I'm with Mr. Cake here. Martin, you seem to be incapable of divorcing your military bias (call it strategy or logistics or whatever) from _any_ aspect of a society. Not everything relates to the military or strategic goals of a state.
To put it another way it is equaly valid to view everything through a economics perspective. In this case the excersize of force, be it conquest, internal dispute, etc are all simply ploys to enhance a particular faction/nation/individual's economic position or to disadvantage one's opponents. Thus the conquest of Sartar and the Holy Country is simply a means to get a secure route through to the sea for trading purposes.
Alternatively one could view it from a religious perspective. The LE is a means of spreading the influence of the RG as widely as possible and as such is only useful when it accomplishes this. Indeed the empire itself is just a distraction and can be discarded when its purpose has been served.
Hell, one could even look at it from a Darwinin perspective. In this view the LE and RG are memes that are competing with the established Orlanth meme and striving to displace each other. War and military conquest is simply one way of achieving this goal, neither more or less important than peaceful cultural assimilation, etc.
If I was sick enough I could come up with a plausible Freudian explanation of the entire thing (I'll leave that to somebody else...)
Each of these views gives rise to completely different motivations being attributed to the same actions and different potential outcomes. Why quash these by elevating one above all others.
These are all equally valid ways of looking at things - the problem with viewing things from only one perspective is that you lose all the fun and subtlety (I know you think that is a nasty word ;) that is possible from combining them. Forgive me for saying this but you haven't given any indication that any of these other perspectives are a part of your vision of the LE, except as subsidary to a largely militaristic view.
Why could it not be that the armies and upright heroic Conan types that you like are simply unwitting tools being manipulated by the scheming, subtle buerocrats and politicians and who don't end up with a "scimitar through thier heads"? Indeed that is far more likely to happent to the Conan-type anyway. I want the empire to be as amenable (or even more so) to "Yes Minister" type games as it is to the Dirty Dozen. Nothing in what you've written in the digest or the Lunar discussion list or from gaming with you has suggested that this will be whole-heartedly supported.
>
> Me:
> >Far from it. The
> >military and magical spheres are linked utterly. One cannot think army
> >without thinking magic. One cannot think battle without thinking heroquest
> >and ritual. In Glorantha these things are utterly interlinked.
>
> David
> > ...but what I was asking for is for them not to linked - to have
> >heroquest without battles
>
> Like an Erissa quest or a Yestendos quest? No problem with that.
No, like major plot arcs or the fate of empires _not_ being an exclusively military matter. The fall of the Middle-Sea empire came about as a mythico-religious backlash. The Gift Carriers, the fall of the Six-leggers, the expulsion of the False-Dragon ring were not primarily military. Yes they can be viewed as "surgical strikes" but that, IMHO, robs them of a significant part of their interest and importance.
> >This is far more the norm than armies clashing in Peloria. Label
> >it 'commando style action by small elite units' if you wish to try and fit
> >it into your military worldview, but I don't think that really captures
> >much of the feel of whats going on - a lot of heroquesting has rather
> >subtler effects than that, and doesn't involve direct engagement with the
> >opposition.
>
> In war, the fact that a worker in a factory never sees the enemy or even
> understands what the war is about has no impact on the definition of his role
> in the conflict. He is part of the grand strategic actions of the nation or
> group of federation he is represented by. A magical ritual, used to
> strength crops is a strategic asset. It gives food, which feeds the base
> population, which enhances the logistical attributes of the nation. On a
> magical level, the cumulative rituals of the priests for the blessing of the
> Emperor empower him with magics that are used for strategic purposes. Their
> low level worship is also a strategic asset. All of these things are
> interlinked. When I discuss military action, it is not distinct from non
> military action, because all actions that a state performs, whether military
> or not are directly related to its strategic function and goals.
This is only one way of looking at it. I'm afraid that you are losing a great deal of the subtelties and richness by adhering to this blinkered view... Just reread that paragraph above - "war, logistics, strategic asset, strategic function and goals"! Even when you say that the military perspective is not the most important you couch it in miltary terms!
Please don't take this as a personal attack, I'm merely trying to point out that a military methphor is not neccesarily always the best way to approach something.
Yours,
Yak
All hail the comming White Moon!
- --
Dave Pearton
pearton_at_u.washington.edu
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Its habit of getting up late you'll agree
That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
And dines on the following day.
The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ------------------------------
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #635
Powered by hypermail