Peter:
>And also that they are nowhere civilized lands, being on the wrong
>side of the sweet sea, and do quite fine by not fighting pitched
>battles which has been a successful strategy for the Rathori so
>far.
The deep Rathori forests are at best 100km away from the large cities and their hinterlands of Eastpoint (pop 100,000), Southbank (pop 80,000) and Riverjoin (pop 120,000) and the medium cities of Glastar (pop 100,000) and Zoria (pop 50,000). They are around 120km away from Harandash in Bindle.
This means that within a 3-5 day period they can actually be _in_ any of those cities and would have been in the hinterland much earlier.
By definition a large city is the equivalent of a Roman provincial capital like Lugdanensis or Antioch, therefore it is in the heart of civilisation. Only a dozen cities in all of Genertela hit Metropolis size and so the large city is the pinnacle of civilisation for most cultures.
Bear (no pun intended) in mind that the city garrison and army is also ony 3-5 days travel from the Rathori forests and it seems clear that they could have a strong force responding to a raid within eight days or its appearance. I find it hard to believe that the Rathori have never been caught and forced into battle. It makes no sense.
>The Arrolians and other Fronelans who receive regular raids would begin
>doing what every raided people has always done, localised fortification,
>followed by a quick reaction and warning system. Even though they are
>sparsely populated, this would work over time.
>This gradual evolutionary process never had a chance to work over
>time because countless events kept stuffing it up. In particular,
>Shah Nadar's raids, the fall of the Loskalmi Empire (in which a
>major City, Eastpoint, becomes a virtual ghost town until the
>Arrolians arrive three centuries later), the Carmanian conquest,
>the White Bear Empire and the Ban all inhibited the formation of
>developed civilized communities capable of putting a crimp in
>deterring the Rathori from invading. I do not believe that the
>people of upper Janubia are capable of maintaining a "quick
>reaction and warning system", much as though they would like to.
I don't believe that they wouldn't. Even frontiersmen in the wild west developed a sense of small town community enough to have a response ability. Its normal for frontier people to learn how to defend themselves in this way. Most have been freed from the ban a generation and have been raided at least a dozen years. That is plenty of time to have developed counters. The Rathori _would_ have an advantage though, given that they had many veteran raiders due to their long sleep, whereas their victims had had decades of peace and no reason to learn fighting skills.
>As for the Rathori raiding the Char-un, this would be even more suicidal
>than raiding the Janubians.
>Then take a look at the sidebar on p43 of the Genertela Book that
>mentions that Elves raid Erigia from time to time and also What
>My Uncle Told Me on p7 of the Player's Book: Genertela which
>describes how the elves and Rathori once had an alliance and
>conquered many foes. If Elves can survive raiding the CharUn
>on the Steppes, then the Rathori should too.
I suppose I could point out that no foot army ever successfully penetrated the steppe in the RW. I guess elves just blend in...
>The Char-un have all their wealth in mobile defended
>groups, are far faster than the Rathori and are much harder to find.
>A cluster of yurts is by no means a mobile defended group, the
>Rathori on foot can cover greater distances per day (50 km)
>than the CharUn rider (30 km)
???? A horseman with two or three remounts can cover considerably more than this per day (the Mongols regularly covered 60 KMs per day and could exceed 80 km is pressed) and should easily outpace a footman. Men only outwalk a horse when there are no remounts and even that is over time. Besides these are steppe ponies we are talking about. Try out-enduring one of those little buggers. Not easy.
BTW a Yurt is the term for a camp. A Gers is the name for the tent and they can be taken down and put up in around and hour. The typical clan outrider will be up to three hours out from the clan yurt giving lots of warning time.
>and a herd of horses is much
>easier to track than half a dozen men on foot.
True enough, but would you really want to find them?
>Further, they are adept at countering and moving large bodies of
>troops with speed.
>Which is effective for dealing with large bodies of men, which
>the Rathori would not do, but not for tracking and hunting down
>small groups, which they do.
The nomad is also a wonderful hunter. For the Rathori to engage a nomadic group they would have to close in on a completely unprepared Yurt. This is somewhat tricky. Once they had raided, they would be hunted and they would have no cover to speak off. The nomads are expert trackers and can cover huge amounts of ground with speed.
In conclusion, I doubt the Rathori would raid the steppe, rather like (to quote Arnold Rimmer) "sticking your wedding tackle in a tigers mouth while flicking its love spuds with a wet towel - sheer insanity"
Martin Laurie
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