> Its bad enough for the
> Imperial command that they have to quarter in some barbiarn hick turd
pile,
> but to actually have to do their duty in the hills??? No chance.
"Watcher language bub. If its clean enough for the first alynx, then why should you complain?" :)
This is the accepted view, and I've defended it vigourously myself, but after some questioning from (I think) Ian Cooper, I've started to dig a bit deeper. (BAD Ian, bad).
What does this mean in terms of everyday life and our roleplaying?
Its been twenty years since the invasion. That means young Orlanthi warriors will never have known life free of the Lunar yoke. Twenty years of murder, rapine, bloodshed, challenge, rapid and confused change, false hopes and constant disappointment. (And the Lunar view may not be so different!)
One thing *is* clear however, in twenty years there has been almost *no* large scale organised military resistance to the Lunars. Those that have occurred - Starbrow's Rebellion, Righteous Wind, Firebull Moot - have been quickly contained with mixture of short-term concessions, bribery, treachery and threat.
Selective use of terror seems a deliberate tool of the Lunars to demonstrate their mastery and give example to the clans. I'd judge the decimation of the Sambari following the Firebull Rebellion and the unprovoked destruction of the Dundealos tribe as carefully calculated actions of terror warfare. And there's always the threat of the Bat.
Of course the Lunars are subtle, and can defeat a clan with gifts as often
as with swords.
They're extremely generous to friends and converts. So through the selective
seduction and bribery of tribal kings and clan chiefs, city rings and
influential godar, they effectively control many tribes from the top down.
And no doubt they use these local allies to patrol much of the countryside,
manipulating every feud and traditional rivalry to their own ends.
That's an important roleplaying point: there are effectively *three* agents in every feud: Clan A, opposing clan B, and the Lunars on the sidelines stirring up trouble and manipulating the outcomes to their own ends. Now if the Orlanthi were smart... (but they're not, so lets not go there.) :)
[excellent stuff about Lunar strategy snipped]
Some questions and comments. It seems we're talking classical guerilla warfare here, right? This is entirely in line with the Orlanthi raiding tradition. Its taken them a generation to learn (painfully) that Lunars don't follow the traditional Heortling "rules" when it comes to set piece battles, but the Orlanthi *do* have a tradition of small scale raids and ambushes developed in fighting the Predark. (And you thought the cry "Lunars are Chaos" was just rhetoric.) As I noted in GD post earlier this week, Lunars fight like (very-sophisticated) Chaos - they don't follow the accepted Heortling traditions of limited warfare - and so must be fought against in the same way. Big Magics and the Bat are great against towns and armies, but against two dozen fighters midst the wild uplands?
Will Sartar's freedom be won more by small hero bands, ambushes and midnight raids than by set piece battles (though these must eventually come in the final campaign). Could the answer be... player characters?
But surely the Lunars have dealt with guerilla warfare before? Don't they have their own tactics and special units for counter-warfare, based on experience in other regions? And rather than regular cavalry and infantry units (both next to useless in the hills) wouldn't these be small, highly trained, irregular units assisted by Sartarite traitors/Lunar sympathisers? In other words, Lunar Hero bands?
Are Starbrow and the Argraths at least partially Gloranthan equivalents of Michael Collins and Ho Chi Min - freedom fighters who turn the enemy's strengths into weaknesses using small dispersed bands of dedicated raiders, manipulating politics as well as military events to win the hearts of majority to their cause?
John
His eyes like furnace doors ajar.
When he had got its weight
and let his industry console his grief a bit,
'I'll fight'
he said. Simple as that. 'I'll fight.'
And so Troy fell.
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