Three hexes northwest, five southwest of Alakran.
Another memorable specialist company of Wahattu, the Spearpoints are a unit of struthiary -- cavalry mounted on flightless birds. This fortress is named Lequnna-Qinnu, the Receptive Roost. The company overall number 72, six squadrons of 10 level 1 soldiers with level 3 and 5 officers, and one lance (2 squadrons) is garrisoned here, in a tower similar to the Earth-Cleaving Crescents' but with an outer fence, riding area, corral, and stables for the birds. The commander divides his time between this place, the other fortress to the south (Samu-Danannu, the Ruddy Momentum), and the main fortress of the southeastern Wahatti army, Sun's Greeting Castle, located westward. His name is Bir-Drada -- yes, sometimes you just have to come up with a name in the heat of the moment -- and the lieutenant of this fortress' lance is Kanugu.
Riding "axe-beak" terror birds with vermillion and orange plumage, descendants of the legendary steed Keledra the "Solar Phoenix", this elite struthiary unit mingles upper-crust scions and ruthlessly skilled social climbers. The fiction that they are a hunt club, maintained to allay the historical concerns of Urighem about rebel armies, is never more transparent than today. A pride of lions insolently lairs within an hour's ride of their headquarters, more mascots than quarry.
A Dawn trooper fairly bristles with armaments: a long lance and its replacement, six javelins, curved tulwar sabre, longbow, and (excessively) one dagger holstered on each snakeskin gaiter. True to their name, they never retreat but are sometimes known to strategically redeploy or engage the enemy in retrograde manoeuvre. Their badge is a burnished copper solar disc with six spearpoints in lieu of rays.
They are fierce rivals of the other elite struthiary of Wahattu, the Unstainable Honour Guard of the Royal Venery, peacock-plumed ponces who garrison in the capital and dye their mounts purple -- in contradiction of their very name and in pathetic imitation of the natural pedigree of Keledra! Specifically, Bir-Drada and the commander of the Venery have both gotten into their head that they need a bird with all-black plumage to be their mount, and the search for that bird threatens to inflame the already fraught rivalry.
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