Naval Militias

 

The Gatekeepers

see listing under Civil Militias

The Imperial Merchant Marine

The Imperial Merchant Marine was formed in the Middle Imperial Era by joint decree from the Kingdoms of Golanicja and Tulosz in response to continued piracy and harrassment of their military and trade vessels in the King's Sea, largely being perpetrated by pirates and privateers commissioned or otherwise enabled by the Senecian Empire.

The organization was largely formed from a collective of merchant sailing ships and privateer escorts, supported by a small naval fleet of mostly decommissioned military vessels with a goal to combat piracy, but more importantly, to prevent the Senecian Empire from establishing a naval blockade at Providovija which would effectively shut down the Passage of Miga and financially cripply both Golanicja and Tulosz.

The Imperial Merchant Marine were not only outclassed by the enemy vessels they typically encountered, but they were also outnumbered in terms of both ships and sailors. Consequently the first years to gain control over the King's Sea were frought. Many dozens of ships were lost on both sides. However, the Imperial Merchant Marine had an organizational advantage. Unlike the well supplied and experienced group of freelancers, pirates and privateers they were fighting, the Imperial Merchant Marine were organized and united in purpose. After every sighting, every encoutner, every skirmish, and every battle, Imperial Merchant Marine Officers were required to submit after-action reports and detailed notes of what happened; what went well, what went poorly, and what they saw the enemy do well or do poorly. This information was gathered, studied, collated, and used to train and retrain officers and crews, both veteran and new, and within five years, the trend of the conflict had shifted.

By the last half of the 8th century the Imperial Marine took decisive control of the King's Sea, and were successfully patrolling the Strait of Provescia and the Fairwind Passage to prevent incursions. While the Senecian Empire still entirely controlled the Widow's Sea, and would continue to do so until the end of the Imperial Era, they were never again able to mount a serious threat to Tuloszian - Golanicjan sea trade.

Order of the Octopus

(Porto Polpo)

The Palm Navy

(Sea of Palms)

The Shearwind Cutters

Senecian archipelago

The Sixth Order

The Sixth Order was originally a ragtag band of thugs, mercenaries and pirates who had sarcastically named themselves the Knights of Sixthos after the God of Revelry and Debauchery. When the Imperial wars shifted into high gear in YEAR, the Knights of Sixthos were often around to take contracts for the highest bidder. Mostly through happenstance, the Knights of Sixthos ended up faring better at sea than they did on land, and over the course of a couple of decades, managed to amass a fairly significant fleet. In the waning years of the Imperial Era, it became more profitable for the Knights of Sixthos to sell their services as naval escorts to companies than to send their ships into battle for Empires that were running out of money.

As the Imperial Era ended, the leadership of the Knights of Sixthos - which had always been informal - determined that the most profitable path forward was to incorporate. They renamed themselves the Sixth Order and chartered themselves as a trade company headquartered in Sancelia, and listed among their assets a fleet of over a hundred ships. In reality, they were distributed around the world, and their ships, captains and sailors remained extremely autonomous. In Year 1257, two years before the Enlightenment officially began, the self-styled Grand Admiral Dame Marialola ordered the majority of the fleet be refitted for use as cargo and transport vessels.

By the time the Northwest Whaling Company began selling their sextant in Year 1259, the ships and captains of the Sixth Order were in prime position to take advantage of the opportunity. Due to their military experience, the Sixth Order was the preferred transport company for sending large shipments of valuables or currency - and a lot of currency was changing hands quickly at the time.

The Sixth Order immediately realized that sending a thousand tons of gold from a city in Tulosz to a bank in Jumira, while at the same time, sending a different thousand tons of gold from a bank in Jumira to a city in Tulosz was terribly inefficient. Rather than transporting gold - they began storing and stockpiling it - building up large reserves on several continents. Rather than ship gold across a sea from one party to another, they would store the received gold and send a message across the sea to release the gold stored there to the recipient. Suddenly, the Sixth Order went from being a transport company that mostly worked for banks to being a bank themselves.