Southern Coalition Knighthunter (Year 500) By Imperator-Zor Watch

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Refugee Continent



In the years after the first invasion the previous divided states of the Southern Grasslands the Guildsman's Republic organized the Southern Coalition, a loose federation of states united towards defense against foreign aggressors. It's main purpose was to maintain a Navy, though it also maintained a comparatively small Coalition Army supplementing each member state's own troops. The Army's forces included a few pike and shot battalions, a light cavalry battalion, a cannon armed siege corps and two battalions of elite light infantry who were known as the Knighthunters.



The Knighthunters had their origins more than a century beforehand when simple peasant hunters in and around Guildtown who took to taking down their quarries with basic matchlock muskets (in contrast to their northern counterparts who generally prefered crossbows and bows). A practice which slowly spread. In conflicts between other southern settlers, bandits and natives they applied their skills in fieldcraft, stealth and marksmanship upon enemy forces and forming companies of skirmisher militia. As time went on the gunsmiths of Guildtown improved their weapons design. Around 440 (their is some dispute as to who actually came up with the idea first), rifling was developed and while this decreased the rate of fire considerably it extended the effective range of a musket to 200 meters. A second innovation came during the First Northern Invasion in 477 when gunsmith Yans Ulfersten teamed up with clockmaker Fren Jorquin to develop the wheel-lock mechanism. Production of wheellock guns was slower than that of matchlocks and they would remain fairly rare for the next decade but their advantages in terms of water resistance and the fact that their users did not need to light a match before firing (which could give away their position).



During the First Northern Invasion, Captain Georn Hrenil took the loose units of hunter marksmen and organized and them into a professional fighting force. Honing their skills through constant drill and adding to them coordination and discipline. While unable to stand with the main line of the army, they were more than capable at harrasing them and were infamous for taking out their officers from the shadows. As the forces of the Havanese invasion were mostly led by knights and still relied heavily on their chivalry to provide deadly cavalry charges, the name stuck. In association with that title the regulation close quarters weapon for a knight hunter was a warhammer. They were lightly armored, generally carrying nothing heavier than a helmet. During the second Havenese invasion (499 to 502) they proved themselves effective once again, especially in the central mountain campaigns.

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