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Medieval Infantry

2023-06-06T21:18:37Z

2607:FB91:11D5:4478:451D:E2A3:6402:C27E: /* Urban Militias */

When people think about Medieval Warfare, what comes to mind first are [[Knight]]s as well as [[Men at Arms]], and fair's fair they were important and would be honed to a fine edge. However they were only part of the equation. Here's a rough guide to '''Medieval Infantry'''.
== Note ==
This is a fairly big complex thing with a lot of local details and variation, since it covers a lot cultures in Europe between roughly 500 to 1500 this is going to be simplifying a lot of history. Just keep that in mind.

== Levies ==
Conscripted [[Peasant]]s put under arms. A medieval lord could raise a levy in times of war, gathering up young men from the farms working his lands as part of their feudal obligations. Usually they'd be given at least a [[helmet]] and a basic weapon and possibly some armour like a padded vest or some ancient [[mail]] and some insignia to mark themselves out, but bringing your own stuff was highly encouraged. They'd get a bit of training and would then be sent off to war and if things went well, they'd go back to their fields with a bit of loot. Possibly they might be taken on as an Sergeant if they did really well.

The advantage of this system is that it was fairly cheap and simple to set up. Of course it had big disadvantages. First of all, a force of farmers with minimal training and basic equipment is not a formidable force. Even if you have a lot of them there are a bunch of records of knights routeing larger formations of peasant infantry and it's not hard to see why. Between the armor and the horse a knight is terrifying to face on foot. When a whole formation of knights charges the ground it self shakes and for a peasant who rather not even be there that make as good a time as any to leg it. Second a peasant under arms is not one tending the crops and paying rent, especially if he ends up dead. This limits when you can raise a levy (IE not during sowing or harvesting), how long you can keep it under arms and how many of these guys you recruit. Levies were common in the [[Dark Age]] but they became less important into the [[High Middle Ages]]. It was not until the middle ages fully ended that levies became important again as nations finally became organized enough ([[Rome|Again]]) to raise large levy forces and also equip them and train them.

In terms of armament, they'd most commonly be armed with polearms, typically a spear, and a wooden shield. Besides being easy to use and easy to train with, especially in dense formations, they're also cost-effective. A hastily raised army of levies that can form a shield wall can be surprisingly effective bulwark against an invasion if used correctly; especially of used defensively with fortifications. But if routed, they’ll be as vulnerable as fish in a barrel. You might also be able to raise forces of archers as well as most Peasants would probably have a bow already to help put food on the table. Axes or other heavy weapons are also good as they need a minimal of training to be functional.

== Urban Militias ==
Similar to levies, but in towns and cities. Also often better equipped as cities were usually richer per-capita. Still not the best trained and equipped force you can get as seen at the Battle of Visby; where the Danish king’s professional army all but annihilated the city’s militia. Excavations of the mass graves there (oddly well preserved and not looted due to the sheer number of dead as well as the heat risking decay when they just died), showed equipment varied from simple mail and polearms to brigandine and battle axes.

== Yeoman ==
Unlike serfs or tenants, yeomen owned a plot of land as their own. This meant they had more income than Paul the Peasant but they were also required to use some of that money to buy gear and serve as soldiers.

In some countries, Yeoman as professional soldiers are also specialists in a particular area of war; England was famed for its Yeoman archers, as they trained relentlessly to be the best archers in all of Europe.

== Sergeants ==
Full time common-born warriors retained by a noble. A lordling will find a big strong guy from his peasants and tell him that he has a job for him. He gets more training than a levy does, a regular wage and room and board as well as better arms and armour. In peace, having a big strong dude who's good in a fight and owes everything to you is a good asset to have to collect taxes, guard gates, provide general security, handle criminals, etc, and he can train up levies in times of war. In times of war, these guys can be your heavy infantry. They’re the first step below professional soldiers in standing armies.

And yes, the modern NCO rank is named after them.

== Mercenaries ==
Professional hired muscle. These guys are the highest quality soldiers you can find without having to maintain permanent standing armies. However, while they are well trained and well armed, they’re ultimately loyal to whoever can pay them the most unless they’re from a culture where honor and reputation are sacrosanct. Expect to spend a lot of time negotiating contracts and terms. And pray once the contract expires that they don’t get hired by your rivals. Or that they don't pillage your city if you can't pay for them anymore. Mercenaries can come from any number of countries and vary wildly in composition. They may also possess skills that the employing military lacks, such as archers or cavalry, to make up for gaps in their unit composition.

== Men-at-Arms ==
Full time professional soldiers, what we normally think of as [[Knight]]s but could be a mercenary instead. Basically all Knights were expected to serve as Men-at-Arms if they were able, but not all Men-at-Arms were Knights. Besides paying for their own equipment, they'll also raise retainers to form a lance of troops that join the company. Men-at-Arms evolved over time from heavy cavalry to heavy infantry; the former using lances as their main weapon, and the latter switching to some heavy two-handed weapon such as a Pollaxe when full-plate armor allows one to ditch a shield. Can either be feudal lords with their own lands, an attache in the service of one, or a professional under the employment of the royal guard.

{{Stub}}
[[Category:History]]

Men at Arms

2023-06-05T18:47:52Z

2607:FB91:11D5:4478:451D:E2A3:6402:C27E: /* Gallery */

[[File:Duerer - Studie Reiter 1495.jpg|thumb|right|A German man-at-arms by Albrecht Dürer, 1498.]]
A type of Medieval soldier, mostly referring to "professional" soldiers before organized militaries were really a thing. See, when called to battle, knights were expected to provide additional troops along with their own armored and horse-riding ass. Knights (and higher nobles) were land owners and as such were expected to raise numbers of soldiers from amongst the men who owed them fealty. They equipped and trained them as they saw fit and could afford and gave them what training they could. However each man that was busy training couldn't work and bring in money, so well-trained people, the "Men-at-Arms" were few in numbers. A knight's retinue would probably include a number of archers, conscripted peasants given weapons and a week of training, and a core of men-at-arms that were better equipped and trained. Men-at-arms more expensive to equip and maintain being better armoured and armed than the smelly peasants and foot soldiers, and often mounted on warhorses to fulfill cavalry roles if there weren't enough knights as horses were fucking expensive, were not that easy to replace; so better to have someone else put his horse on the line instead of yours. A well-off knight might, for a campaign, bring with him 40 men-at-arms and 200 mixed archers and conscripted peasants. (However, a Knight ''may also be'' a man-at-arms, if he were capable of fighting because Knighthood is not a military rank but a nobility rank. Yeah, it was complicated like that.)

The bloke in the shiny armour on the horse with the lance, that bloke is a man-at-arms. He might also be a Knight. He might be a Lord/Baron/Duke/... instead. He might be a member of the gentry, aspiring to raise his status. By the late Middle Ages/early modern period the gentry emerge as a social class, i.e. higher than some smelly commoner, but not even a minor noble. This happened broadly across Europe because as nation-states evolve, they create increasing amounts of bureaucracy. Jobs that are too important (and need an education to do) to allow Gerald the Peasant to do it; but beneath the nobles, who are otherwise preoccupied with more important stuff. That man-at-arms might also, however, be a commoner in his Lord's retinue acting as a professional soldier or a mercenary.

TL/DR: Men-at-Arms are a type of medieval soldier. Better equipped and armoured than their archer and footsoldier bretheren (i.e. your levvies, billmen, militia, spearmen and the like), they often fought on horseback. A Knight is a person of a certain social status. Because status brought wealth, he would almost invariably fight as a really well equipped man-at-arms.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Man at arms.jpg|Example
Men-at-Arms-wraithdt.jpg|A Man-at-Arms by Darren Tan/wraithdt
Maa-knight-graham-turner.jpg|A knight or man-at-arms c.1390 by Graham Turner.
Crécy_-_Grandes_Chroniques_de_France.jpg|French and English men-at-arms fighting in a depiction of the Battle of Crécy, 1346, from the Grandes Chroniques de France.
Xw1llulsakf71.jpg|The French assaulting a Burgundian-held castle in the 15th century, by Igor Dzis
Armor evolution middle-rennaisance ages.jpg|A rough progression of European armor evolution ffrom the start of the High Middle Ages till the 17th century.
</gallery>

{{Stub}}
[[category:History]]

Medieval Infantry

2023-06-05T18:45:51Z

2607:FB91:11D5:4478:451D:E2A3:6402:C27E:

Medieval Infantry

2023-06-05T18:43:32Z

2607:FB91:11D5:4478:451D:E2A3:6402:C27E: /* Urban Militias */

When people think about Medieval Warfare, what comes to mind first are [[Knight]]s, and fair's fair they were important and would be honed to a fine edge. However they were only part of the equation. Here's a rough guide to '''Medieval Infantry'''.
== Note ==
This is a fairly big complex thing with a lot of local details and variation, since it covers a lot of Europe between roughly 500 to 1500 this is going to be simplifying a lot of history. Just keep that in mind.
== Levies ==
[[Peasant]]s put under arms. A medieval lord could raise a levy in times of war, gathering up young men from the farms working his lands. Usually they'd be given at least a helmet and a basic weapon and possibly some armour and some insignia to mark themselves out, but bringing your own stuff was highly encouraged. They'd get a bit of training and would then be sent off to war and if things went well, they'd go back to their fields with a bit of loot.

The advantage of this system is that it was fairly cheap and simple to set up. Of course it had big disadvantages. First of all, a force of farmers with minimal training and basic equipment is not a formidable force unless you have a lot of these guys. Second a peasant under arms is not one tending the crops and paying rent, especially if he ends up dead. This limits when you can raise a levy (IE not during sowing or harvesting), how long you can keep it under arms and how many of these guys you recruit.
== Urban Militias ==
Similar to levies, but in towns and cities. Also often better equipped as cities were usually richer per-capita. Still not the best trained and equipped force you can get as seen at the Battle of Visby.

== Yeoman ==
Unlike serfs or tenants, yeomen owned a plot of land as their own. This meant they had more income than Paul the Peasant but they were also required to use some of that money to buy gear and serve as soldiers.
== Sergeants ==
Full time warriors retained by a noble. A lordling will find a big strong guy from his peasants and tell him that he has a job for him. He gets more training than a levy does, a regular wage and room and board as well as better arms and armour. In peace, having a big strong dude who's good in a fight and owes everything to you is a good asset to have, and he can train up levies in times of war. In times of war, these guys can be your heavy infantry.
== Mercenaries ==
Professional hired muscle. These guys are the highest quality soldiers you can find without having to maintain permanent standing armies. However, while they are well trained and well armed, they’re ultimately loyal to whoever can pay them them the most unless they’re from a culture where honor and reputation are sacrosanct. Expect to spend a lot of time negotiating contracts and terms. And pray once the contract expires that they don’t get hired by your rivals.

{{Stub}}
[[Category:History]]

Roman Empire

2023-06-05T18:35:03Z

2607:FB91:11D5:4478:451D:E2A3:6402:C27E: /* The Collapse of the Imperium */

[[image:Roman Empire at height.png|thumb|300px|right|A map of the Roman Empire at it's height, civilizing the fuck out of unwashed barbarians.]]
The '''Roman Empire''' ('''[[Imperium of Man|IMPERIVM ROMANVM]]''', or as they called themselves '''SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS''', (The Senate and People of Rome, aka '''SPQR''') was a civilization based out of the Italian City of Rome. It was notable for unifying half of Europe and all of the Mediterranean under their rule and being one of the most advanced civilizations of Classical Antiquity. Even today, its system of Government, and its language of Latin, formed the basis of modern Law and Politics all throughout the World e.g. the United States of America. Its only rivals were the [[China|Chinese Han Dynasty]] and the Indian Satavahana Empire as well as its arch-nemesis the Parthian Empire (and its successor the Sassanid Empire), with the Roman-Persian wars spanning a period of ''six hundred years'', each subsequent war doing almost nothing to shift the [[Warhammer 40,000|perpetual status quo]], that is until the [[End Times]] inevitably came in the form of the emerging Muslim Caliphate.

==Roman History 101==

=== The Mythos ===
According to the legends, the ancestry of the Romans can be traced back to the once-powerful city state of Troy. Initially, Troy was winning, but thanks to a [[tactical genius]] named Odysseus, they were tricked into accepting a gift horse statue... which contained Greek warriors who [[Exterminatus|sacked and burned the city and all its inhabitants]]. Troy's salvation would only come when a Trojan aristocrat, Anchises, managed to impregnate nobody else but Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, herself. Aphrodite gave birth to whom the Romans consider their Saviour and Ancestor: the man, the myth, the legend, Prince Aeneas.

Aeneas and his surviving Trojans sailed from Asia Minor (Turkey) all throughout the Mediterranean, fighting monsters and disasters through the way, eventually landing in what is now Tunisia, ruled by a city called Carthage: Hera's favourite city, and dominion of the queen Dido. Hera hated the Trojans, doing in all her power to prevent them from accomplishing their destiny, and hence manipulated Dido and Aeneas to fall in love so that they could waste their time fucking each other for so many years. Zeus, realising what Hera had done, came down and bitched-slapped Aeneas to fulfilling his destiny of making a new Troy in the unknown lands of Italia. Aeneas came to his senses and left Carthage, but in doing so, Dido fell into a massive depression, killing herself in a pyre while cursing him and all his descendants.

One of Aeneas's descendants in Italia, Princess Rhea, would be impregnated by the God of War himself, Mars. Their children would be known as Romulus and Remus. After rebelling against the Etruscans, they formally founded the city of Rome in 753 BCE... unfortunately Romulus accidentally killed his brother over a dispute on where to place the Pomerium (i.e. city borders). Rome, as the city was known, was underpopulated, consisting mostly of refugees. In order to populate his new city, Romulus enticed Sabine women to come to their little city, and while everyone was drunk, Romulus would then signal to rape (meaning [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rape#Etymology_1 abduct]) every Sabine woman in sight, which naturally pissed off the Sabine men. Luckily however, Stockholm Syndrome prevented war from breaking out and Rome got to live on. What we actually know of that time period was that Rome was one of several minor city states in that area and was ruled by Kings. Somewhere down the line the Roman kingdom is no longer ruled by a Roman, but by an Etruscan, whose son named Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (yes, his name was [[awesome|Superbus]]) rapes (meaning [[rape]]s) a girl named Lucretia.

=== Early Wars ===
Everything above is... suspect to say the least. But this is the point where we do know things. Rome was a city built on seven defensible hills. They were surrounded by tribes that didn't like them, namely the Etruscans. They fought a bunch of wars with them, and had some internal disputes as well. In 509 BC, the Roman monarchy was thrown down and replaced by a Republic. Over the next two hundred years the Republic got better and better at fighting, eventually defeating all the tribes around them. What made them different was how they treated the losers. As individual Etruscan tribes and cities were knocked off, they were assimilated into the Republic, ultimately giving the men of those cities more liberty than they'd had previously had. So Rome didn't so much "conquer" as "expand", taking a system that basically worked pretty well (at least at this scale) and forcing it on their neighbors, who eventually grew to appreciate how well it worked. But it was working well because at this point the whole of the Republic was still confined to central Italy and could be crossed on foot in a week or two.

=== The Punic Wars ===

Meanwhile, Carthage, the city once ruled by Dido, was the dominant superpower of the Western Mediterranean, unmatched in wealth and influence, able to bend the Greek kings to their will. Eventually there began to be some friction between the two groups as Carthage moved into Sicily and Sardinia, compromising Roman trade in the Mediterranean. This led to three wars called the Punic Wars where the descendants of Aeneas and Dido clashed.

The first Punic War (264 BCE to 241 BCE) involved the Romans fighting the Carthaginians and its Greek allies over Sicily and Sardinia. The Romans begin to take to the sea for the first time. Rome suffered massive casualties at first, until they reverse-engineered a Carthaginian ship and started pushing back (with the incredible innovation of adding a ramp to the front)... while still taking massive causalities. See Rome was still pretty new to this whole "navy" thing and kept losing fleets to storms. But after twenty three years of fighting, Carthage threw in the towel, paying Rome over three thousand talents of silver to leave them alone (a talent of silver, 26 kilos, was the usual measure of enough silver to maintain and crew a ship for a month). [[Nazis|This crushing economic burden fostered resentment]] making a second war all but inevitable.

Eventually shit happened involving a Greek colony and war sparks again. A guy named Hannibal, whose father commanded the Carthaginian forces last time, swears revenge on the Romans. He invades Spain, [[Creed|brings elephants over the Alps]] and into Italy (at heavy cost), and generally starts wrecking shit, obliterating every Roman army he comes across. The only thing stopping him from destroying Rome is his army is too small to lay siege properly so the Roman regroup under Fabius "[[Troll|The Delayer]]" Maximus, who used hit-and-run tactics to keep the army away from Rome, intending to starve him out rather than risk a direct fight.. Meanwhile, Roman general Scipio Africanus leads his army through Carthagian Spanish colonies all the way through Africa to Carthage itself, Hannibal is called back to defend his home, and gets defeated. Carthage then becomes a dependent "ally" to the Republic, basically being sucked dry of its resources. Eventually around 149 BC Carthage was rebelling and pissing off the Romans again thus resulting in the Third Punic War. A few years later [[Exterminatus|Carthage itself was destroyed, the earth around the city was salted,]] [[Grimdark|and the surviving population was sold into slavery]]...or so the legend goes, as there isn't really any good evidence for the Romans having salted the land but there's evidence ''against'' it (Rome rebuilt and recolonized the area later, and salt was probably too valuable in those times for that to happen).

=== The Height of the Roman Republic===
While Rome's citizen-armies were quite successful militarily, there was a minor crisis brewing; many of these citizens found themselves homeless upon returning from campaign, their land having been sold off in their absence. To deal with this growing problem came the Marian reforms, in which the Roman state (through its generals) would instead raise armies of dedicated professional soldiers ala Sparta: the [[Space Marines|Legions]]. While this solved the immediate problem of soldiers having nowhere to go back to, this created a new one; generals, particularly the emergency military position of Dictator (who had complete control over the armies *and* power to rewrite the constitution), became quite powerful as a result; especially the change of upkeep. The old field-tending citizen soldiers' upkeep was land and they bought their own weapons; now the new, state-funded army needed cold cash, and more taxes during their service AND needed arable farmland for retirement. In short, the end of the Republic had become an inevitability, and Rome needed to constantly fight, enslave and plunder to keep the [[Warmachine]] going. Almost immediately, civil wars centered on factional power struggles started erupting, and the office of Dictator was revived when it had been unused since Hannibal's invasion.

By the end of the Republic, the real power was held by the so-called "Triumvirate" of Rome's three most powerful men: [[This Guy|Gaius Julius Caesar]], [[That Guy|Pompeius Magnus]], and [[That Guy|Marcus Licinius Crassus]] (Ever wonder where the words pompous and crass come from?). After Crassus died in Persia ([[Lulz|Hilariously, his captor poured molten gold down his throat after seeing his insane greed]]), tensions between Caesar and Pompey grew. With Carthage destroyed, there was nothing left that could stop Rome from taking over the Mediterranean world. When Rome wanted to conquer an area they gave the local rulers two choices: [[Tau Diplomacy|Surrender and pay taxes to Rome]], or resist and [[Blam|be purged]]. Either way, Rome got more territory, more wealth, and more slaves, and expanded more or less uncontested until they got to Gaul. These uncivilized brutes continued to resist until the Romans got sick of their bullshit and sent in Caesar with a few legions to deal with it. [[/tg/ gets shit done|He did just that]], and became very popular as a result.

Too popular for the liking of Pompey and the Senate, not to mention now ''hideously'' rich, possessing an enormous army complemented with Germanic (Ubian) cavalry and allied tribes. The Senate also hated how Caesar used the Triumvirate's political machinations to push reform bills instead of the "proper" channels of gaining approval from the Rome's patriarchs; even though they were too gridlocked to do anything about Rome's myriad problems, doing nothing was better than letting an upstart undermine their authority. They ordered him to disband his armies or be labeled an enemy of the state. Caesar's response was "you first"; thus [[Age of Apostasy|embroiling Rome in a civil war]], which he won by Zerg Rushing the city and scaring the fuck out of his rivals. He uses this popularity to become Dictator for life, essentially restoring Rome back into an absolute monarchy. As a result his close friend [[Horus|Brutus]] and his former allies in the Roman Senate stabbed him to death. [[Horus Heresy|This caused another Civil War]], now between Octavian, Caesar's nephew out for revenge, and the [[Traitor Legions|Senators]], led by Mark Antony and allied with Cleopatra. Antony and Cleopatra lost and committed suicide, while Octavian was proclaimed Augustus, the revered one, and establishing the [[Imperial Cult|Imperial cult]]; due to Caesar's supposed descent from the Gods (the gens Julii from were Caesar was born were directly descended from both Venus and Mars, respectively through Aeneas and Romulus), he was therefore venerated as the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|God-Emperor of Romankind,]] and marking the transition from the Roman Republic to the '''Imperium of Rome'''.

Just go and watch the 2-season TV Series Rome, which is ''quite historically accurate'' except Octavian's mom Atia, who was a religious prude IRL. (Fulvia, another character IRL would do the things she did)

For next two hundred years the Imperium ruled the Mediterranean and Europe as one of the ancient world's most influential superpowers, with many states either conquered or offered Protectorate Status under the Pax Romana (they'll allow you independence, as long as you pay taxes and venerate the God-Emperor in some way). It sees a [[Goge Vandire|few bad emperors like Nero]], [[Reasonable Marines|some good philosopher-kings like]] [[Roboute Guilliman|Marcus Aurelius]], and a lot of stability, wars of succession notwithstanding. Rome even manages to make it to the Indian Ocean and make contact with Han China, though this relationship is short-lived; everything goes to the shithouse from there, because...

===The Collapse of the Imperium===
Rome's fall can be attributed to any number of reasons, and any self-styled amateur historian would be more than happy to explain to you his opinions on the subject, but it's widely agreed that there were a number of contributing forces, including but not limited to:
* Even under the reign of Julius Caesar and the early emperors, cracks were starting to form. Population decline had already begun, especially in the cities where death rates routinely outpaced birth rates; [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/892aud/augustus_is_said_to_be_worried_about_the_low/ in part because the archaic Roman society rules, lead poisoning and urbanization], in part because all of the wealthy landowners had seized up all the good land in Italy and left behind a growing unskilled urban population that needed the state to take care of them. This was what partly fueled the Roman war machine, land and funds needed to support Roman's citizens, but of course they couldn't go conquering forever, so once Rome's borders stalled, and the state's costs increased, something was going to give eventually. And even today we all know that a big, dense urban landscape is not a healthy environment for raising large families economically.
* Increased logistical sluggishness of maintaining a sprawling empire, such that it had to split itself into two because it had become too large for a single Emperor to rule on his own. This solution solved that problem but created new ones down the line, as the Western and Eastern halves of the empire (which were ruled by separate emperors that rarely if ever got along) tended to go to war with each other over petty rivalries.
* The various Legions becoming more loyal to their generals than the Imperium; throughout Rome's history, the Empire had always struggled with the fact that the Roman legions trusted their allegiance more to their local generals than the will of the Senate (although by the time the empire started to collapse, the senate had virtually no power anyway) or the Emperor. Said generals frequently followed Caesar's example and got it into their heads to make themselves Emperors; some of them turned out to be pretty good at work, but far more tended to be better at leading armies than ruling over an empire.
* Said Legions being unable to adapt to new arts of warfare. Footslogging, fortification building, shortsword-and-javelin bearing turtles made of tower shields may have been enough for wild Gauls with no discipline. But when entire tribes of highly mobile horsemen and rapid-moving swarms of densely populated Eastern empires are fought against, it's an entirely different matter. Note that Byzantium, a.k.a Eastern Roman Empire survived for another millennium ''exactly'' because it adapted to its neighbours' arsenal, raised its own horse archers named Hippotoxotai after inviting a "barbarian" general or two on how do i shot web, heavy cavalry named Cataphracti (based on Persian Clibinarii), and lightened the legions into rapid deployment.
* Economic and famine crises as Roman farmers were out priced by foreign imports; Egypt and Carthage completely shifted the wheat production to the east, and fields in the Western empire were converted to fruit and vegetable orchards, which were quite perishable. It was not until hardy crops from the Americas (like potatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes) reached western and northern Europe several centuries later that said regions developed sufficient food stability to ensure steady population growth. By contrast, the Eastern half of the empire did just fine since they were the half with all the valuable land. Said wealth from food stability and trade enabled t Eastern Empire to bribe off the Germanic and Slavic migrants (until they lost their breadbasket provinces to the Arabs).
* A disastrous combination of heavy urbanization without understanding germ theory led to events like the [[Wikipedia:Antonine Plague|Antonine Plague]], which killed about 10% of the empire's population.
* [[Barbarian|Germanic barbarians]], who were fleeing from the Huns and usually rebelled after being constantly treated like shit by the Romans despite being responsible for fighting most of the Romans' wars on their behalf. In hindsight, forcing the migrant Goths to sell their children into slavery for just enough dog meat to avoid starvation was a real dick move. And while all of them paid lip service to the Emperors (both Western and Eastern) as vassals in names, they were more than willing not to fight if their people’s’ interests were ignored.
* [[Game of Thrones]]-style court intrigue: Emperors killing emperors, perpetual backstabbing between dynasties, trading places like it's fucking musical chairs, made even worse by the fact that the Empire never had any kind of consistent succession rules at any point during its history. At least the [[Adeptus Custodes|Praetorians]] were ready to off an aspiring Emperor if they believed he was too insane to hold office...or if they felt they weren't getting paid enough, or if they thought they could get more benefits from someone else. On one occasion the Praetorians even sold the position of Emperor to the highest bidder; the "lucky" buyer didn't even last three months before getting overthrown and executed by a rival claimant. This had another side effect of letting the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) lose the recipe for a primitive flamethrower (royal family hid the instructions separately, only for everyone who knew where they were to die in one of the many coups) and get dog piled by Muslims.
* Lead poisoning from widespread use of lead-sealed pipe and pewter-ware; however, this is balanced against them having comparatively clean water for such large cities.
* Terminus, God of Borders asking Dream to speak to Caesar Augustus in a vision, to let the empire die so he may live on. The alternative was to let Rome conquer the world and the universe, effectively destroying Terminus. (Yes, we are comic nerds.)
* The rise of the Christian faith to political dominance, which resulted in A: a mass transference of manpower from the military to the priesthood (this was LONG before Christian monks and priests were required to practice celibacy & austerity, so the average young Roman man decided that it was way easier, safer and more comfortable to join the clergy than the army), forcing an ever-increasing reliance on mercenaries (always a bad thing, for an empire), and B: the ever-increasing drain of funds away from infrastructure maintenance to pay this increasingly bloated priesthood to do nothing but sit around, give sermons, and hold councils arguing over theological trivia like "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" (all of them) and "was Mary still a virgin after she gave birth to Jesus?" (yes-ish). Note that this contribution is highly [[skub]]by, and people argue '''bitterly''' over whether it's true or not (not helped by the fact that at least some of the historians who championed this theory had a clear bias against Christianity that led them to play fast and loose with facts, such as Edward Gibbon).

Heck, even the cooling solar cycle that made the Huns break out in two, one to Europe, another to India, is said to be the driving force in its collapse since before them came every other tribe that wanted to get the fuck away from [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|the teaser trailer of a certain swell guy's antics]]. The East splitting off didn't do the Western lands any favors either, especially when said wheat and exotic produce was utterly cut off. Eventually, the barbarians got all the way to Rome, sacked it (in 410, not in 476, though it had not been the actual capital for about 200 years by that point anyway), deposed the Emperor, and made one of their own the king of Italy. This is the part where most experts say the Western Roman Empire was well and truly dead.

===The Byzantine Empire===

Things were a bit better in the wealthier Eastern Roman Empire after the split. The Byzantine Empire, as it's now called though they still called themselves the Roman Empire, drifted from Rome in culture and aesthetic to the Greek trend, and more or less carried on much as it had before (including the palace intrigue, which if anything became even worse than ever before). On a couple occasions, they came close to recapturing the glory of the old Roman Empire, but this was foiled by the first known outbreak of the Black Death (the Plague of Justinian) the first time and the coming of the Seljuk Turk raiders (and the rise of the Sultanate of Rum) the second time. The Byzantines' call for aid in the aftermath of the latter decades of conflict ended up leading to the First Crusade.

Fast-forward to the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Crusaders lacked the money to sail to the Ayyubid Sultanate as they had initially planned and were deeply in debt to the Republic of Venice, whose doge (we swear, that was the title of their chief elected official) refused to let them disband or leave without paying their debts. The exiled Byzantine prince Alexios IV promised to pay the debt for the Crusaders in exchange for deposing the current emperor and placing him on the throne. While successful at gaining the throne, the new emperor quickly realized that he didn't actually have the funds to fulfill his promises. Anti-Crusader sentiment eventually led to his deposition and execution, which the Crusaders used as an excuse to sack the city for its wealth.

Following the sack, the Crusaders named one of their own as emperor of the new "Latin Empire" (torpedoing any hope of reconciliation between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy in the process), with the old Byzantine state being dispersed between three smaller rump states- the Empire of Trebizond, the Nicene Empire, and the Despotate of Epirus. You probably never heard of them, and for good reason- they didn't accomplish much of interest while they were around. The next few decades were dominated by fighting between the Latins, the rump states, the Sultanate of Rum, and the newly independent Bulgarian Empire.

1n 1261, the Nicene Empire was able to reclaim Constantinople and restore the Byzantine Empire, but the resources from the old Byzantine provinces had been bled dry from decades of war. The new emperors proved to be incompetent and alienated their people through heavy taxation and continued strife with the Latins, and after yet another civil war the Byzantines were forced to become vassals to the Osman/Ottoman sultan. However, their relationship with the Ottoman Turks was strained at best and when hostilities resumed the Byzantines were reduced to Constantinople alone. The city (the modern-day Istanbul) fell to Ottoman invasion by Sultan Mehmet II (seeking to prove he was a strong ruler so his relative wouldn't overthrow/execute him) in 1453, and the Byzantine Empire collapsed with it. Trebizond and Epirus limped on for slightly longer, but both had fallen by 1479, ending the last direct political rule of the Roman world.

=== Legacy ===
Even after its fall, the Roman Empire left a mark on western civilization in terms of writing, language, military organization, architecture, legal systems and philosophy. Many major European cities like London or Milan started out as Roman Colonies. In certain fields (in particular medicine, sanitation and plumbing) the Romans were more advanced than their European counterparts up until fairly recently. The end of the middle ages is generally known as "the Renaissance", the rebirth of western civilization which did involve some attempts by the upper class to recreate the better aspects of the Empire. For this reason various subsequent western cultures attempted to try to recreate some of Rome's Grandeur. The most obvious of these was the Unholy German Abomination called "Holy Roman Empire", which was neither Roman nor an empire (and was only "holy" because the current Pope said it was) but whatever. The Tsardom of Russia proclaimed itself as The Third Rome. Numerous other European monarchs as well as Ottoman Sultans declared themselves as being Emperors or Czars/Tsars/Kaisers/Kayzar-i-Rum ([[Gay|yup, Mehmed II named himself the real successor to Caesar after sacking the city of Constantinople for 3 days]]). Monarchs drew upon the idea of the authority and splendor of the Emperors, Republics drew on the roman concepts of rule of law, elected governments and civil rights.

Arguably its greatest legacy, in the sense of most significant cultural/historical impact, is Christianity and the relations between it and the Empire. Christianity formed and was developed in the Roman world, and was used to preserve various Roman traditions, particularly the military and the government. One of the largest sects of adherents in early Christian history was from the Army; the first non-Jewish Christian was a centurion, and Orthodox processions during the Liturgy are heavily derived from procession of the standards of the legions. On the other hand, Christianity basically divinized the concept of the Roman Empire and office of the Emperor to the point that the majority of Christian kingdoms and empires had a persistent obsession with being the true heir of Rome (which would basically mean that the realm would head the Imperium and thus have a legitimacy to lead the entirety of Christendom, as it is mentioned above).

== Roman Army ==

While the military of Rome went through centuries of evolution in its equipment and tactics, as a whole the armies of Rome can be divided into three parts, one of which is the skirmishers, the cavalry another, and finally the infantry.

Roman infantry went through many iterations but the typical Legionary would take the field wearing a metal helmet with metal and leather armor, a broad, curved shield, a gladius (a short, heavy stabbing sword), and one or more pilum (a hybrid javelin-spear effective against armor). Legionaries would typically fight in a tight formation behind their shields, throw or stab with their pilum and then finish with the sword. The intense discipline of the Legionaries' training allowed them to pull off several maneuvers, the most famous being the Testudo(Turtle in Latin), a tightly-packed shield wall that effectively protected against arrows.

Roman cavalry (equites) were, historically, useless, famous for a number of extremely high profile defeats. In equipment they were similar to Greek cavalry, using flat shields and spears with long swords and leather/maile armor. But for most of the history of Rome, cavalry were drawn from the richest echelons of society and were not known for being particularly disciplined or brave. While the other nations often fielded better cavalry, such as Hannibal's Numidians, Roman Cavalry was principally used to occupy the enemy cavalry and keep them away from the army; a strategy that sometimes shifted battles in the Romans' favor.

The skirmishers (velites) were mostly a Republic thing and largely vanished with the appearance of professional armies. In the Pre-Marian army, all new recruits began as Velites before joining the Infantry proper. Typically they were poor young people armed with javelins and slings, put out ahead of the line to soften up the enemy before contact with the infantry. Post-Marian, Skirmishers, as well as archers, were rarely ever used outside of the Auxilia, which consisted mainly of non-Roman support units.

Where Rome really outperformed its peers was in logistics, discipline and military engineering. Wherever the legions went, they build roads and networks of forts and courier stations. During Caesar's invasion of Gaul, his legion famously bridged the Rhine in 18 days (and again later in a week). After the defeat of Carthage, Rome burned the city for two weeks, tore down its walls and enslaved every survivor. In sieges, where other armies might try ladders, Rome would build a wall around the enemy's wall, and then a wall around THAT wall to protect them from forces trying to break the siege, and finally start slowly building a dirt ramp; [[Rogal Dorn|in the siege of Alesia this amounted to 20 km worth of wall building.]] '''Roman legions do not fuck around.''' They'll go to any length, and they don't leave things half-done.

== Fun Facts and Moronic Misconceptions about Rome ==

* The Romans are one of the first known cultures that practiced the art of the grafiti - you can find everything from penises, scatology, pederasty and funny jokes on the ancient walls. Some notable examples include "Epaphra doesn’t play football well", "Phileros is a eunuch!" and [[Gay|"Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!"]].
* More roman emperors trace their origins from the province of Illyricum (roughly the area of former Yugoslavia) than the Apennine peninsula.
* Roman religion was not a copy-paste of Greek religion and mythology but rather the misconception stems from the fact that Romans used to find equivalents of their gods in other religions like many other cultures did and do. In the city of Rome itself, you could find shrines to almost every deity from the known world, which would be quite welcome if they did not interfere with public order. Romans worshipped gods, emperors, heroes, spirits, ancestors, places, concepts like victoria or pax and even trees.
* Rome originally developed from a native italic group of Latines (think Sabinians, Umbrians and Etruscans) and only later came under the dominion of the Etruscan League and while the former gave them much in terms of architecture and deities, the influence of the Etruscans on the roman development was found recently to be a bit overstated.
* Romans were aware of Han China though only dimly as some vast empire in the east, the Chinese meanwhile called the Roman Empire "Da Qin" or "Great Chin". There was trade between the two but the empires of Persia and Kushan that were the proxies between them were not too keen to lose their middleman status and thus kept them separate in addition to the geographical distances being too vast for anything than a theoretical ambassadorial mission at best.
* While Christianity did give rise to some factors that weakened the empire in the short-term the notion that it turned Romans into ascetic hippies or destroyed the Roman Empire is asinine if for nothing else that for the fact that some of the "barbarians" (who were often adherents of Arianism) demolishing Rome were at that point Christians as well, sparing those Romans who took sanctuary in the churches. There’s also just as much evidence that Christianity helped the Empire, and later Medieval Europe, hold together in the face of various crises like the Antonine plague. And without the church establishing new centers of knowledge in the form of the early Universities and monasteries, what little knowledge Europe held on to would be even less than what had been preserved otherwise, especially since the Library of Alexandria had burned down centuries prior.
* Romans did have knowledge of making steel but it was produced in very limited quantities, most everyday metal stuff was either iron, bronze or copper with some other metals like tin or lead also having situational use. In of itself this was not unusual up until the 19th century, as before the invention of the blast furnace, steel production was extremely labor intensive and required specialist knowledge to remove impurities and get the iron hot enough.

== Roman Empire Analogs in Fantasy ==
To save time, let's just say the Roman Empire is one of the most heavily copied Cultures in fiction, what with it being precisely what any given European would think of upon hearing the words ancient empire" (not to mention much of it more or less remaining in use today, like its calendar, alphabet, military structure...it's not for nothing the Founding Fathers of the U.S.A. decided the Senate would be a part of the federal government). A certainly-incomplete list of fantastical models from them follows:

*[[Imperium of Man]] - While the Imperium also draws inspirations from other political systems and cultures, like Medieval Europe and the British Empire, its aesthetics and government are strongly based around Roman designs.
**[[Ultramar]] - Ultramar, [[Roboute Guilliman]]'s home system, is heavily based around a Greek-Roman hybrid empire. With Guilliman's return he may or may not be setting himself up as a Roman style dictator: one who holds absolute power so that he can deal with a crisis. Given the [[Grimdark|fun times]] he's living in this can last quite a while.
*[[The_Empire_(Warhammer_Fantasy)|The Empire]] The human Empire of Warhammer Fantasy is an amalgamation of the14th-15th century Holy Roman Empire and Rome proper.
*Codex Alera - Romans end up in a fantasy world and learn how to train spirit Pokémon. That may sound odd but that's actually the literal origin of how the books were written in fact, the author Jim Butcher, was challenged to write a book using two "lame" ideas, the idea in question were "lost Rome legion" and "Pokémon", then went one further by throwing in the Zerg.
*The Galactic Empire of [[Star Wars]] fame, which also evolved from a Republic which gave one of its leaders supreme power. More of a combination of Rome and Nazi Germany than anything.
*The [[Star League]] from [[BattleTech]] is a close sci-fi equivalent. Though, like the Empire in Warhammer Fantasy, the feudalism and myriad of fractious member-states could make it a closer analog to the Holy Roman Empire instead. Regardless, the Star League was considered a Golden Age compared to the [[Succession Wars|three century train wreck]] that came after it. That and none of the Great Houses or the Clans denied being tempted to reform it in their own image.
*[[Pathfinder]]'s Taldor is an empire that was once the center of human civilization but has been decaying and losing territory for centuries. Their founder, Taldarius, is unmistakably Roman looking. Like Rome, their breakaways (Andoran and Cheliax) are waxing while Taldor is waning.
*The Tevinter Imperium from [[Bioware|Dragon Age]] is one of the more unsuble examples out there, being basically a copy-pasted fantasy version of Late Byzantine Empire, only with magical racism and a few iconic characteristics of the Roman Empire added in for good mesure, like the widespread use of slavery (slaves, though they did exist, were quite rare in Byzantine lands), and decadent elites more interested in backstabbing each other than safeguarding the Empire.
*The Mal’Zeelan Empire from the Chronicles of an Imperial Legionary Officer book series is a continuation of the Roman Empire after the Legio IX Hispana got themselves transported to a different world (and after that went through another world gate where they established the empire itself) with dwarves, elves, and all your other generic fantasy races.
[[Category:History]]

== Running a Game in the Roman Empire ==
The Roman Empire can make an excellent campaign setting. That being said, there are a few things that should be kept in mind when doing so.

* The Lex Iulia - The Lex Iulia was a very important law, and one of the things that allowed to Roman Empire to last so long. This law forbade normal citizens from owning martial weapons and armor unless you were serving in the military. While it allowed for things like bows and hunting knives, things like swords, spears, or actual armor were something reserved for the military. This means that unless your PCs are all members of the military or can loot something from one, they will have very little equipment.
* There was also a law that generals and governors from the provinces entering Rome lose all their authority. If a military commander leads an army into the old boundaries of Rome, they're declared a public enemy (unless it's a declared Triumph, where a general and army parade into the city for awards and victory orgies). This came up in the civil wars a lot, and basically meant that sorting out the corruption by going rogue was a win or die affair (and occasionally win AND THEN die).
* Another law required that businesses which set up shop alongside roads built by the army (ie, basically all the paved ones) had to post the prices for the services they offered, serve all paying customers if they can, and to give priority to military couriers. Wherever the army built roads a sprawling network of stables and small inns would quickly spring up where couriers could rest and swap horses. This was the origin of the modern legal concept of "the commons".
* Criminals caught in the act usually faced death, even for thievery. Otherwise, discretion on crime and punishment was basically up to the whims of the magistrate, who was typically interested in maintaining public order. A spurious accusation against an upstanding citizen would likely be ignored (if not see the accuser kicked out of town), while a string of trivial grievances against a perceived malcontent might provoke some example-making (''"CRUCIFIXION?" "Yeah, first offense. Marvelous people the Romans."''). In some cities, the condemned were sold as slaves or gladiators to be expended at the whims of their new owners; paradoxically a successful gladiatorial career was effectively a get-out-of-jail card for murder by being really good at murder.

Roman Empire

2023-06-05T18:31:29Z

2607:FB91:11D5:4478:451D:E2A3:6402:C27E: /* The Collapse of the Imperium */

[[image:Roman Empire at height.png|thumb|300px|right|A map of the Roman Empire at it's height, civilizing the fuck out of unwashed barbarians.]]
The '''Roman Empire''' ('''[[Imperium of Man|IMPERIVM ROMANVM]]''', or as they called themselves '''SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS''', (The Senate and People of Rome, aka '''SPQR''') was a civilization based out of the Italian City of Rome. It was notable for unifying half of Europe and all of the Mediterranean under their rule and being one of the most advanced civilizations of Classical Antiquity. Even today, its system of Government, and its language of Latin, formed the basis of modern Law and Politics all throughout the World e.g. the United States of America. Its only rivals were the [[China|Chinese Han Dynasty]] and the Indian Satavahana Empire as well as its arch-nemesis the Parthian Empire (and its successor the Sassanid Empire), with the Roman-Persian wars spanning a period of ''six hundred years'', each subsequent war doing almost nothing to shift the [[Warhammer 40,000|perpetual status quo]], that is until the [[End Times]] inevitably came in the form of the emerging Muslim Caliphate.

==Roman History 101==

=== The Mythos ===
According to the legends, the ancestry of the Romans can be traced back to the once-powerful city state of Troy. Initially, Troy was winning, but thanks to a [[tactical genius]] named Odysseus, they were tricked into accepting a gift horse statue... which contained Greek warriors who [[Exterminatus|sacked and burned the city and all its inhabitants]]. Troy's salvation would only come when a Trojan aristocrat, Anchises, managed to impregnate nobody else but Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, herself. Aphrodite gave birth to whom the Romans consider their Saviour and Ancestor: the man, the myth, the legend, Prince Aeneas.

Aeneas and his surviving Trojans sailed from Asia Minor (Turkey) all throughout the Mediterranean, fighting monsters and disasters through the way, eventually landing in what is now Tunisia, ruled by a city called Carthage: Hera's favourite city, and dominion of the queen Dido. Hera hated the Trojans, doing in all her power to prevent them from accomplishing their destiny, and hence manipulated Dido and Aeneas to fall in love so that they could waste their time fucking each other for so many years. Zeus, realising what Hera had done, came down and bitched-slapped Aeneas to fulfilling his destiny of making a new Troy in the unknown lands of Italia. Aeneas came to his senses and left Carthage, but in doing so, Dido fell into a massive depression, killing herself in a pyre while cursing him and all his descendants.

One of Aeneas's descendants in Italia, Princess Rhea, would be impregnated by the God of War himself, Mars. Their children would be known as Romulus and Remus. After rebelling against the Etruscans, they formally founded the city of Rome in 753 BCE... unfortunately Romulus accidentally killed his brother over a dispute on where to place the Pomerium (i.e. city borders). Rome, as the city was known, was underpopulated, consisting mostly of refugees. In order to populate his new city, Romulus enticed Sabine women to come to their little city, and while everyone was drunk, Romulus would then signal to rape (meaning [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rape#Etymology_1 abduct]) every Sabine woman in sight, which naturally pissed off the Sabine men. Luckily however, Stockholm Syndrome prevented war from breaking out and Rome got to live on. What we actually know of that time period was that Rome was one of several minor city states in that area and was ruled by Kings. Somewhere down the line the Roman kingdom is no longer ruled by a Roman, but by an Etruscan, whose son named Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (yes, his name was [[awesome|Superbus]]) rapes (meaning [[rape]]s) a girl named Lucretia.

=== Early Wars ===
Everything above is... suspect to say the least. But this is the point where we do know things. Rome was a city built on seven defensible hills. They were surrounded by tribes that didn't like them, namely the Etruscans. They fought a bunch of wars with them, and had some internal disputes as well. In 509 BC, the Roman monarchy was thrown down and replaced by a Republic. Over the next two hundred years the Republic got better and better at fighting, eventually defeating all the tribes around them. What made them different was how they treated the losers. As individual Etruscan tribes and cities were knocked off, they were assimilated into the Republic, ultimately giving the men of those cities more liberty than they'd had previously had. So Rome didn't so much "conquer" as "expand", taking a system that basically worked pretty well (at least at this scale) and forcing it on their neighbors, who eventually grew to appreciate how well it worked. But it was working well because at this point the whole of the Republic was still confined to central Italy and could be crossed on foot in a week or two.

=== The Punic Wars ===

Meanwhile, Carthage, the city once ruled by Dido, was the dominant superpower of the Western Mediterranean, unmatched in wealth and influence, able to bend the Greek kings to their will. Eventually there began to be some friction between the two groups as Carthage moved into Sicily and Sardinia, compromising Roman trade in the Mediterranean. This led to three wars called the Punic Wars where the descendants of Aeneas and Dido clashed.

The first Punic War (264 BCE to 241 BCE) involved the Romans fighting the Carthaginians and its Greek allies over Sicily and Sardinia. The Romans begin to take to the sea for the first time. Rome suffered massive casualties at first, until they reverse-engineered a Carthaginian ship and started pushing back (with the incredible innovation of adding a ramp to the front)... while still taking massive causalities. See Rome was still pretty new to this whole "navy" thing and kept losing fleets to storms. But after twenty three years of fighting, Carthage threw in the towel, paying Rome over three thousand talents of silver to leave them alone (a talent of silver, 26 kilos, was the usual measure of enough silver to maintain and crew a ship for a month). [[Nazis|This crushing economic burden fostered resentment]] making a second war all but inevitable.

Eventually shit happened involving a Greek colony and war sparks again. A guy named Hannibal, whose father commanded the Carthaginian forces last time, swears revenge on the Romans. He invades Spain, [[Creed|brings elephants over the Alps]] and into Italy (at heavy cost), and generally starts wrecking shit, obliterating every Roman army he comes across. The only thing stopping him from destroying Rome is his army is too small to lay siege properly so the Roman regroup under Fabius "[[Troll|The Delayer]]" Maximus, who used hit-and-run tactics to keep the army away from Rome, intending to starve him out rather than risk a direct fight.. Meanwhile, Roman general Scipio Africanus leads his army through Carthagian Spanish colonies all the way through Africa to Carthage itself, Hannibal is called back to defend his home, and gets defeated. Carthage then becomes a dependent "ally" to the Republic, basically being sucked dry of its resources. Eventually around 149 BC Carthage was rebelling and pissing off the Romans again thus resulting in the Third Punic War. A few years later [[Exterminatus|Carthage itself was destroyed, the earth around the city was salted,]] [[Grimdark|and the surviving population was sold into slavery]]...or so the legend goes, as there isn't really any good evidence for the Romans having salted the land but there's evidence ''against'' it (Rome rebuilt and recolonized the area later, and salt was probably too valuable in those times for that to happen).

=== The Height of the Roman Republic===
While Rome's citizen-armies were quite successful militarily, there was a minor crisis brewing; many of these citizens found themselves homeless upon returning from campaign, their land having been sold off in their absence. To deal with this growing problem came the Marian reforms, in which the Roman state (through its generals) would instead raise armies of dedicated professional soldiers ala Sparta: the [[Space Marines|Legions]]. While this solved the immediate problem of soldiers having nowhere to go back to, this created a new one; generals, particularly the emergency military position of Dictator (who had complete control over the armies *and* power to rewrite the constitution), became quite powerful as a result; especially the change of upkeep. The old field-tending citizen soldiers' upkeep was land and they bought their own weapons; now the new, state-funded army needed cold cash, and more taxes during their service AND needed arable farmland for retirement. In short, the end of the Republic had become an inevitability, and Rome needed to constantly fight, enslave and plunder to keep the [[Warmachine]] going. Almost immediately, civil wars centered on factional power struggles started erupting, and the office of Dictator was revived when it had been unused since Hannibal's invasion.

By the end of the Republic, the real power was held by the so-called "Triumvirate" of Rome's three most powerful men: [[This Guy|Gaius Julius Caesar]], [[That Guy|Pompeius Magnus]], and [[That Guy|Marcus Licinius Crassus]] (Ever wonder where the words pompous and crass come from?). After Crassus died in Persia ([[Lulz|Hilariously, his captor poured molten gold down his throat after seeing his insane greed]]), tensions between Caesar and Pompey grew. With Carthage destroyed, there was nothing left that could stop Rome from taking over the Mediterranean world. When Rome wanted to conquer an area they gave the local rulers two choices: [[Tau Diplomacy|Surrender and pay taxes to Rome]], or resist and [[Blam|be purged]]. Either way, Rome got more territory, more wealth, and more slaves, and expanded more or less uncontested until they got to Gaul. These uncivilized brutes continued to resist until the Romans got sick of their bullshit and sent in Caesar with a few legions to deal with it. [[/tg/ gets shit done|He did just that]], and became very popular as a result.

Too popular for the liking of Pompey and the Senate, not to mention now ''hideously'' rich, possessing an enormous army complemented with Germanic (Ubian) cavalry and allied tribes. The Senate also hated how Caesar used the Triumvirate's political machinations to push reform bills instead of the "proper" channels of gaining approval from the Rome's patriarchs; even though they were too gridlocked to do anything about Rome's myriad problems, doing nothing was better than letting an upstart undermine their authority. They ordered him to disband his armies or be labeled an enemy of the state. Caesar's response was "you first"; thus [[Age of Apostasy|embroiling Rome in a civil war]], which he won by Zerg Rushing the city and scaring the fuck out of his rivals. He uses this popularity to become Dictator for life, essentially restoring Rome back into an absolute monarchy. As a result his close friend [[Horus|Brutus]] and his former allies in the Roman Senate stabbed him to death. [[Horus Heresy|This caused another Civil War]], now between Octavian, Caesar's nephew out for revenge, and the [[Traitor Legions|Senators]], led by Mark Antony and allied with Cleopatra. Antony and Cleopatra lost and committed suicide, while Octavian was proclaimed Augustus, the revered one, and establishing the [[Imperial Cult|Imperial cult]]; due to Caesar's supposed descent from the Gods (the gens Julii from were Caesar was born were directly descended from both Venus and Mars, respectively through Aeneas and Romulus), he was therefore venerated as the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|God-Emperor of Romankind,]] and marking the transition from the Roman Republic to the '''Imperium of Rome'''.

Just go and watch the 2-season TV Series Rome, which is ''quite historically accurate'' except Octavian's mom Atia, who was a religious prude IRL. (Fulvia, another character IRL would do the things she did)

For next two hundred years the Imperium ruled the Mediterranean and Europe as one of the ancient world's most influential superpowers, with many states either conquered or offered Protectorate Status under the Pax Romana (they'll allow you independence, as long as you pay taxes and venerate the God-Emperor in some way). It sees a [[Goge Vandire|few bad emperors like Nero]], [[Reasonable Marines|some good philosopher-kings like]] [[Roboute Guilliman|Marcus Aurelius]], and a lot of stability, wars of succession notwithstanding. Rome even manages to make it to the Indian Ocean and make contact with Han China, though this relationship is short-lived; everything goes to the shithouse from there, because...

===The Collapse of the Imperium===
Rome's fall can be attributed to any number of reasons, and any self-styled amateur historian would be more than happy to explain to you his opinions on the subject, but it's widely agreed that there were a number of contributing forces, including but not limited to:
* Even under the reign of Julius Caesar and the early emperors, cracks were starting to form. Population decline had already begun, especially in the cities where death rates routinely outpaced birth rates; [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/892aud/augustus_is_said_to_be_worried_about_the_low/ in part because the archaic Roman society rules, lead poisoning and urbanization], in part because all of the wealthy landowners had seized up all the good land in Italy and left behind a growing unskilled urban population that needed the state to take care of them. This was what partly fueled the Roman war machine, land and funds needed to support Roman's citizens, but of course they couldn't go conquering forever, so once Rome's borders stalled, and the state's costs increased, something was going to give eventually. And even today we all know that a big, dense urban landscape is not a healthy environment for raising large families economically.
* Increased logistical sluggishness of maintaining a sprawling empire, such that it had to split itself into two because it had become too large for a single Emperor to rule on his own. This solution solved that problem but created new ones down the line, as the Western and Eastern halves of the empire (which were ruled by separate emperors that rarely if ever got along) tended to go to war with each other over petty rivalries.
* The various Legions becoming more loyal to their generals than the Imperium; throughout Rome's history, the Empire had always struggled with the fact that the Roman legions trusted their allegiance more to their local generals than the will of the Senate (although by the time the empire started to collapse, the senate had virtually no power anyway) or the Emperor. Said generals frequently followed Caesar's example and got it into their heads to make themselves Emperors; some of them turned out to be pretty good at work, but far more tended to be better at leading armies than ruling over an empire.
* Said Legions being unable to adapt to new arts of warfare. Footslogging, fortification building, shortsword-and-javelin bearing turtles made of tower shields may have been enough for wild Gauls with no discipline. But when entire tribes of highly mobile horsemen and rapid-moving swarms of densely populated Eastern empires are fought against, it's an entirely different matter. Note that Byzantium, a.k.a Eastern Roman Empire survived for another millennium ''exactly'' because it adapted to its neighbours' arsenal, raised its own horse archers named Hippotoxotai after inviting a "barbarian" general or two on how do i shot web, heavy cavalry named Cataphracti (based on Persian Clibinarii), and lightened the legions into rapid deployment.
* Economic and famine crises as Roman farmers were out priced by foreign imports; Egypt and Carthage completely shifted the wheat production to the east, and fields in the Western empire were converted to fruit and vegetable orchards, which were quite perishable. It was not until hardy crops from the Americas (like potatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes) reached western and northern Europe several centuries later that said regions developed sufficient food stability to ensure steady population growth. By contrast, the Eastern half of the empire did just fine since they were the half with all the valuable land.
* A disastrous combination of heavy urbanization without understanding germ theory led to events like the [[Wikipedia:Antonine Plague|Antonine Plague]], which killed about 10% of the empire's population.
* [[Barbarian|Germanic barbarians]], who were fleeing from the Huns and usually rebelled after being constantly treated like shit by the Romans despite being responsible for fighting most of the Romans' wars on their behalf. In hindsight, forcing the migrant Goths to sell their children into slavery for just enough dog meat to avoid starvation was a real dick move.
* [[Game of Thrones]]-style court intrigue: Emperors killing emperors, perpetual backstabbing between dynasties, trading places like it's fucking musical chairs, made even worse by the fact that the Empire never had any kind of consistent succession rules at any point during its history. At least the [[Adeptus Custodes|Praetorians]] were ready to off an aspiring Emperor if they believed he was too insane to hold office...or if they felt they weren't getting paid enough, or if they thought they could get more benefits from someone else. On one occasion the Praetorians even sold the position of Emperor to the highest bidder; the "lucky" buyer didn't even last three months before getting overthrown and executed by a rival claimant. This had another side effect of letting the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) lose the recipe for a primitive flamethrower (royal family hid the instructions separately, only for everyone who knew where they were to die in one of the many coups) and get dog piled by Muslims.
* Lead poisoning from widespread use of lead-sealed pipe and pewter-ware; however, this is balanced against them having comparatively clean water for such large cities.
* Terminus, God of Borders asking Dream to speak to Caesar Augustus in a vision, to let the empire die so he may live on. The alternative was to let Rome conquer the world and the universe, effectively destroying Terminus. (Yes, we are comic nerds.)
* The rise of the Christian faith to political dominance, which resulted in A: a mass transference of manpower from the military to the priesthood (this was LONG before Christian monks and priests were required to practice celibacy & austerity, so the average young Roman man decided that it was way easier, safer and more comfortable to join the clergy than the army), forcing an ever-increasing reliance on mercenaries (always a bad thing, for an empire), and B: the ever-increasing drain of funds away from infrastructure maintenance to pay this increasingly bloated priesthood to do nothing but sit around, give sermons, and hold councils arguing over theological trivia like "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" (all of them) and "was Mary still a virgin after she gave birth to Jesus?" (yes-ish). Note that this contribution is highly [[skub]]by, and people argue '''bitterly''' over whether it's true or not (not helped by the fact that at least some of the historians who championed this theory had a clear bias against Christianity that led them to play fast and loose with facts, such as Edward Gibbon).

Heck, even the cooling solar cycle that made the Huns break out in two, one to Europe, another to India, is said to be the driving force in its collapse since before them came every other tribe that wanted to get the fuck away from [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|the teaser trailer of a certain swell guy's antics]]. The East splitting off didn't do the Western lands any favors either, especially when said wheat and exotic produce was utterly cut off. Eventually, the barbarians got all the way to Rome, sacked it (in 410, not in 476, though it had not been the actual capital for about 200 years by that point anyway), deposed the Emperor, and made one of their own the king of Italy. This is the part where most experts say the Western Roman Empire was well and truly dead.

===The Byzantine Empire===

Things were a bit better in the wealthier Eastern Roman Empire after the split. The Byzantine Empire, as it's now called though they still called themselves the Roman Empire, drifted from Rome in culture and aesthetic to the Greek trend, and more or less carried on much as it had before (including the palace intrigue, which if anything became even worse than ever before). On a couple occasions, they came close to recapturing the glory of the old Roman Empire, but this was foiled by the first known outbreak of the Black Death (the Plague of Justinian) the first time and the coming of the Seljuk Turk raiders (and the rise of the Sultanate of Rum) the second time. The Byzantines' call for aid in the aftermath of the latter decades of conflict ended up leading to the First Crusade.

Fast-forward to the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Crusaders lacked the money to sail to the Ayyubid Sultanate as they had initially planned and were deeply in debt to the Republic of Venice, whose doge (we swear, that was the title of their chief elected official) refused to let them disband or leave without paying their debts. The exiled Byzantine prince Alexios IV promised to pay the debt for the Crusaders in exchange for deposing the current emperor and placing him on the throne. While successful at gaining the throne, the new emperor quickly realized that he didn't actually have the funds to fulfill his promises. Anti-Crusader sentiment eventually led to his deposition and execution, which the Crusaders used as an excuse to sack the city for its wealth.

Following the sack, the Crusaders named one of their own as emperor of the new "Latin Empire" (torpedoing any hope of reconciliation between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy in the process), with the old Byzantine state being dispersed between three smaller rump states- the Empire of Trebizond, the Nicene Empire, and the Despotate of Epirus. You probably never heard of them, and for good reason- they didn't accomplish much of interest while they were around. The next few decades were dominated by fighting between the Latins, the rump states, the Sultanate of Rum, and the newly independent Bulgarian Empire.

1n 1261, the Nicene Empire was able to reclaim Constantinople and restore the Byzantine Empire, but the resources from the old Byzantine provinces had been bled dry from decades of war. The new emperors proved to be incompetent and alienated their people through heavy taxation and continued strife with the Latins, and after yet another civil war the Byzantines were forced to become vassals to the Osman/Ottoman sultan. However, their relationship with the Ottoman Turks was strained at best and when hostilities resumed the Byzantines were reduced to Constantinople alone. The city (the modern-day Istanbul) fell to Ottoman invasion by Sultan Mehmet II (seeking to prove he was a strong ruler so his relative wouldn't overthrow/execute him) in 1453, and the Byzantine Empire collapsed with it. Trebizond and Epirus limped on for slightly longer, but both had fallen by 1479, ending the last direct political rule of the Roman world.

=== Legacy ===
Even after its fall, the Roman Empire left a mark on western civilization in terms of writing, language, military organization, architecture, legal systems and philosophy. Many major European cities like London or Milan started out as Roman Colonies. In certain fields (in particular medicine, sanitation and plumbing) the Romans were more advanced than their European counterparts up until fairly recently. The end of the middle ages is generally known as "the Renaissance", the rebirth of western civilization which did involve some attempts by the upper class to recreate the better aspects of the Empire. For this reason various subsequent western cultures attempted to try to recreate some of Rome's Grandeur. The most obvious of these was the Unholy German Abomination called "Holy Roman Empire", which was neither Roman nor an empire (and was only "holy" because the current Pope said it was) but whatever. The Tsardom of Russia proclaimed itself as The Third Rome. Numerous other European monarchs as well as Ottoman Sultans declared themselves as being Emperors or Czars/Tsars/Kaisers/Kayzar-i-Rum ([[Gay|yup, Mehmed II named himself the real successor to Caesar after sacking the city of Constantinople for 3 days]]). Monarchs drew upon the idea of the authority and splendor of the Emperors, Republics drew on the roman concepts of rule of law, elected governments and civil rights.

Arguably its greatest legacy, in the sense of most significant cultural/historical impact, is Christianity and the relations between it and the Empire. Christianity formed and was developed in the Roman world, and was used to preserve various Roman traditions, particularly the military and the government. One of the largest sects of adherents in early Christian history was from the Army; the first non-Jewish Christian was a centurion, and Orthodox processions during the Liturgy are heavily derived from procession of the standards of the legions. On the other hand, Christianity basically divinized the concept of the Roman Empire and office of the Emperor to the point that the majority of Christian kingdoms and empires had a persistent obsession with being the true heir of Rome (which would basically mean that the realm would head the Imperium and thus have a legitimacy to lead the entirety of Christendom, as it is mentioned above).

== Roman Army ==

While the military of Rome went through centuries of evolution in its equipment and tactics, as a whole the armies of Rome can be divided into three parts, one of which is the skirmishers, the cavalry another, and finally the infantry.

Roman infantry went through many iterations but the typical Legionary would take the field wearing a metal helmet with metal and leather armor, a broad, curved shield, a gladius (a short, heavy stabbing sword), and one or more pilum (a hybrid javelin-spear effective against armor). Legionaries would typically fight in a tight formation behind their shields, throw or stab with their pilum and then finish with the sword. The intense discipline of the Legionaries' training allowed them to pull off several maneuvers, the most famous being the Testudo(Turtle in Latin), a tightly-packed shield wall that effectively protected against arrows.

Roman cavalry (equites) were, historically, useless, famous for a number of extremely high profile defeats. In equipment they were similar to Greek cavalry, using flat shields and spears with long swords and leather/maile armor. But for most of the history of Rome, cavalry were drawn from the richest echelons of society and were not known for being particularly disciplined or brave. While the other nations often fielded better cavalry, such as Hannibal's Numidians, Roman Cavalry was principally used to occupy the enemy cavalry and keep them away from the army; a strategy that sometimes shifted battles in the Romans' favor.

The skirmishers (velites) were mostly a Republic thing and largely vanished with the appearance of professional armies. In the Pre-Marian army, all new recruits began as Velites before joining the Infantry proper. Typically they were poor young people armed with javelins and slings, put out ahead of the line to soften up the enemy before contact with the infantry. Post-Marian, Skirmishers, as well as archers, were rarely ever used outside of the Auxilia, which consisted mainly of non-Roman support units.

Where Rome really outperformed its peers was in logistics, discipline and military engineering. Wherever the legions went, they build roads and networks of forts and courier stations. During Caesar's invasion of Gaul, his legion famously bridged the Rhine in 18 days (and again later in a week). After the defeat of Carthage, Rome burned the city for two weeks, tore down its walls and enslaved every survivor. In sieges, where other armies might try ladders, Rome would build a wall around the enemy's wall, and then a wall around THAT wall to protect them from forces trying to break the siege, and finally start slowly building a dirt ramp; [[Rogal Dorn|in the siege of Alesia this amounted to 20 km worth of wall building.]] '''Roman legions do not fuck around.''' They'll go to any length, and they don't leave things half-done.

== Fun Facts and Moronic Misconceptions about Rome ==

* The Romans are one of the first known cultures that practiced the art of the grafiti - you can find everything from penises, scatology, pederasty and funny jokes on the ancient walls. Some notable examples include "Epaphra doesn’t play football well", "Phileros is a eunuch!" and [[Gay|"Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!"]].
* More roman emperors trace their origins from the province of Illyricum (roughly the area of former Yugoslavia) than the Apennine peninsula.
* Roman religion was not a copy-paste of Greek religion and mythology but rather the misconception stems from the fact that Romans used to find equivalents of their gods in other religions like many other cultures did and do. In the city of Rome itself, you could find shrines to almost every deity from the known world, which would be quite welcome if they did not interfere with public order. Romans worshipped gods, emperors, heroes, spirits, ancestors, places, concepts like victoria or pax and even trees.
* Rome originally developed from a native italic group of Latines (think Sabinians, Umbrians and Etruscans) and only later came under the dominion of the Etruscan League and while the former gave them much in terms of architecture and deities, the influence of the Etruscans on the roman development was found recently to be a bit overstated.
* Romans were aware of Han China though only dimly as some vast empire in the east, the Chinese meanwhile called the Roman Empire "Da Qin" or "Great Chin". There was trade between the two but the empires of Persia and Kushan that were the proxies between them were not too keen to lose their middleman status and thus kept them separate in addition to the geographical distances being too vast for anything than a theoretical ambassadorial mission at best.
* While Christianity did give rise to some factors that weakened the empire in the short-term the notion that it turned Romans into ascetic hippies or destroyed the Roman Empire is asinine if for nothing else that for the fact that some of the "barbarians" (who were often adherents of Arianism) demolishing Rome were at that point Christians as well, sparing those Romans who took sanctuary in the churches. There’s also just as much evidence that Christianity helped the Empire, and later Medieval Europe, hold together in the face of various crises like the Antonine plague. And without the church establishing new centers of knowledge in the form of the early Universities and monasteries, what little knowledge Europe held on to would be even less than what had been preserved otherwise, especially since the Library of Alexandria had burned down centuries prior.
* Romans did have knowledge of making steel but it was produced in very limited quantities, most everyday metal stuff was either iron, bronze or copper with some other metals like tin or lead also having situational use. In of itself this was not unusual up until the 19th century, as before the invention of the blast furnace, steel production was extremely labor intensive and required specialist knowledge to remove impurities and get the iron hot enough.

== Roman Empire Analogs in Fantasy ==
To save time, let's just say the Roman Empire is one of the most heavily copied Cultures in fiction, what with it being precisely what any given European would think of upon hearing the words ancient empire" (not to mention much of it more or less remaining in use today, like its calendar, alphabet, military structure...it's not for nothing the Founding Fathers of the U.S.A. decided the Senate would be a part of the federal government). A certainly-incomplete list of fantastical models from them follows:

*[[Imperium of Man]] - While the Imperium also draws inspirations from other political systems and cultures, like Medieval Europe and the British Empire, its aesthetics and government are strongly based around Roman designs.
**[[Ultramar]] - Ultramar, [[Roboute Guilliman]]'s home system, is heavily based around a Greek-Roman hybrid empire. With Guilliman's return he may or may not be setting himself up as a Roman style dictator: one who holds absolute power so that he can deal with a crisis. Given the [[Grimdark|fun times]] he's living in this can last quite a while.
*[[The_Empire_(Warhammer_Fantasy)|The Empire]] The human Empire of Warhammer Fantasy is an amalgamation of the14th-15th century Holy Roman Empire and Rome proper.
*Codex Alera - Romans end up in a fantasy world and learn how to train spirit Pokémon. That may sound odd but that's actually the literal origin of how the books were written in fact, the author Jim Butcher, was challenged to write a book using two "lame" ideas, the idea in question were "lost Rome legion" and "Pokémon", then went one further by throwing in the Zerg.
*The Galactic Empire of [[Star Wars]] fame, which also evolved from a Republic which gave one of its leaders supreme power. More of a combination of Rome and Nazi Germany than anything.
*The [[Star League]] from [[BattleTech]] is a close sci-fi equivalent. Though, like the Empire in Warhammer Fantasy, the feudalism and myriad of fractious member-states could make it a closer analog to the Holy Roman Empire instead. Regardless, the Star League was considered a Golden Age compared to the [[Succession Wars|three century train wreck]] that came after it. That and none of the Great Houses or the Clans denied being tempted to reform it in their own image.
*[[Pathfinder]]'s Taldor is an empire that was once the center of human civilization but has been decaying and losing territory for centuries. Their founder, Taldarius, is unmistakably Roman looking. Like Rome, their breakaways (Andoran and Cheliax) are waxing while Taldor is waning.
*The Tevinter Imperium from [[Bioware|Dragon Age]] is one of the more unsuble examples out there, being basically a copy-pasted fantasy version of Late Byzantine Empire, only with magical racism and a few iconic characteristics of the Roman Empire added in for good mesure, like the widespread use of slavery (slaves, though they did exist, were quite rare in Byzantine lands), and decadent elites more interested in backstabbing each other than safeguarding the Empire.
*The Mal’Zeelan Empire from the Chronicles of an Imperial Legionary Officer book series is a continuation of the Roman Empire after the Legio IX Hispana got themselves transported to a different world (and after that went through another world gate where they established the empire itself) with dwarves, elves, and all your other generic fantasy races.
[[Category:History]]

== Running a Game in the Roman Empire ==
The Roman Empire can make an excellent campaign setting. That being said, there are a few things that should be kept in mind when doing so.

* The Lex Iulia - The Lex Iulia was a very important law, and one of the things that allowed to Roman Empire to last so long. This law forbade normal citizens from owning martial weapons and armor unless you were serving in the military. While it allowed for things like bows and hunting knives, things like swords, spears, or actual armor were something reserved for the military. This means that unless your PCs are all members of the military or can loot something from one, they will have very little equipment.
* There was also a law that generals and governors from the provinces entering Rome lose all their authority. If a military commander leads an army into the old boundaries of Rome, they're declared a public enemy (unless it's a declared Triumph, where a general and army parade into the city for awards and victory orgies). This came up in the civil wars a lot, and basically meant that sorting out the corruption by going rogue was a win or die affair (and occasionally win AND THEN die).
* Another law required that businesses which set up shop alongside roads built by the army (ie, basically all the paved ones) had to post the prices for the services they offered, serve all paying customers if they can, and to give priority to military couriers. Wherever the army built roads a sprawling network of stables and small inns would quickly spring up where couriers could rest and swap horses. This was the origin of the modern legal concept of "the commons".
* Criminals caught in the act usually faced death, even for thievery. Otherwise, discretion on crime and punishment was basically up to the whims of the magistrate, who was typically interested in maintaining public order. A spurious accusation against an upstanding citizen would likely be ignored (if not see the accuser kicked out of town), while a string of trivial grievances against a perceived malcontent might provoke some example-making (''"CRUCIFIXION?" "Yeah, first offense. Marvelous people the Romans."''). In some cities, the condemned were sold as slaves or gladiators to be expended at the whims of their new owners; paradoxically a successful gladiatorial career was effectively a get-out-of-jail card for murder by being really good at murder.

Votann

2023-06-05T16:15:14Z

2607:FB91:11D5:4478:451D:E2A3:6402:C27E:

[[File:Votann.jpg|thumb|400px|[[Meme|"Forty-Two"]].]]

{{Topquote|Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a [Votann]. We are close to gods, and on the far side. ‘We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, too. Never forget I have had the chance to compare and contrast the ways of dying.|An ancient Votann speaking with a (soon to be dead) tech-priest}}

{{Topquote|Behold the One Commandment: God Needs <s>booze</s> RAM.|An ancestor after speaking with the Votann for the first time.}}

{{Topquote|The gun is good, the penis is evil.|Votann commandment.}}

{{Topquote|Dad, I'm in space. I am proud of you, Son. Dad, are you space? Yes, now we are a family again.| Core obsessed with space talking to itself.}}
The Votann (also known as [[Spirit stone|Ancestor]] [[Belisarius Cawl|Cores]]) are massive AI constructs that are venerated like [[Gestalt|ancestors]] by [[Leagues of Votann|Leagues that share their name]]. Named in honor of Votann, chief of the First Ancestors, these are closely guarded secrets, for [[Adeptus Mechanicus|reasons]] that should be obvious, and while the word itself might be known to outsiders, the precise meaning is know only to the Kin. They communicate with the Kin via a tangle of arcane technology called a "Fane" and through the special class of Kin priest-psykers called the [[Grimnyr]]. This unique variant of Kin cloneskein has been specifically engineered by their fellow Kin both to have technopathic powers to access the Votann's empyrically stored knowledge and power from anywhere, and to minimize the usual problems that come with psykers (namely the whole exploding heads and surprise demonic possession nonsense).

Each Votann is a massive repository of knowledge. This knowledge concerns topics all the way from [[Necrons|Science and Engineering]], to [[Just as planned|Military theory]] and [[Creed|Strategy]], and even [[Orks|Philosophy]] and [[Hobbits|Genealogy]]. They're even some [[Standard Template Construct|STC]] fragments in there, big 'uns too, from the sound of it. Basically, if you have a question, then these things can probably answer it. All these constructs are absolutely priceless relics, essential to their League, and the members of each League are more than willing to lay down their lives to protect their League's Votann, and probably another League's too, if push comes to shove.

Unfortunately, even these majestic devices were not designed to last forever, and over time, more and more of their memory has been used up. This has caused many Votann to slow, and develop idiosyncrasies, even what you might call [[Machine Spirit|personalities]], and response times have become painfully long, sometimes taking decades or even centuries for them to answer complex questions. Their minds may have a bandwidth and memory capacity greater than sneaker-net, but that bandwidth comes at the expense of latency being as long as three hundred billion millisecond pings (to all the IT guys in the audience, just ignore how tortured this analogy is).

Lore dumps from ''Loremasters: Leagues of Votann Pt. 1'' reveal that the reason why the Kin seemingly can't just ask how to repair the Votann is that it's simply beyond the Kin's abilities to achieve such a feat. The Votann have been stated to be borderline supernatural, and their massive amounts of data and intellect are so large, that it makes them shine brightly in the Warp and also made them act like mini-[[Astronomican]]s. Anything the Kin make without the Ancestors' assistance is always of lower quality, and modifications to the Votann are at the Votann's specific request. It seems as though the only thing that can fix a Votann is something that is at a similar or greater power level to it.

The Votann are also central in the recycling of deceased Kin. Both iron and clone have their minds uploaded, and their bodies recycled for new kin. With the Votann slowly breaking down, you can guess that this does not bode well for the Kin (not that the Kin can't make more of their own kind without the Votanns' help but again, inferior quality). Additionally, the categorization, archiving, and duplication of every dead Kin’s brain scans, schematics, and genome means that the longer the Ancestor Cores take in their children’s digital signatures, over millennia, the less bandwidth and processing capacity is left, exacerbated by the aforementioned decay. The Votann of the Emberg Agnir Bloc even went mad after absorbing all their dead kin's biomass following their destruction by the Tyranids, becoming the aptly-named Mad Core.

The grimnyr interface in Arcane technological structures called Fanes. A space of timeless devices and quiet contemplation, at the heart of which lies a complex tangle of machinery that is part altar, part interface. It is said that these machines were simply nodes through which the wisdom of the Votann flashes with the speed of thought from one voidcraft to another. They still fulfill this practical purpose. Culturally though, Fanes have taken on a greater spiritual significance to the Kin, so that now they are viewed as places where one stands in full regard of the Ancestors, and where the presence of the Votann lies heavy and Sombre. Indeed, through arcane technological processes that even the Kin do not understand, there have been instances recorded of Fanes miraculously developing artificial intellect in their own right, and joining the ranks of the Votann themselves. These occurrences of miraculous self awareness are cause for great honour and celebration amongst the Kin in whose Hold they occur. By comparison though, more than one Votann has degenerated in recent centuries until they have become little more than Fanes themselves. To witness such a decline is a terrible tragedy for the Kin.

==Trivia==
The name Votann is pretty obviously derived from Wotan, the German name for the god most famously known as [[Odin]] (remember that Germans pronounce W's as V's). Presumably this is a reference to his role as a god of runes and wisdom.

{{Template:Squats}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Dwarves]]
[[Category:Squats]]

Men of Stone

2023-06-05T16:14:03Z

2607:FB91:11D5:4478:451D:E2A3:6402:C27E: /* Leagues of Votann */

{{Topquote|Because [[Human|Man]] could not bear the cold of the ocean deeps, he fashioned Men of Stone to go in his place|Kron, Man of Stone. M41}}

The Men of Stone were a race of humanity created during the earliest stages of their first galactic expansion. Unlike the [[Men of Gold]], the Men of Stone were weaker in body, lacked a philosophical disposition, but were far better artificers and engineers (aka they were the NEEEERRRDDDDDSSSSS of humanity). Being so (relatively) early in humanity's history, little is known of these beings. They were basically the 1.0 version of the [[Mechanicus]] of [[Mars]].

==The Journal of Keeper Cripias==
The Journal of Keeper Cripias is the first mention of the Men of Stone:

"...In time, the Second Men of the Stone Race appear, and in their wake come many miracles and marvels of technology that strengthen the Stone Men’s power, but are also harnessed by those of the Golden Race. Although physically inferior to the Golden Race, and not of philosophical temperament and disposition, the Stone Men have in them the conjurations of great artifices and mechanisms. In time, the Golden Race looks to the stars to expand their dominion. The Stone Race builds great machines of power that send both Men of Stone and Men of Gold into the Ether. However, once the burgeoning race of Mankind has taken its first steps into the greater cosmos, the Golden Race dwindles in influence through their dependence on the artifices of the Stone Race. This the Golden Age comes to an end and the Stone Men prevail.

Our calculations, from the most distant and archaic records, and through constellar comparison, have dated the end of the Golden Age at 20.000 years previous to our present time.

For the next 5.000 years, the Stone Race lives through the Dark Age of Technology. Little can be determined from the Dark Age of Technology, for the majority of existing records concerning that period are gathered in the Librarius Omnis of Mars, and none outside the highest ranks of the Adeptus Mechanicus can gain access past its most determined Guardians (Keeper Malrubius tried once, but to no avail. We have surmised that during the Dark Age of Technology, the Men of Stone created the Iron Men to help them in the building of their Great Empire. At first, the Iron Men are as servants, willing to do the bidding of their masters with no thoughts.

However, the Iron Men, as all creatures do, evolve and grow until they are the equal of the Stone Race and beside each other they set about conquering the galaxy. The Dark Age of Technology is an era of machines and artificial devices, used by the Stone Men, and later the Iron Men, in their endeavours. Many of the technical marvels that the Priesthood of Mars sustain can be traced to their origins in the Dark Age of Technology, and it is at the end of this period that the great organisation now known as the Adeptus Mechanicus was founded. During the Dark Age of Technology, the austere ancestors of the Imperium’s Navis Nobilite are born, and through their unique prowess, mankind forges through the stars. Weapons of great destruction cow the aggression of alien enemies, pushing back the frontiers of Mankind’s dominions.

The end of the Dark Age of Technology is the most obscure region in mankind’s evolutionary tale. For whatever reasons and differences in ideology, the Stone Men and the Iron Men fell to warring with each other. The Iron Men are possessed of no Soul, an anathema to any true Man. The Stone Men in their final acts of self-preservation, annihilated the Iron Men who have turned from ally to foe..."

==Kron's story==
In the short story "Ancient Histories", a shipman working aboard the [[Imperial Navy]] Cruiser, ''Retribution'', tells a story to a greenhorn recently press-ganged aboard the ship. In it, he focuses a bit more and sheds some more light on the Men of Stone.

"'But in time food and water and air ran short on Man's island and he looked to the far islands again. Because he could not bear the cold of the ocean deeps, he fashioned Men of Stone to go in his place, and the Stone Men fashioned Men of Steel to become their hands and eyes. And the Stone Men went forth with their servants and swam in the deep oceans. They found many strange things on the far islands, but none as strange or as wicked as the things that swam in the depths between them; ancient, hungry things older than Man himself. 'But these beasts of the deep hungered for the true life of Man, not the half-life of Stone, so the Stone Men swam unmolested. At first all was well and the Men of Stone planted Man's Seed on many islands, and in time Man learned to travel the oceans himself, hiding in Stone ships to keep out the cold and the hunger of the beasts. All was well and Men spread to many islands far across the ocean, such that some even forgot how they came to be there and that they ever came from just one island at all.’ Kron's tale wound on, telling of how the stone men became estranged from humanity by their journeys through the void. This led to a time of strife when the Men of Steel turned against their stone masters and mankind was riven asunder by wars. A thousand worlds were scoured by the ancient, terrible weapons of those days before the Men of Stone were overthrown, and a million more burned as flesh fought against steel."

==What exactly are the Men of Stone?==
The basics of what is told of the Men of Stone is that they were an artificially created race of humanity, purpose built to lead humanity's first colonization of other worlds. Given Kron's description, they were somehow unappealing to the daemons of the Warp, so could more safely travel through it.

If characters like Kron are anything to go by, the Men of Stone are a cross between organic human and A.I., sort of like a full A.I. servitor. The bionics house the A.I., which represses the consciousness of the organic body its attached to, while taking full control of his body. This repression of the human's consciousness would also prevent the person from experience emotions or thoughts, likely accounting for why warp entities had little interest in them. The "half life" of the Men of Stone likely referring to how the body of a Man of Stone has a soul, but the soul was made completely dormant and suppressed by the A.I. of the bionics.

It was in all likelihood the Men of Stone who created most of the Dark Age of Technology tech. Such as: the first Warp capable void-ships, warp-drives, and the [[Standard Template Construct|STC]] systems. And, of course, they created the [[Men of Iron]].

Essentially, the Men of Stone are like prototype, mobile STC, sapient, A.I. servitors. Think the [https://supcom.fandom.com/wiki/Symbiont symbionts] from Supreme Commander series.

==Likely Men of Stone==
===Kron===
During the events of the short story "Ancient Histories", the character named "Kron" is made apparent to be one of these "Men of Stone". Kron is an old shipman who has had half his skull replaced with cybernetics, including a glowing red eye (that is made out to give '''HEAVY''' [[HAL 9000]] vibes). While fighting off a Mechanicus ambush aboard his ship, he is knocked out cold, and his bionics are knocked off line. When he comes too, he is obviously not the same person shown before. Completely confused about his surroundings, his voice completely changed, he starts to panic and begs his shipmate Nathan to get the cybernetics off of him, while trying to pull them off. Nathan stops him, confused as all bloody hell as to what is going on. Kron's bionics then come back online and he is back to acting like nothing was wrong.

Later, while talking with Nathan, he gives the history of the ship, saying how it got stuck in a space hulk for 2,000 years, before being recovered by the Imperium and returned to service for abother 1,800 years. He ''ALMOST'' lets it slip that he had been with the ship that whole time, before managing to shut himself up. Later still, he managed survive getting hit square in the chest by a [[Chaos Space Marine]]'s bolt pistol round, blowing his chest wide open. Not only did he survive, but he killed the bastard by firing a blast of lightning, like a [[Electro Priest]] (thought when Nathan calls him one, he outright denies that he is anything of the sort. Its likely that Kron salvaged the Electro-Priest's electoos and installed them into himself). He then rescued Nathan by giving him his void-suit's helmet (as the chamber had become depressurized), which should have seen him suffocate. Though when Nathan wakes up, he finds Kron had patch up his wounded arm (which got shredded by a chainsword) and given him a bionic eye to replace his organic one that had been popped when the Chaos Marine pistol-whipped the fuck outta him. The new eye had PERFECT vision, something that is rarely-to-never seen in 40k augmetics, and Kron had apparently made it for him, from scrap laying around, in only a matter of 5 hours.

===Olamic Quietude===
The Olamic Quietude were a civilization of humans who are implanted with bionics from birth which linked them together to a social network (so like Facebook, but you can't log off or). They would cyberize themselves to the point of leaving very little organic matter remaining. They also considered the Imperium as a bunch of xeno-tainted mutants, while they themselves were the true humans. If they were Men of Stone, then they wouldn't be wrong or lying.

===[[House Van Saar]]===
This noble house from Necromunda has its origins in the survivors of a Dark Age colony ship that was lost in the warp and crashed upon Necromunda in M35. The ship was called the Van Saar (where the house gets its name). Even in modern 40k, House Van Saar has retained its relatively fresh knowledge of technology. They also have an STC but it’s damaged and leaking radiation that makes Van Saar gangsters have very short lifespans; even more so if they remove their suits outside their living quarters.

===[[Leagues of Votann]]===
With the recent reveal that the Squats originated from generation ships of humans with AI cores that emerged from being genetically engineered as a race of modified clones (that are altered every generation to the point of being specialized in void adaptivity, have their bodies and minds reprocessed by Votann upon death, and altered warp signature to hide from warp predation), it seems that space dorfs might fit the Stone archetype down to the capital S. Though whether the Men of Stone are the Squats themselves or the Votann Ancestor Cores (sometimes called the Stonemind or depicted as a wheel of stone faces) is another question. The fact they also have Men of Iron (called Iron Kin) integrated into their civilization is also a massive eyebrow raiser. [[Men of Gold|Additionally, some Kin myths mention a “group of gleaming golden figures” in relation to Votann (sometimes referred to as the Gilded One) who is the namesake of the Votann ancestor cores and also first among equals of the First Ancestors.]]

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Imperial]]
[[Category:Squats]]
[[Category:Under Development]]

Men of Gold

2023-06-05T16:09:44Z

2607:FB91:11D5:4478:451D:E2A3:6402:C27E:

{{Wh40k-stub}}
'''Men of Gold''' are a mysterious sect of Humanity that appeared during the [[Age of Terra]]. They were physically and emotionally superior than ordinary men, and used them to learn and spread across the [[Terra|Old Earth]], turning the anarchy of Nature into the order of Civilisation. To help them colonize Galaxy, Men of Gold created [[Men of Stone]], which surpassed their masters in population in M21. With the start of [[Dark Age of Technology]], most of them disappeared.

Characteristic-wise, they MIGHT (emphasis here) be similar to the [[Perpetual]]s due to being described as guiding mankind from the Stone Age to forming civilization like the Emperor, Erda, and Ollanius. On the other hand, it doesn’t explain why they faded into the limelight unless the civil wars alluded to by Erda and Ollanius’ comments during the Siege of Terra were more devastating to their numbers than previously thought.

==Connection with the Leagues of Votann==

Some [[Leagues of Votann|Kin]] myths mention a “group of gleaming golden figures” in relation to the first [[Votann]] (sometimes referred to as the Gilded One, the stonemind, and the primal ancestors). Some myths speak of them as being the wisest and eldest of the First Ancestors, and are also depicted as shadowy presences that are ill-defined and shown in many different forms (similar to the Emperor and Erda using shapeshifting powers or illusions), both humanoid and otherwise, where they are depicted at all. They have also been said in some myths to look like a wheel of graven stone faces. It said in Kin myths that the Votann (an alternate name for the First Ancestors’s leader and namesake of the Ancestor Cores) raised the Kin up, and sent them sailing into the dark void – before oceans of fire and flesh rose to swallow them.

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Squats]]