Me:
>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).
Peter corrects me:
>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.
Aha! If you read what I said in my paragraph, you'll note that I said "from the large cities and their hinterlands", hinterlands being defined as - "A region lying beyond majot metropolitan or cultural centres or a region remote from urban areas". Naturally a large city for RQ is measured between 6-25000 people, no more. This indicates that cities like Eastpoint may well have around 15000 people.
>The upper Janubian cities are by no means densely populated
>states - they are isolated cities in the wop-wops
They aren't densely populated by Pelorian standards, but Riverjoin has 120,000 people in an area at _most_ 100km by 200km which would take its land up to the forest border. This means that it is smaller than Sartar by a fair chunk yet has two thirds of the population (180,000). In effect the density of population is probably similar to Sartars. Which is to say, they would certainly have the ability and density to defend their areas in a relatively strong fashion.
>They are around 120km away from Harandash in Bindle.
>On the wrong side of the Sweet Sea as I said before.
And if you look at the map, you can see that the Rathorelan forest actually ends between the Grey mountains and the Sweet sea and is within 100km of Imperial turf on foot, no boats needed except to cross the Poralister river.
>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.
I'm not saying they are the "heart" of civilisation, but they do have large cities and they have enough density of people to attempt to equal the Sartari fight against their raiding Hsunchen, the Telmori, who are more effective than the Rathori in fighting as a group anyway. They still defeated the Telmori, though it took a major effort. I don't see why the upper Janubians couldn't do this.
>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"
What does this mean? Small as opposed to Loskalm? Small as a percentage of population? Besides professional soldiers are not everything. The Thematic Byzantines were very good troops and they were part timers, border action hardens people to war.
>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.
All you would need is a around 100 riders to be able to reinforce a region under raid. The locals would do most of their own fighting. Unless the Rathori were coming in in strength, this would be enough to scare them off or hopefully catch them in the open.
>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.
Yes but raids go wrong which means they have to have had battles and they _would_ have leanrt something from them, other than to avoid them (because you can't always) They would have had to come up with a way of at least minimising the damage when a raid group gets caught.
> >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.
You don't need much. I'm not talking regiments or serried ranks of cataphracts or anything. The local lord should have a couple of dozen men in his employ, he summons his peasants and yeoman, many of whom will be experienced frontiersmen, then he goes to reinforce the area, while other lords and the state rulers send more troops to try and cut off the raiders. The Byzantines developed a simple strategy for raids. They would often ignore the raid force until after it had raided, position themselves at the point of exit for the raiders and then slaughter the laden raiders with ease. Often this was such a deterrant is stopped repeats for some time.
>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.
A lord with a score of knights and two dozen sergreants is a quick reaction force that even large Rathori bands would be wary of. That is all I'm talking about.
> >>As for the Rathori raiding the Char-un, this would be even more
> >>suicidal than raiding the Janubians.
> I guess elves just blend in...
>With what? If there's trees about, the Rathori can use them too.
Exaclty my point. They elves don't blend in. I think elves raiding Eirigia is wrong and ill thought out.
>???? 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.
The average nomad has a couple of remounts, they measure their wealth in horsesand when they are riding to war, they will use them and I disagree that excess horses were surrendered to a bigger clan, this only happened in war and was not that common.
>And a Rathori can sneak to within firing range and take him out
>with a single shot.
And then he is noticed to be missing within a couple of hours, plenty of time to move the camp and issue warning. The Char-un are experts at this, far more so than the Janubians and on the Steppe, they know what they are doing, the Rathori are fish out of water.
>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.
Which would imply strong numbers, at least 100 raiders. Even a weak clan can field 50-100 warriors. The Rathori would be hard pressed to move that many men any depth into the steppe without being noticed.
>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?
Because a clan is part of a tribe and a tribal khan has obligation to defend his people, plus if the Rathori are allowed to get away with it, then they will come again, and who will be next? As I said, the Char-un are _experts_ at this stuff which means they know the score and know how to defeat raiders. Even if the Rathori did defeat a yurt, they would have a hell of a job getting out with theirr loot, especially as they can't ride the horses and the horses would not want to go with them and would resist.
Martin Laurie
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