Bannermen were Marcher Lords sworn to serve and, primarily, to lend military support to their sovereign Lords in the Free Marches.

The legal tradition of the bannermen was banned in 516 by Emperor Talmbrack: all military affairs were standardized.

Origins

In the aftermath of the Drummir Kingdom, the various settlements and warlords of the Marches had to make do as they could. With time, officers came to ally among each other to better coordinate the people they protected, and to have stronger armies for wars against the cling-clan. In 621, the Lord of Eastmarch took a vow of servitude from Marcher Lord Taugreim, and proclaimed:

The great generals of the Andan legions of old had been escorted by proud warrior with flapping banners; the nostalgic value of this image was still high. Various Marcher Lords had adopted banners in various ways, usually as clan insignia, and it had become tradition for a Marcher army's commander to be escorted by the banners of the clans in his army. Thus, when a Lord marched to war, his sworn allies' bannermen marched with him - hence the name.

The custom of carrying banners to battle had goblinoid origins. In the Trensandor Empire, however, banners did not denote individuals or families, but displayed their units' place of origin. Officers displayed family insignia on their armor instead.

The Tradition

With time, the majority of the Marches came under the control of a few greater clans. Larger clans had a political and strategic advantage over smaller clans, and so increasingly many Lords found themselves swearing allegiance to some clan or another.

Sworn bannermen always had to answer their Lords' call to go to war. The greater clans did not have the largest armies; typically, a Greater Marcher Lord's army was constituted to nine-tenths from bannermen.

Some bannerman relations included other services. In spirit, bannermen were subjects of their Lords in all respects, but the Lords generally kept their leashes very loose. Bannermen were still proud Marchers in their own rights and enjoyed considerable autonomy in their domains.