>Remember, most of Dragon Pass, in the era described by
>the game, is wilderness. Even a dozen soldiers can
>only do so much, given dozens of miles of border to
>patrol.
I used to be in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms). Every year in August they have a war, the Pennsic War, between the Eastern kingdom and its allies, and the Middle Kingdom and its allies. The loser gets Pittsburgh for the year (it's a long story).
The war consisted of several large battles (used to be around 2-3000 people involved in the big field battle, who knows how many now), some smaller battles (1-300 people), and a couple of archery contests. Whoever gets the most points wins.
Anyhow, though I wasn't a fighter, I did take part in the Woods battle a few times as a non-com water-bearer/first-aid person. We would hole up in a thicket and wait for weary troops to pass us by, and we'd water them down. Or we'd hole up in a thicket off to the side of a hot-spot, and look out for injured people. As non-coms, we couldn't talk about who or what we'd seen, but we did see an awful lot. Three hundred people could indeed be very, very quiet if they're quite disciplined about it, though more often than not they were less than quiet and gave their positions away. And this was in a very confined area, probably no more than three or five square miles, where people are looking for action. As Bryan says, multiply that by dozens or hundreds of miles, and it's very easy to imagine it.
Regards,
joe
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