The Sun-Lion Standards

Noble Military House Bloc — Akesh#

"They defend the frontier magnificently and resist the exchequer absolutely. The two positions are related." — Akeshi central treasury report, heavily annotated

The great march-lords of Akesh's frontier have held their estates against desert nomads, Khavari incursions, and the occasional Pasharan commercial expedition for generations, developing in the process a military culture of crushing self-assurance. The Sun-Lion Standards are the bloc formed by these border dynasties — eleven great houses whose combined cavalry strength represents the largest single military formation in Akeshi that does not directly answer to the Crucible. They understand themselves as crusaders defending the solar dominion's physical margin; they understand the central bureaucracy as an obstacle to this mission.

Their relationship with the Dawn Crucible oscillates between alliance and cold war. The Crucible needs them to hold the frontier; the Standards need the Crucible's legitimacy to maintain their noble charters and conscription rights. Neither can afford to destroy the other, which means their conflicts are conducted through the medium of tax withholding, strategic border incidents reported too late for the central command to respond, and the careful placement of junior family members in Crucible administrative positions. Both sides consider this normal.

For adventurers, the Standards offer employment of a straightforward martial variety with unusually good material support — these families can provision expeditions lavishly and provide military escorts through frontier terrain that would otherwise be extremely dangerous. The complication is that Standard commissions usually involve frontier problems the central government does not officially know about, and resolving them generates intelligence that both the Crucible and foreign states would pay to receive. Staying neutral in that situation is not an option that tends to remain available.