The War Book

A realm to discover. A crown to claim.

Know your armies. Master the realm. Your illustrated companion to the struggle for the March.

Six chapters take you from your first campaign to the houses that contest the realm. Every rule stated here is the rule the current build plays by — flavour is labelled as flavour, counsel as counsel, and the numbers are exact.

Start here: Taking Command Play the game

Original painting: footmen forming ranks on a morning muster field, a mounted sergeant in a red cloak before them, plain crimson and gold standards rising overhead, the low sun at left, and a walled town beyond the haze.

Taking Command

Your first campaign: the turn, your orders, and what to hold first.

Taking Command
Your first campaign: the turn, the orders, what victory asks, and the first three things to do about it.

Armies

The soldiers you can raise, and how companies grow between battles.

Archers
The shooting arm — strikes from beyond the melee and never strikes back. Softens a line before contact, shatters if the enemy reaches it. Raised only where woodland domains stand.
Cavalry
Shock riders — the charge lands harder on open ground than anything else in the war, and nothing on the field moves faster. Dearest to raise and keep, and raised only at pasture domains.
Companies and Banners
How formations become armies: companies, grouping under one banner, combining, garrisons, standing marches, and supply.
Engineers
The support formation — builds and wields the battering ram that opens gates. Fights like fresh Footmen at every rank; ranks buy speed of work, never strength of arms. Raised at any secured castle.
Footmen
The universal line troop — matched attack and defence, raised at any secured castle, with a brace that stops a cavalry charge cold.
Formation Development
Ranks and experience: how formations earn XP in battle, what each rank buys, where gold can hurry it, and what development is not.

Original painting: a castle courtyard in warm late-day light, stacked spears and shields at left, covered supply wagons and a well at center, and a stone stair rising to an arched keep doorway flanked by two plain crimson banners.

Strongholds

What castles and cities do, and how they change hands.

Castles and Domains
Every castle is a fixed domain: size, terrain, wealth, and walls that capture never changes — income, local reserves, and regional recruitment flow from it.
Occupation and Securing
A taken castle pays nothing until it is secured: presence across owning turns earns control, absence resets it, and the benefits resume only after.

A generated realm on its first turn from the game: a many-settled world with roads and rivers between walled settlements, three houses' banners across it.

The Land

Terrain and roads — the ground the whole war is fought over.

Terrain and Roads
Six terrains and the roads across them: what ground costs to cross, what it defends, where cavalry charge, and where the map cannot be crossed at all.

Original painting: an engineer crew fitting a covered timber battering ram, its iron head aimed at a grey stone fortress above the valley, scaffolding below the walls and an army's banners marching up the road under a golden sky.

The Art of War

Battles from entry to aftermath, and the siege engineer's trade.

Battles
How a fight is joined and won: deployment and reserves, activations, attacks and retaliation, shooting and sight lines, objectives, and what survives.
Sieges and Engineers
Fortress assaults: the walled field, gates and battering, the prepared ram Engineers build beside your target's walls, and the keep that decides it.

Original painting: three riders seen from behind on a ridge at sunset, surveying a valley below — a winding river, a stone bridge, a walled town with its church spire, and small plain pennants of rival castles on the far hills.

The Realm

The four houses, the March, and the realms the generator draws.

Doctrines
The standing way of war each computer house takes up at setup — Warden, Raider, or Opportunist — and why no banner guarantees one.
House Ashcombe — The Crownless
The broken crown on slate blue: watchful, politically hungry, and counting crowns in the widest generated realms.
House Calder — The Rayed Sun
The oldest banner on the river: gold, the rayed sun, and the house every campaign puts in your command.
House Rowan — The Red Fox
The fox mask on moss green: restless, probing, and seen on distant roads long before it is expected — a house of generated realms only.
House Vane — The Iron Warden
The barbed arrowhead on rust red: patient, territorial, severe, and holding the east bank of the Mor in the authored March.
The March and Generated Realms
One authored war on the river Mor, and seeded realms without end — what carries between worlds and what the seed redraws.

The armies

One deep dive per unit you can raise today — identity, role, and the exact rules behind both.

Painted standing figure of an archer: a bearded bowman in a sage-green hood and wool tunic over cream linen, leather bracer laced on the bow forearm, a quiver of pale-fletched arrows slung across his back, and a plain wooden longbow held at his side.

Archers

The shooting arm — strikes from beyond the melee and never strikes back. Softens a line before contact, shatters if the enemy reaches it. Raised only where woodland domains stand.

Armies · unit deep dive

Painted mounted figure: a bearded rider in grey mail hauberk, mail chausses and conical nasal helm seated on a bay horse with dark mane and tail, cream saddle cloth and brown leather tack, holding a lance upright with a plain off-white pennon.

Cavalry

Shock riders — the charge lands harder on open ground than anything else in the war, and nothing on the field moves faster. Dearest to raise and keep, and raised only at pasture domains.

Armies · unit deep dive

Painted standing figure of an engineer: a stocky bearded craftsman in a steel kettle hat, olive quilted gambeson and brown leather work apron, an iron maul resting over his shoulder, with a rope coil and smith's tongs at his belt.

Engineers

The support formation — builds and wields the battering ram that opens gates. Fights like fresh Footmen at every rank; ranks buy speed of work, never strength of arms. Raised at any secured castle.

Armies · unit deep dive

Painted standing figure of a line footman: a bearded soldier in a knee-length grey mail hauberk with mail coif and conical nasal helm, cream arming collar, tan leg wraps and brown boots, a plain off-white shield on his left arm and an arming sword held point-down in his right hand.

Footmen

The universal line troop — matched attack and defence, raised at any secured castle, with a brace that stops a cavalry charge cold.

Armies · unit deep dive

The muster field

The army's arms in one glance — each figure standing ready at left and striking at right, with its page a link away.

The bowman at rest (left) and at full draw (right) — illustrative poses at a woodland clearing's edge.
Archers
The rider ready (left) and charging home (right) — illustrative poses on open ground.
Cavalry
The engineer ready (left) and striking with his tools (right) — illustrative poses on a siege yard's packed earth; the ram is campaign work, not this strike.
Engineers
The footman ready (left) and striking home (right) — illustrative poses on worn ground, not a rule diagram.
Footmen

The houses

The four banners of the March — character, heraldry, and how each fights for its crown.