Humakti and DI's *Long* (but good :-) )

From: rstaats_at_mail.lmi.org
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 95 23:05:56 EST

     Greetings!
     
        The responses to my posting were well thought out and logical.  
     Sorry for changing the basis for the discussion.  I think we should be 
     careful in defining what one means by desertion of their buddies.  It 
     seems we are saying basically the same thing, but there is a 
     philosophical issue that involves translating between the RQ Glorantha 
     and the ``in Greg's mind'' Glorantha.  
     
        It seems reasonable that RQ Glorantha is probably filled with more 
     heroics and daring-doo than the other.  I concur that a group of 
     **PC's** would probably fight it to the death, but well trained, 
     disciplined military folks follow orders to retreat and surrender.  If 
     I told one of my captains to surrender as a competent military 
     commander and he decided to lead the charge up the hill then, if he 
     survived, I would most likely have him court-martialed after the fact. 
      :-(  (You can't have folks disobeying orders, especially your 
     leadership.)  If you ask for volunteers to go on a suicide mission 
     then yes, I would expect them to ``gut it out'' and die with honor; 
     afterall, they knew the odds when they signed up.  (In the Alamo 
     example, the folks who volunteered to stay were essentially agreeing 
     to a known suicide mission.)
     
        Part of this whole thing is how we individually picture Humakti.  
     (By the by, I defer to Sandy on this one as he has been thinking about 
     this a lot longer than I have, has actually played in one of Greg's 
     campaigns and has written a good bit of the Gloranthan lore.)  
     Personally, I picture the Humakti and the Yelmalians as both 
     representing very professional standards within the brotherhood of 
     arms.  When I think of a Humakt outfit, I imagine a group following an 
     underlying code of honor (kind of like the US forces Code of Conduct) 
     and the quote ``death is a feather, duty a mountain'' springs to mind. 
     But, duty is not entirely internally determined in a military unit.
     
        Let me give a real life story.  (No, I'm not claiming we were 
     Humakti, ;-)  but I do think we were a professional military outfit.  
     :-)  )  I had a command of about four hundred folks over in 2d 
     Infantry Division in Korea.  We were mustered out to fight a fire one 
     evening on a local mountain.  The winds were high, and there were 
     villages nearby.  We could not afford to let the blaze just burn out 
     and risk having a village catch on fire.  I sent my command up the 
     mountain in groups of five.  I headed up with the last twenty man 
     outfit.  I noticed one of my lieutenants had injured his eye when I 
     reached the top of the hill.  I ordered him down the hill to get 
     medical attention.  About 5 AM the next morning the fire was finally 
     out, and I ordered my unit down from the mountain.  I came across this 
     same lieutenant.  He had blatantly disobeyed my order to get medical 
     attention earlier and had further injured himself.  He nearly lost the 
     eye, and he did lose a good portion of his vision.  When I asked him 
     why he disobeyed my order he said ``sir, I couldn't desert my 
     troops!''  *Wrong answer!*  It shows a consummate lack of faith in 
     your subordinates to stay on when you are incapacitated.  (The message 
     you send to your subordinates is that ``you are so incompetent and my 
     faith in you is so low that I am better suited to lead when I am 
     incapacitated than when you are at full capabilities.'')  At that 
     point, the young lieutenant was much more of a liability to his unit, 
     my unit and my soldiers.  :-(
     
        There are definitely times to retreat, but the maximum punishment 
     for desertion in the face of the enemy is still death in wartime even 
     under the US Code of Military Justice.  So, the spin depends on the 
     specifics of the situation.   If the young Humakti's decision process 
     was ``I must get out of here to warn the settlement and tell the 
     Deathlord about this foul nest!'' then it was probably the right thing 
     to use a DI to ``get to safety'', but if base fear was the motivation 
     then it was just plain old vanilla desertion.  Likewise, if the 
     Deathlord said ``initiate Jones, in the name of Humakt I command you 
     to get out of here and spare yourself!'' then I would argue that it 
     was a legitimate and honorable move to use the DI to ``escape.''
     
        Perhaps if we did an article 32 investigation of the Humakti 
     involved in the incident . . . ;-)
     
        That response was worth at least a lunar!  :-)
     
        In service,
     
        Rich
     
      

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