V3: Outfit Intro

On the southern shores of Chalice Lake, with spring’s sun burning away the last winter storms, the great Bossman known as Sarj Beorn planted a steel-tipped spear in the earth and declared that he would raise a city. Over a thousand Alistairs and free Lakelanders of the Bear tribe raised their fists and voices in acclamation on that day, granting him unprecedented power over the course of their lives. More would follow, drawn by the scent of change upon the winds.

Fourteen days after making his boast, with his forces bolstered by new recruits and the first longhouses being raised, Sarj Beorn solidified his position by announcing a tribe of tribes called the Outfit. Rather than make his own tribe supreme over all others as Bossmen had done in the past, he brought two other leaders into his council to stand as at least nominal equals; Grim Lanni Ironwolf, an even more popular and skilled warboss than Sarj himself, and Aoife Hellcat, renowned to be the most bloodthirsty duellist and assassin of the entire Cat tribe. Those who followed the Wolf totem were organized, numerous, and coordinated, while Cats favored the advantages of surprise and sowing chaos to reap victory. These advantages complemented the Bear doctrine of individual excellence and patient strategy carried out with overwhelming fury.

With the versatility granted to him by welding such disparate forces to his own, Sarj Beorn’s Outfit went from ‘dangerous upstart warband’ to ‘unassailable force of nature’. By the time summer’s heat was fading and the leaves had begun to turn in that same year, the Outfit had crushed or conscripted every clan in the Lakelands that did not flee out of their reach. For many peoples, such a lightning campaign of annexation and absorption would have been untenable. Rebellions and infighting would have ripped a human confederation apart in simple rejection of the shocking speed of that ascendancy, splintering the Outfit into its constituent factions once more.

Not so for Lakelanders, a breed apart from the humans they resembled. They respected strength above all else, strength of will and mind and body alike. Defeat that did not come with death meant submission to a superior, and the many clan leaders and lesser Bosses fell into line with only moderate chafing as they sorted out their place in the hierarchy. Those who had followed them as petty independents would do so when they were subordinate to the dominance of Sarj Beorn and his captains, or else make their own decisions and seek their own opportunities.

It was his understanding of the feral peoples around Chalice Lake that gave Sarj Beorn his great advantage when uniting them under his banner; rather than try to change their nature, he turned it to his own ends and made it their strength. No ban was passed on traditional methods of deciding rank and station, be it duelling or other customary tests. Thus it was that leaders were selected by merit, and Lakelanders had long been used to shifting their loyalties to follow the best, rather than the oldest or highest born.

By the time winter’s winds whipped the open plains again, the town called Shylo had grown to be a permanent settlement. Footpaths and wagon trails had become roads of hardpacked dirt lined with timber, winding their way between buildings that were spaced much farther apart than most peoples would think convenient or necessary. Favoring their privacy over boot leather, Lakelanders preferred broad areas of no-man’s-land between their stakes, frequently leaving so much space unused that any other architect would simply plot another building in the gap. Sarj Beorn’s own stone hall, the first building to have been erected and focal point for the entire town, was the best example; a massive, rambling, sprawling multi-room palace by Lakelander standards, surrounded on all sides by open fields which soon became impromptu practice yards and proving grounds for the Outfit’s warriors.

Reflecting the Lakelander temperament, the most common domicile were large single-room longhouses inhabited by a single clan apiece; identical to those dotted in isolation through plain and forest in the Lakelands and often containing the whole material wealth of the residents, they were built as symbols of affluence and pride. Commonly raised in timber on stone foundations, they were lined on each interior wall with wood-framed sleeping nooks below and storage spaces above, and dry, ladder accessible attics for keeping herbs and winter goods. Communal hearths were spaced equally from end to end, with at least two in the smallest houses to as many as seven in the greatest, with small shielded holes in the ceiling to allow smoke to escape.

Next most popular was the barrack, a new idea generated by the influx of clanless bachelors and freeriders who had gathered to seek their fortunes under the Outfit’s banner; usually ill-made and poorly kept, they served to keep wind out and rain off and little else, yet still presented a rise in accommodations compared to a tent in the wilds as the occupants were used to.

After that, there was even less regularity to the structures, with their design and placement falling much to materials, expediency, and political reality. Those who had followed Sarj Beorn since before his declaration made their homes closest to his hall, and could generally do so without forsaking their traditional estates in the countryside; such was their wealth and strength in numbers, to provide security for multiple longhouses.  Next came those who had lost their homes in some previous inter-tribal conflict, a popular reason to have joined Sarj Beorn in his campaigns, the spoils of which paid for their new quarters and more besides.

Regarding the next layer of ramshackle barracks and bachelor-built shanties, the council expected one of two results: either they would be replaced by more permanent structures, or they would eventually rot away to leave an open field between the clan residences and whatever arose in the current outskirts. Either option was as good as the other, so they made no proclamation on the use of land within the city; longhouse, barrack, saloon or forge, all that was required was the open space and materials with which to build upon it.

Build they did, ramming earth and raising timber, piling stone on stone until there was a shape to their liking. It was then that the real work began.

There was no secret made of Sarj Beorn’s plan to gather an alae and drive north into the lands around Glockenbaltz and beyond. Rather than attack the city itself, a fool's errand as all knew, he planned to reave the countryside until the merchant-princes had no choice but to pay tribute to the Outfit, or else wither on the vine. Glockenbaltz could not survive without the produce of the fields, or the trade brought by caravans along the roads. Such a campaign would have to last much longer than a single summer of traditional raiding, and that meant stockpiles of preserved foodstuffs, weapons and armor, and a thousand other pieces of materiel.

And so the fields were tilled and planted, with more ground being turned every day as new freeholds were established in Shylo’s environs. In the south, entire hills were flattened and scattered onto a new plain as minors stripped them for iron to feed the Outfit’s forges. Hunting parties ranged far afield in search of gargants, bringing down the massive herdbeasts for meat and furs, sometimes capturing their young to be brought home for domestication.

Those warbands which had their logistics in order bided their time, honing their swords in the longhouses and their skills upon the practice field as they awaited summer, and the raiding season.