Dr. Bret Devereaux

I mean, for this sort of early medieval setting, they are the great empire of before that has collapsed, and it's one weird eastern chunk is still going for some reason.

They're kind of the Romans of the setting, and this isn't like a straight one-to-one, but one sometimes feels a bit of Roman-ness, like the men in their stone houses kind of stuff going on here.

Yeah.

And, of course, the Romans were famously not great horsemen.

Here I will push back a little bit and note that the Romans were generally not short of cavalry.

It's just that their cavalry sucked.

Oh, my.

Roman armies bring a fair bit of cavalry.

It's just not very good.

The Romans themselves, of course, figure that out.

And so over time, they do seek allied or subject peoples.

that because of their cultural setup is more oriented towards this kind of warfare, produce better cavalry.

So in the middle and late Roman Republic, after the Romans defeat Carthage, they pull the kingdom of Numidia, this North African Berber kingdom, under their control.

The Numidians make great javelin cavalry.

They're some of the, they're the best horsemen in the Western Mediterranean, some of the best in the whole Mediterranean.

And we see Numidian cavalry detachments to show up regularly with Roman armies.

In the imperial period, we see as the Romans get into the Near East, and they're encountering like Persian horse archers.

They're like, yeah, this is great.

And so they look to recruit those guys.

As they connect with the steppe, they're encountering steppe peoples or nomadic horse archers.