Twinight Posse

Amateur warriors, amateur results

Paetyr believed he was serving our king. He believed he was chasing his fortune. I don't know if either of those beliefs were true. But I know this: My beloved Paetyr believes nothing anymore.
Mabyn Tregsys, Charian potter, 1201 AoE

T

winight Posses were spontaneously-formed units of amateur oplander rangers that arose in response to the bounty that Charia's King Helinand placed on the head of every Noctern. In the earliest stages of the Nomadic Wars, there were no formal troops loyal to Helinand. The implementation of his bounties created the first wave of Charian aggressors who roamed the forests, stalked the snyres, and tried to drag any Noctern corpse they could find to Vien for payment.
The use of the term posse can be somewhat misleading. Although most of the bounty hunters felt they could increase their odds by loosely organizing into small, cooperative teams, there were certainly plenty of "lone wolves" who plied the forests on their own. Despite these solitary hunters, everyone who chased Helinand's bounties are referred to, collectively, as the Twinight Posses.

Decimated

The reign of the Posses lasted little more than a year. Originally, Helinand believed this approach to be an ideal way of conducting a war while maintaining no army and spending nearly no money from his barren coffers. But after a year of the Posses' activities, public opinion started to turn on Helinand because a disturbing percentage of the Posses went off into the grand forests of the Greywold and the Rainwold - and they were never heard from again.
The initial, naive assessment of these disappearances was that the young men and women, having scant training or experience, were simply victims of the natural dangers that are always present in Excilior's vast wilderness. But as the toll of missing continued to rise, it gradually became clear that the Posses were not dying at the hands of feral creatures, or treacherous ravines, or ever-shifting snyres. The Posses disappeared because the Nocterns knew they were being hunted, and they systematically wiped out the amateur packs of bounty hunters who ventured into the forests to find them.

Composition

Manpower

P

recise numbers are impossible to ascertain, but cognoscenti now believe that as many as a thousand young men and women probably wandered into the Greywold and the Rainwold with the misguided notion that they could slay a pile of Nocterns and collect on easy riches. Of those thousand, fewer than half were ever heard from again.

They stumble through the forest with all the grace of a parrican. We listen as they dream about how glorious it will be to drag our bodies before their king. And somehow they have the nerve to look surprised when they find a spear driven through their innards.
Tauno Eskola, Noctern raider, 1201 AoE

When Posses organized, they typically had 4-8 members. They tried to avoid smaller groups because they (accurately) feared that they would be easier targets for Noctern ambushes. They rarely formed larger groups because basic math meant that, even if they were successful in killing a Noctern, the resulting bounty would be split so many ways as to make the reward minimal.

Weaponry

M

any of the Twinight Posses are recorded as wielding swords. A select handful of them even had rare blades of steel, passed down to them from ancestors who had forged them in the Wansian strongholds of the Hammerhorn Mountains. This probably gave them a (false) sense of security in their combat abilities. But in retrospect, it was also a sad misuse of materials.

Poorly Equipped

When forced into battle, Nocterns are infamous for their ability to avoid boot-to-boot combat. They make great use of their deadly bows. Their bloodwood spears are launched with stunning accuracy, and in close quarters those same spears have been shown to be far-more lethal than large blades. The cognoscenti assume that most of the forever-lost Twinight Posse fighters probably never even saw their attackers. It's extremely difficult to entice a Noctern to attack an oplander in broad daylight. And there's no reason to believe that many of the Twinight Posse felt remotely comfortable fighting in the inky, nighttime blackness of Excilior's forests.

Training

T

he typical member of a Twinight Posse had no training whatsoever. More importantly, most of them didn't actually believe that they needed any training. Their king's rants painted the Nocterns as barely-human cretins who could be slain like homuhns. This ignorance was heightened by the fact that most Posse members were exceedingly young - with most of them well short of twenty. They had never been to war. They had never fought a sapient opponent. Most of them weren't even particularly-skilled as basic hunters. But against the looming ecological crisis of the 5th Trial, they were anxious to leave the tutelage of their peasant homes and leverage their bravado by hauling 500-florenth corpses to the capital.

Logistics

Upkeep

F

or a time, Helinand believed he had instituted a brilliant military coup. The populace was atwitter about the "looming threat" of the Nocterns below their feet (which meant that they were not gossiping about the legitimacy of Helinand's rule). Flocks of eager young bounty hunters were swarming the countryside to do his bidding. And even better: those bounty hunters cost Helinand almost nothing. He needn't pay for uniforms, weapons, training, supplies, or experienced leadership. He just had to post a reward and watch the impoverished masses do everything they could to snatch it. If they failed, it was no real cost to him. He owed the unsuccessful bounty hunters nothing. And even in those rare cases when they were successful, a 500-florenth payment was a pittance - even in the context of his exceptionally-bare treasury.

Recruitment

I tell you now that if you think you're a patriot. If you love the arbyr that fostered you. If you're loyal to the king who protects you. You will drop your petty ambitions and drive this subhuman pestilence from our lands.
Helinand Penhalligon, Charian king, 1201 AoE

K

ing Helinand was basically the Recruiter in Chief for the Twinight Posses. Although he did not coin this phrase, and he did not specifically ask anyone to organize into makeshift groups to remove the "Noctern menace", he was directly responsible for instigating their formation. He instituted a 500-florenth reward for any Noctern corpse delivered to Vien. He railed against the Nocterns in impassioned public speeches and in private rants to the nation's powerful arbyr chiefs. Most importantly, he dispatched a flood of criers to every Charian village. First, those criers posted public notices of the handsome reward, in every town square and public meeting place. But because much of his population was illiterate, he also paid those same criers to stay at their destinations. Once embedded in the local population, they told an endless stream of shocking tales about the atrocities supposedly committed by the cave dwellers just below their feet. Of course, they also repeated, to anyone who would listen, tales of the riches that could be earned by slaying only a handful of Nocterns. It didn't matter, in the least, that none of the criers' tales bore a shred of truth.

History

T

winight Posses held sway for barely more than a year. What started as a convenient way for King Helinand to prosecute a "war" without having to spend any of the money associated with such an endeavor, quickly devolved into a way to anger the rank-and-file citizens who realized that their young men and women were disappearing into the forests - forever. Over the course of this first year, it's estimated that more than 500 young Charians perished under the foolhardy assumption that they could march into the forest and drag out the corpse of a Noctern. During that same period, Charian records indicate that a grand total of twenty-three Noctern corpses were presented in Vien for payment.

Exterminators

The failure of the slapdash Twinight Posses led to the instantiation of the Exterminators. This was a formal fighting force - a "real' army - led by the primeval combat hero, Berrion Bellion. Over time, they would suffer their own string of humiliating defeats and lopsided casualties. But there's little doubt that the Exterminators were always far-more equipped to fight a guerrilla war against an embedded force. From the standpoint of history, there's now little doubt that any of the Twinight Posses ever really stood a chance against the preternatural wiles of the Dawn Reaver and his highly-proficient Noctern rangers.

Historical loyalties

N

octern bounties were implemented by King Helinand, ostensibly in the service of his fledgling Charian kingdom. So from that perspective, it's easy to the say that everyone in the Twinight Posse was loyal to Helinand and to Charia. But a more-cynical interpretation of the situation could point out that anyone responding to a bounty is, in a practical sense, only "loyal" to the person/organization whom they expect to pay on that bounty. With this in mind, it's entirely feasible that the Twinight Posses would have hunted King Helinand if offered a sufficient reward to do so.

Pronunciation

TWIGH-nite POSS-ee

Type

Mercenary

Founding

1201

Dissolution

1202

Overall training Level

Untrained

Assumed Veterancy

Recruit

Used by

• Charia