>I liked the idea of the Kingdom of War "knowing every battle plan that
>existed" thats neat. So your saying they may have a kind of War College
>where they study everything to do with warfare? In that case Lhankor
>Mhy could be one of their war gods. God of Military Knowledge.
Erm, no. What I meant was that they had heaps of experience in war having heaps of practice fighting it whilst under the ban (presumably to alleviate population pressures?). A Warlord seeing the Loskalmi army arrayed porbably knows at least five or six different tricks ('I'm bored with Caltrops today, let's try something else') to catch the Loskalmi off guard. They are too savage to have anything resembling a staff college or an OKW.
Mark Smylie:
>Some of us felt, frex, that the Orlanthi didn't
>really practice an Art of War, being commited to a culture of individual
>heroism and individual strength of arms more akin to a picturesque conception
>of Viking-Celtic cutlure or even knighthood in the Middle Ages. This also
>seemed true about Seshnela and Loskalm (...) with the Lunar and Kralorelan
>Empires being the only clear candidates for military cultures with a studied
>theory of warfare.
Re with Ralios, I think the battles between the cities are more like each army manevuers for a good position until one gets trapped into a hopeless postion and surrenders. This is what from what Sandy told me about the 15th century Italian city states duking it out before the french came along. The French when tricked into one of the 'hopeless' positions, refused to surrender and instead charged taking the other army by suprise. Result: a stream of French Victories....
Seshnela is not chivalric like Loskalm IMO. The lords of the land (Tanisor, Nolos, Pasos, Azilos etc) are becoming increasingly desperate in violating the chilvaric code and caste strictures to gain a military advantage. Thus they are more likely to make efforts to study what the Art of War more than the Ralians (That is until the Ralians get a taste of the new Seshnegi style of Warfare and begin to fight accordingly). This is part of the coming horrors that mark the Hero Wars IMO.
>Does the cult of Yelmalio, frex, practice hoplite
>and phalanx techniques akin to those of the ancient Greeks out of religious
>tradition, or rather out of some studied theory of warfare?
I think that the Yelmalio cult was itself constructed with the aim of making hoplites the ideal warrior. The Sun County had a tradition of a mounted warriors which is on the verge of making a comeback via the efforts of Ragnar's Rough Riders (I've probably butchered the unit name).
>The Kingdom of War, as another
>query point, seems most often described not so much as a culture dedicated to
>the study of the Art of War, but as the land of a hundred war gods (each of
>which, presumably, has its own ritualistic approach to the conduct of war
>and, perhaps more specifically, battle).
I don't think the Kingdom of War is ritualistic in battle. Each Cult has its own method of fighting but that is more like a niche it has carved out in the Order of Battle rather than a divine mandate from the Cult's God.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #158
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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