Esrolian Male Sheep

From: martin <102541.3423_at_CompuServe.COM>
Date: 19 Apr 96 15:16:34 EDT


Pam Carlso asked:
>And do Esrolians learn extra bladesharp spells to fight Harrek and his
>wolf pirates? (What's the point?) Do they fight off the Orlanthi
>raiders from the West, or just spend the extra magical effort recovering?
>Do the Esrolian queens, when warring against each other, use private armies
>of mercenaries and warriors, or their farmer folk?

To which Peter Metcalfe replied:
>Esrolians use their farmers like Trolls use Trollkin. Well, not as
>callous. The men are mustered in large formations, equipped with
>shitty weapons and sent towards the enemy in an effort to wear them
>down before the real (female) fighting units launch their attacks.
>This sort of tactic means it's not cost effective to teach them
>battle magic. Of course, these male units are near useless to
>repel raiders (as by the time they have been mustered the raiders
>are GONE).

I know Esrolia is a female dominated society and thats fine. However I find the idea of all the best Esolian units being women to be faintly ludicrous and here's why:

(1). Irregardless of anything else, women are statistically weaker than men. Sure there are women who are as strong as the weaker men but there are no women as strong as the strongest men. Strength does have a tremendous effect on melee combat. You hit harder, can carry more weaponry and armour while moving just as fast and on the whole can take more damage. A unit of Esrolian women warriors could be highly effective (as in Babeester Gor) but given a large military campaign such units must be hard to find,therefore the majority of female units will not be this exceptional and ranged against a force of male warriors, they would tend to lose most melees.

(2). Women tend to be less aggressive than men. This is largely due to testosterone and social conditioning so there are exceptions but as a rule aggressive states are hard for women to keep up in action. I have seen this in sparring many times in Muay Tai. The best women can stand toe to toe with many men but put them against one of the best men and its a no contest.

(3). In the RW I found a classic example of this. The French Foreign Legion campaigned against an Africa King who had a whole regiment of rifle armed women warriors. These women warriors were respected by the Legionnaires who said, with no hesitation, that they were better than the kings _men_ in both discipline and courage. However the legionnaires (who were often outnumbered and mostly ill or starving) still charged over them with bayonets fixed and wiped them out to a woman.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with women warriors but any country whose regular forces were entirely made up of women and who were surrounded by male warrior cultures wouldn't last ten minutes.

Then there is the social problem. If the Esrolian queens kept summoning me from my farm to get slaughtered and kept giving me shitty weapons and told me to hold the line against a horde of cav while the women warriors took it easy behind us until the enemy were tired, I'd turn round, join the enemy and kill the snotty bitch who gave me the order for the callous coward that she was.

This cannot be a real policy in any regard or Esrolia would have long since lost its Queens and would have a very repressive male pyschopath sitting on the throne.

Heres how I see the Esrolian military:

20% Female. Units of Babeester Gor, Vingans, Female Humakti Elites, Light cav, Skirmishing archers mostly.
80% Male. Humakti mercs, Regular spear, heavy cav.

Basically the women would still give the tactical commands but a large part of their arm would be fighting for "Queen and Country" and would be male and hopefully hightly patriotic. Look at England under Elizabeth or Victoria. Or India under Mrs Ghandi. In those days they were male dominated to a huge degree but they still fought for women rulers. Thats how I see Esrolia, not as something from a feminists dream world.

Martin Laurie


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