​Battlefield Role: Elite Heavy Infantry
Weapons: A Great Sword or a Battle Axe, and a Longsword as sidearm. They usually carry a sturdy round shield on their backs.
Outfit: Semi-enclosed helmet. Reinforced plate pieces over a layer heavy chain mail, over another layer of a thick padded gambeson.
Skill level: Experts in close combat.
Affiliation: Eldara
Doctrine: Athena's Way of the Warrioress
Strengths: 3 layers of heavy armour makes them really tough to injure, while their heavy weapons are quite hard to block or dodge.
Weaknesses: Eldarians have high standards of honour, so their armour is weak on the thighs, because they don't expect low blows.
Eldarian Nobles
​Due to both a strong naval tradition and the rather hilly geography of the deeply forested region belonging to the Merchant Republic of Eldara, the Eldarian Nobles often prefer to fight on foot alongside the rest of their armies rather than on horseback. This leaves Eldara's armies with a serious deficiency of heavy cavalry regiments of its own, but those nobles are still very useful on the battlefield, be it on dry land or aboard vessels over the waves, as some of the best footsoldiers on the northern coasts of Arandolia.
They come from the richest and most influential ruling families that are members of the Eldarian Council of Elders, possessing more than enough personal wealth to afford the top notch armour and weapons money can buy, as well as the best military training available in the ancient City of Eldara.
Some of them are Elders themselves, veterans of countless wars who survived to tell their stories, while many occupy high-ranking posts in the military thanks to their vast experience and highborn upbringing. But there are also enough numbers of nobles in Eldara to field entire regiments of Elite Heavy Infantry. Regiments those which are simply relentless in combat.
Wielding heavy great swords and battle axes as their primary weapons, the Eldarian Nobles crush the enemy front lines with their ferocious charge. Shall they be targeted by enemy arrows, they carry a shield on their backs and a longsword as a sidearm, being fully able to form up a solid shield wall and hold their ground. Very few enemies are those who are able to outmatch the Eldarian Nobles in a fair battle, so the Eldarian Generals always choose their positioning very carefully in order to take full advantage of this elite units' might on any battlefield. Many Eldarian Nobles are also assigned to the Eldara's mighty Navy, because they are quite the fierce individual fighters. Perfect for assaulting the enemy ships' decks during boarding assaults and capturing vessels in name of the glorious fleets of their praised home city. Especially Salacian vessels at that!
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Actually, speaking of the Salacians, just like the ancient cities of Eldara and Salacia are each other's archenemies, the Eldarian Nobles are the ancient archenemies of the Salacian Matricians, who are just as fierce and capable of a force to be reckoned with. For countless generations, those two cities' best warrioresses fought each others to see who is the better. So far, none of them have been able to end up on top of any particular conflict in between the two warring regions.