Actually, this isn't so. Every king has risen from peasant _origins_, but his parents can quite easily be Lords and normally, perhaps invariably, have been.
Joerg
>I find it surprising that Loskalm did emerge from the Ban with a
>that numerous knight caste
I personally believe that during the Ban the knight caste survived by acting as police, courtiers, bodyguards, and as a lower class of nobility. I also suspect that immediately after the Ban there was a huge increase in the Knight's Caste, as many qualifying farmers were suddenly accepted.
I agree with Joerg that the army of Loskalm, while determined and well-equipped, has seen little experience, and is trained for the entirely wrong type of war. They are asphalt soldiers.
>Also, has anybody calculated how much metal these 22,000 knights
>need for their armours and barding?
Not a problem, given the Ban's length and the fact that old armor doesn't simply go away, but gets passed on to new Knights. Quite a bit can be accumulated over the centuries. This is how the KoW got all its stuff, too. Replacement can be a problem, of course.
>the 33,000 foot soldiers of the Loskalmi army rank as knight caste
>as well?
No, these are the Soldier Caste. The newest writeup of the Hrestoli gives them what amount to 4.5 castes -- Peasant, Soldier, Knight, Wizard, Lord. The soldiers are super-militia, or perhaps sub-knights. It's hard to say really. Basically they're new recruits from the peasants who don't have any good weapon skills yet. The bulk of the army, sadly.
>But then Loskalmi "feudalism" isn't like any Western European
>feudalism I know of.
I don't think it's feudal at all. I doubt that knights swear loyalty to a particular lord, at least not as sincerely and seriously as did a medieval knight. Loskalm is a bureaucracy more like ancient China or Turkey than it is like any government in Western Europe.
Sandy P
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