Importance of foundation

After collecting my money from company's treasure I decided to come back to Ox barony and start hiring people for my company. Thanks to my humble lifestyle, and a lot of marauding which is also known as trophy collection, I can be very pick on whom to hire. This time I plan to go through whole cycle of recruitment-training properly without unnecessary shortcuts and compromises.

So first thing I need to do is find good candidates. It may seem that best place for search is tavern or inn popular amongst mercs but in reality the best place to get info about good mercs is merchants guild. Why? Most of mercs reach warring baronies via trade caravans and during their trips merchants will start to fill some kind of dossier about any merc that stands out of grey mass of cannon fodder. Moreover merchants won't work with complete scum and brigands as such there is no need for further filtering of candidates.

Yet there are two big drawbacks of using merchants guild, first is you have to pay quite a sum to get such info, second they tend to miss greenhorn mercs with good potential as well as late bloomers. But since I have time and resources I decided to pay them a visit while keeping an eye on new comers.

First few weeks I have spent searching and selecting potential candidates. To my surprise I was able to get some really good professionals all thanks to my reputation. This allowed me to fill squad and platoon leader positions with them by promoting them to sergeants and improve training schedule since I can leave certain duties to them instead of having to oversee them 24/7.

Recruitment, selection and training become lesser of a problem with a help of experienced mercs but I still had to get proper equipment. No matter how well I train my men but they will be just slightly better than typical meatshield serf if they have to fight with rusty swords and wear gambeson with patches.

This forced me to make big order from local smith guild. Despite my attempts to make sure that my company will use standardised equipment gritty reality and half-empty pockets caused me to equip soldiers in good but various equipment. Most of my men had to wear chainmails and very lucky few were wearing scale armour. Sergeants were given the best protection available, coat of plates. Reason for buying such expensive armour is simple - chain of command. At the moment company lacks experience and cohesion and as such without sergeants it might easily turn into disorganised mob. So by providing good equipment to sergeants I try to prevent that.

As for weapons I decided to use combination of sword and shields. Initially I planned to go for standard spear and shield combo due to its simplicity but my skills in swordsmanship and expertise in training allowed me to go sword combo. So now my men were armed swords were practicing how to fight in tight formation whiles spears were considered as secondary weapon used only in case of dealing with cavalry.

It may seem to be easy to deal with daily needs of company but in reality it is pain in a neck. So instead of dealing with that as well I appointed Lukas as our quartermaster and treasurer. Now every few days I could hear angry shouts and scandals when he was dealing with our suppliers. I also wanted to hire company's own medics and smiths the only problem was lack of funds. So for now my company has to use outside specialists.

After six months of blood and sweat my company started to resemble professionals and not just bunch of people used to shedding blood. That was good since my pockets started to run dry. Now I can finally look for a good contract and baptise my company turning them into real dogs of war.