How Battania Lives and How It Goes to War
The Greenwood Expanse supports a scattered and uneven population shaped by forest, hill, and moor. Unlike the river valleys of Vlandia, where dense farming villages cluster along roads, Battania’s people are spread across ridges, valleys, and sheltered clearings. Villages are smaller, more numerous, and more isolated. Population density is lower, but local knowledge of terrain is far greater. Many households maintain seasonal dwellings, moving flocks between lowland pastures and upland grazing as weather turns.
Across the Greenwood Expanse, the total population is modest for the size of the land, but resilient. Most people live in villages tied to clan land, with larger towns serving as trade hubs where lowland merchants meet hill folk. A significant portion of the population lives within a day’s walk of forest cover, which shapes both daily life and the ease with which people can disperse in times of danger. The Greenwood’s population survives on mixed subsistence: small-field agriculture, herding, hunting, timber cutting, and limited trade of wool, hides, and iron.
Only a fraction of Battania’s people can be called to fight at any given time. Clan musters are not standing armies. They are temporary gatherings of able-bodied adults called when danger approaches or opportunity arises. A typical clan can muster a few dozen fighters quickly, swelling to a few hundred if given time to gather kin from scattered holdings. Larger mormaerates can assemble warbands in the low thousands, but doing so strips villages of labor and leaves herds and crops unattended. Prolonged musters risk hunger, loss of winter stores, and internal unrest.
The High King’s call to arms does not compel immediate obedience across all clans. It triggers negotiation, council, and bargaining. Some clans answer at once, driven by old grudges or immediate threat. Others delay, weighing the cost of leaving their land unguarded. This means Battania’s response to invasion is uneven in time. Early resistance often comes from border clans and those nearest the threat. Larger, coordinated forces assemble later, if at all. This delay is the Greenwood’s greatest weakness in open war and its greatest strength in attritional defense, as enemies are harried by small warbands long before they face a true host.
Within musters, roles are informal but recognized. Experienced fighters form the core of skirmish lines. Younger volunteers and peasants fill out numbers. Highborn youths train under veteran archers and warriors during campaigns, learning through survival rather than drill. The Twenty of Dunthanach, when present, can rally disparate warbands into temporary coordination, lending coherence to otherwise loose formations. However, their presence is rare and usually reserved for existential threats or decisive strikes.
Battania does not maintain large standing garrisons outside key hill-forts and towns. Most fortresses are lightly held in peacetime, with clans expected to reinforce them when invasion looms. This means many strongholds appear underdefended until war actually arrives. Enemies who strike quickly can take ground before resistance gathers. Enemies who linger find themselves surrounded by increasing numbers as the Greenwood awakens.
Population loss is deeply felt in Battania. With lower density and slower recovery than lowland realms, every dead warrior represents years of lost labor and knowledge. This makes Battanians cautious about committing to large, decisive battles where losses are heavy. They prefer prolonged harassment that bleeds enemies while preserving their own numbers. When Battania does commit to a major engagement, it is because the cost of not fighting has grown greater than the cost of dying.
In short, Battania’s population supports war in pulses rather than permanence. Its musters rise like fog from the valleys, strike, and thin again as people return to fields and flocks. The Greenwood cannot sustain endless war, but it can make invasion so costly and uncertain that few who enter its hills leave unchanged.