Northern Corps

The quintuple-tier organisation is taken almost word-for-word from the chapter 133 briefing: regiment → 5 battalions → 5 companies → 100+ men per company. When Henned defected, he peeled two of these battalions — 5 000 men — off the corps.

The Northern Corps is the standing army Grand Duke Lukins built to counter Grand Duke Fisabrun's border corps and to serve as the backbone of the independent Duchy of Lukins he dreamed of carving from the Northern Highlands. By design the corps was to number twenty thousand soldiers.

To save money, Lukins disbanded the local garrisons once the corps was formed, billeting its units across towns, manors, and castles — reasoning that a couple of thousand men could easily crush any noble's resistance. That decision later backfired: the corps was spread thin across garrison duty and could not quickly assemble a large field army.

The supreme commander is Grand Duke Lukins himself, for whom the corps was a tool of profit. His Gold Knights: Chevany, killed in the first campaign; Henned, captured and then defecting to the Nortons; Tabek, beaten badly by Lorist and bedridden for a year; deputy commander Bitsen, holding the capital Jildusk; and Odema, at the Henderlif bridge and Castle Frest.

After the first rout the duke furiously confiscated the dead Chevany's estate and heaped humiliation on Baron Camora — his own envoy. It was the duke's heartlessness toward his own soldiers that drove Henned and the silver knights to break away.

The corps is built on a quintuple system: a regiment divides into five battalions, a battalion into five companies, and a company holds more than a hundred soldiers. At its peak it numbered up to twenty thousand. Because the corps had replaced the disbanded garrisons, about twelve and a half thousand of its men were tied up on garrison duty, leaving at most around five thousand for the field.

The key strongpoints it held were the capital Jildusk, the Henderlif hanging bridge, and the neighbouring Castle Frest: these three kept the Second Prince's forces out of the Northern Lands (a battalion each), plus a company in each manor and village.

The Northern Corps is the chief military force propping up Duke Lukins's rule over the Northern Lands. When Lukins sent two battalions (four thousand men) against the Nortons under Knights Chevany and Henned, the whole force was annihilated, Chevany killed and Henned captured. It was a slap the duke could not answer.

Lorist deliberately released Henned and the captured silver knights for an 'insulting' ransom so they would return and stir up a storm at court. Humiliated by the duke, Henned walked off with five thousand Northern Corps soldiers. Stripped of its backbone, the corps could not muster a new campaign, and soon Lukins's coalition was broken at Rockcastle and at Tverdynya; the corps's collapse plunged the southern Northern Lands into turmoil.