Warfare and Law

A Roeta advancing by bounds. One element shoots while another loads and watches.

How Teraell fights, and why it mostly doesn't. Six city-states, none of which can conquer another: a world that has seen its share of wars and never a world war. The Pact of Reason sends disputes between cities to arbitration; what remains is piracy, the Frontier, the feud and the duel, and the standing armies and navies every city keeps anyway.

Rifled weapons have been standard for two or three hundred years. Teraell had its smoothbore, linear-formation phase during and after the Brass Awakening (Years 340–520) and moved past it in the Frontier Struggles that followed; linear warfare is ancient history, studied and occasionally romanticized and practiced nowhere. The reason is accuracy: rifled fire kills at three to five hundred yards and makes standing in ranks suicidal. The world learned this the expensive way over a century and a half, and current doctrine everywhere reflects the settled results.

Land

• Skaerflint — the rifle of the age, and how one fact about it shapes every battle
• Land Warfare — infantry, the Roeta, artillery, cavalry, and clockwork in the field
• Armies of the City-States — six armies, six characters
• Siege · Retreat — and what the Oathbond says about each

Sea

• Naval Warfare — clockwork at sea, water aboard, tactics, and why boarding still happens
• Vessels of Teraell
• The Six Navies
• Piracy — the community, its captains and articles, taking a merchant, coastal raids, pirates meeting pirates, pirate against navy
• Anti-Piracy · Privateers

Between persons

• Feuds and Declaration — a feud without declaration is an ambush
• The Duel — the caeshmae: weapons, grounds, witnesses, conclusions, consequences
• Group Feuds — how a feud runs in each city, and the six stages of escalation

Between cities

• Why City-State Wars Are Rare
• Why Conquest Does Not Happen
• The Pact of Reason