By The Book Comic

Filler! I’ll be doing another filler next time and then some question answering filler for a bit while I try to organise the massive collection of books, parchment, napkins, stone tablets and all the other things I’ve written notes on for Ch5 into some semblance of a script, story boards and eventually actual comic pages 🙂

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Here we have some design sketches for the ‘Nemean legion’-they’re part Roman legion, part Swiss guard-a unit (or army) of elite troops that serve the great and holy Empire that rules over much of BTB world and is the keystone of the Concordiat of light.

Nemean refers to one of many cat based sentient creatures-in this case a race of lions. They have links to the divine and Aasimar like traits are not uncommon-glowing blue eyes, halos of golden fire, small feathered wings etc. Those blessed with these features tend to raise through the ranks more quickly than others.

Their gear is highly influenced by ancient Greek armour design while their fighting style will be a mix of Greek and Roman-large formations of elite heavy infantry making up the mainstay of their fighting units.
Although they still use the phalanx formations of the Greeks, they combine this with other units armed with swords and tend to split their armies into smaller ‘maniples’ as the Romans did-which gives them a much better level of tactical flexibility than other massed pike formations.

They also put far more store in missile weapons, using powerful bows tipped with adamantine arrows in large quantities.

Their armour is ornate, featuring many heavenly elements (feathered wings and lightning bolts being a favourite) and their already impressive 7ft height is further augmented by the ubiquitous horse hair crest worn on the helm. Despite these adornments, the armour is far from ceremonial -affording excellent protection and augmenting these proud creature’s magically resilient hides (which are all but proof against any conventional missile attack to begin with).

As with the gnolls, the Nemean do not make much use of cavalry, though their infantry is almost as fast as a horseman when it wants to be as well as possessing great stamina. Additional mobility is provided by chariots drawn by celestial dire lions.