Re: Prax, Char-uns and other bestiaria

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 15:44:33 GMT

Ilav Topix replies to me:
> >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.

I'm not suggesting that there (necessarily) be a formalised hierarchy at the below-regiment level -- though it seems clear to me that there will often be. Rather, I'm saying that the 'command structure', in whatever sense it exists, must in some sense reflect how it's deployed. Or at least, how the military establishment at one point imagined it would be deployed, whether or not it's bothered to update such notions in line with how it's actually being used.

Thus to reiterate: if you customarily split Char-Un regiments up into 40 companies of 15, or some other more or less ad hoc arrangement on such lines, then there will be _de facto_ 'company commanders' who are able to muddle through in such a role.

Now, how well this actually works is quite a different matter, I entirely agree. If you start to organise units differently from their nominal organisation, or if their nominal organisation was a polite fiction all along, then clearly all sorts of farcical and entertaining results may occur. But in the long-run, form will tend to follow function, even if the form is ramshackle, and the function is dubious in the extreme.

Cheers,
Alex.

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