After having jammed a finger and strained a knee playing hoops to work off Thanksgiving turkey, I finally got a chance to sit down and review more carefully the KoW perspective pieces I posted and about a week's worth of digests, and just wanted to make a few last comments for the moment (everyone who hates the KoW thread say "yaay!"). First off, I was a little surprised and embarrased about the harsh tone in some of my posts from last weekend, so I tender apologies to the digest in general and Sandy Petersen in particular (mea culpa; I dunno, maybe I had a couple of bad hair days, or somebody slipped me some decaf and I went into withdrawal or something). That said, on to some particulars, in the approximate order in which they appeared on the dig.
About a week ago David Cake posted some interesting suggestions on "Gloranthanizing" aspects of KoW tactics -- most notably their use of the undead; I agree with him when he posited a Humakti-style attitude towards turning their own soldiers into the undead (outside of those warriors, perhaps, who follow the God of Hate), and I saw as one of the Carrion Eaters' functions the duty of selecting defeated enemies to turn into ghouls, ghosts, skeletions, and zombies. In addition, it had occured to me that in the same way that the Issaries cult breeds mules, the Marcher God cult might create zombie work- and pack-animals; though slower than their living counterparts, they can carry more and also solve the problem of pack animals eating the supplies they carry, which reduces their range of operation. KoW logistics would therefore be handled by zombie animals for long-range transport when time was not of the essence, and by living animals and the troops themselves when things needed to be speedier.
David Dunham noted:
>Somehow, I picture saying the word "Peace" to a Warite and getting a blank
>stare. It's just not something they're familiar with. Nor would I expect
>them to care about chaos. Evil is probably stuff like cowardice and
>treachery, the worst possible things you can do. Or maybe even sympathy
>(which leads to the other two). Inaction, maybe, but not peace.
I agree that "operationally", cowardice and treachery are distinct no-nos. I had the Captain kind of talk around cowardice, using a vaguer insistence on the need to "support" the Pack in battle and introduce a notion of self-regulation; anyone with a tendency towards cowardice would have been dead a long time ago, killed in the KoW's "live ammo" training exercises (in PenDragon Pass terms I would think all "Warites" have a Valor of 16 at minimum), but I also think that the KoW has some understanding that fear is probably unavoidable at some point, and hence their attempts to make fear and defeat their friends, as it were. If I rewrite the pieces, however, I will attempt to address cowardice more directly. As regards treachery, I had tried to look at the circumstances which would _lead_ to treachery, and hence the warnings against accepting "binding ties" -- taking someone as your king, or falling in love, or accepting ties to the land (itself an aspect of sympathy, perhaps).
While I agree that no KoW warrior has probably experienced "Peace" in terms of their everyday existence, I had thought that they would probably experience it "mythically" in their experiences of the Sacred Time, most notably in the moment after I Fought We Won before Time began and the New Year begins. What most Gloranthans experience as a moment of peace and euphoria following the turning back of Chaos, I had thought the KoW would experience as a terrifying absence of Conflict -- a victory, yes, but one that is simultaneously a defeat, relieved only by the return of the New Year and the return to the cycle of violence. Hence, both Peace and Chaos (which I agree is a more distant concern to them) are the true enemy as they mandate the end of Conflict; but if you don't buy it, then you don't buy it.
Both fellow AOLer Argrath/Martin (sorry, can't remember if that's Martin Crim or Martin Laurie) and Loren Miller make similar complaints about what I wrote, arguing that the "the level of brutality should be greater" and calling for gruesome examples of their ethos. Martin writes:
>There should be less rationality, and more "We are Golani, we are
>insane" type ranting. It should read like it was shouted by a drill
sergeant
>foaming at the mouth.
Mm. I tried to take a more philosophical or theological approach on purpose, in that my primary concern wasn't really _what_ the KoW does (as Sandy has pointed out, on some level we already "know" what the KoW "does"), but rather to try and figure out _why_, and at the time I prefered to leave the ways in which their ethos would manifest itself as implicit, rather than explicit (using references to the "rights of the victor" and hoping that people could fill in the blanks on their own). In case there was any confusion on this point, let me just state unequivocally that I _do_ think the KoW commits Atrocities, as I see Atrocity as War's Hand Maiden (and therefore think everyone commits them: no one is innocent). I should also perhaps note that, in the same way that the perspective pieces from other cultures do not represent those cultures in full, what I wrote wasn't meant to represent the KoW's activities in their entirety, and presumably those pieces should be accompanied at some point by cult write-ups to more clearly detail their presumably atrocious rituals and horrific (and familiar) spells and spirits, Sect write-ups to detail the different Sects' tactics and practices (and their various chants and songs, of which Martin has provided us with a few examples), perspective pieces written by survivors of their attacks to get the "other side" of the story, etc. Loren suggests a number of excellent KoW rituals, most particularly the mother/mother-substitute ritual killing (which adds added incentive to the desire of the KoW's women warriors to avoid pregnancy), to which I would add a father/king ritual killing; in fact, it occurs to me that a ritual sacrifice of a mother or mother-substitute would be a good initiatory ritual for an individual upon joining the Pack (symbolizing the rejection of the "binding" tie to the mother/land in favor of the "nonbinding" tie to the Pack's multiplicity), and the father/king sacrifice would be a good group ritual when the Pack-in-training finally joins the Sect in the field ("Et tu, Brutus?", symbolizing the rejection of the "binding" tie of kingship in favor of the "nonbinding" tie to the Sect).
However, as I said when I posted them, they weren't what I had hoped, and if I rewrite them I will attempt to spice up (or perhaps the phrase should be "spice down") the language and ratchet up the hysteria a bit, though I think that Scott Haney's sarcastic post has demonstrated about the entirety of the drill sergeant/Pat Riley/Mike Keenan approach to the KoW as disciplinarians.
A quick side note on the term "Sect"; I wasn't entirely happy with it either, but I considered the term "Regiment" to be too, well, regimented, implying a top down organizational model (the captain "establishing his regimen") rather than the hairesis/school of tactics model I wanted to follow. I had also considered the terms brigade, corps, legion, battle, and host, and fell back on Sect as a reserve.
Loren Miller adds:
>That, and the jarring references to the War Machine. I really
>think that Mostali are the only gloranthan group that ought to be
>going on and on about machines. The "war machine" is an industrial
>metaphor, and I wouldn't expect people in an ancient or even high
>medieval culture to grok it.
>
>I'd rather see something truly frightful instead of this endless
>prattling about machines.
Oh well; I guess I missed all the posts of people complaining about the oblique prattling on about "food-men" in the "What the Ogre Talon Says" piece in _SotB_ and instead demanded explicit details about how ogres torture, kill and cook their captives ("How to Serve Man": "It's a cookbook! It's a cookbook!"). Loren's main point is, however, well taken; I too had found the phrase "War Machine" somewhat anachronistic, but had kept it because a) most ancient and medieval cultures did have _some_ conception of the "machine" or "engine" or "automaton", even in Glorantha (frex, the God Learner "Machine Ruins"); b) it was the phrase used in the essay that inspired this particular POV; c) I thought it reinforced the seeming connection between the KoW and the Mostali Doomsday Machine, and d) I couldn't think of anything else at the time. In fact, I had continued to refer to them as the "Kingdom of War" until I got to the "Who Rules Us?" question, when I suddenly realized that taken to its logical conclusion, they would not in fact actually refer to themselves as the "Kingdom" of anything in this schema, having utterly rejected the notion of sovereignty (resulting in the particular repetition of the phrase "War Machine", as I went back and changed the phrase "KoW" wherever I found it).
However, a phrase in one of Sandy's recent posts which I agree with -- "I believe that by now, the KoW has evolved beyond its original purpose and has become incarnate War." -- caught my eye and suggested an alternative. Rather than referring to themselves as "the War Machine", perhaps they refer to themselves as "War Incarnate" ("We are War Incarnate; we are ruled by no one, not even ourselves" etc.; this also might symbolize their rejection of dwarven influence), and use the phrase, I dunno, maybe "War Host" to describe collective bodies other than themselves -- hence, the forces of Aldrya and Loskalm would become "Lesser War Hosts", Arkat had a "Greater War Host", and Ty Kora Tek becomes the leader of the "Spirit War Host." If I ever rewrite them, I'll probably use that language.
Loren then adds:
>In short, the write-up needs a clearer understanding of the nature of
>human evil. I'd recommend you watch _Goodfellas_ and _The Usual
>Suspects_. These movies are frightening in a way that the write-ups
>are not.
As I have now said on a number of occasions, they aren't what I hoped they would be, but I have to admit that I find this somewhat puzzling. While I haven't seen _The Usual Suspects_ yet (it's been recommended to me strongly by everyone I know that's seen it, though I'll probably have to wait until it hits video), I have seen _Goodfellas_ a number of times. What struck me as most frightening about the characters in that film was the utterly banal face of _normalcy_ which hid their psychopathic interiors, the smile and kind word and pat on the back before the blow is struck and the bullet fired, the suburban homes and pasta in prison which mask their amorality; and Scorsese has talked at length about the fact that he finds villains interesting because of the _choices_ they make. To some extent, this is precisely what I tried to capture with those perspective pieces (though I admit I may have failed), so I'd be curious to find out from Loren whether his take on the movie differed from mine, or if he agrees, how it can be more accurately applied to the KoW.
As final notes (sorry about the length of the post, btw), I would like to thank Tim Torres for rising to my defense, and I would also thank Nick for not gloating too much -- though I would point out that I do not remember him saying that KoW perspective pieces would be _difficult_ to write, only that they shouldn't be attempted _at_all_. I am glad that he and others found useful things in them. It will probably be a little while before I attempt any rewrite of them, or for that matter the more difficult next step of actually attempting suggested cult write-ups; if I get around to them, I will sound out that digest before I post them to see if anyone's interested.
Still dealing with leftover turkey,
Mark
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #239
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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