> Well, I'm still not satisfied with things I am hearing about Yanafal
> Tarnils.
How terribly sad.
> Even Nick Brooke seems to have drawn back from his statement that to
> join YT you had to first buy a Lunar Officer's commission.
When and where have I *ever* made such a statement?
> Yanafal Tarnils (as spelled in CoP) is the major war cult of the
> empire. No cult can make such a broad claim without having a vast
> following amongst the common soldiers. Otherwise, there just aren't
> enough YTs to justify the boast.
Humakt (as spelled almost everywhere) is the Sartarite God of War. Are most Sartarite warriors Humakti, then? Not in my gaming experience.
Yelm was the major ruling god of the Dara Happan Empire. Do I hear you saying, "No cult can make such a broad claim..."? Why not analyse the reasons why you don't, and maybe then you'll see where I'm coming from.
Does Yanafal Tarnils even look like a god who could have a vast following among the common soldiers of an army? Let's have a go at applying the CoP Humakt parallel to the two sides of this "mass Yanafali" coin.
Obverse:
If Yanafal Tarnils is a common soldier's god then many Lunar soldiers are
decent, honourable, clean-living, gifted/geased, etc. This seems unlikely to
most of us, and certainly would come as a surprise to the authors of the Tarsh
War and Soldiers of the Red Moon.
Reverse:
If Yanafal Tarnils is a common soldier's god then the cult doesn't have any of
the distinctive extreme elements that are found in Humakt: rigid codes of
"honourable" behaviour, unusual ritual prohibitions, etc. This also seems
unlikely to most of us...
My conclusion: worshipping Yanafal is not attractive to such a vast horde of Lunar soldiers. Any more than most of the colonial marines in "Aliens" wanted to look and act like Lt. Gorman, their squeaky-clean, by-the-book commanding officer. Or than any of Sharpe's Riflemen aspired to be like their snobbish aristocratic commanders. Add more parallels to suit taste.
Obviously more members of an elite formation would want to be spit-and- polish, clean-shaven types, with a scimitar you could shave with and a cuirass you could use as a mirror - while some loonies in any unit might feel the same way, seen as Melo Yelos by their fellows - but I feel these are the exceptions who prove the rule.
> How can the foot sloggers be outnumbered by the officers? The more
> formations that are all YT, the smaller the officer ratio.
Consider, please: if 95% of the regiments in the Lunar Army have Yanafal Tarnils officers, and 5% are all-Yanafali regiments, then most people in the Lunar Empire will think of Yanafal Tarnils as god of officers. After all, while there are (say) 5,000 men who worship him in five regiments, there are 95,000 who know that only the top handful of men in their own regiments worship him. We're writing up the Empire-wide cult, in its most typical perceived/functional role: army officers. Lunar Army officers can be met everywhere in the Empire; whole regiments of Yanafali can't.
I put it to you that the Cult of the Steel Swords Legion is far more likely to be a Yanafal Tarnils *subcult* (with its own exotic practices, peculiar organisation and unique rune spell) than a useful, by-the-book example of mainstream Yanafalism. After all, the 1,000 members of the elite Steel Swords Legion all live together, work together and worship together on a daily basis. Their cult writeup is pretty useless unless you're in the presence of the whole elite regiment itself.
Sure, we will probably have a couple of regimental subcults included for the sake of example in the YT writeup. But the general form of the cult will be for the commonest form *encountered* - the Lunar Officer.
If regiments have cults and enlisted troops, must join these cults (which is what we're positing in Granite Phalanx and Soldiers of the Red Moon), then saying that many or most Lunar troops are Yanafali would mean either that Yanafal Tarnils represents a specific technique of massed warfare -- which seems to go against the "heroic, honourable leader" model we derive from the Humakti parallels -- or that many or most Lunar troops join two cults: that of the regiment and that of Yanafal as its tutelary Wargod.
Certainly, nothing has ever suggested that the Lunars have a new way of fighting (other than Yara Aranis' dragoons and the Lunar College's massed magics, neither of which are Yanafal specialities): their army formations are made up of local troops of various types, each using their own native techniques in battle. So Yanafal isn't likely to be a common regimental type. ("Scimitar-armed, honourable single combat" as a massed battle technique? Pull the other one, it's got chaos features on! The Lunar officer's scimitar is about as useful as the centurion's vine staff, major's baton or army officer's pistol in the line of battle: it's a symbol and an instrument of coercion among his own unruly men, not the main arm of battle for the regiment!).
> One of the best ways to get into a fight with someone is to try forcing
> your religeon unto him.
And one of the best ways to get someone to fight *for* you is to convert him to your religion. As you say, "This is true now, and would be even more true in a bronze age setting, where the gods manifest themselves in visible ways." Happy? This is, after all, the documented Lunar experience (check out the Sables, Carmanians, Char-un, Sylilans).
> An example of a Char-un hetman (sp?) who brings in his levy, and is
> forced to pay lip service to Yanafal Tarnils. Baaad idea.
It would have been! Believe me, I know the Char-Un, and wouldn't like to force them to do anything! What I posted is that, if anyone reminds him to, Hetman Ignatieff will burn a pinch of incense to YT on his holy day. But, like most lay members, he needs to be prodded to do it: it doesn't come naturally.
> First, you can't honestly claim that this guy is a follower of YT.
Yes I can: he's a lay member. How else do you define this status? [please see footnote]
> Second, what are you going to do with the hetman if he says no?
If I dislike him, he's a mutineer and a traitor to the Lunar Way. If I don't mind him, I circulate a staff memo encouraging wider attendance at chapel services. Obviously my reaction is tempered by practicality and character -- a Steel Swords zealot or Directorate fanatic would likely seek to have him impaled, while a pragmatic, tolerant Lunar officer would turn a blind eye. This is what we call "role-playing".
(The frequency of pragmatic, tolerant pacifists in the ARMY of an Empire which publicly preaches pragmatism, tolerance and pacifism is another question!)
> You can be absolutely certain the Light Son leading in a Yelmic
> regiment from Alkoth is going to refuse outright.
Duh... He's fighting with the Red Army, for the Red Army, but will refuse outright to join in a worship service to the god of the Red Army? Can you tell me something more about this "Light Son's" antecedents, so I can see where he's coming from?
> All that this accomplishes is a negative attitude in commanders that
> must be reliable in combat. This is no way to build esprit d'corps...
> ... It would be far better to encourage non-Yonafali to join, even
> temporarily. Co-operation, not coersion.
Who ever mentioned "forcing" and "coercion"? Was it me, or you?
Rereading, I'm struck by the dogmatism of your post. Please rest assured that I've read and inwardly digested *everything* "Cults of Prax" has to say on the subject of Yanafal Tarnils -- not that this takes long -- and don't need to be reminded of its exact words. Writing anything is an act of Creation: you can't just extrapolate ad infinitum, especially if you start with a poorly-conceived premise for a cultureless cult's writeup (like Humakt) and try to graft it willy-nilly onto the theocratic/bureau- cratic Imperial structure of a civilised state's standing army. Perhaps *you* can, though. Again, can we please *see* something you have done, which adds to the game and its world! All this repetitive hollow knocking is giving me a headache...
[Footnote: please -- if you have to post again -- spare us the futile, holier-than-thou, CoP fundamentalism. It's not getting you anywhere! If you can read your paragraph on CoP v GoG without sniggering, you're the only one among us!]
Powered by hypermail