Lord Cal Kandor was an ostentatious man. However, he was also politically shrewd and highly intelligent. He knew just how to take advantage of the fact that his lands bordered the Dorian Kingdom to the southwest. He was also extremely selfish, greedy and sometimes outright cruel. Despite his young age and short reign, his selfish leadership style and personal decisions had already stirred discontent and hatched multiple plots against him.
Unfortunately for the just, or at least the less selfish, the political opponents of his Lordship never had any success in replacing or moderating the young man's excesses. Lord Kandor actually seemed to enjoy participating in the conniving plots commonly surrounding men of his station.
Beyond political savvy and intelligence he also had a huge network of spies and informers in addition to the 2,200 man Kandorian City Guard as well as his own stable of Gladiators. It was said that he often employed the Gladiators as enforcers or hitmen for internal dissent or political rivals. He had no standing army, relying on the feudal obligations of the Knights and men-at-arms.
The source of his true strength, however, was his blackmail files. His widespread network of spies and informants not only warned him of plots against him but also the secrets and weaknesses of many. He had at least one dirty, dark secret about each and every one of his Knights to ensure their loyalty.
Most Knights were wealthy landowners with their own servants and retinue. In a battle, the Knight was immediately assisted by his squire while his orders were given and relayed to the three Archers by his Sergeant. The six-man unit was called a 'Lance', tactically consisting of three archers and three armored men-at-arms. All of the men in a Lance were mounted but the archers were not true mounted archers, not being skilled at firing from the saddle at full gallop with accuracy. Unlike mounted archers who carried composite bows, they instead carried longbows. (reminder: Composite bows consisted of a flat wood core with thick layers of animal horn and sinew on opposite surfaces. The horn increased the compression strength and the sinew increased the tension strength, and when combined with recurved shape, allowed for a much shorter bows to generate force superior to the best longbow with a significantly lower draw weight and increase in mobility on horseback. The lower limb of the bow was often shorter than the upper limb which made mounted use easier but also stabilized the shots. With a composite war-bow in the same high draw weight as a military longbow and a good enough arrow, even good steel wasn't guaranteed protection, at least not in any level of thickness that could be worn as armor).
It was the Knights and men-at-arms forming up and gathering with other Lances into anything from a group of a dozen Lances to run off bandit groups or raiding parties to hundreds of Lances formed into a proper army that provided the fighting force for a Lordship, instead of a standing army, which was expensive, difficult to build and high maintenance in return for use on highly rare occasions. In most situations it was easier just to hire mercenaries if you ever had need for more men than you had access to. The arrangement was not at all not unusual in the feudal times where Lords, and even Kings, simply hired mercenaries, drafted peasants into a Militia and called on their Lords who, in turn, called on their Knights, when in need of a large fighting force.
The fact that the Aurion Empire had a standing army in itself was an advantage. Said army was highly trained, impeccably armed, and possessed officers with extensive experience. The Legionaries were full-time soldiers who had no need to return home every year to harvest their crops or practice their professions. They were professional fighters who achieved high skill and group coordination by being trained every day that they weren't actually fighting. Only a few other people had warriors or soldiers that were full-time fighters and not farmers, shepherds or artisans who picked up swords to fight for their leaders in times of crisis or go raiding during the warm season before returning home for the harvest and winter.
Unsurprisingly, he had renamed the capitol of his fief after himself. Though it was originally little more than a castle surrounded by a few small urban centers, 'Kandoris' was turned into an opulent walled city filled with imperial architecture and material wealth. But, if you weren't rich, you were severely poor. The outskirts of the city, nearest the walls, circled the city almost entirely with the simple wooden huts of poor. They were crammed together and forced into an existence that was only separated from homelessness by having an eight by eight foot, non insulated wooden shack. The products of Lord Kandor's overtaxing and confiscation, clearly.
Above all, the worst was the enormous statue of Lord Kandor himself located up the mountain slope directly behind the city, framing his 'palace'. The statue stood more than one hundred feet tall, with a body made from marble. The robes of the giant marble likeness were made from solid bronze while the generous jewelry was formed from solid gold. The area around the enormous stone base was leveled during construction for a couple hundred meters in all directions out, and up-down, the softly sloping ascent.
Like many of the large or capitol cities in the Aurion Empire, Kandoris was built using surrounding terrain features as natural defenses.
With it's back to a mountain that had no back paths or secret trails and whose only gentle slope were those leading down to the city's back, Kandoris had a distinct advantage in only needing three walls and having the high ground on any invaders who attempted to besiege their capitol city.
They could also retreat up the highly defensible mountain at their back if the city itself was to be overwhelmed. In fact, there was already a few preparations permanently in place, were that ever to happen.
Seeing the Lord Kandor's colossal likeness made Amila sick. It was shocking to consider how many people could've been properly clothed and fed with only the gold from the giant pieces of jewelry adorning it.
