Fire Breaks

From: James Wadsley <wadsley_at_cita.utoronto.ca>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 20:38:44 -0500


Just a quick point on fire breaks. When Alexander the Great went into Mesopotamia, the Persians considered a firebreak but wouldn't damage their own lands and lost them. Against a later conqueror ( crusading king Richard? ), however, the local ruler ( Turks? ) did create a scorched region ( of roughly one hundred miles or so ) and he was effectively stuck on the coast. There is good discussion of this in Archer Jones. I think the lesson here ( as far as it may be drawn ) is that porting food especially for horses over distances of hundreds of miles for a decent army is impractical and thus the KoW would be restricted to river routes or otherwise considerably slowed. This might be their undoing - if their society is sufficiently unstable to rely on steady conquest. One could envision a questionable heroquest which involved hurting Ernalda/Flamal/Aldrya so as to render a huge region infertile and thus foil the KoW. A gentler version might involve putting her to sleep ( Like Brown elves in winter? ).

James W.


End of Glorantha Digest V2 #232


WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html

Powered by hypermail