The basic tenets of their faith are worshipping the six moons (Called “The sentinels of the gods”, this actually allows for just about any number of gods and faiths to be included as long as they watch through the moons, making the Luminarian Church essentially the bureaucrats of the gods), and to a lesser extent the stars (“The lights in the dark”), to be “The light in the dark of the world”. Moon phases and astrology are a big deal, and many of the rights of passage within the church involve moving through dark spaces. Surprisingly enough, this faith has not just found favour amongst humans, but also amongst Dwarves. To the Dwarves, the night sky is but one large cave, and the moons and stars are the gems within the walls. This has led to some idle chatter amongst the Dwarven people about whether or not one could extract a moon or a star from the sky, but it’s not expected any will be crazy enough to try that.
During the Drekeen-Lewean war, it was actually Luminarian Church forces that truly turned the tide of the battle with surprising amounts of innovation to counter Drekeen strategies. After the early defeats during the war, they found ways to stop cavalry charges dead in their tracks, disrupt arcane energies, and craziest of all the Dwarves came up with highly explosive ways of blowing the “false gods since they are not correctly interacting with the world through any moons known as dragons” out of the skies.
Of course, all good things come to an end and that “someone trying to screw up the nice thing they have going” had to happen eventually, as it did when the eldest son of the venerable king became embroiled in this new faith worshipping the sun. THE SUN. It’s like the moons, but it’s afraid of the dark. Even worse, they wanted to change the schedule of worship services to be at some ridiculously early time in the morning like the heretics they are. Worship services should be based around nightfall as you are to be the light in the dark. Sure, it’s rough on the morning people who just want to go to bed already, but all must endure some trials. As such, when the king died, as per their legal power, the Luminarian Church crowned the second son of the king, who just so happened to have dedicated his life in the Luminarian Paladin Order (Absolutely not relevant to the decision as to who they crowned), as the King of Lewea.
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Human forces
The Luminarian Church started amongst humans, so it should be no surprise that they have more human followers than anything else.
Spearmen (3 x 6)
The basic infantry of Luminarian forces, these are equipped with much larger shields than normal to allow them to hold a favourable position quite nicely. (I was short one of the correct shield, so another one was substituted in until I can order the missing one)
Pikemen (2 x 6)
The biggest problem with cavalry charging is they have long pointy things that can stab you before you can stab them. Luminarian Pikemen seek to solve this by carrying long pointy things that stretch the limits of practicality.
Shieldwall
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Paladins (2 x 6)
The biggest vulnerability of any shield wall is the flanks, and the Luminarians have just the solution for protecting them when stone walls aren’t an option: The metal walls known as “Paladins”. Holy champions serving the Luminarian Church, their battlecry of “We are the light in the dark” could use some work, but those who know just how tough it is to bring down Paladins tremble with frustration all the same.
Lancers (1 x 6)
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Crossbowmen (3 x 6)
Luminarian forces generally regard all the time required to train with the longbow as silly, and instead have their peasants who lack the nerve to stand in the front row of a shield wall use crossbows, which are much quicker to become effective with. The ranged support allows for a properly deployed Luminarian force to act almost as a mobile castle.
Boomsticks (1 x 6)
The Dwarves being so fond of the Luminarian Church led to them bringing some of their crazy inventions along. In the case of Boomsticks as the Dwarves call them, “dehydrated alcohol powder” is used to propel pieces of metal out of a tube at great velocity out to a decent range. These are some of the most mentally stressed forces due to the constant use of semi-controlled explosions designed by a bunch of drunk Dwarves on a whim.
Macemen (1 x 6)
Given their extensive use of armour and their history of fighting orcs, the Luminarian Forces are well aware that sometimes you just need a big smashing thing to deal with tough opponents. Macemen are exactly this, meant to be able to take a massive amount of punishment while getting near whatever heavily armoured skulls need caving in.
Clerics (1 x 6)
A church with Clerics. Shocking. They do the healing, and sometimes the smacking.
Sappers (1 x 6)
Given how slow many of the Luminarian forces are, sometimes they need someone quick who can do such mundane tasks as: Firing catapults, climbing ropes and ladders up walls to open the gate, passing messages, having hands free to hold stuff. These units are extremely versatile in what they can do.
Guardsmen (1 x 6)
Sometimes you just need some people to watch out for petty crime in a nowhere village. These folks get whatever armour happens to be lying around, but they’re mostly used as a city watch so they don’t need a lot of uniformity. Sometimes they accidentally find their way to real battles, where they make excellent cannon fodder.
Starmages (1 x 3)
While not as magic embracing as the Drekeen Empire, the Luminarian Church does not ignore the capabilities of Wizards. Quite often the Starmages specialise in disrupting the magic of other casters, as was quite effective during the Drekeen-Lewean war, but they do not ignore other studies of magic.
Iconcarriers (1 x 4)
Being a large church, it is important that significant battles have suitable brand presence. As such, the Luminarian Church has some troops whose sole job is to carry religious symbols into battle. (The icon itself is a creation to be built, shown is who will likely be carrying and moving it around)
Royalguard (1 x 2)
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Dwarven Forces
The Dwarves view the night sky as simply the roof of a cave and the stars as gems within the walls, so it should not be much of a surprise that they were willing to join the Luminarian Church in large numbers. With them, they bring their slew of alcohol related inventions, half of which wind up exploding unpredictably. The Luminarian Church had no real doctrinal opinion on alcohol before the Dwarves showed up, but since then, alcohol has been incorporated into many of their rituals.
Rockforgers (1 x 6)
Dwarven smiths are legendary, mostly because they have discovered the most important part is not heating metal adequately, but hitting it really hard with a big hammer. Similar ideas also works for forging rocks into smaller rocks and enemies into a squishy paste.
Treeslayers (1 x 6)
One of the most dreaded of enemies has proven to be shockingly resistant to hammer smashes (They usually only do superficial damage), as such, the Dwarves needed to come up with a new weapon effective against it. Trees are constantly invading their tunnels near the surface with their tendrils straight through the earth itself. Then they saw a human chopping firewood and what they needed to do made sense. This “Axe” thing the humans invented is fantastic at countering the dreaded tree threat.
Rifledwarves (1 x 6)
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Smiters (1 x 6)
The Dwarven Clerics are far more about “Using Divine Power to smite our enemies” than the “Actually knowing much about our religious doctrine” and there are few complaints within the Luminarian Church about this.
Miners and Gunners (2 x 4)
Dwarves spend lots of time digging, whether for rocks, metals, gems or crystals they aren’t all that picky. What matters is that they need to use explosives to blast away stuff in their way. Sometimes in drunken bets and not wanting to walk all the way over there out of laziness, they shoot the explosives at what needs to be cleared.This accidental gunnery training makes the miners surprisingly good with mounted weapons.
Pilotes (1 x 4)
All the crazy contraptions the Dwarves make tend to have high fatality rates for the operators. As such, only the oldest Dwarves with the absolute strongest nerves and a resignation that their life is nearing its end will drive them. Operating these vehicles requires the most feared of all things: Sobriety. It is a noble sacrifice to make to become sober to be able to cause the booms to impress the other Dwarves, but the data collected in testing does not lie: Sober Dwarves have a life expectancy of minutes instead of seconds when piloting the contraptions.
Heroes
Rak Longbronze - Cliche: Crazy Tinkering Sniper
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Grilmor Thunderhammer - Cliche: Overly aggressive Chef
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François Jonesy Rodriguez - Cliche: Swashbuckler Indiana Jones
A flamboyant swashbuckler who claims to be an archaeologist on the side, this usually just turns into François stealing stuff out of tombs and activating massive curses.
Roland - Cliche: Paladin
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Inquisitor Theopold The Bold - Cliche: Super secret holy ninja
The Luminarian Church is not fond of the use of inquisitors, they feel that that is embracing the darkness instead of illuminating it. That being said, they recognize the practicalities of having them on occasion. This means that Theopold is basically operating with a comically underfunded and overworked office of… himself.
Chief Priest Honorius - Cliche: Ridiculously powerful and holy cleric
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Princess Delphina Lewea - Cliche: Cleric Princess
As a Paladin, King Brutus decided that his firstborn should be dedicated to the Luminarian Church. Luckily for him, his firstborn was the daughter who would tolerate this, as opposed to her younger, significantly wilder sister Xena. Princess Delphina is mostly just happy that she gets access to all sorts of ancient tomes containing vast knowledge that may or may not be able to trigger the apocalypse.
Princess Xena Lewea - Cliche: Warrior Princess
Princess Xena has always been a bit rough around the edges. Eventually, the royal tailor gave up with her and simply started incorporating armour into all of her dresses because otherwise she was just going to get herself killed. As a compromise, she will more or less behave for formal engagements. Troops find following her into battle to be downright terrifying because they know that instead of taking a reasonable approach to the battle, it’s going to be some insane out of nowhere strategy that is almost certain to either wildly succeed or get everyone horribly killed.
Queen Mary Lewea - Cliche: Shotgun diplomat
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King Brutus Lewea - Cliche: Paladin King
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