A Historical Overview of War Magic - Volume 2

A Historical Overview of War Magic Vol. II From Notes and Lectures of Miette Hartley, Compiled by Jacksen Aiken

Despite the conflict between the Burning Page and the Fold of Nine - technically none of what transpired is considered warfare. As noted, they engaged in many battles and skirmishes, but they did not fight over territory, nor were the battles between national armies. The nature of the tilts were not really meant to be sustained engagements involving magic, but this would begin to change, as two nations began drawing magi into their ranks.

Dobrekon The orcish nation of Dobrekon was the first, aided in an essential manner by the efforts of a cabal known as the Golden Tusks. These Golden Tusks were an inluential group of gold mages turned political as a faction within the court of the Emperor and using their influence, they were able to orchestrate the creation of a dedicated war mage corps operating under their own concepts. This included the chain of command and where the war mages stood in it's regard - that is, outside of standard, retaining their own ability for initiative. The integration into their armed forces of large numbers of permanently bound planar summons was another; the combination essentially making the war mages an autonomous entity just as much within as alongside the Dobrekon Army.

The war mage corps would take the name of their benefacting political party, and at their peak boast approximately five thousand mages organized into brigades of two hundred apiece. Of these five thousand, a fifth could be considered order mages - while the rest were auxillaries or apprentices. The majority of the forces strength, alluded to above, was the standing bodyguard of planar summons. Baatezu, to be precise. The exact number is thought to have been somewhere between seven and ten thousand, mostly minor denizens, but perhaps five hundred combined cornugons and pit fiends.

Their specifics aside, the more important note regarding the Golden Tusks and Dobrekon is their model of separate hierarchy alongside the standard military.

T'Nanshi This was a stark contrast to the alternative being developed amongst the elves of T'Nanshi. Where the Dobrekonese model created separate hierarchies, the elves instead integrated their war wizards into the standard army at the small unit level. There are two key reasons behind the elven methods employment at the time. Firstly - the ratio of arcanists amongst the population was quite a bit higher than the other nations of Avlis, affording the organizers to be a bit more generous with the allotment of mages. Secondly, dovetailing from the first - with the nature of their population and the military being comprised of volunteers, the squad units of T'Nanshi were already likely to contain some number of mages. And so they needed a way to account for this and to maximize the effectiveness of each unit.

The result was an integration of mages to the point that there was rarely ever a distinction made between them and the standard military with regard to the chain of command, although it did create several specialized forms in the process. The most notable to this day being the Arcane Archer.

Contrasting the Arcane Archer and it's close, tactical work within each unit with the modern Kurathene War Mage's long rage artillery and support role provides a visible comparison of the two styles still today. It is difficult to judge which stands to be more effective, even with the opportunity provided by the styles' clash during the Great War. The effects both had upon the war in general and the lands involved, however, is indisputable - the vast majority of the destruction involved, even prior to the much noted orcish evocation, was brought about by the participation of mages.

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In the era following the Great War, the world would see two national developments of note with regard to war magic and dedicated war wizards. Each following in the footsteps of the two models established prior.

Galdos The first would transpire within the Dwarven Kingdom of Galdos, where the dwarven army began working on the concept of integrating the role of a healer with the war mage. The impetus amongst the dwarves stemmed from the discovery of White Necromancy as a practice; a practice the Galdosians were more willing to experiment with than other nations. Odd to comprehend at first, until the attribution of the art's creation to Gorethar is considered. In any case, the concept's key purpose was in removing healing clerics from the frontlines, allowing them to serve entirely as more dedicated care to the rear of the heavy fighting. This reduced the likelihood that the most capable healers would be caught undefended in the fighting while tending the wounded, in fact increasing the survival rate of wounded Galdosian soldiers.

In contrast to a trained battle priest, the most effective healers' training lent them to be more often than not less-capable as combatants - and so replacing the latter with White Necromancers provided a means of first aid and triage for the wounded at the lines of battle, allowing soldiers to continue and or survive to see the dedicated healers to the rear. Simultaneously, the substitution of these war wizards substantially increased the amount of fire each unit could field.

The Kurathene The Fraternity of Kurathene War Mages' establishment is the second development of note. Inspired by Joral Kuras' organization of his late-Republican armies, the fraternity took existing concepts and refined them. Notably - rather than being composed of pre-existing order mages, they, with the support of the Fold's Blue Order was established entirely independently from recruiting to training.

The War Mages would be integrated with the rest of the Kurathene Republican Guard, later the Imperial Army, on the brigade level. This gave them inclusion with regards to both the chain of command and the command staff. Each imperial legion was provided with a single mage regiment, divided into three companies which were then assigned to individual cohorts. A company of mages at full strength numbered one-hundred and fifty full mages with two assistants or apprentices each for a total of four hundred and fifty individuals. The mages would then be split by platoon at the imperial brigade level. For those unfamiliar, this broke down to approximately five mages for every one hundred soldiers - serving as both support and fire element.

The five composing these mage sections were divided by role : a generalist battle mage, two evokers, an enchanter, and an abjurer. The generalist commanded each mage section as an Ensign, answering to the command structure of the army as any other platoon commander. So while they were independent of the actual soldiers in the hierarchy, they remained an integral part of the unit to which they were attached.