Fantasy Stream

18 November 2025

More on the details of how I created different parts of the first series, in this case, information on how I established the seklesi order, the composition of each part down to the squad level, and battle tactics for the battle detailed in Book 2, The Staff of Shigmar.

27 November 2012

As I drafted Book 2, during the first half of ‘06, I realized that one thing I needed to do was give more time to the ‘secondary characters,’ meaning, those beyond the three central characters–Klaybear, Blakstar, & Thalamar. I turned to Delgart & Marilee, and their places in the seklesi order, which meant I needed to establish all the little details of the order. Since I used the Roman ‘legion’ to describe the enemy forces attacking Shigmar early in the second book, I decided to use it for the seklesem. Thus, when it came time to write the battle of the Crossing of Reema, I reckoned the Fereghen would take his personal legion, along with four legions, each legion made up of 10 companies plus the legion command squad and quartermaster squad, each company 10 squads plus command & quartermaster squads. The basic seklesi squad then consisted of 2 squad leaders, 2 kailum, 2 maghem, and four each of scouts, swords, & shields; further, the members of any squad would be a mix of veterans and ‘green’ members, making 18 members. Command squads had only 2 of each plus 2 messengers & 1 quartermaster (who led his own group of company quartermasters–five total for each company), all veterans who had distinguished themselves in some way, for a total of 15 (20 with the quartermasters). So each company totaled 200, each legion 2020, meaning about 10,000 seklesem participated in this battle in Book 2.

At the squad level, the only difference between swords & shields had to do with rank & experience, the ‘first sword’ having the most experience, the ‘fourth shield’ the least. Each squad could divide in half at will, led by one of the two squad leaders and including 1 each of both kailum & maghem. The scouts did as their name implies, but also were the most experienced and proficient archers, who, along with the first & second swords, formed the squad’s archer corps; the third & fourth swords shifted to shield duty when the archer corps loosed arrows. The following image shows the specific makeup of Marilee’s squad, the eighth squad of the Eighth Company of the Third Legion:

Most of this first image shows who held which position in Marilee’s squad; below that are several drawings of different squad formations: the first on the left shows how the squad divided, the right shows the squad ‘wedge’ formation, and below that, the Eighth Company’s formation.

This next image shows a schematic of the aperum’s (dragons’) flight pattern across the battlefield, and which scout was watching which–this was necessary to keep track of the dialogue as the battle proceeded. I should add that this was written before I had established the colors and what element they represented, so here they are shown as green (G), red (R), white (W), & black (B)–the white became blue (ice), the black, orange (earth). Below that, we can see that I was working on Chapter 15 at the time, projecting four more chapters and their content. At the bottom, although not very readable, is my construction of the orthek (spell) used by Marilee’s squad, at Delgart’s suggestion, that combined teka (magic) of both kailum & maghem.