Re: Re: Delayed welcome - new member

From: Jane Williams <janewilliams20_at_...>
Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 11:56:45 +0000 (GMT)

> > I don't think the average Lunar citizen thinks
> much about foreign
> > wars at all. Any information they get will be late
> and/or filtered
> > though official channels.
>
> Certainly the case, since passage of information
> would be slow and
> sporadic. Like the Russians in WW1 who thought they
> were winning
> until the army returned having failed. However, word
> would filter
> back through letters (military censorship is never
> 100% effective)
> and through troops returning from the front either
> through necessary
> rotation or through injury. The trader cults will
> make cash from the
> passage of information about the ongoing siege.

Yes, a lot of what gets back is exaggerated rumour. Big facts, like the Bat being sent (and defeated), and the actual fall of the city, will be known about in vague terms. I have a young Lunar officer in Sartar in 1620 knowing that the Bat had been defeated at WW (and privately being rather relieved about it), but genuinely believing that Kallyr had killed it singlehanded.

> I always felt that Tatius has been portrayed as an
> overly cautious
> idiot. Doesn't it say in KOS that after his
> appointment all Lunar
> military successes stop? Do we reckon that Tatius is
> hampered by his
> fear of the political repercussions of committing
> his phalanxes and
> thus stops making decisons and fails in his
> leadership, or is he
> simply incompetent in the use of the Lunar army? Is
> he perhaps a
> slightly tragic figure who has been given a poisoned
> chalice by
> backstabbing politicians in Glamour, jealous of his
> rising star?

Tatius as I understand him is a very intelligent and ruthless politician, with a clear understanding of the magical/mythical nature of the siege and next to no interest in the military side except as a means to an end. He's trying to kill Orlanth. Having Orlanth tied to WW, and then destroying WW, is a good method. But that does mean that the destruction has to be done with the right ceremonies and on the right day.... so when the lower ranks wonder if he's even trying to win the siege as fast as possible, they're right to do so. He isn't. He's trying to encourage the defenders to use as much Orlanthi magic as possible, to make it all the more certain that when WW goes, so does Orlanth.

I'm not at all sure how many of his underlings know what's really going on - probably not many. The rest get very confused and annoyed by apparently senseless orders from Management (go and read some Dilbert). But since Tatius is a lot like the Patrician of AnhkMorpork, they don't argue.

I'm sure there's political stuff going on as well, rivalries and blackmail and so on, but he's good at that. The one case I know of for certain is a research magician who wants to use WW as a practical test of one of his theories, and threatens to reveal nasty secrets about what Tatius' (dead) cousin Euglyptus got up to if he doesn't get his research grant. Since the test in question is "can one kill a Great God?", Tatius has reluctantly submitted to the blackmail :)

On the Orlanthi side, Broyan catches on reasonably fast to the magical side of things, Kallyr a bit later, and again, they don't spread the idea. What they do, we decided, is take the logic a step further. The question isn't whether WW will fall, it's how. And it isn't whether Orlanth will die, it's how. So they deliberately escalate the whole thing, trying to be sure that when Orlanth vanishes, he's gone down a mythic path controlled by them, not by the Lunars, from which they can bring him back. Again, this can lead to what look like rather odd bits of strategy.



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