The Fractured Isles

 The Fractured Isles

I have a 17th/18th century Imaginations project that has been bubbling or maybe simmering below the surface, by which I mean mainly in my head with no actual physical progress.

My setting is geographically the British Isles and Ireland but as the title suggests, not united in any way. Instead we have multiple smaller confederations, principalities, duchies and kingdoms similar to early anglo-saxon england but with some aspects of the holy roman empire. Or so it goes in my head. It's all very loose and very made up!

I've mainly been working on the mapping. I found a hex map of the area in the hexographer app some time ago, although the time period was dark ages or early medievel. The hexes were approximately 6miles across according to the author/artist. 

I used the .hxm file and opened it in notepad to grab the terrain information for each hex, then manipulated it to the correct layout (number of columns of hexes) and used conditional formatting to colour the map. I used a mirror image to generate tile income and an income table to generate the Annual Income for each territory by assigning each hex or square now it was in excel, an owner.

This allowed me to generate an indicative annual income for each of the territories in the Isles. From that I made some assumptions about military spending in this world of mine. 

Raising Troops

From income I can then define a proportion which is used for the military, and work out the split between the different arms. Say 40% of the total income is diverted to the military, and that amount is split between Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, and Engineers including other specialists.

I've assigned costs on upkeep and raising of regiments for the four main arms, although engineers are a bit specialist so i will handle them seperately. Think on it now I probably need to account for Naval spend which could well be 50% of the total military expenditure given the nature of the isles. I'll need to rework the sums but the principle holds.

From what I've read in "The art of warfare in the age of Marlborough" by David Chandler, cavalry were around 20-30% of the total force. In addition there appears to be an average of 1.6 guns or artillery per 1000 men. So I can set an amount of infantry and determine the amount of cavalry and artillery as a result. Allowing me to adjust the infantry figure to get the upkeep within the indicative annual military expenditure. Well minus naval spend which will need some more research!

Initial Plans

The idea is to use Sharp Practice to play out small level encounters and narrative missions, and either Maurice or shot, steel and stone for the higher level actions.

First off I'm planning on zooming in for a smaller sub-campaign which will involve the Grand Duchy of Saxonia, the Kingdom of Dumnonia and maybe Cymru, Anglia and Mercia. For that I added a larger hex to the above map and translated the "dominant" terrain to a blank sheet of A4 with a hex printed on. This will allow me to cover a wider area with ease. The area is centred on the area of the map where Saxonia borders Anglia, Mercia, Cymru and Dumnonia. That felt like a fertile area for dispute and controversy.

In the Warlord Games sprue sale I grabbed 5 sprues of Marlborough wars infantry sprues and 2 of cavalry, alongside two or three of the pike and shot cavalry, which I figure should work alright. Imaginations after all. The 5 sprues of infantry will give me about 50 figures or two forces of 24 figures each plus a Leader. I also picked up to metal figures on horse, which will be the big man for each side. 

These will form the core of two forces. One for the Grand Duchy of Saxonia - a regiment of infantry raised by Colonel Henri von Hyde. I'm still pondering the uniforms but a light or sky blue coats and yellow cuffs for the Saxonia force is a high contender. 

The other force will be from Anglia i think, a larger and perhaps more belligerent neighbour to the north. Not sure what coat colours I will use for them. Possibly a light grey.

I have worked out the leaders of the territories and some characteristics for them based on d100 rolls. This will give a basis for higher level diplomacy if it should be required. I will also work out their goals and desires, and vices or weaknesses.

I initially had Hibernia (geographically Ireland) as a single entity, and then decided I would split it up into some provinces as I did have it as a confederation, so I split it into the provinces of Ireland (may rename them at some point) and included Meath for more variety as there is no Ulster - it's part being taken by Dalriada which has a foothold in the geographical western Scotland.

I'll leave it there. I plan to cover this more, using this blog as a project tracker and place to put down my thoughts on the project.