> >And also that [the Rathori] 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).
The population figures you quote are _total_ populations of the city states, not the populations of the cities themselves which are markedly smaller. A city of one hundred thousand souls is something you'll find only in Sog City, Nochet etc.
The upper Janubian cities are by no means densely populated states - they are isolated cities in the wop-wops
>They are around 120km away from Harandash in Bindle.
On the wrong side of the Sweet Sea as I said before.
>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.
Look at the density of cities in and around Loskalm, Dara Happa and Safelster. Those places are the heart of civilization, not remote places like the Upper Janube valley.
>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.
What strong force? They have "a small number of professional soldiers" and have to rely on "ragged mobs of peasants and city dwellers" to round off their civil defense, GB p12. This doesn't sound like a ready reaction team to respond to raiders.
>I find it hard to believe that the Rathori have never been caught
>and forced into battle. It makes no sense.
I have never said this. I have said they avoid the battlefield because it's a place where they get _killed_. Raiding is much safer.
> >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.
We were talking about "a quick reaction and warning system", not a "response ability". As said before, the Janubians do not have any amount of forces to deal with raiders effectively.
>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.
Such as build fortifications, I agree. But you are postulating something like a ready reaction force ready to charge of into the wilderness to catch raiders, which I do not think the Janubians have.
> >>As for the Rathori raiding the Char-un, this would be even more
> >>suicidal than raiding the Janubians.
> >[...] 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.
Since I deny the Rathori muster in foot armies, this isn't quite a fatal objection that it appears...
> I guess elves just blend in...
With what? If there's trees about, the Rathori can use them too.
> >>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.
Remounts says it all, doesn't it? The average nomadic clan is not going to be able to outfit all its riders with remounts, considering that excess ridable horses are usually surrendered to another clan bigger than you.
>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 Rathori can sneak to within firing range and take him out with a single shot.
> >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?
Considering that's the whole point of raiding, I would think so. Since the CharUn use their horses for food, very few of the hoofprints represent a mounted rider. And they would be able to tell by the depth of the hoofprints whether it carries a rider or not.
> >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.
No, they wouldn't have to. They can close in on a weak and isolated Yurt.
>Once they had raided, they would be hunted and they would
>have no cover to speak off.
There are large amounts of rough terrain in any steppe. And who is doing the hunting? The yurt that has just been raided or another yurt? Would the latter yurt bother to send help? Or would they think that the raided yurts woman and horses be much safer with them? These sort of factors make raiding the CharUn far less suicidal than you imply.
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #525
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