There used to be a full RQ3 cult write-up by Harald Smith on the net which it's probably worth hunting for if you're interested. Any chance a HW version of this will appear in either the LIH or the forthcoming UW Imther Book ?
Harald's long OOP zine New Lolon Gospel and one of the issues of Codex also had HW material.
IIRC there's also something on HW and Mirins Cross by Martin Laurie in one of the Enclosures.
While the cult (if it's not been retconned out of existence in the meantime) is based primarily in Saird this is also where the headquarters of the Provincial Army and Administration are based so it is easy to imagine small detachments of HW engineers being sent out all across the provinces to build/repair roads and fortifications - so some luckless bunch may well have ended up in Pavis.
The Lunars also built a small fleet at Corflu for use in the invasion of Heortland which implies there is also a team of naval engineers based in Prax - who ancient engineers being flexible types would have expertise in fortifications and siegecraft as well.
Re the Roman legions thread one reason for the low apparent mortality of imperial legionaries (and I'm convinced it is more apparent than real as we nowhere have the sort of detailed personnel records that would prove this - Egyptian papyri do exist but are generally too late and too fragmentary top tell us anything about legions in the earlier empire ) is that 1st-2nd century legionaries rarely were engaged in battle with most of the fighting and actual patrolling actually carried out by auxilaries (read Tacitus on Suetonius Paulinus' climactic battle against Boudicca where the legions sat back and let the auxilaries do all the fighting) and that the true frontier forts are manned by auxilary units while legionary fortresses are well behind the frontier in places like York, Chester and Caerleon
(this is less so on the Rhine and Danube frontiers where the Legions are stationed on the rivers and their tributaries as these provided by far the cheapest way of moving the large quantities of supplies required to keep a legion going).
In fact one reason Varus was defeated was probably because many of his auxilaries may have deserted leaving him with three legions who were not best suited for fighting in the bogs and forests (really we don't know for sure as the the sources don't give us that much detail) - but when Germanicus invaded the same region a couple of years later he had little problem defeating the same enemy with a much better balanced force.
IIRC in the Boudiccan war the major Roman defeat was when part of a legion was caught without its auxilaries and another Legion sensibly refused even to leave their camp until Paulinus had retained from Anglesey with the frontier units.
Similarly when Civilis led his Batavian auxilaries into a revolt the local Legions had huge problems dealing with him without their auxilaries until they were heavily reinforced.
The only example where legionaries seem to have borne the brunt of the fighting was in the two civil wars of 69-70 and 192-4 due primarily to a lot of the auxilaries having to stay behind to defend the frontier - however even here you get the impression from Tacitus' Historia that generals made more use of the auxilaries they did have with them as they were far cheaper, more mobile and in the last analysis more easily replacable
The one thing imperial legions did excel at was building and besieging fortresses and the average legionary probably spent far more time wielding a spade than a pilum.
To get back on topic I think there is an analogy here with the Lunars in Sartar and Prax whose Heartland Corps units sit tight in the fortified cities (although somehow I can't see traditional Dara Happan hoplites doing much digging and fortifying themselves as they have whole castes of people to do that for them back in DH - modern Lunar units are probably more Roman in this respect) while the running about in the hills is done by local and other auxilaries and special units like the vexilla in BA.
This is of course also pretty much how the Red Army behaved for most of their time in Afghanistan...
ROGER
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