LMFC 02: Factions in the Late Medieval Fantastic Campaign
The LMFC needs faction play. Fortunately, the political landscape of late 14th-century Frisia has us covered and provides plenty of material for it.
Until only a few generations earlier, the rural communes of the East Frisian peninsula and neighboring Frisian territories had largely governed themselves through local assemblies, effectively preventing the emergence of a feudal order. Over the course of the turbulent 14th century, however, this political order began to unravel. Failed harvests, the Black Death, and a series of devastating storm floods - including the Grote Mandrenke (“Great Drowning of Men”) - created conditions in which power gradually shifted into the hands of established and increasingly influential families. These families assumed leadership over many rural communities, transforming them into what were, in effect, quasi-domains.
The emerging ruling elite styled themselves hovetlinge (chieftains) or capitanei. They surrounded themselves with armed retainers and constructed fortified houses and small castles from which to consolidate and project their power. By the late 14th century, the Frisian chieftains were locked in a web of political conflicts: forging shifting alliances, pursuing feuds, raiding their rivals, and engaging in piracy to finance their ambitions.
As these struggles increasingly developed into a contest for supremacy over the peninsula, some chiefly families established connections with the Victual Brothers, pirates driven out of the Baltic and North Sea who were organized, at least in part, along guild-like lines. Their presence and alliances in Frisia, in turn, attracted the attention of the powerful merchant cities of the Hanseatic League.
Even this brief overview suggests a political landscape crowded with competing interests, and therefore a wealth of potential factions for the campaign:
- The great chiefly families, for example the tom Brok, Cirksena, and Ukena.
- Lesser chiefly families, local Dorfhäuptlinge whose influence may extend only across a handful of villages or a small territory.
- Pirates and mercenary bands, ranging from local raiders and private warbands to the more organized forces associated with the Victual Brothers.
- Hanseatic cities, above all Hamburg, eager to protect trade routes.
- Rural communes and village communities, protective of their traditional rights and autonomy, and far from passive players in the political struggles around them.
- Aristocratic powers from within the Holy Roman Empire pursuing their own political, economic, and dynastic interests on the peninsula.