Armor: most Mongols had leather, with metal helmets. They were perfectly able to make and wear chain, but mostly did not, using captured chain primarily. The Europeans, with heavier armor for their heavy cavalry, presumably would have been tougher one-on-one if the Mongols had ever fought that way.
Steve:
>according to my sources, Plate armour was introduced by the early
>13th century
The Europeans the Mongols fought did not use plate armor. The introduction of same was in the West, among the French, Spanish, and Italians. Not the Eastern Europeans, who did just fine without switching to plate armor.
> In the Crusades, whenever the crusaders won their casualties were
>nonexistant.
This had nothing to do with their armor, and was the normal state of affairs before the introduction of gunpowder. It was common in battle for the losing side to suffer vastly greater casualties than the winner, at least if the winner had light troops to follow up on their victory. This held true from before Marathon on up through Charles the Bold's campaigns against the Swiss.
>The crossbow was the west's answer, so to speak, to Horse Archery.
In the first place (as you know), this is not true. It was invented and mainly used by people who never saw a horse archer in their life. It wasn't even an answer to the longbow (since crossbows came first). It was only a technique to provide heavy firepower that could pierce armor. And I cannot think of a single battle in which crossbows were used by anyone but highly trained soldiers. The whole "doesn't take training" theory falls to pieces.
>I said that the Mongols would avoid melee if possible (against
>standing European troops).
This is simply false. Name one time that this was done.
Interior lines: For the campaign in Europe, all the Mongol armies came from Kiev. THe Europeans gathered from the north, and from the south. The Mongols split to hold them off, one force going north to Liegnitz, the other going south to Transylvania. This is a textbook case of the use of Interior Lines by the MONGOLS.
Steve then asks me to point to an existing Mongol state as proof they were any good, a test of history which no other nation has been forced to endure. The Romans are kaput, but no one thinks they were a flash in the pan. Look at what's left of Spain, once the leading world power. The British Empire is down the toilet, but they made an impact on the world, at least if you were brown-skinned. The Mongols were around for centuries, and influenced the politics, religion, military arts, and literature of everyone that had contact with them, in either a positive or negative manner. Their impact in Asia is comparable to the impact the Romans had in Europe, and they lasted centuries.
This line of discussion is starting to irk me. (So why doesn't Sandy stop? The whole world wonders.)
>So, who are all the Seven Mothers
She Who Waits, Queen Deezola, Jakaleel the Witch, Irrippi Ontor, Yanafal Tarnils, Danfive Xaron, and Teelo Norri.
> will we ever see a complete writeup on them & their subcults?
I don't know. I don't think they have subcults, actually. In general, I suspect that the Lunar gods get by with associates, rather than subs, except for a few few minor exceptions, like First Slave (a subsidiary spirit of Yara Aranis, formed from the soul of the first person to attempt to rob her shrine -- her baptism by fire, so to speak).
Short details follow:
SHE WHO WAITS: no known cult. Probably her worship is a Lunar Secret, practiced only by select personnel.
QUEEN DEEZOLA: life/earth goddess. In my campaign she has spells such as Prehealing, and Ward [Disease] (the former lets you pay for healing a hit location before it is damaged, the last is a one-use spell permanently increasing resistance to the named disease.)
TEELO NORRI: her cult structure is a benevolent do-gooder association, with little magic or myth. It has both an international (missionary) organization and an internal (welfare) one.
JAKALEEL THE WITCH: a secretive faith about which little is known. Blue moon trolls are known to worship her, which isn't unusual, because she appears to have been a troll herself. They are terrorists, and worse. Kind of like Krarsht, really.
IRRIPPI ONTOR: a cult of wisdom not unlike Lhankor Mhy. They are similar enough in goals to share a temple in Pavis, but I imagine the spells and cult structure are as dissimilar as Issaries and Etyries.
YANAFAL TARNILS: the cult of the Red Army. More like Humakt than anything else you can name.
DANFIVE XARON: a highly restrictive cult of trusted secret police. Members are chosen primarily from wanted criminals whose life is forfeit. Most fail the onerous years of testing and training, and are eliminated, but some few show enough skill, craft, loyalty, and ruthlessness to become the Empire's agents all over the world. They make a fine intelligence service, but the murder arm of the Lunar government is probably Jakaleel (under DX control).
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #248
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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