The pleasure of the KoW is that it should be _so_ dreadful that the PCs are forced to begin emulating its techniques to survive, AND that at some point in this process they should come to a realization of just what they are doing. Then with luck we can get some soul-searching, some angst, and questions like "Should I sacrifice my eternal soul in order to help destroy the KoW so that others can live free?"
>I can see your point re: leaving them human so they're more
>terrible. Of course, this is almost impossible to pull off.
I have read many many interviews with people who dealt personally with serial killers, mass-murders, long-term mafioso, and Nazi war criminals (don't ask). I've also read many volumes of speculation about them. One thing that stands out from all this reading is that psychologists and criminologists who have not actually _met_ these men tend to evaluate their actions in terms of normal human desires and emotions -- to humanize them, if you will in the natural way common to civilized man -- to explain their evil deeds as logical outgrowths of their early years, education, and others' influence. And I think, to a great extent, they are right.
BUT, the interviewers, whether psychologists or hardened detectives, who met the killers face-to-face, are almost unanimous in stating that "something" was missing from these men. Some of these men could put on a persona, a semblance of normality, but it was as if their souls had been pithed. They had traded their humanity for something else. I believe that the KoW men, by and large, have traded in their humanity and that the normal activities that pleasure Homo sapiens are not theirs. All are sociopaths.
>Still, they'll have to get cannon from somewhere, >and seem also
to >disagree with the idea that their forces are 100% mounted. And I
>completely agree with you about the need for "support cults"
working >alongside the main fighting cults of the War Machine.
Cannon are a good "end of the world" war machine for them to be keeping in reserve. I tried hard to argue against it internally, but failed. As I've said before, I believe that all of the KoW forces are mounted BUT that many of them fight on foot. Think of them as dragoons, if you will. Thus the whole army can move quickly, but fight effective in phalanxes or whatever.
"Support cults"? I suspect much of the support activity is performed on a rotation basis by members of the military. Certainly there is a general staff, and an espionage arm. No counter-espionage is necessary, as it's almost impossible to disguise yourself as a KoW warrior for any length of time, and if you sneak in as a peasant you can't find much out. I do not think that the KoW warriors are paid. They are fed, clothed, housed, rewarded, etc., but there is no payroll. Anything they want, they can just take from the locals. And anything they need, they can get from their officers for free. I do not think that most of their campaigns have a lengthy logistical line. Up to now, their armies have not fared all that far from their home, and when they do, they normally live off the land, like Napoleon's men.
Mark Smylie
>I postulate a missing class from the KoW's social hierarchy, even
if >it is nothing more than a class of "privileged serf overseers"
whose
>INT and POW aren't tapped.
Martin
>I agree with you but what I thought was that the Serfs have tapped
>INT and POW but they will have an overseer who will have tapped
STR, >CON and DEX who organises the porduction.
This is also my feeling. Except that they may just assign warriors to oversee production. They don't need real complex stuff. They have smiths making tools and weapons (some of these smiths are warriors, of smith-like gods). They have farmers producing food, and they have laborers building forts under the auspices of warriors from engineer-style cults. But I do agree that the precise stats Tapped vary with the subject's career.
Peter Metcalfe
> The Kingdom of War is _not_ a normal society, it is a Madness.
Martin
>Hear, hear. However, Madness is still part of the greater human
>experience, which means that there is something going on there.
>Even in Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR, there was culture
The KoW is worse than Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR. Don't think "inside Nazi Germany". Think "inside occupied Russia". Not much culture was taking place there -- just horror and destruction. What traces of culture existed were all on the part of the suppressed population. The German soldiers didn't have a culture in Russia -- they had a discipline, an ethos, but that's not the same. All were paid by the state, all were freely provided food, raiment, and weapons. When they went home on leave, it was like a different world (as has been the case in almost _every_ war -- the difference is that the German governing system in Russia was nightmarish).
Think of the "government" of the Pseudo-Christian rebels in the Taiping rebellion.
Consider Pol Pot's regime during the killings. Not a hell of a lot of culture -- just people killing a third of their nation's population.
Look up the behavior of Tamerlane's men on their last invasion of India, perhaps the most senselessly destructive campaign in the history of the planet.
Nazi Germany was able to exist without war. Stalin's Russia was _harmed_ by war. But the Taipings, the Nazi occupation regime, etc. would have been forced to change had peace actually come. They were unbalanced societies that needed to constantly move or topple.
This is the Kingdom of War. Not an organized society in which people must farm and have village headmen and marry and give in marriage, but a terrifying progressive disease that leaves nothing behind. In the center of the KoW, the peasants may already be extinct.
Martin
>For one thing, the KoW has weaknesses, and its enemies will want
to >know what they are.
The weaknesses of the Kingdom of War are not military weaknesses. The KoW can be beaten. It can even be beaten in battle, just as a military force with inferior training, morale, commanders, and equipment can sometimes beat its enemy, but this is not the norm, any more than a typical high school football team can consistently beat the Dallas Cowboys.
Sandy P.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #219
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
Powered by hypermail