Recruited from the Dacian mountain tribes, these men are superb archers, well able to use every piece of terrain in order to pepper the enemy with arrow fire.

Recruited from the Getic mountain tribes, these men are superb archers, well able to use every piece of terrain in order to pepper the enemy with arrow fire. Not to be confused with the Agrian tribe of the Southern Rhodope, “Agrianai” was also used to denote mountain men. These men are wealthy Komatai drawn from the Getic tribes dwelling along the Karpathes. They are armored with studded leather armor, woolen trousers and armed with the bow. They developed their taste for the bow from their contact with Skythians, especially the Agathyrsoi, who once ruled the Getai as overlords, and have since become, through time, intermarriage, and a little war, a Getic tribe themselves. Their incessant fighting in more recent years against migrating Celtic tribes led many of them to adopt the Celtic-style longsword, which made them deadly when closing in for the kill. These archers should be employed as most archers, from a safe distance from the enemy and used to pepper the enemy’s vulnerable positions. Unlike most other archers though, these men can perform well in close combat, although they are most effective against weakened, exposed, or tired foes.

Historically, these highlanders were a strange synthesis between the old and the new. While they were quickly to learn the methods of Celtic metallurgy, they held ferociously to their traditions, and probably impressed the Celts through their beliefs, as many of these Celts in southeastern Europe seem to start adopting Getic incineration rituals by the third century BC.