Just a couple of quick comments on some of the recent Art of War thread.
Sandy P:
>Now, the Lunar art of war is probably pretty sophisticated,
>along the lines of Machiavelli's rules. The newest manual on the
>subject is probably written by Hon-Eel, with notes by Jar-Eel.
For the most part, I like your list of who actually practices an Art of War, though as a minor note I had thought of the Lunar Art of War as being more in line with specifically Roman practice, with a Vegetius-like figure somewhere in Dara Happan history. In so far as Machiavelli's writings could be considered a commentary on Vegetius, I suppose a parallel with a later work by Hon-Eel, with futher commentary by Jar-Eel, would be appropriate, though I had thought the obvious parallels between the Safelster city-states and the Italian city republics had made Ralios the ideal spot for introducing a Machiavellian thinker (perhaps writing in response to a theory of war left over from Arkat's Dark Empire or even the God-Learners). The arrival of a concept of discipline in accordance with the breakdown of kinship ties had seemed more appropriate to guild- and city-dominated Safelster than the Lunar Heartland (which seemed kin- and cult-oriented, though there is the minor sticking point of the polis).
On the Kingdom of War, I happen to be a little confused about some of the references to the KoW as being an almost purely mounted force; this seems to contradict the notion that they worship 100 gods of war, in that I have a hard time imagining a hundred different Genertelan cavalry gods. Are war/battle gods that happen to emphasize foot fighting totally ignored in the KoW, or have they been altered by KoW cultic practice into horse-related gods ("dragoonized", in effect)? Mounted berserkers (despite bison-riding Storm Khans) have always struck me as something of a contradiction, and I assume that somewhere in the KoW are folks that follow Pole Star (who, with his emphasis on Dance and Discipline, has always struck me as a candidate for unofficial god of pikes) or, as I think Nick Brooke suggested, gods/spirits similar to the Granite Phalanx wyters. The numerical dominance of mounted troops also strikes me as running against RW models, in so far as outside of the various steppes nomads, foot soldiers have historically outnumbered mounted troops (even during the middle ages with all its literary emphasis on mounted knights, though France and Burgundy might be exceptions to that).
Later,
Mark
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #163
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