Shargashi = Assyrians, Sense Runes

From: James Frusetta <gerakkag_at_wam.umd.edu>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 13:06:49 -0500 (EST)

Peter Metcalfe writes:
>I have thought of using the Aztec warriors as a model but they
>fight crap (mainly because they fought as individuals and
>in a ritualistic manner). Proper Shargashi should be able to
>subdue their sense of self when fighting in a group.
<Stuff on Rome, snip>

Now, I don't know much abou thte Shargashi, but how about the Assyrians? I give the following two quotes, from Sennacherib and Assurnasirpal II:

"[Attacks Babylon] Like the on-coming of a storm I broke loose, and overwhelmed it like a hurricane... With their corpses I filled the city squares. The city and its houses, from its foundation to its top, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire ... I razed and dumped [the rubble] into the Arahtu Canal... Through the midst of that city I dug canals, I flooded its site with water, and the very foundations thereof I destroyed. ... I completely blotted it with floods of water and made it like a meadow."

"[Suru rebels] In the valor of my heart and with the fury of my weapons I stormed the city. All the rebels they seized and delivered them up ... Azi-ilu I set over them as my own governor. I built a pillar over against his city gate, and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to stakes round about the pillar; many within the border of my own land I flayed, and I spread their skins upon the walls; and I cut off the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled. Ahiababa I took to Nineveh, I flayed him, I spread his skin upon the wall of Nineveh..."

All the bloodthirstiness of the Mexica! All the efficiency of the Romans! Two great hits, together in the Assyrians. <g> On the plus side, they are (to my knowledge) one of the few integrated (cav & inf) armies of the pre-modern period that relied on terror (unlike the cav-only nomads, or the inf-only Mexica). So, anyway, their tactics were even close enough to the Dara Happans to make them a good possibility. (Maybe too many chariots, frex.)

Lewis Jardine suggests: I'd offer in turn:
>Sonar = Darkness
>Taste = Water? Taste = Water
>Touch = Earth Touch =-Earth
>Sight = Ether/Light Sight = Aether
>Sound = Air Sound = Darkness*
>Smell = Chaos? Smell = Air**
>Illusion = Moon!?!? Pain(?) = Chaos?

				? = Moon
				Heatsense = ?
			

• Because you can hear in darkness? And darksense is, since it's treated like sonar, basically a kind of "hearing" (albeit a superior one). I've read that blind humans can be trained to perform some fairly impressive abilities with echolocation -- including being able to tell what kind of coin you were holding in front of them (because they could apparently tell the size). The book in question, while a reputable scientific study, is about 20 years old, though (part of the NATO stuff on sonar) and may be out of date. So, anyway, Echolocation: it's not just for trolls, anymore.
  • Maybe because you need air and wind to carry the scent to you? Frex, you need air for _both_ sound and smell. :( A coin-toss to figure out who gets what?

James Frusetta

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