The Oddballs: Yeomen and non-titled land owners

Non-noble landowners are not part of the feudal system directly. A yeoman is essentially a peasant that owns the small piece of land he or she works on.   In addition to the legal rights of free peasants, in theory a yeoman cannot be kicked off his/her parcel of land. Control of the land will pass to his/her family upon the person’s death. Unless the yeoman owns a parcel of land out in the middle of nowhere, he still has to pay taxes. If he pays taxes, the noble who collects his taxes is obligated to defend him from outside threats and to not let his soldiers harass him.   Most Scarterran Yeomen are either retired adventurers or the descendants of said adventurers. Yeomen within a feudal nation probably received his parcel of land as a reward by the nobility for something they or their ancestors did. Usually a royal decree along the lines of “In recognition of your great service, this land shall belong to you and your children and children’s children through perpetuity.   If the king’s great grandfather gave the yeoman’s great grandfather a parcel of land, he’ll probably honor it. If the nation folds or yields territory, things are less clear cut. The new conqueror could just say “You can stay, but you pay your taxes to me now", but it is unlikely the new feudal lords will let the yeoman keep his land. Thus yeoman tend to be loyal and enthusiastic supporters of their monarchs.   Yeoman can be pressed into military service, but they usually receive somewhat better training than conscripted peasants and earn a modest salary to boot. Given that most yeoman are descended from fairly accomplished adventurers, they are probably far better combat trained and equipped than a typical peasant conscript.   Yeoman occasionally exist in feudal societies when one nation annexes another and for whatever reason opts not to steal the land from all the original owners (though the tax payments go to a new lord, naturally).   If a Yeoman has more children than can effectively inherit the land, the non-inheriting children have to make their fortunes elsewhere. Sometimes the best they can do is scrape up the starting equipment of a novice adventurer…thus the cycle continues.       Beyond yeoman, some landowners are a lot better-off. Some landowners have lots of land and have to hire workers (or buy slaves). Like the lowly yeoman, they have to pay taxes, but they are a lot harder for nobles to push around since they can use their wealth to buy political influence. If they are living in a mostly feudalistic land, they probably own land that produces something other than a staple food crop. That way the feudal lords still monopolize food production. All that said, wealthy land owners that are not part of the nobility are quite rare in feudal societies. If a businessman or adventurer gets this successful they can probably either gain a noble title outright or get a political marriage with a prestigious noble family that is strapped for gold.   Wealthy land owners could have a plantation for cash crops, own a piece of timberland, or own a mine. If they live in a non-feudal society, they could have any sort of land and are serve as the de facto nobles despite not holding a title. They probably have the king’s ear even if they don’t have any formal power on paper. In a feudal society they or their ancestors probably did something extremely valuable to help the monarchy and received the land as a reward, but for some reason did not receive a title to go with the land.   If the land is conquered, a wealthy landowner could easily lose everything, but he has a better chance of holding onto his land then a yeoman does, if only because a wealthy land owner could potentially offer a hefty bribe and may have some potent guards. Conquerors deal with yeoman as afterthoughts but wealthy land owners were probably known to them early. Sometimes conquerors can conspire with wealthy land owners before invading, perhaps even offering the turncoats a noble title as a reward.