of the Golden Boar
The company are Vlandians, mostly local levies who don't adjust well to peacetime and opted for a life of constant warfare. They are probably the least disciplined and most brigandish of Calradia's mercenaries, and a scourge to any bit of countryside where they are allowed to run loose. Still, like all mercenaries, they know that their future earnings depend on their reputation, so they honor contracts and practice their skills, particularly with the crossbow, to ensure their employers receive their money's worth.The Company of the Golden Boar as a group:
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Not of an individual culture, but an aspect of it, they are based on the Free Companies
of medieval Europe, such as the Catalan Company, White Company or the Grand Company. - Private Military Contractors: The faction is a Mercenary company, fighting for foreign lords of even Vlandia.
Eleftheroi
The Eleftheroi, the free people, live on the steppelands at the edge of the Empire. Originally the descendants of runaway slaves and debtors, they soon became highly valued by the local imperial commanders for their knowledge of this frontier zone. Their leaders have been granted titles, their young men taken into the retinues of archons and emperors. But although they are loyal to the idea of the Empire, they remain quite hostile to its actual authority.The Eleftheroi as a group:
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: To the Cossacks. As they both are a horse-riding imperial-descendent people fighting in the frontiers of the Empire the steppe nomads. The dev blog Lampshades they are more based in the "Third Rome" (i.e the Russian Empire) rather than the "Second" Rome (The Byzantine Empire, which the Calradian Empire is based on)
The Embers of the Flame
The Embers of the Flame are the descendants of a rebel movement that rose up nearly a century ago, after the saintly but ineffective teenaged Emperor Darusos was toppled by one of his generals. They claim that they are preparing the way for Heaven to bring back Darusos and usher in a new golden age, but like so many other rebel movements in Calradia they have been forced to turn to extortion to survive.The Embers of the Flame as a group:
- Messianic Archetype: In Emperor Darusos, who they believe will return from the heavens to bring a new golden age for the Empire.
- Motive Decay: Like many others, they started as religious rebels, but had to become bandits to keep their movement alive.
- Warrior Monk: Not necessarily the group themselves being a cult turned to banditry and mercenary work, but their Flame and Blaze units nod to this trope wearing the scholar's robe, which resembles a friar's habit, as their main piece of gear.
The Ghilman
The Ghilman are a band of mercenaries who recruit from the tribes of southern Calradia and the lands to the east. They are legally their own slaves and masters: each “sells“ himself to the order and, in the process, becomes a part-owner. They are known for their fine horses and fine clothes. But no one should assume from their oiled locks, perfumes and peacock feathers that they spend more time preening then training. Their skills as mounted archers are second to none, and as lancers are close behind the Vlandians and the imperial cataphracts.The Ghilman as a group:
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: To the Mamluks, similarly they are slave-warriors from an Arabic-like culture.
The Hidden Hand
The Hidden Hand are a mafia who dominate the rural areas, and sometimes the towns, of the southern parts of the Empire. They thrive by making themselves useful to authorities: repressing unrest, silencing troublesome preachers, and robbing from merchants who compete with their patrons. Many of them go back and forth between a respectable life in the towns and a criminal life on the countryside, spending two or three months a year as brigands and enforcers and the rest of the year as "traders" specializing in stolen goods, knowing full well that no one will bother them.The Hidden Hand as a group:
- Devious Daggers: Fittingly for a mafia, they rather uniquely specialize in throwing knives, with their Puppeteer infantry carrying three sets.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: To the Sicilian Mafia.
- The Syndicate: A criminal group that dominates the rural areas in the Empire.
Jawwal
The Jawwal, or “Roamers,” are the main Bedouin confederacy in the Nahasa desert. They wander from highland to lowland grazing ground, declaring huge swathes of the desert their “territory” in which any caravan must offer protection money. They compose poems of their deeds and mock the other clans of the Banu Asera for giving up the “freedom” of black wool tents for stone houses in the oases. The other clans consider them boastful nuisances, though grudgingly respect them as protectors of the old ways.The Jawwal as a group:
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: To the Bedouins, similarly they are nomadic peoples from a big desert to the south of the sea, the "Nahasa" desert also sound similar to "Sahara".
Lake Rats
The Lake Rats live in the marshes on the shores of the great northern lake, in shacks made out of the timbers of ruined ships. They live by "wrecking" - i.e. luring ships onto shoals with false lighthouses and beacons. Because they're scorned by the rest of Calradia - "all criminals, smell like marsh gas and mud and rotten fish" - they scorn everyone else back. Although mostly Sturgian, their ranks have been swelled by fugitives, debtors, and anyone else who'd rather live by a thieves' code than by the laws of nobles.The Lake Rats as a group:
- Pirate: A land variant, they lure ships into shoals, where they wreck and loot them.
Karakhuzaits
The Karakhuzaits are a nomadic clan that has resisted all efforts by the centralizing Urkhunid khans to keep them in one place, give them farmlands and serfs, and force them to give over taxes and military levies. They are treated by the other clans with a combination of envy and contempt. They trade and sometimes even intermarry with their settled brethren, but they also do a limited amount of kidnapping for ransom and raiding of flocks, and scoff at those who would blame them for carrying on with the heroic old ways.The Karakhuzaits as a group:
- Horse Archer: Even more than their parent civilization, all of their troops are horse archers, even their lowest tier troop (Karakhuzait Nomad) is a horse archer.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Just like the Khuzaits, they are based on the Mongol, Turkic, Scythians and other steppe cultures. However, the Karakhuzaits represent the people that kept their traditions as nomads while the rest of the Khuzaits settled in conquered imperial territory.
Legion of the Betrayed
The Last Legion was created after the Emperor Arenicos enacted his reforms, abolishing the last of the Empire's standing armies in favor of archon's private retinues that were significantly cheaper and better at controlling territory. The Legion is made up of men who detested this change: they loved the old army, its standards and its unit histories and its camp life, and they blame the new system for destroying the empire. But an army does not hold together unless it is paid regulary, and they take contracts from imperial and foreign lords alike.The Legion of the Betrayed as a group:
- Private Military Contractors: Composed by legionaries who felt betrayed by the Empire and still kept the Legion running, even though they serve the Empire no more, but the highest bidder.
- Lost Roman Legion: The Legion is still around, but due to the decline of the Empire, the lords and Emperor moved away from the system of Legions and adopted a Byzantine-style Theme system. A sizable number of Legionnaires felt betrayed and broke away from the Empire, forming the Legion of the Betrayed. They're pretty much nothing but mercenaries now.
Skolderbrotva
The Skolderbroda, or Shield Brothers, are a mercenary company for those who take fighting and training very seriously. They are primarily Nordic but do allow recruits from other cultures, as long as an already-serving Shield Brother will vouch for them. Their rules are almost monastic: no women in their encampments and no amusements, and no Brother is allowed to spend the night outside without permission. In combat, they fight with spear and axe in the Nordic style and are valued by all the noble houses of the north.The Skolderbrotva as a group:
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: To the Vikings, however, the Nords in Mount & Blade have already taken this spot. The Skolderbrotva are more based on the Jomsvikings, as they are both mercenary bands from Nordic peoples.
- Private Military Contractors: A band of Nord warriors that sell their services to Calradic lords.
Sons of the Forest
The tribes known as the Forest People practice slash-and-burn farming in the deep woods, outside the grasp of the Sturgian boyars. They burn down tracts of trees, grow crops on the virgin soil fertilized by ash for a few years until the land is exhausted, and move on. It is an inefficient use of land but a very efficient use of labor, suitable for a numerically small population in a large area. Also, because the plots are hard to measure and tax, it's a very good strategy for people who don't care to be governed.The Sons of the Forest as a group:
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: To the Finnic forester tribes that constantly interact with the people of the 'Rus and the Nords.
Wolfskins
The Wolfskins are heirs to a long tradition in the Battanian lands wherein great warriors went "wildling" for part of their youth, learning the ways of the woods and how to suffer hardship. So long as a Wolfskin wears no sewn clothes, eats no cooked food, and sleeps under no roof, he is immune from the laws of man. In fact, the modern wolfskins tend to be the sons of wealthy families taking a few years to indulge their feral side, robbing travellers and living viciously and not necessarily hewing to the old code.The Wolfskins as a group:
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: To the Fianna of Ireland, roving bands of young Irish noble warriors who left their clans for glory and gold.
- Pelts of the Barbarian: True to their name they eschew traditional clothes, instead wearing various animal hides to show off their flaunting of society.
