Lothern Sea Guard

The Sea Guard are the answer to a question only Lothern could ask: how does one army defend a city whose streets are water and whose walls are the horizon? Trained to fight from deck, quay, and shore-wall alike, they advance behind interlocking shields, loose disciplined volleys from their bows, then ground shields and set spears in the heartbeat before impact. An enemy charging the Sea Guard is shot by archers and received by a phalanx, and they are the same soldiers.

Every family in Lothern owes the Guard its sons and daughters, and its ranks are full of harbour-pilots, chandlers, and merchant heirs serving the duty their citizenship demands. In them the asur's cruel arithmetic becomes doctrine: a people too few to field two armies trains each soldier to be two. When the Sea Guard stand upon the Emerald Gate, they are not merely defending a port: they are holding the front door of the elven race.