>From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_yeats.ucc.ie>
>Theo Posselt asks:
> > One question: what do the Lunars and the Kralori supply each other?
>
>Sheng Seleris?
Awful thought. The most because it could be true. I refuse to keep my mind on it.
>Why should this be the focus, pray? If you're integrated into a
>huge military establishment like the Lunars', and are notionally
>deployed in wartime in 500-odd regiments, you can't just suddenly
>'take a notion' to peel off 15 guys and park them in Tarsh by
>themselves, without a commander of any sort whatsoever. And nor is
>it a very good idea to just pluck a soi-disant 'commander' for them
>either out of the rank and file, or out of the non-Char-Un officer
>cadre. Disaster on a stick, frankly.
IMO, your POV is too modern. Gloranthan regiments are not XX century units. The chain of command is not a complete tie at all, in game/Gloranthan terms. Disaster was very often caused by such acts that you, as a modern eye, judge as mistakes. Disasters were quite equally caused by what you call a military establishment, which tried to exert itself simply over stronger, less evident customs. Take the byzantine army which was crushed at Manzikert, as an example. I am asking you an act of faith, here, but believe me, Alex: wars, and especially non modern ones, are a foul, complicated and far less than rationale work. So is hierarchy, in civil or military respect. Comments?
>It's a demanding discipline, but after many years of training I feel
>that I've achieved the necessary state of Enlightenment.
>
>Cheers,
We cheer with you ;-)
Thank you, Trotsky, for your notion on Praxian publication. My question was intended to provoke this sequel: is anyone reading going to ask my humble contributions (or at least giving me a chance to prove my fitness) in writing such a sourcebook? (begging tone)
myself:
><<>I understand most ivory in medieval Europe was in fact >mammoth tusks
>from
>what is now Belarus, Ukraine and >western Russia.
> I didn't know this fact. It shocks me. Mammoth? Really? And the African
>elephants? What were they hunted down for, then?>>
Trotsky:
> Ivory for use by the Africans? Mind you, widespread use of mammoth
>ivory
>is news to me, too - I'd have thought they'd have used walrus or something.
Ivory for business use by the Africans, yes. The Nubian civilisation is an example, as I (vaguely) remember. The North African Elephant Race was extinguished in ancient times because it was easily huntable by mediterranean parties. Hannibal's or Pyrrus' kind of elephants is no more, nowadays. Sorry if this new saddens any of you.
Alex:
>So as John says, in many ways the
>'top down' question of whether Orlanth is imprisoned isn't the most
>crucial: rather, Orlanth, Orlanth, why have you forsaken _me_?
I undersign here, too.
Alex:
>I thought cav. companies were traditionally a fair bit smaller than this
>(over and above cav. regiments being 'smaller' in terms of numbers of
>men).
I suspect that we fail to understand that the exact concept of company or regiment was not at all that which we are used to, nowadays. In the Roman Army, broadly speaking, the centurie could not be 100-men strong. They could descend from an ancient time when the common origin of a certain block or sector of Rome gave about 100 warriors; but after some centuries (and centurie) the same block gave just 50 warriors or 150 or none at all (just a sum of money to buy mercenaries, for example), but they were still called a "centuria" for the sake of tradition.
Aloha!
Ilav
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