Re: Imperial Army ranks

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 23:16:02 +0000

On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 08:39:07PM +0000, donald_at_... wrote:
> I think we've got to have a standard terminology which tells a reader
> roughly the status of any general. While the intricacies of protocol
> are of considerable interest to many of us, we aren't writing ILH 432
> - a guide to military titles and protocols. If you want to include
> Tatius's Dara Happen title in his character write up, fine, but let's
> also have a Lunar title which can be applied to a general from any
> Lunar background.

Hrm. I'm not entirely comfortable with the logic here. I don't think RW descriptive convenience is a strong argument that the Lunar army has a NATO-style rank equivalency table, esp. if the source material indicates exactly the reverse.

Mind you, I think there is a case to be made in *this* particular example. Aside from the "Lunarism, bah!" old-school Dara Happans on the one hand, and the "vegetable rights and peace" Lunars on the other, there's a definite element by which the trapping of Lunar thinking are used to gloss whatever essentially very imperial, and Solar Imperial ideas (not very) deep down. In that spirit, it'd not surprise me in the least if DH-inclined Lunars used some "informal" or "poetic" convention by way of analogue to the old-fashioned tripolis ones. (Such as Crescent, Half, and Full, for the sake of argument.)