more Esrolia (sigh)

From: Andrew Joelson <joelsona_at_cpdmfg.cig.mot.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996 14:44:05 -0500


While looking into the 'raid in force' vs 'Lunar Invasion' bit, I found the history of Kaethela (sp?) in The RQ Companion. The effort is definately listed as an invasion, with the attack into Heortland as a lesser effort. But the article goes on to talk about the Pharaoh, and how he mainted and strong military force. More specifics to follow:

Durupt Jean says

> Why does the Esrolian military have such a bad reputation?

        The RQ Companion may be an old source, but it says that the Holy Land had a strong military force. It also says that the land was governed by 'sixths'; one sixth was Caladraland, one sixth Esrolia, etc. Each part contributed. I would expect the Esrolians to suffer from unbalanced unit types rather than simply be bad. IE, the trolls provided light skirmishers, and the Heortland provided light cav, and ..... Now that these realms are separate, Esrolia may be all light infantry without heavies, or cavalry (?).

> Why do the raiders (Dithali, Solanthi, Wolf pirates and Grazers) have
> such an easy task in Esrolia?

        The Grazelanders were firm allies of the Pharaoh. Raids only started after the Pharoah disappeared...and didn't turn up again. I can't speak well to the Ditali/Solanthi, but the others: 1) It's hard to turn back raiders unless you have a fast unit (usually cavalry) near where the raid takes place. Then your fast response team takes off and tries to give the raiders a licking. This means a fair amount of standing troops near/at the border, not levies that have to be raised.
2) The discussions here keep implying that the Esrolians have little/no cavalry, which makes it hard to catch Grazelanders. The Wolf Pirates are as bad or worse, since Harrek led them into battle and wiped out most/all of the Pharaoh's fleet.
3) The other way of stopping raiders is to hit them back, which doesn't seem to fit the Esrolian mind-set. It is impractical vs the Wolf Pirates and Grazelanders, who don't have fixed bases. And trying that against the Ditali et al resulted in the Lion's Feast.

        In short, the esrolians will continue to suffer from raids until the come up with something dang innovative.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++      I
Andrew Joelson				joelsona_at_cpdmfg.cig.mot.com        -+-
AKA  Rupert von Harl, Seven Mothers/Yanafal Tarnils and Humakt		    |
"Contradiction?  No, I always did tend to kill chaos creatures anyway."     /

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