Pie Throwers

Composition

Manpower

Pie Thrower formations are effective in long, usually thin lines. As a result, their numbers usually range from three to four hundred men per unit, smaller than average for most equivalent units of that age. However, this disadvantage is mitigated by the layers of units. By the time one unit falls, the next unit is able to throw and counterattack. After two or three assaults most opposing armies of two or three thousand are too demoralized to continue; most rout.

Equipment

Pie Throwers bear no armour on any of their limbs: no gauntlets, joint pads, boots, shin guards, or the like. For optimal throwing, both legs and both arms need to be freed up. For the same reason, helmets are frowned upon. Instead, Pie Thrower standard garb is short, short-sleeved gambeson garb. In cold environments, their non-combative gear includes flint for making fires. Often, against regulation, the Pie Throwers light fires in front of or behind their unit for warmth.

Weaponry

Pie Throwers are equipped with a round, convex buckler, atop which rests a pie in some sort of unconnected tin. The pie is generally foamy. The dominant hand usually has a short spear, but many units have replaced the spears with axes or falxes. In any case, the wood of the weaponry is made of native Keyrit Okat wood. The preferred metal for the axes and bucklers is tempered steel, but preferred metal for the tin is aluminum. An alternative layout launches the pie over the shoulder in a catapult-like motion. The buckler in this case turns into a pan, and the pan often doubles as a second-hand weapon instead of a shield.

Vehicles

Pie Throwers are expected to travel on foot, but often the carts used to carry the pies are used to bring the wounded back to their places of healing.

Structure

Pie throwers, inheriting their structure from the Nettites, divided themselves into Tea'aru, literally First Fathers, and Yaaru'u, the Last Sons. More clearly, in general, the First Fathers have more experience with throwing. While rookies usually are moved to the Yaaru'u, ones with particular past history (ceremonial Nettites, for example), and ones with natural born talent are promoted immediately. All recruits are expected to have some sort of initial melee training. The Yaaru'u are usually the first line, though certain chapters and battalions have their own rules. In the usual scenario, the Tea'aru fire their pies from behind their apprentices. If the enemy breaks through the first line during the melee phase, standard protocol demands that the veterans retreat and fire a second pie at the intruders before returning to the fray themselves. Each Tea'aru has a single or couple Yaaru'u apprentice(s), but within the Tea'aru and within the Yaaru'u there are themselves hierarchies.

Tactics

Pie Throwers were designed exclusively for infantry-versus-infantry, hand-to-hand combat. When an opponent charged, the Pie Throwers would launch their cargo at the enemy, specifically the faces. If they landed, when they landed, the charge would lose its effect, the front line having slowed down or tripped over. At that point, the Pie Throwers would charge the enemy in a counterattack. Because the second line would be less prepared, the hope was that the momentum of the counter would push through the ranks and rout the entire enemy unit. If not, the skill of the Pie Throwers themselves in melee combat would add to their initial advantage of distraction.

Training

Each veteran has one or two rookie apprentices. Non-combative training includes physics (ballistics) lessons and cookery. Apprentices are trained to learn which materials to use when supplies are cut, particularly which materials are edible and how to prepare the ones that aren't. This makes each Pie Thrower self-sufficient in times of crisis, and individually invaluable assets in any army. While each rookie is expected to be proficient in melee combat as soon as they are signed on, they still maintain rigorous stabbing, hacking, and/or blocking drills. In between, the combatants practice throwing, alternating between strength exercises and accuracy exercises. The day in total usually takes up at least three quarters of daylight. Nighttime training is rare but not unheard of, partially because their armor doesn't help save them from the cold.

Logistics

Logistical Support

While not a strict requirement for the task at hand, it is a matter of honor and tradition that all pies thrown must be edible. Good-tasting is an entirely different matter; many military bakeries have substituted sugar for salt, especially when fighting against particularly heinous rivals. Sugar was usually cheaper than salt, however, so normal ingredients were preferred.
There were two schools of thought when it came to logistics. The first was that the ingredients should be transported to the Pie Throwers, where specialized cooks could make the pies for distribution to the soldiers. This saved the army from having to transport a cavalcade of delicate pastries across an ocean. However, it lacked the mass production aspect necessary for wars of scale. Ingredients would often come in poor proportions, if they came at all. While most soldiers were trained for improvising and baking pies as necessity dictated, this option was rarely pursued. However, chapters with "specialties" (such as the Berry Regiment) refused anything other than pies made within their respective systems.
The second school of thought was that pies would be made in a main factory, then distributed to other Pie Thrower units. This required major renovations in preservatives and food shipments, but the resultant materials and techniques developed by Keyrit's finest minds would be used for centuries, arguably millennia to come. Ideas for cheap creams were whipped up and proved equally as if not more effective than pies made on the field. Few things could resist the elements, however; a month's travel would rot the pies. As a result, the former option was often required.

Auxilia

The Royal Chefs of Keyrit are officially considered a part of the Keyrit Army due to the role they played in supplying the Pie Throwers. The Pie Throwers had taken up the full capacity of the pie making industry in the Keyrit capital, and the king at the time declared that his personal chefs would help in the effort to supply the pies. While the pies were the primary purpose for the drafted unit, the army that fought alongside the Pie Throwers abused their grant by heaping a host of extraneous tasks to their work pile. They mostly wanted the good food, and the chefs understood. The chefs kept the meals cooked within pie crusts to fool the king, inventing meat pies in the process. The army feasted like kings, quite literally. For a certain week, shipments were accidentally swapped. The regular army ate nothing but meringue pies, while boiling meat pies were slammed into the faces of the enemy. After the disbandment of the Pie Throwers, the chefs remained in the service of the army, helping create mass producible meals for the soldiers while abroad.

Upkeep

The only upkeep Pie Throwers needed were the pies and/or pie supplies themselves. They were known to be extraordinarily resilient in metabolism, and equally as resourceful in foreign lands. They could often turn basic grasses into flour, fruits into sugar. Still, this was the exception to the norm. Pie Throwers required entire barges' worth of materials in order to supply themselves over large campaigns. The morale benefit they gave to the rest of the army convinced the king that the investment was worth the bother.
However, this was merely the case on the campaign. When they returned home, their gambeson armor often needed to be completely reworked and refitted. Weaponry might have been battered or snapped in twain and would need to be reforged or renewed. Usually pans would be purchased from Keyrit citizens in advance. Citizens mostly didn't mind; they were paid enough to purchase brand new kitchenware, so long as they could wait their turn. Spears were fashioned manually or selected from the vast armories of the Keyrit Empire. Gambeson was the most difficult to reproduce, as it required a large amount of cloth and stuffing, neither of which were fashioned by the Empire in abundance. Often entire armies had to be kept on hold in reserve as new imports came shuffling in from Keyrit's allies to the north and south.

Recruitment

Pie Throwers by decree and protocol must never be directly recruited from the populace. Often, though, for especially promising recruits, the acceptance into the Keyrit military is merely a formality. For most cases, though, Pie Throwers are taken directly through the common military, often from pike units and artillerymen. All applicants went through a rigorous endurance test, the end of which was a test of melee combat. The weapons used by tester and testee alike were wooden and dulled, but the fresh men of the Pie Throwers did not let up. Applicants were not expected to withstand the barrage, but most weren't expected to pass anyways. Those who were able to maintain a semblance of resistance at the end were invited to join the Pie Throwers. There are nine men on record who were invited to join the Pie Throwers yet declined the offer.
In the ceremonial phase of the Pie Throwers, applicants additionally had to take a written exam and pass an interview. The training was significantly less rigorous but the prestige even greater during this era, which meant thousands of new applicants for the position. During lulls in recruitment, for example in wartime, the difficulty on the endurance test was noticeably lessened. Technically, the royal family was a part of the military, so citizens with obscure royal titles who sought to avoid the draft could be selected to fatten ranks.

History

The Pie Throwers were preceded by the Nettites, who used nets to entangle the enemy. While the nets were effective when they hit their respective targets, they were too unwieldy to use accurately and reliably. Pie throwing was much easier to train and transport and so was readily adopted by the Keyrit military. While this is the official story, legend has it that the Welok were the first to use it.
The Welok had a similar battalion of Nettites, which were stationed in a average-sized town in what is now western Keyrit. The Welokyi Nettites were easily outmaneuvered. The Keyrit Army travelled down city streets and around corners. By the time the garrison found the assailant, the assailant was too close for the net to be effective, and the Nettites would have to engage.
As a result, what few Nettites remained took up camp in the town square. While the booths of the shops surrounding the square provided for less space, the open air meant optimal conditions for throwing. By then, however, it was much too late. The Keyrit Army had the entire rest of the city under occupation, and they outnumbered Welok ten to one. They fell upon the Welokyi, whose nets stalled a few but could not hold back the tide. All but one of the garrison fell to the more melee-oriented units. In an act of desperation, his net expended, the man fled to the outer perimeter of the square, specifically to a bakery. His will unshakable, he grabbed the pies on display and began flinging them at his opponent. If legend is to be believed, he emptied the entire rack, and each of his throws reached its mark. While he was too busy to kill anyone, he did manage to prolong his resistance for roughly fifteen minutes. Despite his best efforts, though, he was captured by the Keyrit Army.
While the grunts who bore the brunt of the pies wanted his head on a pike, the officers who sent them to their humiliations pardoned the lone defender. In fact, legend says that he went on to install the doctrine into the Keyrit military after the war. No sound evidence points to a definitive Welokyi captain described in the legend, but there are several candidates.
The Pie Throwers were used as auxiliary forces in excursions abroad, notably in the Ugo-yt and Tuhran campaigns but also in Unterritory, Wiltowa, and Irewa. Their effect ranged from moderate yet acceptable losses to complete and utter rout of the enemy. While many credit the pies, the probable cause was the experience differential between the veteran Throwers and their levy opponents.
As long-range, reasonably accurate projectile weaponry introduced itself to the masses in the form of Alkali firearms, Pie throwers, and veteran soldiers of any sort for that matter, rapidly became obsolete. The Keyrit military was at the time the forefront of technology. They tested the rigor of the Pie Throwers in a mock battle, referenced informally then and formally many generations later as the Battle of Kotrok Hill. The newly formed peasant battalion of Alkali riflemen were equipped with hollow metal casings to act as blanks. Their opponent was two battalions of Pie Throwers. The Pie Throwers were instructed to reach the peasant militia from across the battlefield, while the fresh commander was authorized to use any means necessary in order to stop them. The opposing Pie Throwers did their best to make use of the terrain. the commander's initial calls to volley at once, then to fire by rank left his opponent unimpeded. The wily commander, however, in a hasty mad genius, called for his men to shoot according to their birth month: the invention of platoon fire. The Pie Throwers found no refuge from the assault, and the peasants were rationing their ammunition masterfully. The best efforts of both Pie Thrower formations amounted to a single pie reaching the new levy. For that, the Pie Throwers lost their entire army virtually and even three soldiers in reality. The War Daskalarch issued permits for a second test, but the Pie Throwers protested and overturned the decision. They did not want to lose lives because of a mere drill. They would accept defeat gracefully.
Pie Throwers were dropped from most active engagements. The last Pie Thrower battalion deployed in battle gave their lives in the first land battles of the Great Eastern Uprising, failing once and for all on the shores of Welkwu. This was the second to last detachment of Pie Throwers in history. The last Pie Thrower battalion, which was too busy training recruits to join their comrades, was adopted by the monarchy upon news of the front. They became a purely ceremonial unit, which meant no deaths, accolades without end, and the finest of crafted pies. Every year, the Pie Throwers would have an annual hurling contest, to be adored by dozens of wealthy patrons. Their success instigated the re-implementation of their predecessors, the Nettites, also ceremoniously.
The two battalions met their fate in the T'krautaur Coup of 3014, an attempted overthrow of the monarchy in favor of a Harmonist system. The army proper had been told to stand down by powerful but nefarious actors. Before the loyal high-ranking officers understood the situation and redeployed, a large mob of revolutionaries barreled down the streets towards the queen's palace. The Nettites and Pie Throwers were the only organized forces between Queen Tetria and the horde. Through their discipline, they held the gates for five hours, trading lives for time until there were no lives left to trade. The mob broke through and banged on the doors of the palace. Before they could bring a battering ram through, though, the military reorganized and tore down the revolutionaries. Out of respect for the men who lost their lives, and partially because there were none who could teach the practice, Tetria declared that 3014 would be marked as the Heroic End of the Pie Throwers.

Type

Infantry

Founding

573

Dissolution

1342

Overall training Level

Professional

Assumed Veterancy

Experienced

Used by

• Keyrit, Iathoya Takalarkyi: Daskalarch Order of Keyrit