[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

I'm just imagining catapults lobbing dozens of jars full of pitch, followed by a few slingers with incendiaries. How practical is this for your setting? For offensive and defensive purposes?

For defensive purposes, very practical. For offensive purposes, only if you are attacking something within a few hundred yards from deep water, where the ships that carry heavy artillery can sail.

The logistical situation for the ground war is somewhat odd. For the past winter, the Free Unther* side had been subject to a blockade of their remaining coastline and, in any case, were feeding hundreds of thousands of refugees. As a result, oxen, mules and horses had mostly died, been eaten or are so skinny that they are little use for warfare.

But now the Free Unther side more or less controls the seas, at least on the coasts in the northern parts of Unther, where the ground war has advanced, so they have fairly good mobility and logistics, as long as they stay near the coasts or near navigable rivers. Or near the Methmere, a huge freshwater lake near the western border of Unther. But inland, the Free Unther forces have very little mobility.

*Fifteen years ago, it was a decadent fading empire ruled by a sole despot, the God-King Gilgeam, who used to be heroic god, but slowly became corrupted by power until his rule had become an almost intolerable tyranny.
The northenmost provinces remaining to the empire had experienced food riots and a slave rebellion in the largest city, which turned into a full-blown revolution, albeit one where the rebels were divided into factions with contradictory goals and many revolutionaries had incomplete or no goals beyond being carried by the course of events into overthrowing local government. This city was Messemprar and the likely result of this revolution was that its fate would be the same as when revolution had broken out in smaller towns in Unther, it would be crushed by Gilgeam's armies.
Due to events in the divine realms, this didn't happen. Instead, Gilgeam and his nemisis, Tiamat, clashed for control over the central provinces of the empire. Tiamat, the Mother of Dragons and Nemesis of the Gods, rallied to her banner much of the discontented people of Unther, though Messemprar was too far from the scene of the action to become involved on any large scale.
As it turned out, Tiamat slew Gilgeam, but was herself (apparently) destroyed. Much of central and southern Unther remained under the local nobility, but the rebels broke into factions of various mutual allegiances, under the clergy of Tiamat, under the charismatic warlord Furifax and under hundreds of local figures. The north remained effectively independent, with its own factions. Eventually, the remnants of the official government managed to retain the other large cities, because the army remained together, but much of the south paid tribute to Furifax and his Grey Ghosts and the Tiamatians, once they started to recover form the apparent loss of their goddess, had a lot of followers and began plotting against the rump government.
The north, on the other hand, was invaded by an army from the now-independent provices to the west. This was due to more divine politics. Gods clashed, destroyed one another and Messemprar was saved by the intervention of a foreign god (eager to claim the followers left by Gilgeam's death). The western army was not defeated, but many decided to leave once the leadership was dead or disappeared. Others became local warlords or petty bandits.
So for the past fifteen years, Unther has been the scene of several civil wars, one invasion and a descent into warlordism. Messempar became effectively independent, as the rump regime had no time or attention to spare for it.
Ironically, once the coalition government of former Gilgeamites had established a more-or-less stable order again, two years before the PCs get involved, the neighbouring empire in the east, the (Egyptesque) Mulhorand, finally emerged from their isolation. By launching a holy crusade to liberate Unther from chaos, warlords, evil gods and backwardism; bringing them good order and the right gods.
This crusade shattered the rump regime has taken over much of the country. The rebels, however, merely changed their targets from Gilgeamites to the Mulhorandi. And the north of what remained of Unther, dominated by Messemprar, became the center of resistance against the armies of the Pharoah. Refugees from the rest of Unther fled there, especially after the old capital fell to the Mulhorandi, and the remains of the armies of the Gilgeamites went there as well. An uneasy peace was arranged between warring Untheri factions (at least those that didn't abandon Unther or throw in with the Pharoah), to focus on the real enemies, those nasty foreigners.
That is the situation when the PCs arrive.