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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