The Queen's Riders

A cavalry/police group that protects Tortallans who live in hard-to-reach parts of the country. They enforce the law and teach local residents to defend themselves. They also have a reputation for being willing to do anything, no matter how crazy it is, to get the job done. Their flexibility allows the most insane plans to be carried out perfectly and lets them improvise when an ordinary cavalry unit might get bogged down by tactical errors.

Terms and Terminology

 * Captain : the leader of a rider group; group commander


 * Commander : the collective leader of the Queen's Riders, supported by the Second-in-Command.


 * Group : a group of riders
 * Horsemistress: responsible for the Riders' ponies, including acquisition, instructing trainees in their care, and general management. The position is filled by a civilian expert and is often accompanied by an assistant or two.


 * Lieutenant : the second-in-command of a rider group.


 * remount : A rider's second horse, to ride when the primary horse gets tired. In the case of the Queen's Riders the remount is the spare horse.
 * Second-in-Command : also called assistant commander, or just The Second, a nominal position under the Commander, usually held by a captain


 * String : A group or train of horses on a lead rein

Emblem
A red horse rearing on a golden field.

History
The Queen's Riders was co-founded by Queen Thayet I and Buriram Tourakom as a means to help protect their newfound home. It hasn't changed much since they founded the organization a little over a hundred years ago.

The Ranks
Unlike the army, the navy, and the King's Own, the Queen's Riders accepts both men and women into their ranks. Commoners are preferred, though younger nobility is also accepted.

The military structure of the Rider's is much looser than that of a convential martial organization, with the overall leader being the Commander, and the leaders of each group being a captain and a lieutenant. Each group consists of eight to nine members (counting the captain and the lieutenant).

Trainees: newcomers hoping to join the Riders;

Others: additional civilians such as healers and tailors who work for the Riders by educating trainees and acting as support staff.

The structure is as follows:

- Commander (1)

- Second-in-Command (1)

- Captains (1 per rider group)

- Lieutenants (1 per rider group)

The Rider Groups

 * The First - the first rider group


 * Ghostwind - the second rider group


 * Webspinners - the third rider group


 * The Queen's Rabbits - the fourth rider group


 * Clouds - the fifth rider group


 * Daine's Wolves - the sixth rider group


 * Nightsbreath - the seventh rider group


 * Soft Lightning - the eighth rider group


 * Ogre's Bane - the nineth rider group


 * Royal Arrows - the tenth rider group


 * Trollwatchers - the eleventh rider group


 * Spiderdeath - the twelve rider group


 * Razors - the thirteenth rider group


 * Gret's Shadows - the fourteenth rider group


 * Stickers - the fifteenth rider group


 * Thayet's Dogs - the sixteenth rider group


 * Group Askew - the seventeenth rider group


 * Buri's Rams - the eighteenth rider group


 * Player's Follies - the nineteenth rider group


 * Last Company - the twentieth rider group


 * Mad Hatters - the twenty-first rider group


 * Peerless Ravens - the twenty-second rider group


 * The Iron Brigade - the twenty-third rider group


 * Black Cats - the twenty-fourth rider group


 * Jesslaw's Crew - the twenty-fifth rider group


 * Onua's Ponies - the twenty-sixth rider group


 * Chavi's Bunch - the twenty-seventh rider group

The Uniforms and Accessories
Technically, the riders don't have a uniform. They wear boots, breeks, shirts, jerkins, and anything else that they can get away with wearing while on the trail, though an oufit consisting of plain white shirts, brown tunics and trousers, and riding boots is the most common and is what could be considered "the uniform." Around the arm of each Rider is also a badge declaring that they're a Queen's Rider. Commanders will have an additonal gold ring around their insignia, captains will have a crimson ring around their badge, and lieutenants will have a crimson ring with a thin black stripe in the middle. Occasionally, the Riders will wear armor, though it's not very common. Riders travel light, and light armor is not.

Going on that idea, members of the Queen's Riders carry only what they need to - tavel packs of food, a spare change of clothes, basic utensils, and their weapons. Other than that, they're expected to scavange and scrounge as they go.

Horses
The Riders don't actually ride horses, they ride ponies, which are better suited for taveling swiftly through forest and over rough terrain. Each Rider has two ponies, their primary and their spare (termed a remount.) Riders learn to fight, eat, sleep, and virtually live in the saddle, and care for their horses is a huge thing.

Training
Joining the Queen's Riders is easy enough, really. The requirements are posted throughout the realm in schoolhouses and other such gathering places, and the list itself isn't all that long. You must be fifteen years of age or older, healthy with all your body parts attached (no missing hands or eyes), single, no spouses or children, you need to have good reflexes, and you need to be able to read and write (if you cannot, the Riders will give you work in the palace until you learn.). It helps if you ride, though that is not mandatory, and every hopeful trainee must be at the Rider camp in Corus by the March full moon.

Yes, all you have to do to join the Riders is meet the minimal requirements and show up. Thing is, it's the staying in the Queen's Riders that's tough. Training begins on the dot every year on the full moon of March, and from the start trainees are given a strict regimen. More often than not, trainees will get sick, or they can't take orders, or they can't handle the schedule. Regardless, the weak ones are weeded out early on.

Trainees begin their day by waking up and and getting out the door in full dress mere moments after their trainers sound the morning call. They then spend the morning doing seemingly menial tasks such as running through the meadows and climbing the tallest trees around. This is broken by lunch, and then the trainees go right back to the hard work. After supper, which is about seven in the afternoon, the trainees go into the school, where they do their book learning and field training, learning to, among other things, identify, use, and counter-act poisons; apply and make medicines, mostly with medicinal herbs; identify and prepare edible plants; how to track and hunt, on all terrains; how to sew your own wounds, without numbing the area; how to read maps, and how to draw them; battle tactics; veterinary medicine; and virtually everything possible about weaponry and hand-to-hand combat. The ones with the Gift learn to do all they can with it.

After a few weeks of playing around, the Horse Mistress for the Queen's Riders will come in with a herd of ponies in tow, and the real work will begin. Trainees will go to the meadows and pick out two ponies: one for the morning, and one for the afternoon. The trainers watch this carefully, because the trainees' choices in ponies will either make or break their future Rider career. Day one is spent grooming the ponies and getting to know them, as well as fitting temporary tack, which will be replaced with saddles and bridles that the trainees themselves will make.

After this, the trainees learn to ride their ponies, to fight while on their ponies, and pretty much anything else you can think of, on their ponies. This is a time when many trainees drop out, as well. Usually, by the time Spring ends and Summer is upon them, there are around thirty trainees left. By this time, the trainees are deemed ready to wet their toes and head to the summer riding camp -- which is a different location each year. It's there that the trainees apply everything that they've learned, and their training is further expanded upon.

The trainees all do the best that they can, and at the end of the following fall, those that remain divide into actual Rider groups in the field and begin their trial year. If they survive (and most do, nowadays), the trainees are hired as Riders and assigned to their permanant groups.