Crew

A unit of military organization from the Northsong and Southsong Cycles

A crew was the basic unit of Waveborne warrior society. Nordlings and Southrons—whether man or woman, free or indentured, Elder or Fledging Worlder—regarded membership in a crew to be of utmost and fundamental importance: a Waveborne warrior without a crew did not exist in any meaningful sense.

Traditionally, a crew comprised forty souls, usually a combination of free and indentured warriors captained by a thaen. A crew of forty represented a full complement for a ten-oar warship (meaning, ten rows of oars on each side of the vessel). Some larger, multi-deck ships in later epochs required multiple crews to operate. A half-crew, or skeleton, was more typical than a full crew, except during large-scale campaigns. A dozen souls was commonly called a bare bones crew.

Crews were fluid: voluntary or mandatory reassignment of an individual warrior to a new crew was a common occurrence. A crew, however, existed independently of any specific ship, or any ship at all. Some ad hoc crews existed only for the length of a particular venture, maybe as little as a seven-day. Yet some renowned Nordling crews of the Fledgling World existed across epochs, long after their original members perished.