Notes on the Ferali

Bill's concept of Giovanni forced me to be a bit more specific about the fearsome mountain fighters employed by the Count. -The Storyguide

The Ferali are a recent (1315 or so) innovation of the Count's. If you notice that this date is after Marius's arrival in Dalmatia, you get the prize. Yes, Marius had a lot to do with their creation, and has a lot to do with their supervision.

The whole thing with the Count wanting the Rock from Lidija was so that he (and Marius) would have an isolated, private, easily-defensible place to use as the headquarters and training ground for this new kind of soldier.

That sounds too spooky ... "new kind of soldier." I basically just mean that Marius (who is a bit brighter than his boss) realized that using men trained in traditional echelon tactics in largely unfamiliar, hostile-native-guerilla-occupied mountain terrain, is just sending men into a meatgrinder. Historically, the King of Hungary found the same thing out fighting the Vlachs of what-will-be Romania not that long ago. The Soviets were up against the same thing in Afghanistan, except the Soviets had attack helicopters and heavy artillery.

So your average Ferali man-at-arms is:

(1) a native-born Slav;
(2) selected at a young age for physical prowess and ferocity;
(3) raised apart from society among a group of his peers, with the sure knowledge that they are the elite of their comrades;
(4) trained to operate alone or in small groups in mountainous terrain, surviving off the land for extended periods of time;

and so on ... you get the picture. This is the standard regimen used throughout history and fiction to produce the Green Berets, Hitler's SS, and Frank Herbert's Saudarkar.

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