Naval Militias

 

The Gatekeepers

see listing under Civil Militias

The Grscholt Privateers

The Grscholt Privateers were formed by the Royal Decree of Matriarch Agnis II in 709 following an appeal from spriggan forces in Kashdush to ally against the aggression of King Joric in Tulosz and King Gaelan in Golanicja. With no organized navy of any kind, Queen Agnis II looked to the next best thing; a ragtag fleet of fishers, whalers and sometime pirate raiders who sailed out of Grscholt Island in the Sea of Obersch and who were technically part of the Queendom of Obersch - at least under the terms of the Treaty of Gojod. Queen Agnis II send twelve ships to Grscholt Island, filled with all manner of goods - gold, tools, weapons, art, finery, foodstuffs and liqueurs, and appealed to the leaders of the communities on the island to form a navy and join her campaign against the Golanicjans. The chieftains of the fishing and whaling villages on the islands, who had never known they had technically been subjects of the Oberschi Crown for over three centuries, agreed to form a navy and fight for Obersch without even asking a question.

In the early years, the Grscholt Privateers were little more than a privateer fleet - pirates and raiders who would attack Golanicjan ships and ports simply to collect bounties from the Oberschi Crown - but over a few decades - particularly after the Privateers managed to capture several actual warships - they grew into a more organized navy, but not much more. Compared to the structured and formally trained navies of the expansionist nation states of the Imperial Era, the Grscholt Privateers never more than an ad hoc fleet - formed out of a need from the ships and personnel available, and rewarded under the table directly by the Crown.

With the end of the Imperial Era, and particularly following the collapse of the Kingdom of Golanicja, the Queendom of Obersch had little use for an organized navy, but the Crown continued to fund it regardless. At the beginning of the 15th century, the Grscholt Privateers still maintain a naval academy in Grscholt, and a fleet of 24 warships. These ships principally provide security to shipping between continental Obersch, the Shaded Coast region of Golanicja and Grscholt Island itself. Many say the Grscholt Privateers still engage in illegal piracy in the Sea of Obersch, preying mostly on Golanicjan merchant vessels that find themselves in inclement weather - raiding their cargo, dispatching the crew and reflagging the captured ships to support the fishing and whaling industries of Grscholt Island.

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 Saleen Trident Hanse

Trade guild originating in Guhara, Jumira as a coalition of independent merchant traders who banded together to expand trade and seek protection from bandits. The Hanse has grown to encompass groups of traders and small towns from across Jumria. By establishing safe trade routes and outposts throughout Jumria, this has made the Hanse a true economic and political force that rivals the larger more established trade guilds in Tear. The Saleen Trident Hanse is named after the three original core towns of the coalition - Guhara, Bhotpur and Salalgal - the points of the Jumira trident.

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.