​Battlefield Role: Spear Infantry
Weapons: 5 Spears, all throwable, and a thick wooden shield.
Outfit: A green cape over brigandine armour and light chain mail. They also paint their heads in celtic dark green war paintings.
Skill level: Mediocre skills in melee combat. Noteworthy skills at throwing spears on the enemy's heads.
Affiliation: Eagle Island
Doctrine: Artemis' Way of the Huntress
Strengths: Their spears are balanced and robust enough to act as both melee weapons and short-range projectiles.
Weaknesses: Lack of investiment in melee infantry units at Eagle Island means low pay rates, poor-quality trainment and gear.
Spearheads of Eagle Island
Eagle Island is the land of archery and marksmanship! The best archers of Arandolia come from this oddly eagle-shaped island full of wild birds of prey, and the local population glorify these archers like nothing else on Earth. Every little girl born in Eagle Island urges to be a master archer when they grow up, but unfortunately, not everyone is naturaly fit for the demanding task of mastering archery itself. Specially when Longbows are involved.
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The Longbow is the only kind of bow used in Eagle Island. They believe only its sheer power and accuracy is worthy of being employed in archery, but the longbow is also really diffcult to be handled, as it demands tall and really strong women to pull them, while a good eyesight is also fundamental for anyone dealing with long-range weapons.
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As such, there are always those who grow up desperately trying to match their childhood friends' skills at the shooting range, only to reach adulthood being sadly either nearsighted or too shorty in overall height to properly handle a longbow with a decent effectiveness.
In any other place of Arandolia, such a thing wouldn't mean much else than a little bulling while growing up. But in Eagle Island, it means being the leftover of a society that praises something you may never achieve as the most important thing in life. The women of Eagle Island who can not be a proper archer have to either content themselves with an ordinary peaceful life as a farmer/craftswoman without much glory, or join the ranks of the valiant amazons who overcome their hardships and reinvent themselves into something else! Something that the armies of Eagle Island, always overcrowded with archer regiments, so direly needs. ...Infantry units.
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Being the odd woman to pick up a spear and a heavy shield to stand in between the allied archer regiments and the enemy is a great proof of bravery all by itself, while throwing the so said spear at short-range do not demand nearly as much skill as shooting a longbow, and it can be sometimes even deadlier! These shorty and/or nearsighted rejected amazons amongst the eagle-islanders then train hard to be the ones covering the glorified archer's backs by taking up the role of holding the front-lines, doing so even with considerable lack of investiment and recognition from the part of their rulers and commanders. They still bravely fight on and make the best they can out of their neglected situation, making sure to show everyone else how strong and decisive they can be.
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So let the archers stay with the better armour and equipment, with the better wages and with almost all of the renown for Eagle Island's victories! The Spearheads of Eagle Island know very well what their own spears are trully capable of, and for such a low esteemed and mostly forgotten unit, they are indeed great warrioresses on their very own right. They wear their shoddy uniforms and paint the Eagle sigil on their faces, boasting the colours and the symbols of their homeland with great pride in themselves. They march on and fight with all the courage they can muster, showing to the world that they too are great women in their very own way. With, or without a longbow in their hands!