>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.
A NATO style rank equivelency table is exactly what I want to avoid publishing. Although I'm sure it exists, if only unofficially, in the Empire. I'm looking for a way of indicating to the average reader whether a particular officer is in command of a couple of regiments of militia or twenty regiments of the Emperor's finest.
The fact that a Char-Un Hetman of Ten Thousand would not be accepted as a General of Three Stars by a DH phalanx has nothing to do with their relative positions or the strength of the forces under their command. Indeed the reverse is also true.
>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.)
I'm less concerned with what the DH's do than what all the other peoples of the Empire who don't use the DH titles do. And how to write that in such a way that someone who isn't interested in this particular aspect of Glorantha doesn't get overwhelmed. Flight Commander of the Royal Avilry is a great title but it might mean anything from the supreme commander of Rinliddi troops to the captain of the only squadron of Avilry in the empire. And is the Wing Commander of the Royal Avilry his junior or his senior?
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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