- The Marches
- "If you want to get a good, nostalgic look at the primal Fialta culture of days gone by, look no further than the Thalranese Marches. The March Lords are the same proud, brawling, honorable warriors that have defined the Fialta since the earliest days. Their ferocious hatred of the regimented hegemony of the Fialta Imperium does not make them any safer for the average cosmic traveller to approach, however.
Always make sure a Fialta owes you a favor before you owe them any - they make terrible foes, yet fast friends. In time, you will come to appreciate their fierce loyalty and bravery."
- "If you want to get a good, nostalgic look at the primal Fialta culture of days gone by, look no further than the Thalranese Marches. The March Lords are the same proud, brawling, honorable warriors that have defined the Fialta since the earliest days. Their ferocious hatred of the regimented hegemony of the Fialta Imperium does not make them any safer for the average cosmic traveller to approach, however.
The Thalranese Marches are a collection of highly militarized states on the frontier of the Fialta States.
History[]
The Thalranese Marches were formed in response to an unusually successful series of orcish conquests against the Fialta states in the early 3rd century A.U.: a collection of Fialta lords agreed to a strong mutual defense pact which enabled them to stall the orcish advance (after a grueling war of attrition, the orcs reached a fragile armistice with the Fialta and settled into what would become the Orcish Directorate). Over the subsequent century, this pact evolved into an economic cooperative and, ultimately a steering council overseeing the Marches’ semiautonomous membership (very much a model for the eventual Fialta Confederacy).
Fialta Confederacy[]
- Main article: Fialta Confederacy
The Thalranese Marches were the primary drivers of the Fialta Confederacy following the First Coalition War. Within the Confederacy, the Marches are the principal counterweight to Fialta Imperial influence within the Confederacy. As part of this position, the Marches act also as something of a standard-bearer for older Fialta traditions.
Religion[]
Though tolerant of all faiths of the Lords of the Pentacle, the Marcher Lords overwhelmingly give their worship to Thalran, and a strong preference for the Martial Lord (as he is known) runs throughout the upper echelons of Marcher society. Consequently, the clergy are relevant but far from exercising the enormous power they enjoy in other parts of the Fialta Confederacy
Society[]
The Marches are dominated by two classes of grandees, the lords and the grand captains. Lords are hereditary landowners, usually enriched by council-approved trade or tax concessions, while grand-captains are the elected leaders of large standing military companies embedded in the complex web of mutual support pacts that form the military command structure of the Marches. Both grand captains and lords are defined most of all by their patronage relationships with the Thalranese soldiery, which makes up the dominant political class of the Marches. Above individual lords and grand captains are the castellans, a mutually self-recognizing group of powers magnates responsible for administering the defense of critical worlds: these are the political descendants of the founding lords of the Marches, and prior to the creation of the title of Marcher Prince, the Council of Castellans formed the closest approximation of an executive that the Marches enjoyed.