Steve:
>Martin, you make really good points. Which leaves me head scratching why,
>IMO, it appears that for a great deal of time, "raiding" like we're talking
>about seems to have been a relatively successful lifestyle (at least,
>Caesar's Gallic Wars, the history of the attempted settlements of the
>balkans up until say 1200 or so (just to pick a number, I think you get my
>point), the history of the pre-crusader muslim kingdoms bordering "wild"
>areas in the mideast, etc) for quite some time for quite a large number of
>people?
There is a very simple reason for this, which I will sum up with one word - initiative.
The raider has it, the raided don't. With the initiative the raider can choose where they will raid, they can choose _when_ they will raid and they can plan for specific defences of the area they are to raid via recon and past experience. This is such a huge advantage that it takes massive resources and abilities to offset, if ever.
The result is the raided people can develop an number of methods of dealing with this:
1). The raided people have to develop a means of catching the raiders and stopping them cold, usually at a fortified border - Hadrians wall, Great Wall etc were used in this fashion as they were such obstacles that they caused a raiding group serious trouble. Other areas are controllable through geography like Anatolia.
2) They have to develop a counter military potential ie they must be able to hurt unto others as they have been hurt themselves. In otherwords, one possible evolution for the raided is to become such fierce raiders themselves that raiding is continous and normal for all groups on all sides of the region. Can we say Orlanthi clans?
3) They have to put someone in the way of the raids who will do the dirty work. The Romans did this for centuries and the Lunars have done this to a degree with the Provinces.
4) Fortify so heavily and so completely and have a culture under siege and heavily armed so the raiders simply cannoy achieve success of any degree. (this is a practical impossibility for any length of time)
5). Build up a powerful army and attack the raiders, destroying their centre of power. (This is perhaps the most difficult to achieve due to the source of most raiders. They usually come from poorer countries (which in turn are poorer for a reason, usually geographic) and are very hard to defeat as they have no real centre anyway).
6). Put up with the raids, hide the most valuable things and simply consider them a fact of life, no more unpleasant than a landslide or an earthquake. (this on is actually very common)
>I'm mainly using the raids of "barbarian tribes" against the 'civilized
>roman provinces' as my model, just because I'm most familiar with them, but
>it really seems like the barbarians were a threat for a long time over a
>huge geographical area? I don't have a problem with any of the points you
>made & I snipped, I just wonder then why all these communities that were
>under relatively long-term constant threat of raiding (and also very much
>like the Anglo coastal settlements vis a vis the Vikings) didn't simply pop
>up walls and end the threat?
The Romans are an interesting point. For a long time they had few walls within their provinces because in the early Principate, they projected power rather than defended. Even their legionary forts were a joke compared to some of the early fortifications in the time of Dionysius or Archimedes. It seems that they used them simply as bases to push their power into barbaricum and were more places to stay than attempts at defence. It was only later, when the enemies against them were stronger that they resorted to a defence in depth system, but for many years this was dropped as soon as they could to return to a frontier strategy. Only with Hadrian do you see a deliberate appraoch of solid defence. Diocletian increased this trend. Therefore I would contend that the Romans did fortify themselves when the threat appeared but prior to Hadrian barbarian incursions into the Empire were much less common and much less enduring. In other words there was little threat to evolve to and they resisted that evolution for some time, but they _did_ evolve in the end (yet it wasn't enough because the barbarians evolved faster).
>I truly don't know. It just seems that raiding MUST have somehow been a
>decent method of supplementing a culture/society's existence, and not
>totally pointless?
It's by no means pointless at all. Consider evolution on a military spectrum of rationality to be the equivalent of Clausewitz's concept of Total War. It's an ideal and not fully real. Like anything in war, it is beset by friction. The Roman state was up to stopping the barbarians, it had all the advantages in its favour - logistics, manpower, material, training etc. Why didn't it stop them? I think that its obvious that one simply _can't_ stop a determined adversary without destroying them utterly. They just keep coming back. In then end the Romans damaged themselves so badly that they were unable to apply their comparative advantage to all the areas they needed to and lost the Empire slowly, a bit at a time.
To take your saxon shore example, the Romans were the first to experience this phenomena when they controllled Britian, they tried to fortify but internal problems stripped the country of troops and stopped the work. The Saxons themselves was a schismed people, with several rival nations, each weak and often poor. Their system of rule and society was ill fitted for countering raids but even they found the right King to eventually meet the Vikings on more even terms. Oh, and if one thinks that a barbarian nation can't have rapid deployment forces, then perhaps a quick look at Harolds march to Stamford bridge then to Hastings will dispel that.
>Therfore I hold that it must be a useful lifestyle in
>Glorantha, mainly because I like the idea of "bear raiders" in terms of MGF!
Agreed. I don't even think MGF needs to overrule common sense. It's plain that raiding in Glorantha works, as it does in the RW. However there are caveats to that and they, like the RW, are based on common truths. For example, the best people to raid other horse nomads are _other_ horse nomads. The horse nomad is the ultimate raider of non-mountain or swamp terrain etc..
>BTW, not to start another totally seperate thread, but can anyone explain to
>me why there are so seemingly few fortifications in Glorantha?
Furthest is fortified, all the DH cities are fortified, every city in Peloria has _some_ fortifications, mostly they have a LOT. Glamour has huge walls, Alkoth has a 100m wall, Nochet is fortified, so is Sog city, so is Boldhome and Jonstown and Alda-chur. Mirins-Cross is and so are almost all of Seshnela. The Jonatelans live in massive castles, Ralios is bedecked with fortications and Fronela is building them like crazy. There are defences everywhere! Maybe Kralorela has few but they have the mountains and the Iron forts and their navy, but even they were at war with Sheng a mere 170 years before to the knife. I think they would still have some old forts.
>I mean sure, there are some, but they seem FAR more common RW than
>Glorantha?
I disagree! :)
>Is there a
>reason? Am I misperceiving this? M&B structures almost litter England,
>hillforts were all over dark ages europe, and of course castles seem to have
>sprung up just about at every useful chokepoint in the Old World.
I think Sartar is full of them, which makes the hills a poor place to be for the Lunars.
>Granted, magic is extant, but I think we seem to pretty frequently on this
>list seem to accept that "offensive magic = defensive magic" and they cancel
>each other out. Is that not the case here? Is magic more advantageous to
>attackers than defenders in this circumstance?
No I think they largely cancel but the difference a hero can make is significant. A Hero can lead an assault that no RW person could equal. A Hero incarnating their god _is_ like a walking god and mostly beats anything. In Gregs Harmast saga, when Morden dies, he holds off an entire Urvairinus regiment on his own and kills most of them as an example.
Martin Laurie
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