Aquilonia

The Warlord

The Warlord

Mongoose
The rulebook states that Aquilonia is similar to a medieval France. Is this a correct protrayal? I envision medieval France with serfs, knights in shinning armour, castles, jousting tourneys, etc. Yet, there are no pictures in Conan that represent this type of culture. Everything seems to lean more toward 'ancient' eras. Just curious, as to how other envision Aquilonia, heck, even full plate armour.
 
BullBear said:
The rulebook states that Aquilonia is similar to a medieval France. Is this a correct protrayal? I envision medieval France with serfs, knights in shinning armour, castles, jousting tourneys, etc. Yet, there are no pictures in Conan that represent this type of culture. Everything seems to lean more toward 'ancient' eras. Just curious, as to how other envision Aquilonia, heck, even full plate armour.
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Hard to tell; the Road of Kings sourcebook provides more info. For my part, I always envision the Hyborian Age as a projection of antiquity in a fantasy (sword & sorcery) setting. Cavalry always played a major part in all battle since men can ride and organize military units.
I don't know if Howard had the idea of jousting tourneys but I generally agree with the rest (serfs, knights, castles).
To have a better opinion by yourself, you can read following Conan stories which settle in Aquilonia (or at least give info about the kindgom): beyond black river, the black stranger, the scarlet citadel, wolves beyond the border and hour of the dragon (the must). With this in mind, you'll be able to describe a vivid Aquilonia.
 
I'd say Aquilonia would be much less heavily settled/civilised, less populated, & less rigidly feudal than medieval France; more like France meets the Wild West. :) Also I think you could use a lot of Byzantine Empire stuff for Aquilonia, not least the names.
 
S'mon said:
I'd say Aquilonia would be much less heavily settled/civilised, less populated, & less rigidly feudal than medieval France; more like France meets the Wild West. :) Also I think you could use a lot of Byzantine Empire stuff for Aquilonia, not least the names.
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Exactly. Until the Sun king, the French kings always were in a tricky position because they usually weren't as rich as their barons and had to be well versed in intrigues to gain any true allies. Their best ally was the Church who told the position of the king was a divine will (that's why all kings said "We" instead of "I" for instance) so all barons had to submit if they didn't want to be excommunicated. In compensation, the church in general (and the French Church in particular) became a major power to contend with and progressively defined the politics.
A good example is the 100 years war between England and France. The former took of lot of ground in France because the king couldn't find anyone willing to defend his kingdom. Many barons stayed neutral or even allied with the English crown. Joan of Arc was captured by French who sold her to the English. The judges during her trials were French (who submitted to English pressure).

All this to say that the king of Aquilonia has more power. But of course he still has to find some allies if he doesn't want to be overthrown (that's exactly what Conan did).
 
The geography of the Hyborian Age is very similar to the geography of Xena's Earth. It's a weird mixture of historical anachronisms mushed together into a world that is similar to, and resembles, but is not identical to, historical Earth.

In Xena's Earth, you had Julius Ceasar, King Arthur, Odysseus, Jason and the Argonauts, the Battle of Troy, the Great Wall of China, and an allusion to the Birth of Christ all co-existing within 10 years of each other.
 
REH speaks of some clothing articles (jupon, etc.) and armor bits that suggest a "High-Middle Ages" (circa 1450 AD) feel to Aquilonia. Aside from the Latin-derived personal and place names - and the lack of Christianity, there is very little to interrupt this impression.
 
Take also into consideration that almost each Aquilonian province provides the army with speciality troops: archers are Bossonians, the best cavalry comes from Pointain and the bulk of the infantery consists of Gundermen.
IIRC England had the best bowmen in the middle-age, while the French Cavalry had also a fearsome reputation.
So you wouldn't be wrong if you represent Aquilonia as a Western European country of the middle age.
 
In France their were also Longbowmen, in fact it was that the nobility forced the King to dismantle them during the HYW because they feared the underminig of their influence nad power.
 
Jousting tourneys don't seem too unlikely , Amalric and Pallantides fight with lances at the end of Hour of the Dragon , so it seems logical that formalised tourneys would have been held at some point .
 
Sword-dancer said:
In France their were also Longbowmen, in fact it was that the nobility forced the King to dismantle them during the HYW because they feared the underminig of their influence nad power.
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It's strange I always thought that the British had a serious reputation in this field of long bows. I remember a battle (but forgot it's name) where English Bowmen won the day just by cutting down the French Cavalery (and killing many nobles).
 
Agincourt is probably the most well known, although there are others.

As Sword-Dancer implied, England was the only nation that retained longbowmen. The reason for this is that skill with the longbow required extensive training from a relatively early age, which in turn meant that peasants needed to be armed in order to practice. And most nations feared an armed peasantry.
 
The main reason , the English Longbowmen were so successful, was that they had a good disipline and military Training.
It`t likely possible that a good part, weren`t aremed with Longbows but with bills and that longbowmen meant only Light infanterist as men at arms Serjeant dàrms meant heavy Soldier(Cav or inf).
The other point is, that against plate and so on the longbowwasn`t an effective weapon.
Their had other countries their trained "yeomanry" like the citie militia of the flames.
 
But at Agincourt, it was the longbow men who did most of the damage to the french knights. It would seem longbows were effective against plate
 
At Agincourt the french attacked through wet ground, their should hve gon kneedeep in the mud, ths was at 1415, and at Crecy the french knights attacked the english 16 times.
The first "perfection" of the plte was about 1450, the same time the longbow went out of use in central europe.
 
Just to say that Howard described in his "Hour of the Dragon" a very medieval-like battle where the cavalry is the heavy weapon that can shatter anything (unless there is a dark sorcerer on the adversary side who can cast some nasty spell like "river swelling" and "earthquake").
 
Anonymous said:
Just to say that Howard described in his "Hour of the Dragon" a very medieval-like battle where the cavalry is the heavy weapon that can shatter anything (unless there is a dark sorcerer on the adversary side who can cast some nasty spell like "river swelling" and "earthquake").
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I was the guest. My automatic log in was disactivated.
 
Speaking of Agincourt, I saw a documentry on The History Channel about this battle, and we all know the television never lies...

The longbowmen we actually fairly ineffective against the armor of the French knights. The plate was strong enough to prevent the arrows from penetrating.

The knights were moving downhill with infantry moving quickly behind and if I'm not mistaken, through a bit of a bottleneck. It had rained and the knights were sinking in the mud, and as they fell, the suction was so great that they couldn't even stand up... Easy pickings.

Like I said, I saw this on TV, I do not consider myself an expert in the field. Make of it what you will.

Sorry for going off topic.

SS
 
sanseveria said:
Speaking of Agincourt, I saw a documentry on The History Channel about this battle, and we all know the television never lies...

The longbowmen we actually fairly ineffective against the armor of the French knights. The plate was strong enough to prevent the arrows from penetrating.

The knights were moving downhill with infantry moving quickly behind and if I'm not mistaken, through a bit of a bottleneck. It had rained and the knights were sinking in the mud, and as they fell, the suction was so great that they couldn't even stand up... Easy pickings.

Like I said, I saw this on TV, I do not consider myself an expert in the field. Make of it what you will.

Sorry for going off topic.

SS
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It's not off topic, as Howard gives great praise of the Bossonian archers that are probably using long bows.

Anyway here is an excerpt of an Encyclopedia (Universalis) : "The battle fields of Hasting (1066), Crécy (1346) , Agincourt (1415) saw the reign of archery. The long bow enabled a shooting rate of 10-12 arrows per minute to a range of over 200 yards. The Welsh were the most reputed in that field.

In Agincourt, The French had an oveerwhelming superiority in number (50.000 vs. 15.000). The cavalry had no space to charge and the ground was soaken. Many knights falled from their horses and couldn't stand up with their 20kg heavy armor; there they were cut down and slain. 10.000 French and 1.600 English were killed, what makes this battle one of the bloodiest of the middle age.

Not out of topic: if you ever play grand scale political games, you'll probably have such battles to resolve.
 
If you look up Gunderland, you will find that this was apparently an individual in the court of Charlemagne, circa 9th century AD....
 
The King said:
Anyway here is an excerpt of an Encyclopedia (Universalis) : "The battle fields of Hasting (1066), Crécy (1346) , Agincourt (1415) saw the reign of archery. The long bow enabled a shooting rate of 10-12 arrows per minute to a range of over 200 yards. The Welsh were the most reputed in that field.
.
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The Normans did not use the Longbow, they did use a bow which is in Game terms a shortbow.
And many of the french were killed in close combat, after the hail of arrows had broken their formation(to close to fight) or were massacred after the king ordered to kill the prisoners.
 
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