Exploring the Interesting Aspects of the Fantasy Military and War

Anarchy in fantasy depicts a lawlessness world. This image features a city with a castle on a hilltop above it. The city has both rectangular- and square-shaped buildings with a wavy roof on each one. The buildings come in four colors: light yellow, brown, light blue, and white. The roofs come in the following colors: dark blue, red, light black, and dark brown. Many of these buildings have windows and some have a visible door. The road itself runs down the middle of the image, swaying to the right and then the left, ending at the doorstep of the castle. The road also meets two others, one that runs to the left, and the other to the right. Behind the city is a grassy field with blades of grass scattered throughout. A river cuts through the field, meandering from the left edge to the right edge of the image. The castle itself is white with gray shadows. It has four red turrets and diamond-shaped windows. Smoke billows forth from the buildings and castle, as if they're on fire. The grassy field is yellow-orange and the sky is a pale yellow with gray clouds. The castle and town being on fire is an effect of the fantasy military and war.
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Sunfire

CONTENTS

Overview

A major theme that appears in many works in the fantasy genre is war. These stories explore it in different ways, some focusing on how destructive it is on nature, others hone in on how it changes society both in positive and negative ways, among others. Regardless of how it’s explored, one thing is for sure, it needs a military to make it happen. Thus, the fantasy military and war plays a large role in many stories.

War is expensive, not just financially but in terms of manpower and logistics. That’s where the military comes in. Charged with the task of protecting the realm and winning the war, the military works overtime over the war’s duration, moving armies and supplies to where they need to be. This laborious process doesn’t stop until the war reaches its end.

Should you decide to have war be a centerpiece of your story, the first thing you need to do is to have it start off right. Wars don’t just ignite overnight; they’re the end result of a long series of decisions made beforehand that over time fueled a growing resentment among a faction that eventually reached its breaking point.

Battles are an integral component of the fantasy military and war but they’re just parts of a larger picture. These battles occur in what’s commonly known as theaters. Each theater serves a purpose and each side has a set of objectives they’re striving to achieve — and deprive their opponents of as well.

Many creators have the war that span their stories end in the last part and explore just a little bit of its ramifications. Unfortunately, it’s easy to bungle, leading to a great dissatisfaction among the audience for how it ended so it’s imperative that you do it in a way that pleases your audience and makes sense in your world.

This is article number ten in the series exploring the fantasy military. If you enjoy this article and would like to see what else we have, you can find plenty more on our blog page!

Setting up the Fantasy Military and War

War doesn’t happen by accident. A lengthy series of choices made years, decades, even centuries beforehand generated a chain of events that led to it breaking out. It’s important to showcase the major reasons why it happened so that your audience can understand why and what the countries of your world are fighting about. How you do so is up to you but you want to present it in a way that engenders interest.

Some stories immediately throw their audience in the middle of a ferocious war, leaving them to try to figure out who’s on whose side and what they’re fighting about. They have little time to get to know the characters because they don’t know who’ll make it through the battle unscathed or not. This can make for fantastic storytelling since the tension is already high right at the beginning of the story.

A gray tower with five spires at its peak in the middle of a grassy field. It has many blue windows. A golden road runs from its door past the wall which is one of many defensive fantasy fortifications you see in the genre. Behind the tower looms a blue mountain range and a orange sky with oval clouds.

Other stories that involve the fantasy military and war do so it in layers where the first part primarily focuses on laying the groundwork for the main drama. Throughout the part, the audience gradually learns more about the major players and their own agendas which makes it easy to understand once the main conflict starts.

When setting up the fantasy military and war, do so in a way that is true to the spirit of your story. For example, if you have a sprawling epic with many characters and different factions, it would be best to ease your audience into it. Let them learn more about the militaries of each side, the characters themselves, and what they’re striving to reach before war officially breaks out.

Show the major tension points between each faction. They are living with the consequences of decisions made before their lives or before they became adults. Don’t forget to explore their relationship with the military since after all, the soldiers under their command will be carrying out their orders sooner or later in the story.

The Theaters of the Fantasy Military and War

One battle does not make a war. It is a series of skirmishes, both small and grand, within a specific area as each side endeavors to press forward or hold the line. The site where these battle occur is called a theater.

Theaters are essential to fantasy military and war in that they are time-consuming. There’s a lot of strategizing within the top echelon as to where to attack, how much manpower to commit to said mission, and the logistics required to move everything they need in position to strike. Theaters can last for months to years.

Purple question marks within white clouds above a mountain range in the blue sky. These question marks signify what goes into creating a fantasy social hierarchy.

While some wars have only one theater, many more have two or more. Regardless if it’s just one or more, in each one, the combatants involved have their own goals. Some are intent on conquering the whole land whereas others adopt a piecemeal approach, pressing their advantage in spots where they have the upper hand and holding the line in other areas.

At the onset of the theater, the objectives for each faction involved are clear but as time marches on, said objectives are likely to change. For instance, a side might have the intention to win control of a highly strategic area like a major mining facility that can bring in massive revenue but might ultimately be forced to look elsewhere if it’s suffered a series of defeats that’s made it difficult to move into position to attempt to seize control of it.

A theater in war comes to a close in one of two ways. The first is when the invading army successfully attains all of its objectives and the second is when the defending side makes the odds of the attacking force seizing all the contested territory within the theater unlikely. In the former, the theater ends but it may well open up a brand-new one with the same factions still duking it out or it brings another group of people into the war. 

Ending the Fantasy Military and War on a High Note

While each phase of the war is important, how it ends is far more instrumental than the others in that it’ll determine the state of the world afterward. Thus, when ending it, it’s imperative that you close it in a way that satisfies your audience and makes sense given the context of the world.

War isn’t a clean-cut affair. While there are victors and losers, it comes with it a whole slew of unforeseen effects that will reverberate for a long period afterwards. The victorious side will rejoice in the peace, ebullient that it prevailed over its enemy whereas the faction that lost will seethe with fury and will be determined to win the next war.

A tyrannical government in fantasy rules its lands from dark towers or castles. This dark gray tower has a diamond-shaped hole at the top where parts of it jut out in different directions. On the tower's front is a series of steps going diagonally. A path runs from the door to the bottom of the image. On each side is a rock plateau. Behind the tower is a gray mountain range with a volcano on the right side. The volcano has a ring of clouds swirling above it. Above the mountains is the black sky with gray clouds.

When it comes to the fantasy military and war and how to end it on a high note, presenting the last battle as the grand finale is a superb way to bring together many of your plot lines. Some of your characters will not get the opportunity to see the long-awaited victory they’ve been working towards so it’s their time get their moments of glory.

While the skirmish between the protagonist and the villain will take center stage, exploring how the other characters are doing enables your audience to see how their favorites and the ones who they loathe are faring. This makes for a more tense environment as your audience clearly sees both sides know this is it which means they’ll give it everything they’ve got.

With the end of the war comes peace. But before then, both sides will have to negotiate terms. Even though negotiations can be boring, you don’t have to make it that way. You can make them dramatic by showing how the side that lost refuses to see reason or that the victorious side is bullying their vanquished foe by issuing outrageous demands. This can and will sprinkle the seeds of a future conflict.

Tying it all Together

Many stories feature the fantasy military and war in some capacity. While their main focus is winning the battle, these two parts can affect the plot in meaningful ways. How the characters of your story perceive them will dictate the actions they take that will have both positive and negative effects.

A good chunk of stories devote the first part to setting up the military and the war. In the prelude to the main drama, their audience learns more about the state of the world, the characters and what’s driving them. They also learn more about events in the past that led to the world they’re seeing with their eyes.

Moving onto the action itself, an excellent story uses the fantasy military and war to great effect. They hone in on how each side is faring, what their next objectives are, and use the theaters of the war as the backdrop to show both sides’ moves. This generates natural tension, especially as both sides gird for a major battle that will determine who will win this part of the war.

As the plot careens towards the end, it needs to close on a high note. How the war ends dramatically dictates the contours of the postwar era so it’s vital that it has a satisfying conclusion, both to the characters who’ve shed blood and saw the people close to them fall in battle and to the audience who’ve invested time in seeing the twists and turns of the war. Smart creators do an excellent job in bringing the drama of war to an end that pleases both groups.

Haven’t given much thought about the military and war? There’s no better time to start than today!

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Thanks for reading this and until the next time,

Sunfire

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