Shurima empire army speculation

YDy2ZkRq02·10/6/2018, 1:03:51 PM·9 votes·8,838 views

While I was re-reading Where Icathia Once Stood, I noticed some intersting affirmations about the Shuriman army. Principally this statement:

“Don’t get too impressed,” said Saijax. “The Sun Emperor has five armies, and even the least of them will outnumber us three to one.”

While it is completly possible that Saijax was wrong about the exact number of soldiers, I gonna assume that he was close to the truth. Now we need the number of soldiers of the Icathian army, something that the story also give to us:

More immediately impressive was the army taking position athwart the hard-packed earthen road leading into the city. Ten thousand men and women, clad in armor of boiled leather and armed with axes, picks, and spears.

So, considering that the smaller Shuriman army had 10,000 x 3=30,000 mortal soldiers, this means that the other 4 armies had 30,000+ soldiers, leading to the conclusion that the Shuriman army in total force had 150,000+ mortals soldiers.

Now I want to talk about the organiztion of the army. It seems like the stronger Ascended lead groups of 10,000 warriors:

So true and just was his conduct that other god-warriors would always gather at his side, and ten thousand mortals of Shurima marched behind him.

From Aatrox's lore

“To you, but when I first came here, the walls were newly raised, two hundred feet of polished marble, every stone pristine and veined with gold. My brother and I entered the city in triumph at the head of ten thousand gold-armored soldiers with burnished spears. We marched through this gateway to the cheers of the city’s people.”

This quote is from Bloodline, its Nasus talking about Vekaura. I'm not sure what was the purpose of the army since Nasus said this right after this quote:

He let out a rumbling sigh before continuing, “A year later, it was all gone. It was the end of everything. Or perhaps it was the beginning. I have turned from the world so long I can no longer tell.”

Consedering that the Fall of Shurima happened one year later, Azir's mother came from this city(also said by Nasus in Bloodline), the citizens were cheering their arrival and Vekaura is incredily close to the capital, I doubt that Nasus and Renekton went to Vekaura to invade the city, since it wasnt an offensive force, it is possible that Nasus and Renekton were leading bigger armies. But still the number that we have so far for them is 10,000.

10,000 soldiers was also the number of soldiers in the elite royal army:

When last he had walked this path, an honor guard of 10,000 elite warriors had marched in his wake, and the cheers of the crowd had shaken the city.

But I'm not sure if the royal guard was part of the armies or just a separeted group of warriors, so I will not include them.

Weaker Ascended, like Ta'anari and Syphax, seems to lead smaller forces, even in important fights, like the seal of a Void rift:

“Syphax, my brother, we waged war on the abyssal monsters when they poured from the ocean rift on the eastern coast. We fought for ten days and nights, to the very limits of endurance, but we drove them back. We triumphed!” ... “I do not speak of that time,” said Syphax, his many eyes veiled in smoke. “Seven thousand golden warriors of Shurima died on the red shore. Only you and I returned alive.”

Though, it could be explained by the death of numerous warriors in previous fights against the Void.

During the Icathian rebelion, 9 Ascended were in the lead of the armies, the only number of warriors that came to Icathia gave by the story was this one:

From the slopes above, we watched wave after wave come into sight, tens of thousands of men who had never known defeat, and whose ancestors had conquered the known world.

So perphaps, 9 Ascended were leading at least one of the five armies.

So while each army had 30,000 warriors or more, those armies being lead by multiple Ascended, Shurima had smaller groups of warriors form these armies that could be lead by one or two Ascended. But it wasnt just Ascended since Renekton and Nasus lore revels that the shuriman army had mortals generals and war-captains:

Within a few years, he rose to become one of Shurima’s most feared and capable war-captains, and he fought on the front line in numerous wars of conquest to expand the empire...Nasus became a decorated general, and the two of them served in a number of campaigns together, remaining very close despite their inherent differences and frequent disagreements.

(this quote appears before their ascension) I'm not compeltly sure about the place of the mortal military leaders. Where Icathia Once Stood mentions this:

The god-warriors spoke swiftly to their attendants, who turned and ran to bear their orders to the wings of the army. Almost immediately, our enemy began to move uphill.

Perhaps, those attendants are the mortal leaders? Even if the story only mention the attendants receiving orders, we dont have the full vision of whats happening in the army, so maybe those attendants were leading together with the Ascended?

I also want to mention the big difference of forces between the Shuriman armies and Darkin armies, the Darkin war is said to have exterminated most of the human population and when you compare the 150,000+ warriors of the Shuriman army to this:

“Nine hosts. Nearly ten thousand warriors.”

(Quote from Twilight of the Gods) You can see how much of the population was lost. Even though it was just nine hosts and not all the armies of the Darkins.

Edit: I had a talk with Bioluminescence in Discord and she said that while my estimations were good, I was using a bad source and this lead me to numbers smaller than the true army. We don't have other sources to the number of warriors in the armies right now, so this is the closest I can get with the material that we received.

4 Comments

Gold Light10/6/2018, 4:26:33 PM5 votes

This is a very impressive and in-depth analysis. I'm genuinely impressed. Still, I don't think it's that much of a surprise. The Shuriman empire managed to pretty-much conquer an entire continent when it was around (save for Targon), so it makes sense that their armies would be massive.