The Company

Italy, 1361. You have men, a banner and no land.

The cities of Italy were rich enough to buy war and unwilling to fight it themselves. You are a captain of one of the free companies they bought it from — Florence this season, Milan the next, whoever is paying.

Fifteen years. Sixty seasons. One name.

The season. Take work, ride for your own account, or rest the company. Garrison and escort contracts are safe and pay badly. Campaigns pay well, run two to four seasons, and put you on a field. Towns will pay you to be somewhere else, and the country remembers that you asked.

The men. They are paid every season, whether or not anyone hired you. Pay late and loyalty falls; let it fall far enough and a lieutenant takes a third of the company and goes. Your lieutenants are named men — they die, and the ranks hand you replacements you did not choose. You set the shape of the company, and recruiting fills toward it.

The field. Choose your ground, then your orders: hold, loose, charge, or refuse the flank. Each beats one and loses to another, and the ground changes what each is worth — a charge that wins in the open dies in a defile. What you may order depends on who you recruited, because a company with no archers cannot loose a volley. Specialise in two doctrines out of eight, three steps deep, and it begins to fight like your company rather than anyone's.

Your name. Five employers, each with a memory. Florence forgets nothing. Milan breaks faith first. Sign against a former employer and pay for it with them for the rest of the run. Being feared pays — frightened towns offer better terms — but a captain who is both feared and without honour is a problem the cities can solve together, and a league formed against you does not negotiate.

Your captain. Four attributes, armour, a horse, a blade, and what you wear when you are being looked at. Six permanent investments — a surgeon, a paymaster, a herald — each worth more than another fifty men. And a coat of arms, chosen from the gallery or rolled from a generator that will not hand you anything a herald would refuse.

How it ends. Four ways: a commission for life, your own men, a coalition, or the road home with whatever you have. Winning asks for money and a reputation at the same time, which is why most careers end short of one of them. If that reads as unforgiving, begin on Condottiere.