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Where are you planning to be based? If you are in England or France, you're definitely going to be brigands - you'll be traitors in the english areas, and enemies in the French.

You could move to italy, where you could take service as mercenaries without anybody caring that much about who you want on the throne of england.

From a purely practical viewpoint, brigands doesn't sound that good an idea. A group the size of yours is going to get hunted down and killed without too much trouble at that time - you're well past the days of the big bands or marauding routiers that infested france after the peace.

Why is your group still loyal to Richard? Are you former retained men of his? If so, that gives you a lot of the setup information about your characters, as you'll then know what they were doing pre-1399.

If you weren't his retained men, but sympathise with him, I don't think you'd be wearing his badge - it's more like unit flash on a modern uniform than a general sign of support for his policies.

Regarding liveries....well, if you're brigands, you can wear what hell you like or can steal!

If you were retained men of Richard, you might well still be wearing clothing issued to you while you were in his service. However, this need not be uniform - "livery" means that it is issued to you as part of your pay, not that it is in particular colours.

The same goes for any other commander - retained men were normally issued clothes (or a quantity of cloth to be made into clothes) as part of their annual salary, usually twice a year. This might be any colour the commander choses, and may simply be whatever's available at the time, and/or different for different individuals.

However, there are also accounts of lords dressing their entire followings alike, when they wanted to put on a good show.

As to what sort of individuals would be in such a unit....well, again, if you're brigands, anything goes! You have accounts of brigand bands being led by knights, rogue priests, all sorts - this is actually why Mallory is in the tower when he writes le morte d'arthur, for carrying on like a medieval Jesse James. Most will probably be archers, though, since that's what most of your troops are likely to be.

If you are still an organised military unit, well, armies at that point are basically being recruited by contract - X agrees to attend a certain lord for a campaign with so many mounted men at arms and so many archers, in return or a certain sum - and I'd use that as a guideline for what your unit should look like. Usual ratio is about 1 man-at-arms to 2 archers, but can go as low as 1:1 or as high as 1:3.

Men at arms are in full armour and riding "covered" horses, archers in as much armour as they want to wear and can afford - some of the illos from that period show them in damn near full harness.

Followers - well, depends mostly on setting and who you are.

Hope that helps

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Why is your group still loyal to Richard? Are you former retained men of his?

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If so, that gives you a lot of the setup information about your characters, as you'll then know what they were doing pre-1399.

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Equally, you don't HAVE to be brigands - you can equally well seek mercenary service elsewhere, if you'd prefer.

Equally, you could almost certainly make your peace with the new dynasty - you aren't important enough for them to hold a grudge against, and if I'm willing to recruit my armies from the jails, I'm probably willing to rehabilitate some former servants of the deposed king without too many qualms, in return for some garrison service in france, perhaps? There's plenty of evidence for this sort of thing under edward III, certainly - I don't know of evidence for later, but that's probably because there's less research on the composition of amies in a "quiet" period.

I guess it depends on what you want to do.

Regarding badges, you have a number to choose from. The most obvious is the white hart, but he also - like most medieval lords - used a number of badges; the popular conception that each lord had a single, unique badge is a simplification, I'm afraid.

Depending on role, some of you might well be wearing one (or more) of his badges. Don't overdo it, though - as far as I'm aware, the badge most commonly worn on combat gear at that point by anyone not entitled to hearaldry is the simple cross of St George, which any english troops might wear.

Badges of individual nobles seem to be much more commonly used a couple of generations later, in the wars of the roses, when obviously the St George is out, as both sides would be wearing it.

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If I may reccomend a site (mine, I say in all humility...), check out http://www.maisonstclaire.org/timeline/timeline.html

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Ta

Adhemar

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Originally posted by tim seasholtz:
You could always go 15th Century.

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