I believe you have transcended the ordinary OTT of Trying Too Hard and reached the realm of 40k OTT. Like, if you removed an ounce of the sheer ludicrousness of the entire thing it would fall apart but the whole thing is just so crazily awesome that it works. It's obvious that you've put some thought into the backstory and the mechanics of each faction as well.
Whatcha gonna do, little buckaroo? | i be pimpin' madoka ficsThanks! Although, IMHO, "some" work is quite the understatement
Previously I've written something akin to a 50-pages essay that summed up just the pre-Byzantine history of the Imperial faction on another forum. Unfortunately, that forum is now nuked and so is my essay, except for a draft I don't keep on my person.
Unfortunately, I have to admit that this world I've created stemmed from a crappy Crossover Fic of Tsukihime and Age of Empires three years prior. So I'd need advice on whether the level of Shout-Out is too much, and whether I need to slash anything.
Support Taleworlds!As it stands now, it's no longer a crossover between the two. My universe has, if I might say so myself, grown quite the stubble.
Although, I'd like to ask you guys, which one was inspired from where?
Support Taleworlds!Sum up their name, what they do, and what kind of feedback you actually want in three sentences or less and I might be able to help you out. It shouldn't take walls of text to say "They have these kinds of special snowflake weaponry/armor, and are called in to fight these kinds of people/creatures/whatever. (Specific question)?"
I read that to mean that your feedback is that all of these are Mary Sues?
Of course, this is just me and my lore expansion. All of this could be very well unnecessary to anyone but myself.
Support Taleworlds!I'm saying that when asking for advice, going Purple Prose and describing every single little detail of the history of these units on the descriptions is not very conducive to helpful advice.
I also don't know what feedback you want. Unless there is a specific problem that needs fixing, like "Help me think up a military-esque slang term for these folks?" or "What sort of rivalry would one branch have with the others?" or "How would training work?", I'll just assume that this infodump is not actually asking for advice but attention whoring for praise, which makes me feel even less inclined to reply.
edited 16th Mar '11 3:39:29 PM by Leradny
Well, you can say that too. But by that same logic, I can argue that anyone who posts his work here without a sound description as to what he does want in particular could be considered whorig for praise, no?
Guilty as charged.
Support Taleworlds!Neither do I.
Because if I go down the specifics I could ask anything from "Is this historically accurate?", "Does this flow with the relevant epoch's historeography?", "Does this development make sense from an econo-socio-political context?" to "Are the names right in the languages?"
Such are my issues and concerns with my own work that my list of question can be longer than what I am asking for help about itself.
Does that make sense?
Support Taleworlds!Nope. This is my universe expansion.
... do tell me if that is not allowed here.
Support Taleworlds!Got anything else, now it is here?
edit: also, the silver-sheild huskrals kinda remind me of this thing
edited 6th Apr '11 11:21:54 PM by doorhandle

Here I decided to share some of the elite military units as they will appear in my yet-unnamed setting. Please give feedbacks as you see fit - there will be cookies!
1) Varangoi Kataphraktoi Somatophylakes (Imperial Vampire Varangian Bodyguard Cataphracts)
To the human world outside the Holy Komnenian Empire, the iconic image of a vampire is a slender, bat-like, bloodsucking monster. To everyone within it, it is the Varangoi Kataphraktoi Somatophylakes, encased in shining Hemothorakes Kataphraktou while mounted astride mighty Athanatoi Hemohippeoi that is the most iconic symbol of the Empire, its struggle for greatness and stability and the various virtues within it.
As majestic as the sight of a Cataphract may be, furnishing such a warrior is an expensive business. A Hemothorax alone, being a complexly blood-enchanted scale mail, costs more to maintain than entire platoons of regular infantrymen. These soldiers are, without saying, exclusively drawn from the top of the nation - high nobles who can afford the equipment and whose interest ties directly into that of the state, or lesser nobles with exceptional combat skill and experience.
Formed after the Cataphract Reforms in the Late Antiquity as a countermeasure by the First Kingdom against the Parthian steppe vampires, it was only after the Byzantine era that the Cataphracts became anything resembling the mainstream Imperial troop. After the fall of Constantinople and the migration of the Empire to the North, there has been no conflict that the Cataphracts had not played an important role in.
Nowadays, the Cataphracts are the pinnacle of a knighthood order in all but name, a relic of the Byzantine age. In principle, they are loyal to nobody but the Empire itself, though owing to the complex politics in the empire after the Ducal War in the early 1920s, most of the Cataphracts' loyalty remained with the order and whichever noble house whence the grandmaster hails. In any case, since their interest is so intricately interwoven with that of the state, every fight in the name of the Empire they would take part with their hearts and souls.
2) Kalmar Sølvskjold Huskarlar / Kalmarioi Huskarlai Argyraspidai (High Wolf Kalmarian Silver Shield Huscarls)
The existence of the Silver Shield Huscarls itself so contradicted popular lore of werewolves that for years the officials of the church and werewolf hunters alike had been doing their best to conceal the truth behind it. This is made doubly easy, if only because those werewolf hunters who did face this body of elite, disciplined and utterly unyielding fighters rarely ever returned home again.
Even the top brasses of the werewolf hunters never knew all that much about this army, except for two things. One, they always appear in battle-ready form, fighting in a shield-wall/phalanx formation, with exceptional skill in both pikes and axes. And two, their shield is a tower shield gilded with some kind of rudimentarily enchanted silver, both for protection and a symbol of their kind's defiance. It is unknown what had given rise to this body of fighters, except for that whatever training and conditioning that could so adjust a werewolf's body to silver must have been excruciating in more ways than one.
In battle, these werewolf warriors are as fierce as they are disciplined, with strength to move mountains and break boulders with bare hand and with the weapons to best facilitate it. Their greatest strength, though, was in defense rather than offense, and nothing but direct application of an army twenty or more times their number can even come close to unroot these determined soldiers from their respective positions.
Fortunately to the werewolf hunters, rarely would they have to face more than a couple of Huscarls, if only because their specialty and battle prowess means that they are forbiddingly expensive to all but the most important of clan chiefs. Raising anything beyond a five-by-five block of silver-shield huscarls requires nothing less than a national effort on the Kalmarian High Wolves' part.
3) Pedites Singvlares Consvlari (Consular Picked Bodyguard Heavy Infantry)
The Consular Havenguard Legions' history dated back to the early antiquities with the formation of the first five "havens" - underground magic mines - in the Latium and along the Alps. Rapidly picking up the military traditions and tactics of the late Roman Republic and using their own vast wealth, the White Vampires were soon capable of fielding their own legions, led by their own political magnates and leaders. Owing to their relative shelter from the rest of civilization as well as their transformation from a military to a merchant nation in the two millennia in between, little was changed regarding the White Consulate's military organization, right until the Battle of Sarajevo in the early 1980s.
Among the Legions, there exist a special wing of super-heavyweight infantry, the Pedites Singvlares Consvlari. Picked from the scions of wealthiest of families, these heavy infantrymen are loyal first and foremost to their own havens, then the Consulate.
Clad from top to toe in enchanted Lorica Composita - segmented banded armor over full-body mail, these soldiers are the chosen body guards of important Consular officials, and they had been doing their jobs extremely well both in and outside of battles. Outside of battles, nowhere in the world could one find better bodyguards against anything from skilled assassins to petty thefts.
And in times of war, these men can stand up to the mightiest of cavalry charge. throwing their pilum in the face of approaching cavalry before bracing themselves into a nigh-impenetrable wall to endure the shock, then prepare themselves for the countercharge. Always these men would rally around their leaders and charges, without fail, and alone they would carry the day in their own hands when all seemed lost. All the while, the White Eagle standard in their charge would be raised high to the sky, as a beacon for their fellow allies to fight on against superior odds.
Sadly, the fall of the White Eagle and the rout of the White Consul's own unit of Consular Guard in the Battle of Sarajevo heralded the fall of the entire army and, with it, the fall of the Consulate.
4) Hime no Shinkirou (Ducal "Mirage" Battlefield Assassins)
Compared to the other factions' elite, the Shinkirou was just an infant history-wise. They were formed after the Year of the Dragon Treaty, an agreement between Minamo and the local Japanese authorities of both governmental and supernatural kind, allowing her to raise a limited number of local troops and train them as she pleases.
Representing the crux of the Imperial rebel Minamo Kouzuki's doctrine, these men and women - or rather, boys and girls - are much more dangerous than they look. They hail from supernatural families - either powerful magical clans or non-aligned vampires and werewolf familes - and many of them weren't even aware of their abilities until they are scouted out by Minamo's agents. Therefore, they had no expensive armor and elite status like the Kataphraktoi or full panoplies of specialist weapons like the Huscarls, clad only in what would appear to be their own high school uniforms and carrying a knife the size of a Consular pugio as weapon.
These simple weapons concealed their sheer power and dangerousness on the field of battle. For the knife, but a piece of metal to other factions, had been so overloaded with enchantment that they could easily cut through any non-enchanted armor like hot knifes through butter. And their clothing allowed them maximum mobility and concealability on the field of battle, making them fully capable of carrying out devastating ambushes all in their lonesome. This devastating flanking capability granted them the name "Shinkirou" - "Mirage" by both friends and foes alike.
However, unlike the Cataphracts and the Huscarls, these equipment also meant that the Shinkirou are extremely vulnerable to a protracted melee. That is, if someone can catch them in melee for long enough.
5) Hataikusa Samurai (Shogunate Flagbearer Samurai)
(Work in progress)
6) Rittermeister (Order Master Knight)
(Work in progress)
So... thoughts?
edited 15th Mar '11 7:24:02 PM by ArgeusthePaladin
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