Jane responding to Donald:
> > Yes, the descriptions are vague but they don't describe the style
> > of Roman legion you are talking about. E.g. pg. 12 "The soldiers
> > again pulled back into two squares of long shields and bristling spears".
> Eh? That describes a regular unit, in close formation, and, as gets mentioned later, uniforms.
> They perform rehearsed manouvres to order: even forming a testudo to avoid missiles at one point.
> They don't make the analogue as close as using the exact same equipment as a Roman legion, no,
> but the basic principle is the same, and totally different from the Orlanthi. Whether they use spear,
> gladius, or scimitar is a minor detail of implementation (though since what Makepeace breaks later
> is a scimitar, it looks like they're dual-armed, spear and sword). Could they perhaps be using the
> same long spear, scimitar, and big shield, as described for the generic Lunar soldiers in the RQ2 books?
Well, to be fair, if they use spears and scimitars, then they are not like classic legionaries. The classic late republican / early imperial legionaries threw the pila, which was a heavy javelin, not a spear. They then closed to melee distance. One of the big reasons that they totally pwned their enemies is that they had better close-distance sword-and-shield combat. Their style was to hold the shield up to whatever beating the other guy put out, then gut him with an underhand stroke. Or, if the enemy to the right held his shield wrong, slice his leg or side. Further, their ranks were often more closely packed left to right than their enemies. So, 4 enemies might be fighting 5 Romans, with the result that one enemy has to face a Roman to the left and right. The exception was when they were fighting phalanxes, in which case they threaded their way through the pikes until the hoplites had to drop the spears and engage in hand-to-hand.
Stuart Cogger:
> And if there are going to be a network of tunnels under Whitewall then it stands to reason
> that Lunar military engineers are going to realise that Whitewall sits atop karst and know
> that caves and tunnels are a probability. This will add a whole new element to the siege as
> Lunars attempt to locate/blockade/penetrate such tunnels.
I like it. Underground guerilla wars in the dark. Heortlings look for Uz allies. Lunars call for blue moon trolls. Secret stuff down underneath and hidden agendas among supposed allies.
Jane beat me to it:
> But mid-siege, 1620 say, we have have plenty of tunnel warfare: exploration of
> tunnels by both sides. There's "interesting" things, down there in the dark...
Chris
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