Throughout history, one of the largest catalysts of technological advancement has been war. The ability to fashion iron, then steel, into arms and armor lent significant power to the civilizations that first developed those technologies, and advents like gunpowder or nuclear fission would change how war is fought entirely. In World War II, the development and advancement of tank technology would see the lowly Panzer II go from a formidable force on the battlefield to utterly obsolete in a span of under ten years—considering the length and breadth of human history, this is an incredible rate of advancement.

Even in sci-fi and fantasy, we can see wartime escalation and the importance of nations to continue developing their weapons of war.

The original Gundam series, 0079, was about the development of beam weaponry, and many a theorist has surmised that, had Zeon been able to develop the Gelgoog as fast as one month sooner, the end of the war would have looked vastly different. This echoes arguments about World War II and the rise of early jet technology—by the time it had been developed, it was too late to have a significant impact on the war, but simply the fact that it was developed would go on to shape warfare into the future, as the conflict shifted from Germany to Korea.

Exalted exists in a strange place with war technology and the advancement thereof. Much of the truly superior technology is held over from the First Age in the form of power armors, artifact weaponry, powerful sorcery, and strategic superweapons (e.g. Soulbreaker Orbs). Even when it comes to naval and aerial warfare, the developments of the Second Age pale in comparison to any surviving and functional technology of the First. But these assets are rare enough that while they can have tactical influence, their ability to affect the outcome of a war on the strategic level (aside from strategic options like the aforementioned Soulbreaker Orb, or Juggernaut) is much more reduced.

But the existence of the Solars also means that humans jumped a lot of mundane technology. The Iron and Bronze Ages were entirely passed over for steel, and the fall of the Solars ushered in a nebulous period during the Shogunate which would be akin to our Dark Ages, only lasting what appears to be a period somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 years long.

With the disappearance of the Empress, we’re not only seeing a return of the Solars, but several civilizations are making mundane advancements that may change the face of warfare both in the Realm and Threshold, and it’s worth looking at those advancements—who stands to gain from them, and how they might gain them. Almost any “vanilla” story (meaning one beginning five years after the Empress’s disappearance) is going to see significant advances in wartime technology both on the mundane and magical fronts, and it’s worth laying some of these out for an easy reference.

The question I want to investigate is: what would an early war in the vanilla story look like versus a late war.

Assuming that, in vanilla, the Reclamation plot is about to hatch and the Empress is due to return within 10-15 years after her disappearance, players who establish a power base in their first 5 years (or Dragon-Blooded assuming command of a field force or even legion) will be operating in about the RY 785-790 time period. And there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world of war tech on both the strategic and tactical level.

Let’s use the Realm as our sort of “baseline”. With the world’s largest standing military, they’re the most reliant on mundane technology to outfit their legions. I won’t go into too great of detail on the Realm military, because it’s described far more capably in Scroll of Kings, but suffice to say for summary that so far as their mundane component is concerned, they’re roughly equal to the Western Roman Empire at the height of their power. They deploy in large blocks of close formation, leading their heavy infantry with medium and light infantry to skirmish in the front, and—given time to prepare, are no stranger to erecting siege weaponry such as catapults or siege towers.

Why is this question important, you ask?

Because the Realm got straight up trounced, handily, fighting what should have been an inferior opponent in the North. In terms of mundane equipment and training, the barbarian tribes united under the Yuurgen Kaneko may have been technologically inferior, but they won because of their supernatural assets. Conflated with the loss of Thorns to the vanguard of the undead, the Realm’s strategic deployment will have to change significantly, or the Empire will crumble. Military strategists around Creation, hearing this, will also have to evolve their tactics and their technology if they are to defend their borders from new, rising threats of Exalted, the undead, and the fae poised to launch the Second Crusade.

The enemies of man in the late Second Age cannot be fought by the mundane strategies of war as they have been understood throughout the entire Shogunate and Imperial Periods.

Let’s look first at who is leading mundane technological advancements in Creation.

On the northern front, introduction of the Haslanti League into any conflict is going to bring with it mundane airships, glider and other early aerial components, and crossbow technology. Only the most advanced civilizations would have the capability to actually produce airships and gliders, and most that can do so largely already do (that being Lookshy and the Realm). It’s unknown if the undead would have any use for an air corps, though it would be in their best interest to certainly deny their opponents air superiority. The Guild would perhaps be interested in developing air technology if only to give their merchant princes new options to get goods to market, but other than perhaps escort frigates armed with Scorpions or, at best, Light Implosion Bows, their own military presence in the air will likely be minimal—however, as wars are won and lost with resource acquisition, any prolonged campaign in the Threshold will want to court the Guild, if for no other reason than to deny their enemy access to feathersteel and the other materials necessary for airships, or acquire it for themselves.

The South advanced into gunpowder, but it’s a primitive sort that relies on firedust as a combustible, rather than for propulsion. So rather than developing guns, they have created flamethrowers. The concern with waging war with firedust is of course the supply—unlike an airship, firedust warfare relies on a consumable found largely in its home region (note: this could be house-ruled so that the Delzhan were merely the first to develop firewand technology, and perhaps the Haslanti, some other Northern civilization, or even the West could develop it independently or with reverse-engineering as well, and have the resources necessary to make firedust natively available). Similar to the introduction of matchlock rifles to Japan during the Sengoku Jidai, should a Realm Civil War break out on the mainland, it’s not out of the question that forward-thinking commanders would outfit their legions with a scale or two of firewand infantry, or conscripting/hiring firewand cavalry straight from the Delzhan. Essentially, whichever House claims the southern ports of the Realm and control of the Fire Navy will have access to this powerful technology, though it probably won’t be seen in any large-scale conflicts in the Riverlands.

Unquestionably, however, the leaders of technological advancement comes not from any force in Creation, but the Autochthonians, who have harnessed both steam technology and early industrialization. As their participation in the vanilla story is optional, I’ll only include them here as a special mention. In the vanilla story, they emerge in the polar South, near the edge of the world, and begin carving out an empire there as part of the Locust Crusade. Their fighting style is much more suited for Close-Quarters Combat, and formation/field deployments are something alien to their civilization. They would be much more comfortable building steam tanks and using propulsion-based weaponry like pneumatic crossbows or, once they figure out firedust, early matchlocks. Their reliance on ranged warfare could be seen as a downfall, but they have both the numbers and logistics to field enough projectile-based armaments to whittle down and rout even the cavalry of the Southerners.

On the magical front, things get more complicated.

No Realm or Lookshy Legion would dare march without a sorcerer. Spells like Death of Obsidian Butterflies are, even in the Shogunate and Imperial Periods, a staple of the battlefield, and loosing such a spell in battle would be disastrous for an opposing scale or even wing caught in its area of effect. So the idea of area-of-effect capability isn’t new to Creation’s militaries. But these options are slow and limited. Strategoi might deploy their infantry in fog or seek to assassinate rival sorcerers before attempting to rout their opponents.

Where we would see the most advancement, magically, is the rise of Solars and battlefield sorcery extending into the Sapphire and Diamond Circles. With them come Second and (gods forbid) Third Circle Demons, capable of doing what a single sorcerer could accomplish not just multiple times over, but with a much stronger ability to withstand assassination. Considering demons don’t have to materialize until they’re ready to act, and Sapphire or Diamond Circle Sorcerers would likely come with Celestial defensive Charms or even Circlemates committed to their defense, neutralizing that area-of-effect threat becomes far more difficult.

This is where Lord Tepet Arada’s strategy in the North crumbled.

We know from fiction comics later on that Chejop Kejak “gave” the Tepet Legions to the Bull of the North—we can assume that this means that there were negative astrologies affecting their battlefield performance and also likely a lack of committal from the Immaculate Order. The IO is and has been the Realm’s largest asset when it comes to dealing with supernatural threats, and at the time of the Empress’s disappearance, it’s the weakest it’s ever been since its inception. So when a Blood Ape pops up, yes, they might commit a talon to its eradication, but when a talon of Blood Apes appears in coordinated attack, that same human talon—and its entire accompanying scale—are going to rout. Men were not made to face demons en masse.

Fact of the matter is: The Realm (and, truly, any standing military) has no great answer for Yuurgen Kaneko and his Circle on the battlefield. Not at the start of a vanilla campaign. With the Immaculate Order weak, the Sword of Creation unmanned, and the Legions with no central, organizing command, there is little to nothing that the Realm’s standing doctrine can do on a late Second Age battlefield. If Lookshy fares any better, it’s because they have fewer foreign interests (meaning they can consolidate their power better) and they have the benefit of not having to cross an ocean. Any war Lookshy fights will likely be defensive, and so long as it remains so, they can rely on rapid deployments of their Yoroi Rapid-Response and Gunzosha Power-Armor battalions to carry the day against demonic, magical, and otherwise supernatual opposition. But if Lookshy is drawn out of position, they will be just as vulnerable as the Realm. Nexus has relatively little to worry about in terms of open warfare, given that they owe allegiance to no one but money, and the Reclamation effort concentrated on them is much more subtle and insidious.

Now we begin getting into the hypothetical

As a disclaimer, this is largely conjecture based on what we know from various 2-2.5 edition publications, notably Scroll of Kings. While we can make reasonable guesses as to what the major world powers will do, ultimately, the player characters will and should have greater impact.

Continuing my focus on the Realm, following the defeat at the hands of largely supernatural entities, I would think that the Palace Sublime would be petitioned to reform the Immaculate Order and begin accepting the militant training of mortals en masse. With the spear being an in-form weapon for Five-Dragon Style, it would be the ideal weapon to train mortal monks with, though an argument could be made for the naginata (polearm stats) as well. While the Immaculate Order has always been known for its militant branch, the mass training of mortals for the explicit purpose of war is not touched on in any books—it’s safe to assume, I think, a large portion of the Second Age would have lacked the massive field of synchronized mortals in kata practice. That is all poised to change, and with the Wyld Hunt in a severe dearth of capable bodies to answer the call, a shift to reliance on mortal monks would be the reasonable solution…if the Mouth of Peace agrees to such reformations.

These scales would be deployed with little or no armor and used to counteract specifically First-Circle demon forces, though they might be used to tie down Solar-trained Tiger Warriors and Lunar offspring Beastmen as well. Similar to Total War’s Naginata Warrior Monks and Imperial Flagellants, these unflagging mortal warriors would be vulnerable to missile attacks, but that’s what the heavy infantry is for—they shouldn’t be deployed against missile troops but instead held in reserve to wait for a wave of blood apes, tiger warriors, or lunar shock infantry.

The aforementioned firedust infantry or cavalry scale would be a huge boon for whoever can claim and field them in a Realm Civil War, but if the Realm rediscovers peace before the Reclamation can spin them into total turmoil, they would prove largely effective against those same first circle demons, either on the back lines to ward off agata-based flying attackers or as a shock flanking force to thin the ranks of monstrous infantry like blood apes, or even to decimate a flank after the skirmish phase.

Lookshy would do well to acquire crossbow technology from their northern cousins, if for no other reason than to equip their reservists with them. While the crossbow is technologically confounding, it eliminates the need for strength training by practitioners. A crossbow unit could be equipped and trained in a fraction of the time of a bow unit, given the capability to mass-produce the crossbows. Lookshy has the engineers to achieve this capability, and outfitting reservists so even they can be as deadly in combat as front-line skirmishers would give them a significant tactical advantage. With their local command over the skies, the Haslanti League’s airships and glider technology would round out their air force into Creation’s first non-divine aerial military.

Chairoscuro is not and has never been in a position to start any kind of conquest. Having reached their peak of development, the only thing they could really do to further advance would be to adopt Autochthonian technology when finally confronted with the alien invaders, or be lucky enough to adopt some Exalted into their ranks. A couple Lunars generating quick-footed offspring combined with their already formidable missile cavalry would give the Chairoscurans a hit-and-run style military doctrine not unlike the Huns. As no Lunars are openly working with the Chairoscurans, such a hybrid force wouldn’t take to the field until later in any prolonged conflict. This also assumes that the Chairoscurans eventually declare sovereignty and abandon the Realm. The weakness of the Delzhan Horde will continue to be, however, its logistics. Feeding a thousand men is a Herculean feat. Feeding a thousand men and their horses in the steppes if not the Southern deserts is a feat that even legends such as the Solar Exalted would have a difficult time managing.

The West is in a rough spot, technologically. They’re largely isolated from the rest of the world, and without moving into steam technology there’s only so much more their mundane ships can improve. For the most part, conflicts in the West will look like our world’s naval skirmishes up to even the early 1500s. They’ll be reliant on massed archer fire, fire-based light projectile weapons, and light siege weapons like small ballistae and scorpions, with boarding and ramming action reserved only for the militaries that have the marine manpower to rely on such strategies. Blue-water naval confrontation is almost out of the question entirely simply because keeping such forces supplied is a logistical nightmare. A ship more than a few days out of port is a ship on a timer. The exception, of course, are supernatural forces—that being First Age warships, Lunars in warform, demons, elementals, and other supernatural entities. Any entity that seeks to command the West or move out from a base of power will need to reckon and harness these forces first.

As RY 800 draws nearer and nearer, militaries in Creation are going to have to rely more on alliance and integration of new technology.

With forces like the Autochthonians pushing into Creation, the man-based militaries that come to rely on these entities will be the ones finding themselves with an edge in combat as the old ways of war are pushed farther and farther into obsolescence. It doesn’t help that the few true superweapons like Thousand-Forged Dragons, Soulbreaker Orbs, and Juggernaut can undo any advantage if leveraged correctly, but that is the reality of war and outside the purview of this little mind exercise.

Ultimately, Sun Tzu’s wisdom reigns as true in Creation as it does in our world—the commander who is victorious will first win, usually by seizing or neutralizing any opponent’s advantages, and then seeking conflict. A sorcerer should ideally not be met on the battlefield. Thusly, the wise commander will seek to know the number and composition of their opponent’s forces, and if they have (for example) a sorcerer, it would be in their best interest to kill that person in their sleep, or sway them to their side, or otherwise neutralize the threat so their heavy infantry is not marching into jeopardy. Where Lord Tepet Arada failed, merely, is that he fought a war that he would have won as near as six months earlier. By the time the Tepet Legions landed on the northern shores, they were already too late, and the Solar Circle of the North had everything they needed to best the older legion in open warfare.

So, Commander, now you have everything to need to forge your own legend into the later campaigns of Creation’s history.

What legends will they tell of your deeds?

Art: Gambargin, via DeviantArt