> Ancient Sparta, frex -- probably the closest thing I can think of to the
> KoW in RW history, though the Mongols also come to mind (I'm less certain
> about Nick Brooke's Ottoman Turkey parallel); in fact, I'd suggest the
> term "helot" for KoW serfs
First up, I already use Spartans as the backbone of Sun Domer Yelmalion cultural attitudes, while the Mongols are grafted onto Pent. But with the Ottoman Army, you have a vast, civilised-cum-barbaric war machine trampling across mediaeval Europe. If you were to read Stephen Runciman's "The Fall of Constantinople" or some other good history of the period (Turkish campaigns in the Balkans vs. Vlad Dracula or the Siege of Vienna would be fun), I think you'd get the point. My comparison has always been with the Ottoman ARMY, and not with life back home in Turkey; I'm sorry if this wasn't clear to you.
The Spartans are too civilised, the Mongols too barbaric, IMHO. The turban fits, for me. (And that's all I can ever allege when proposing a cultural 'fit').
> Any war machine requires a vast array of "support personnel", amongst
> which I would include both crafters and entertainers.
Yeah, but doing this serves to HUMANISE our inhuman enemies. I don't want to do that. OK, if we assume "entertainers" to be luckless serf/'helot' girls forcibly conscripted into the Joy Divisions, and "crafters" to be near-naked burn-scarred serfs pounding the anvils until they drop and get the chop, I can live with that. But you were talking about Poets and Sculptors. Pfui!
> (perhaps with something along the lines of the Humakti dueling code for the
> settlement of internal arguments, or quasi-mock battles -- though this is
> perhaps too martial in its nature for your liking; perhaps they settle it
> all by voting).
What, pray, could be "too martial" for the Kingdom of War? This aside shows the lunacies into which we are led by trying to write these people up as a viable, admirable, healthy culture. They are not. They are the Enemy, and they are going to win, unless your PCs pull their fingers out and get working.
> As a side note, I personally tend to view Loskalm as a nation-state...
That was my take in the sect write-up in Tales #13.
> A Loskalmi campaign run purely around the inner tensions of Malkionism and
> its competition with the heathen Jonatelans is perfectly possible...
Archbishop Zalpthir of Okarnia is very unhappy to have his people tarred with the undeserved adjective "heathen". OK, so the Syanoran Church in Jonatela is not exactly flourishing, and admittedly King Congern hasn't been seen in chapel lately (while his chief Boyar, Jarngror the Killer, only ever goes to chapels to sack them), but Jonatela contains many happy believers in the revelations brought by the Prophets Malkion and Talar. (Or is it against the Watchdog Council's censorship policy for me to release this information in Loskalm? I can't help but remember US govt. propaganda about those inhuman, godless Communists).
> A sylph could drop a rock from a mile up and the kinetic energy alone
> would destroy much of a typical castle.
I doubt this is true on Glorantha. There's a lot of old castles still about, and summoning Sylphs ain't so hard. So maybe terminal velocity works differently, here?
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