I've been recently reading a book on the techniques of Guerilla warfare. It's been quite interesting, and I have to admit that every half page or so I was thinking of how to apply this to Sartarites struggling to free Prax and Sartar from the Lunars.
The main points seem to be that successful guerillas need to have the support of the locals. Even if only tacit support ('I don't necessarily agree with what you're doing, but I ain't gonna turn you in to the Lunars'). The rebels need to be able to hide amongst the locals so that they can't just be rounded up. If the lunars react by killing people who aren't rebels, or being harsh in their retributions, then they drive more people into supporting the rebels.
Primarily the struggle is not to beat the regular forces as much as to make the cost of holding the land unbearable.
The Lunars already sent home from Pavis a couple of regiments because the cost of logistics to keep them fed was too much. How difficult will it be to make the price of keeping Prax too high.
If the Lunars want to hold the land (and they appear to) then they need to spread their soldiers out to stop the rebels living off the land, which means that the soldiers in any one place are not an overwhelming army. If the rebels can travel around looking like normal locals, then they can amass themselves to locally outnumber the Lunars (Look there's a lunar patrol of 14 guys, all we need is twenty in one place, and we can take them) even if there is only 50 rebels in the area, if they can get local superiority of forces they can have victory, then they all bugger off and pretend to be farmers again, (hiding any wounds with healing). If the Lunars clump together in unassailable lumps of a couple of hundred troops, then the rebels just go where the lunars are not and do sabotage.
Threatening a caravan or two would mean that the Lunars need to send escorts with them, which increases the cost of the caravan (and uses up troops who could be elsewhere).
This all requires that the Rebels have better intellengence than the Lunars. A lot of this can come from the locals who aren't actually fighting. They just watch where the soliders go and pass it on. Because they aren't actually rebelling, if the Lunars crack down on this sort of information they increase support for the rebels who can say "See the tolerant Lunar Empire - aren't they bastards?"
The odd matryed rebel, executed for struggling for freedom, would probably help the cause as well.
If the soldiers go out on a patrol, then just burn down their barracks, or drop dead broo bits in their water barrel. Acts of sabotage that require very few people to have a significant affect. After that's happened once, then half the patrol stays home to guard their barracks, so there isn't as many troops out looking.
The rebels are trying to avoid a stand up fight.
Have people in the towns where the troops are staying, if the troops go out on the beer, watch them, and if one steps out for a quick piss against a wall, slash their throat from behind and disappear. (You could probably get by with throwing an ax at his back and running - you don't need to kill them to make them scared) This stops the troops feeling safe in the town, and they stop fraternising with the locals, further alienating them from the locals.
The ideal group size for a lot of the classic guerilla operations depends on the terrain and what you are trying to do. 2-8 seems to be a common size of cell. Open plains are very bad for guerillas, but large towns and forested or hilly/mountainous regions are good. (That fits in well with my player group size)
Problems: Magic - particularly Rune Magic. Vision, Divination, the odd DI, are all going to make life tougher. But then they work the other way too.
Prax has wide open plains which are quite difficult to hide in, unless you have the support of some of the Beast riders. Organising them to work together sounds unlikely.
I'm slowly coming up with a plan to have the PC's take part in the liberation of Pavis, and Prax and (if they live that long) Sartar.
Part of the technique seems to be to get the Lunars so annoyed that they do things that are counter to "winning the hearts and minds". Making life unpleasant for people who've joined the Lunar way seems likely to be useful as well.
Does anyone have any advice from similar campaigns?
What are the obvious things for the Lunars to do? (Send out small units of experts to try and beat the rebels at their own game?)
Any advice cheerfully received.
Steve
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