> >Bou-who?
> She's a Kallyr analogue for Roman Britain.
I was trying so hard to avoid using that as primary description... even in my admittedly biased opinion the analogue probably ought to be the other way round. But yes, this sort of thing is one reason why I view the Lunars as primarily Roman. Their conquest of Sartar is so obviously a parallel with the Romans in Britain (and Gaul, though I know less about that). I can't point at any one individual and say "that's Cartimandua, who settled her differences with the next tribe and her ex-husband by using Roman allies", but I am pretty sure that Cogidubnus' palace at Fishbourne is in the Nymie valley. Hmm, some of the Far Place battles are echoes of what happened to the Romans in Germania, too. TeutoburgerWald, anyone?
Did any invasion of Sartar use elephants? If it doesn't yet, we really ought to write some in.
> The point Greg makes about the Persian Empire as an analogue rather
> than the Roman one is that the Persians were far more tolerant of
> cultural differences within the Empire.
And the problem with the analogue is still that hardly anyone knows that.
> That's why the Sartar Rising books introduced all sorts of Heartland
> soldiers - most are not significantly better than the provincial
> (Tarsh) army but there different styles of fighting provide interest
> and a new challenge to players.
Which is fine, except that if they're interesting in that they differ from the standard: where did the standard go?
>Stuart Cogger:
>
>> But I find it hard to get away from everything I loved about the
>>Lunar army as presented in White Bear, Red Moon.
>>Built around the Stone Phalanxes as the toughest 'normal' unit.
> There's absolutely no reason to get away from that. The Stone
> Phalanxes are still there although with thousands of years of Dara
> Happen tradition and magic rather than Lunar stuff. The Beryl
> phalanx appears in Barbarian Adventures.
True, they do. We can't have our old friends the Marbles, since we KNOW they're up in Pavis (in gradually diminishing number in Swords, for some reason), but at least we get one of the Stone elites.
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