Dogs of War
So. The other day, pne made a post that included the word Rotwelsch, as the name of a language. After a little bit of research on the language I had a sudden analysis of Rotwelsch as "Road-Welsh", i.e. a foreigner language spoken by Travellers.
sarkat wondered if that had anything to do with rottweilers. I can find no etymology for Rottweil, but I did find that it had two 't's, so there's probably no connection to Rotwelsch.
In the mean time, I learned the the ancestors of the rottweiler include Roman war dogs that accompanied the legions to Germany. This got me looking at war dogs.
You don't hear much about war dogs, in either history or fantasy. Too overshadowed by war horses. But then, what isn't overshadowed by war horses? Our culture has a millennial obsession with horses. That's why I have no cavalry on the Hajasith in Sedes (though, interestingly, equids make up a more significant portion of the ecology, there being no deer, goats, antelope, etc. But none of the equid species will bear a rider.)
I can think of only one fantasy book with even a mention of war dogs (in Oathbound, the Sunhawk mercenaries have a dog handler, and I know large war dogs are mentioned, but I think only small messenger dogs actually appear in the book). D&D talks about war dogs occasionally, but they're generally talking about dogs as war mounts for small humanoids, esp. halflings (this is not a historical, or especially practical use for dogs*).
But though they're rarely mentioned, dogs have been used in war all through history, from Babylon to Baghdad. The Romans had entire formations of war dogs. Attila used war dogs. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I each sent hundreds of war dogs to support various conflicts. Four thousand US war dogs served in Viet Nam.
In modern use, dogs are not usually used in large numbers to attack enemy troops, since modern weapons render that strategy largely ineffective. But in pre-modern times, large dogs often accompanied troops into battle, wearing spiked collars and even mail coats.
Attack dogs are generally Molossers in general, and the English Mastiff, the heaviest living breed, is particularly adept at this (note above with the English monarchs exporting war dogs). The progenitor of the English Mastiff, the Pugnaces Britanniae, greatly impressed the Romans as fighting dogs when the conquered Brittain in the 1st C. Irish wolfhounds are probably descended from war dogs, too. More recently they were used for hunting wolves and boar, activities not terribly different from war, really (interesting point: breeders recommend keeping young wolfhounds on a strict diet to keep them from growing to their great height too quickly, which can damage their health).
And, you've no doubt guessed where this is going. Yep. War dogs on Sedes Draconis.
The dwarves will definitely utilize war dogs, and probably all manner of working dogs. The reasons the dwarves especially will have war dogs are two fold:
1) Dogs will be the only war animal of any significance in the dwarven homeland. Humans utilize bekena (~donkeys, if you like) to pull chariots (though they won't bear riders). But a chariot is useless in rough or hilly terrain. And there's just not that much you could do with a gadla (~goat, if you like) in combat, either, except possibly have it pull a chariot.
Dogs, then, will be the primary, probably only, war animal used by dwarves.
2) Dwarves like their dogs. Dwarves live in cold: in northern highlands. The colder it is, the less palatable plants there are, and the greater portion of a hominids diet will be meat. Primary sources of meat are hunting and herding, two tasks dogs excel at.
To quote Fernando-Armesto, from Civilizations:
Some people, however, like ice. In the Old World, they followed it northwards as the glaciers shrank at the end of the last great ice age. Near the edge of the ice, among burials at Skateholm, on what is now the shore of the Baltic, they left their bones lying in shallow pits enriched with beads and blades and gifts of red ocher. [...] Their dogs lie in adjoining graves: burly, wolflike hunters, buried with the spoils of their careers, including antlers and boars' tusks, sometimes with more signs of honor than attend human burials. These dogs were full members of societies in which status was determined by hunting prowess: dogs who were leaders of men, real-life heroes of what, to modern children's writers is fantasy. In this part of the world, dogs were so much a fixture of the northern hunters' lives that their myths often allege a canine progenitor.
Humans almost certainly use war dogs, too. Imported from the dwarves if nothing else. Goblins, possibly. Goblins territory might be too wetland for effective use of dogs. Orcs warfare is naval. Kobolds definitely don't use war dogs.
Do elves? Maybe. Dogs would be good at combat in wooded areas: finding hidden enemies, weaving between trees. I'm not sure if elven warfare is terrestrial enough, though.
Do trolls? Maybe. A mastiff is probably big enough to be respectable even to a troll.
Do gnomes? Maybe. I had previously decided gnomes were generally uncomfortable with dogs. Too big and scary. But I was also thinking at the time that Hajasith dogs were going to be less plastic than Earth dogs (largely because I find the extreme twisting of animals you see in a number of dog breeds vaguely distasteful). But there really are reasons for dogs to be that plastic, and if they're to be bred as war dogs, they're probably being bred for all sorts of other tasks. Probably including, unfortunately, lap dogs (who have at least 2000 years of history on earth).
So it's less clear gnomes would be as generally uncomfortable around dogs as I was first thinking. And if they're can get used to dogs on smaller creatures, they'd probably adopt dogs for many uses too. And a people who are invariably outmassed by their opponents in combat can't pass up too many options. Good or bad, the equivalent of a mastiff is going to be fucking terrifying from a gnome's point of view, given it, too, outmasses them (slightly).
*dogriderssociety.com recommends a dog only carrying a rider up to 20% of its weight. Given that the world record holder for heaviest dog in the world was 315 pounds (Zorba, an English mastiff), and 20% of that is 63 pounds, this trick is reserved for small children. Interestingly, this means a small to medium halfling could just about ride a large mastiff. I'm inclined to doubt that it would be useful, even where possible. But hey, I was wrong about moose cavalry.
Bonus: Voytek the Soldier Bear. No, really.
sarkat wondered if that had anything to do with rottweilers. I can find no etymology for Rottweil, but I did find that it had two 't's, so there's probably no connection to Rotwelsch.
In the mean time, I learned the the ancestors of the rottweiler include Roman war dogs that accompanied the legions to Germany. This got me looking at war dogs.
You don't hear much about war dogs, in either history or fantasy. Too overshadowed by war horses. But then, what isn't overshadowed by war horses? Our culture has a millennial obsession with horses. That's why I have no cavalry on the Hajasith in Sedes (though, interestingly, equids make up a more significant portion of the ecology, there being no deer, goats, antelope, etc. But none of the equid species will bear a rider.)
I can think of only one fantasy book with even a mention of war dogs (in Oathbound, the Sunhawk mercenaries have a dog handler, and I know large war dogs are mentioned, but I think only small messenger dogs actually appear in the book). D&D talks about war dogs occasionally, but they're generally talking about dogs as war mounts for small humanoids, esp. halflings (this is not a historical, or especially practical use for dogs*).
But though they're rarely mentioned, dogs have been used in war all through history, from Babylon to Baghdad. The Romans had entire formations of war dogs. Attila used war dogs. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I each sent hundreds of war dogs to support various conflicts. Four thousand US war dogs served in Viet Nam.
In modern use, dogs are not usually used in large numbers to attack enemy troops, since modern weapons render that strategy largely ineffective. But in pre-modern times, large dogs often accompanied troops into battle, wearing spiked collars and even mail coats.
Attack dogs are generally Molossers in general, and the English Mastiff, the heaviest living breed, is particularly adept at this (note above with the English monarchs exporting war dogs). The progenitor of the English Mastiff, the Pugnaces Britanniae, greatly impressed the Romans as fighting dogs when the conquered Brittain in the 1st C. Irish wolfhounds are probably descended from war dogs, too. More recently they were used for hunting wolves and boar, activities not terribly different from war, really (interesting point: breeders recommend keeping young wolfhounds on a strict diet to keep them from growing to their great height too quickly, which can damage their health).
And, you've no doubt guessed where this is going. Yep. War dogs on Sedes Draconis.
The dwarves will definitely utilize war dogs, and probably all manner of working dogs. The reasons the dwarves especially will have war dogs are two fold:
1) Dogs will be the only war animal of any significance in the dwarven homeland. Humans utilize bekena (~donkeys, if you like) to pull chariots (though they won't bear riders). But a chariot is useless in rough or hilly terrain. And there's just not that much you could do with a gadla (~goat, if you like) in combat, either, except possibly have it pull a chariot.
Dogs, then, will be the primary, probably only, war animal used by dwarves.
2) Dwarves like their dogs. Dwarves live in cold: in northern highlands. The colder it is, the less palatable plants there are, and the greater portion of a hominids diet will be meat. Primary sources of meat are hunting and herding, two tasks dogs excel at.
To quote Fernando-Armesto, from Civilizations:
Some people, however, like ice. In the Old World, they followed it northwards as the glaciers shrank at the end of the last great ice age. Near the edge of the ice, among burials at Skateholm, on what is now the shore of the Baltic, they left their bones lying in shallow pits enriched with beads and blades and gifts of red ocher. [...] Their dogs lie in adjoining graves: burly, wolflike hunters, buried with the spoils of their careers, including antlers and boars' tusks, sometimes with more signs of honor than attend human burials. These dogs were full members of societies in which status was determined by hunting prowess: dogs who were leaders of men, real-life heroes of what, to modern children's writers is fantasy. In this part of the world, dogs were so much a fixture of the northern hunters' lives that their myths often allege a canine progenitor.
Humans almost certainly use war dogs, too. Imported from the dwarves if nothing else. Goblins, possibly. Goblins territory might be too wetland for effective use of dogs. Orcs warfare is naval. Kobolds definitely don't use war dogs.
Do elves? Maybe. Dogs would be good at combat in wooded areas: finding hidden enemies, weaving between trees. I'm not sure if elven warfare is terrestrial enough, though.
Do trolls? Maybe. A mastiff is probably big enough to be respectable even to a troll.
Do gnomes? Maybe. I had previously decided gnomes were generally uncomfortable with dogs. Too big and scary. But I was also thinking at the time that Hajasith dogs were going to be less plastic than Earth dogs (largely because I find the extreme twisting of animals you see in a number of dog breeds vaguely distasteful). But there really are reasons for dogs to be that plastic, and if they're to be bred as war dogs, they're probably being bred for all sorts of other tasks. Probably including, unfortunately, lap dogs (who have at least 2000 years of history on earth).
So it's less clear gnomes would be as generally uncomfortable around dogs as I was first thinking. And if they're can get used to dogs on smaller creatures, they'd probably adopt dogs for many uses too. And a people who are invariably outmassed by their opponents in combat can't pass up too many options. Good or bad, the equivalent of a mastiff is going to be fucking terrifying from a gnome's point of view, given it, too, outmasses them (slightly).
*dogriderssociety.com recommends a dog only carrying a rider up to 20% of its weight. Given that the world record holder for heaviest dog in the world was 315 pounds (Zorba, an English mastiff), and 20% of that is 63 pounds, this trick is reserved for small children. Interestingly, this means a small to medium halfling could just about ride a large mastiff. I'm inclined to doubt that it would be useful, even where possible. But hey, I was wrong about moose cavalry.
Bonus: Voytek the Soldier Bear. No, really.