Organization of a stratocratic order of knights in a medieval fantasy world

In a medieval Europe-based fantasy world, the Empire of Rossrik is under the stratocratic rule of the Caballine Order, whose knights form the core of Rossrik's armies, and which is also deeply entwined with Rossrik's state religion, the Eponic Church. ^note The names are just placeholders for your convenience; I'm using this as a general model for a variety of "knightly order that rules over a country" concepts.

I need help with fleshing out leadership positions for the Caballine Order that would be fitting for a stratocracy of knights. Below is what I have right now.

• Grand Master: The supreme commander of the Caballine Order, who reigns over Rossrik as the Knight-Emperor.

• Chapter Master: The leader of one of the Caballine Order's chapters, who report directly to the Grand Master. Chapters are typically geographic in their scope, which follow a more or less linear hierarchy based on the size of the region they preside over; e.g. the Pullanian Chapter is stationed in the Kingdom of Pullania, one of Rossrik's minor allies, in order to extend Rossrik's aegis over the country against the neighboring barbarian tribes and bandit gangs.

• Castellan: The commanding officer of a Caballine castle and the governor of its surrounding territory, including any towns and villages.

I also need help with fleshing out various classes into which the Caballine Order's members can logically be organized into; below are the ones that I've come up with so far.

• Squires: Apprentices to the knights who learn the ropes from the latter in order to be eventually dubbed as knights themselves.

• Knights Errant: Newly dubbed knights who are frequently sent on quests or even wander freely in search of opportunities for achieving great deeds, until they are deemed to have acquired enough experience and proven their prowess and valor for elevation. In times of war, they typically form the bulk of the heavy cavalry in Caballine armies, eager as they are to earn glory and prove their worth.

• Knights Militant: Fully-fledged knights who serve as the backbone of the Caballine Order's standing army.

• Knights Templar: The guardians of the Eponic Church's temples, as well as those who undertake special quests based on the priesthood's divinations and visions.

• Knights Praetorian: The personal bodyguard of the chapter masters of the Caballine Order.

• Knights Palatine: The personal bodyguard of the Knight-Emperor. Colloquially known as "Paladins".

Finally, there are also the auxiliaries that are technically not part of the Caballine Order but accompany it to war nonetheless, performing supplementary battlefield roles as well as fulfilling non-military specialties.

• Militiamen: Conscript levies of commoners that are raised to supplement the local professional troops. The practice is uncommon, and usually only invoked for defensive purposes when evacuation of the commoners is unfeasible for some reason.

• Men-at-arms: The closest to professional infantry that Rossrik has. Aside from their role as battlefield auxiliaries, they also form the rank and file of garrison and police forces, with Caballine Knights serving as their commanding officers and liasions with local chapters of the Caballine Order (useful for when they need "heavy-duty backup" against a sufficiently formidable threat).

• Yeomen: Common men who could afford the expense of both maintaining a warhorse and equipping themselves for war and have proven their martial prowess, yet were deemed unfit for becoming Caballine Knights. They instead serve as the light cavalry of Rossrik's armies, as well as as couriers for important messages.

• Ministers Hospitaller: Ministers of the Eponic Church who are charged with providing medical care, food and lodging to the sick, the poor, the elderly, and other groups of socially disadvantaged people, as well as to pilgrims and other hostless travelers. They also provide similar services at the Caballine Order's various castles, field camps and outposts.

A few things of note:

• The armies of Rossrik are predominantly based around the heavy cavalry that are the Caballine Knights, who embody the lion's share of Rossrik's military power, with the infantry and light cavalry being auxiliary in their function.

• The Eponic Church and the Caballine Order are two side of the same coin; the former attends to spiritual matters while the latter handles warfare and governance, with neither having any inherent formal authority over the other outside their respective domains.

• The Eponic Church is a case of Religion is Magic, and the primary portfolio of the Church's patron deity Epona includes warfare and horses; as a result, all Knights of the Caballine Order receive Epona's divine blessing through their bonds with their warhorses, which greatly empowers their martial abilities and provides considerable supernatural protection that compensates for the normal vulnerability of cavalry to spears, arrows, guns and artillery, as well as long-range offensive magic.^note Hopefully this is sufficient justification for how a heavy cavalry-dominated military could work in spite of their logical weaknesses

• As it should be obvious, I have neglected to touch upon the naval forces; truth be told, I had only realized that as I was writing this. I am open to suggestions for how to make the Caballine Knights have a significant role in naval warfare.

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 1st 2023 at 9:12:43 PM

... Is there really nothing to add or change here?

I think you have exceeded TV Tropes capacity for processing detail. A simpler question would have garnered you more answers.

I read through it all and am mostly stuck on the question: what exactly do you need help with? you seem to have fleshed it out quite well. I don't really see major holes or anything. I am unsure how a knight-heavy, knight-focused empire would do well at sea, it seems like a thing they would avoid (given the focus on land warfare and the blessing of horses).

Are there specific problems you have?

regarding the sea thing, if such a thing is needed, I'd add a category for Navel Knights. Called the Knights Oceanis of something and with a focus for Punic-war-era Roman tactics and land bridges.

But yeah this seems like you might have all the details fleshed out for me to have any input on.

Honestly for the naval stuff it may be better to just disregard it. Leave the sea stuff to any potential allies or vassals

devak:

Well, I feel that the roster of leadership positions is underpopulated, so to speak. And now that I think about it, I am interested in what kinds of ranks would such a knightly order have for its knights, excluding the usual aristocratic titles.

Also, so far I only have a single example of a position/role from the Eponic Church. What other possible positions/roles would be fitting for such a church, especially considering Religion is Magic is in full effect?

I want to subvert the expectation that a stratocracy of knights would be bad at naval warfare and thus maritime powers would be safe just by blockading any attempts at naval invasion.

Morning Star 1337:

That is a very good suggestion. Instead of the typical terrestrial horses, they could ride hippocamps. What do you mean by Punic war-era Roman tactics and land bridges, though?

Hippocampus can work (edit: reading the linked page mentions specialized infantry called "Marinus" so I'm now strongly suggesting Knights Marinus/Marini as the title for the navy)

And iirc (I might be misremembering if those took place at the same time) Rome had both stolen the art of shipbuilding from their rivals in Carthage and also innovated on them by using something called a Corvus to bridge their ships with enemy ships during said wars.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 8th 2023 at 9:58:46 AM

I don't see any such mention. Where is it?

Ah yes, I remember reading about that. Why bother getting into a shoot-out with an enemy ship crewed by people that are far more experienced than you with such a thing, when you can just ram straight into the ship, anchor yourself to it, and take advantage of the fact that your infantry are far better in close combat than theirs due to both training and equipment?

description section, first paragraph, last sentence, the exact term is italicized

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 8th 2023 at 4:42:41 AM

... Oooooohhhh, you put your edit in the very beginning, making me think that you were referring to the hippocampus article instead of the corvus one.

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 8th 2023 at 2:56:49 PM

yeah in hindsight, placing the edit there (since it pertains to the name) and assuming you would derived the context from the rest of my post was an error.

As an aside, Corvus itself might make for an excellent name for an Knightly air force, but I'm assuming the tech isn't that far enough for that. (if flying mounts are a thing, dragoons may or may not be more appropriate:P)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 8th 2023 at 5:03:47 AM

I could easily have Caballine Knights riding pegasi and horse-dragon hybrids (that is, equine creatures with draconic scales, wings and other traits) to serve as a fantastic version of an air force.

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 8th 2023 at 6:32:25 PM

I think you misunderstood. People live on land. This knight's force is very well suited to conquering land. Any capacity their own organization misses, they could simply obtain by conquest. I'm thinking of Rome, whose bread and butter was heavy infantry. But they used the people they conquered as "allies" or vassals (called Socii -vassals but treated as allies) and so applied their specific strengths to make up for their shortcomings. Roman legions were (mostly) heavy infantry supported by Socii cavalry, light troops, archers, etc.

In this context, your Knight's Order would conquer seafaring neighbors and use them to control the seas. The ships, captains, sailors etc would be outside the Order, but still subordinate. In fact this model might also apply to other stuff.

If you want to have an order of knights, you have to be careful with adding an air force. it would radically change warfare, and not in the kind that makes Knights make sense.

Edited by devak on Aug 8th 2023 at 8:14:09 PM

So it's like Teutonic Prussia and Estonia, and the other states that popped up after the Baltic Crusades? In that case, if you want more detail in their leadership, you should probably crib some elements from how they handled succession.

In particular, I'd recommend having a vice-master who's job it is to call the election when the Grandmaster dies or retires, and handles other mostly ceremonial duties. So the vice-master would choose a small group who gets to vote, and then they'd vote and decide who gets to be the next Grand Master.

The Teutonic Order's elections were decided by a group of a priest, four sergeants, and seven knights, which, you can go larger or smaller in your electoral pool or mix and match, but figuring out who gets to decide succession is probably important and you could probably find a few more ranks if you really need them.

I'd recommend researching a little into the Teutonic State for further development of this idea, they had a lot going on and were very successful up until Poland and Lithuania ganged up, and conveniently they wrote a lot down and a lot was written down about them, so things they did are very well documented so you can play with them as you like.

Anyway for internal church positions you're probably going to want some hierarchy in it. So you'll have churchpeople of varying ranks. Your local priests and chaplains, possibly some bishops (or whatever you decide to call the higher-up priests) who outrank the lower ones and are defined by having at least some temporal holdings. The fact that Epona is a god with very specific domains in a world with many gods could get in the way of centralizing the religion under one leader, notably this is a major reason monotheism (even soft monotheism) was so successful against polytheistic religions. Some polytheistic religions did have a very high ranked spiritual figure though, so it wouldn't be entirely unrealistic to have a pope (or whatever you decide to call the highest religious authority short of the god themself if you end up having one.)

For a fun bit of intrigue, I'd say the Order should nominally answer to the priests, while in practice that's not how it actually works and the priests end up answering to the Order at least as much, if not more.

Well, how many positions you need depends on the scope of the empire. You could write out an organizational chart to see where you need more representation.

But on the top level you have a single emperor with a Chapter per region. Each Chapter would have numerous Castellans. For a medieval setting that is light on Feudalism that's basically enough. It depends a bit on how finely you divide the territory: there might still be space for a sub-regional ruler (like a Provincial ruler), who rules over numerous Castellans.

The Palatine, Praetorian and Templar knights all fall directly under a tier of leadership. The thing missing here, i think, is who actually runs the army. Militant make up the army supported by Errant and Squires. But does that mean a First Among Militant is the commander of the army? who are the officers?

The last bit i'm thinking of is what exactly is the relation between the Order and the Church. The Knight Emperor is likely Head of Church and Head of State, but you can't really do that all the way down. The army moves out but the state doesn't. I would expect either Chapters to have a Priest Administrator or a layer below that (but above Castellan). Same goes for other elements of statehood

Yet Fire Emblem has both knights and people riding pegasi and wyverns.🤔

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 9th 2023 at 7:54:29 AM

That probably means that the military implications of air forces on the usefulness of knights have been disregarded. Or there are ways to keep knights useful in spite of air forces.

I believe that in A Song of Ice and Fire the fact that there are/were only few dragons and all under control of the central government of Westeros means that knights were still useful to deal with land-based threats like non-central government of Westeros armies, outlaws and the like.

I don't know much about Fire Emblem, but fantasy has a tendency to ignore the actual implications of what various magic creatures would mean on the world. But i don't see the point of pouring a bunch of effort in creating a believable knight's order and then going "well they also have flying mounts". It's shooting yourself in the foot.

ASOIAF is one example where dragons are basically nukes. But it's difficult to overstate the power of communication and speed. Scouting was one of the hardest things to do. All the way up to roughly WW 1, the fastest means of communication was "man on horse". Once an army left the city, it was basically an unguided projectile for anyone in power. It could be wiped out in the field and nobody would ever know.

But if you can just perfectly scout your environment on Pegasus or whatever, then you're never going to have pitched battles and your knight army is obsolete. the weaker party can simply always evade the stronger party and wait in their cities as their flying mounts harass the attackers. Sieging would be incredibly difficult without air superiority. And with medieval technology, denying enemy flying units would be also incredibly difficult.

@devak:

That is a fair point, and is kinda what I already envision for the non-Caballine portion of Rossrik's army, and the rank and file of the Rossriker navy would be formed of such people. That said, the point that you are replying to still stands.

Dammit, such an obvious thing to miss! Uh, provisionally, I would have a simplified system of ranks that are assigned on a meritocratic basis, with the rank names being suitable for medieval setting. Captains in command of companies (with their seconds in command being lieutenants), marshals in command of individual armies, and so on. I will have to look into this further later, though.

Yeah, logically the politico-military leaders of the Caballine Order should be mirrored with religious ones from the Eponic Church as well.

BTW, just for clarity, Eponism emerged with the future First Knight Emperor, and then the Eponic Church was formally established by priests of the previous state religion that eagerly converted to Eponism. The Knight Emperor and the chief pontiff of the Eponic Church are formally equals, with each deriving their authority (politico-military and religious, respectively) directly from Epona.

Well, I'm sorry, but some of us like to enhance our fantasy creations with some realistic details where such does not interfere with the fantasy aspect.

Uh, I can't help but notice that you act as if only one side in these conflicts would have access to appreciable numbers of flying mounts.

Good idea! I'll look into that.

Well, I did specifically qualify my mention of those domains with "includes" to show that the deity's portfolio is not that limited. Compare to how Zeus/Jupiter of ancient Greco-Roman polytheism was "primarily" a god of the sky and thunder as well as king of the gods, but whose authority and roles encompassed seemingly every aspect of Greco-Roman life and society (sometimes locally, sometimes panhellenically), from hospitality and agriculture to kingship and warfare.

This actually reminds me of how some Neon Genesis Evangelion address the seeming overpoweredness of the eponymous Humongous Mecha as military assets by highlighting the fact that while they can easily solo entire armies (assuming that the Evangelion has an S² Engine to provide a limitless supply of energy), they can't hold territory and aren't invincible (a sufficiently powerful nuke — sorry, N² weapon! — can break an Evangelion's AT Field and thus open it for takedown by massed conventional weapons fire).

I guess nobody else has any further feedback to give?

Whenever i have to check whether a list covers my needs, i generally take two approaches. The first is to check the list and see what it covers - which tends to root out problems within the list. This is largely what we did so far. The other option is to check what i want to cover and see if the list covers it. this can root out problems not considered so far.

So in this case you have an organization structure, but the question remains whether it solves the issues this empire faces in whatever, well, actual empire it has. Does it solve the needs of its people, can it deal with the challenges it encounters. For example, solving disputes between citizens.

A simple way to approach this is to consider who the empire is meant to serve, and then check how that is enforced. A King's role traditionally were Supreme General, Supreme Judge, and Supreme Priest. So, within the population, are there any the Empire favors militarily, religiously, or legally? Well it's an empire so it has a core population that extracts resources from its periphery. If there's a military distinction, who enforces this. if there's a religious distinction, who enforces this. If there's a legal distinction, who enforces this. You can endlessly iterate this until you hit a road block with "there's no distinction" or "there's nobody left to distinguish".

Another way is to consider the practical elements you encounter. An army needs to be fed, clothed, armed. Who arranges this. An army needs to move from A to B, who arranges this. Religion may be centralized, so who organizes this. Cities have lots of people with needs, so who arranges this. But also, some cities may be favored over others (the roman empire orbited around rome, for example). Cities cover a region, so does anyone organize that? Regions may have distinctions that group them, so is there any organization over that? There may be military, legal, religious or economic reasons that cities and regions are tied together.

Within the capital there may also be other things to cover. A king or emperor may have many tasks, so someone would probably be responsible for keeping them up to date. If there is frequent travel, someone might be responsible. Same for clothing, armoring, jewelry, but also for example religious or judicial responsibilities. People who give council, people who supply goods, people who execute orders.

All of that heavily depends on how the empire operates in the setting. If there's magic, there may be a Court Mage who advises on such matter. There may be diplomats and ambassadors. If travel to allies takes a long time, they might want permanent diplomats stationed at the empire's court. But also, someone would probably want to keep all these diplomats from causing diplomatic incidents. One culture's sacred rite may be anothers' profane gesture.

That's a lot to cover, but there's a trick for that too: whatever is most important to the story is most important to explain (and thus also check). The intricacies of grain transport in the capital are probably fairly irrelevant if the story takes place in a battlefield in a foreign country. on the other hand, if it's a detective story about shady grain transport deals in the capital, the precise workings of an army on a foreign battlefield is fairly irrelevant. So it is a fairly manageable task: if someone imports grain to the city, someone may want to check that it's grain, someone may want to check that it's safe, and someone may want to check that you're not heavily undercutting native farmers. if the buyer ordered 10 tons of grain but got 8, who do they turn to (is there anyone to turn to?). Who do the inspectors turn to? who pays them? who pays their bosses? who gives them any authority in the first place?

Edited by devak on Sep 4th 2023 at 7:49:29 PM

So basically Prussia.