Help with background of my character.

[Remmo87]

Hello folks.

I'm about to create a Human Captain.
To be able to create a proper background story for i need to know more about LOTR than i do,
which is almost nothing. So of course it will soon be much more playing the game and reading the books.

However, i have a question until then:
What's the background stories of Captains?
I.e: How, when, where are they promoted to captains?
Is there anything clear about this?

[LagunaD2]

Captains are the equivalent of professional military officers or NCOs today. They are important enough to have an aide to serve them (your herald pet).

They might be minor nobility or gentry (in cultures that have feudal elements like Gondor or Rohan), long-serving veterans who came up through the ranks, or have risen to lead town guard or sell-sword companies in areas like Breeland that don't have military forces.

The captain's defining characteristics are leadership and motivation of others.

[HunterGreen]

You don't literally have to have been promoted in a structured military hierarchy, you just have to a) have a follower, and b) be the sort of person that others would follow. That could happen as part of, say, the Dol Amroth Swan-Knights, but it could also happen by being one of a small mercenary company, who happened to take the lead.

There's not really any canon about how any military or other structure worked -- presumably someone appoints someone else to be a leader of a group, and that's that. Closest we get is all Gondorian -- Faramir, Beregond, etc. getting appointed to a leadership role in this or that place. And some suggestions of the King appointing Marshalls in Rohan, but how the Marshalls appoint the leaders of éoreds is surmised at best. But it's likely to be as simple as 'you seem like an experienced and capable person who can lead, so go do it'.

[LagunaD2]

You don't literally have to have been promoted in a structured military hierarchy, you just have to a) have a follower, and b) be the sort of person that others would follow. That could happen as part of, say, the Dol Amroth Swan-Knights, but it could also happen by being one of a small mercenary company, who happened to take the lead.

Right - in LotR anyone who leads men into battle is described as a "Captain".