: Well, gee, you're much to smart for me. I'd better retire
: to a life of quiet contemplation and... hey, what's
: that on your shirt? Right there where I'm pointing?
: I could make the point that the pregame pics aren't
: exactly reliable, but that wouldn't be sporting. I
: can, to be fair, see the berserks being offered
: blankets and sneering--real men don't wear anything
: OVER their kilts either, and all that--but it just
: seems so suicidal. Another possibility is that the
: zerks just aren't human, that hailing as they do from
: the North, their body chemistry is different and
: therefore they don't require more in the way of
: clothes. I seem to remember something about the actual
: Scottish Highlanders using a multi-purpose garment
: that could be everything from bedroll to toga to parka
: but that's IRL so it's out of bounds. I don't know, I
: just don't see someone as smart as Alric letting this
: machismo cult go this far. Sure, I'll buy the bit
: about him not liking horses, but letting his best
: melee fighters freeze to death because they don't want
: to cover up their warpaint? It seems like a good
: commander would risk a little opprobrium by ordering
: his men to put on a sweater, for Wyrd's sake.
But they're not his. They're independent allies, and proud ones. You have to put up with a little bull-headedness if you want to have such a valuable resource on your side. And anyway, if you think that Alric probably told them to dress warmly, the fact that they didn't do so suggests that they didn't have extra clothes. Which suggests that they didn't have a supply line. Whoo!
GURPS does say that the Zerks are pretty temperature-tolerant, but it also says that they're gen-yoo-ine humans. And the in-game Berserk deaths from cold show that they could certainly have benefitted from a turtleneck or two.
: I've just realized that this completely fails to address
: the original point of several posts ago, but I've had
: three beers and I'm not ready to go digging through
: this enormous thread right now.
Hey, I'm just nitpicking random statements of yours. What *was* the original point? Let's just assume I won there, whatever it was.
: You make a valid point here. I don't really know where my
: resistance to the whole food-providing-mage thing
: comes from. Maybe it just seems too vulnerable--you
: reach an area with relatively little mana and oops,
: sorry, we forgot to keep a supply line going, I guess
: it's eat grass or starve tonight. I just tend to think
: the journal writer would have mentioned these guys at
: least once. An army, after all, moves on its stomach
: and the journalist is smart enough to notice this
: fact.
Hey, he doesn't mention a mundane cook either. Or clothes, or any of the rest of it. The narrators are remarkably intellectual and thoughtful men, remember, and they apparently consider it more important to chronicle the state of the war and their immediate tactical objective than to write about last night's dinner.
: As to self-sufficiency: like many of the points you make
: here, it's based on the idea that Mythworlders are
: stronger, smarter, and more resilient than RL human
: beings. Not that this is unacceptable: it's a fantasy
: and that covers a multitude of sins, plus the
: Mythworld, seeing far more warfare than ours does,
: would certainly select for the most flexible and
: cunning in the population. Chalk it up to evolution,
: then. And those awfully convenient wizards.
Yeah, it's mostly based on the wizards. And while I don't think the Mythworlders in general are better than us (one look at the peasant headshot should tell you that), I do think the Legion is, because--as I keep annoyingly repeating--they're the hand-picked cream of the crop.
: Depends on the crusade and your definition of
: "devout". The so-called Children's Crusade
: was all about walking the fine line between devotion
: and mania, while several of the early crusades were
: all about political gain. 8-x (not a skull and
: crossbones--instead think of a guy with glasses
: looking just painfully smug).
Of course, but the Children's Crusaders weren't exactly soldiers. And from what I know, they were quite well-behaved up until the time some Venetians (IIRC) came up to them and said, "Want some candy, little Christians? Climb aboard our ships, heh...heh...bueno..." I think my original point--that the Crusaders who committed the atrocities were *generally* not the ones who came out of a sense of ethics and religious zeal, so you can't use that example to argue that an ethically trained Legionnaire would still commit lots of war crimes--is still valid. And I'll continue to think this. Forever.
*infers from the emoticon that Wellington has four mandibles, shivers*
: Yeah--especially since she's hanging on a bowman. Maybe
: it's just the accent. ;)
You know what they say about guys with big mustaches...
: An excellent point. Once again, you have cut to the quick
: and found the flaw in my ironclad logic. But pray, do
: go on.
C'mon, I want better prayers than *that*. Thighbones wrapped in fat, boy!
: I'm assuming you're basing this on GURPS, since all the
: female units in the game are Dark (and I still can't
: figure out why people think the Fetch are female). As
: to sex partners who are also comrades-at-arms I can
: imagine this being a real big no-no for the Light's
: generals. Sure, knowing that your husband in Scales
: just got eaten by a ghol might spur you on to bigger
: and better feats of valor, but watching your wife get
: her face lopped off by a myrmidon blade would be more
: likely to, well, distract you. Plus the company you're
: in needs to be a cohesive unit and sex tends to
: restrict group relationships, those soldiers unable to
: find dates will become jealous and resentful
: (therefore less likely to back up their squadmates)
: unless provided with a secondary outlet, etc. etc.
: Furthermore, gender equality actually doubles the
: number of prostitutes necessary to keep the Legion
: happy. I will, however, accept your answer if you add
: on the proviso that drug runners are unnecessary
: because the combatant dwarves are able to provide all
: the required recreational pharmaceuticals without
: resorting to non-combatant suppliers.
Yep, I'm basing it on GURPS. (Although the bit about female Berserks was told to me by Bungie employees.) We knew Fetch were female before GURPS said so, though; Bungie texts call them priestesses.
While a number of modern armies hold to the doctrine you lay out above--that fraternization among soldiers is too troublesome to allow--this certainly hasn't been true for many past military organizations. I'm sure you remember the thread on the military and homosexuality a few months ago; we discussed how many Mediterranean armies (the Spartans being the most famous) encouraged sexual relationships among their soldiery to strengthen their bonds. Thomas More also suggested in "Utopia" that men go to war alongside their wives. Yeah, if your loved one gets cut down in battle you're going to be distracted, but until it happens you'll be fighting extra-hard to make sure nothing happens to her (and possibly the most important factor in mass melee combat is whether each soldier's looking out for his comrades), and after it happens you'll be fighting extra-hard out of sorrow and rage.
Also, we're already assuming that these Myth armies are so easy-going and disorganized that they permit a mass of prostitutes and other hangers-on to follow around. Seems to me like it'd be easy to have an affair with a fellow soldier in such an atmosphere, whether or not it's officially encouraged. In fact, it's probably less hassle to sneak off with another soldier for a tryst than to covertly head out and find a prostitute.
And if you can't find a date? Well, that's what the prostitutes are for. I didn't say there were NONE. :-)
: But not so rare as to render your point less valid. My
: argument would be that the vast majority of world
: knots, at any rate, seem to be clustered in urban
: centers and therefore the first thing a warrior is
: likely to see when he steps out of one is a red light
: district. Enough of the fighting is urban that disease
: and food supplies will remain a significant problem.
: As to non-infrastructure teleportation, you have me
: there.
Indeed, my main point with this was not that there aren't going to be so many prostitutes as that they aren't actually going to be camp followers. Instead, as you say, they'll congregate around the areas of teleportation and meet the soldiers when they arrive, then wait for the next batch. (Or else a good fraction of those 10,000 mages are hired by the escort industry to teleport the girls to whatever military unit is most needy at the moment. No, I don't actually think this.)
: But of course guerrila forces rarely have room for
: noncombatants of any kind, which would include food
: wizards. Do these useful fellows have some kind of
: attack strength, or is a significant portion of the
: Legion's efforts directed at keeping them alive?
They can probably defend themselves if need be; they certainly tried against the Watcher. Listen, don't knock the offensive usefulness of the Rain of General Tsao's Chicken Dream until you've seen it in action.
: And of course there have to be plenty of
: avatara-in-training, since that particular job
: description probably has fewer openings per annum than
: even heron guard (but also pays better). Oh, sure,
: there has to be some kind of graduate assistant
: equivalent in the Scholomance. Perhaps part of my
: resistance is due to my inability to believe that
: anyone would major in Food Production at a school that
: also offers courses in Dispersal Dreams and Confusion.
: Then again, this is largely due to the fact that I
: never had the chance to learn any of these skills. I
: wasn't sure why anyone would major in business
: administration or animal husbandry when film school
: beckoned, but then I've since met people who thought
: film was dull and tedious but for whom accountancy was
: a lifelong dream. A useful skill is a useful skill,
: and plenty of people will jump at the chance.
: Conceded.
Also, not everyone has the innate talent, or is willing to invest the time and energy, to learn the real major spells like the Dreams and fireballs and stuff. And not everyone wants to be in a situation where Dreams would actually be useful--namely, with a thousand Thrall lurching toward you. Being a food/clothing wizard is a somewhat easier and safer life, most likely. Not to mention that, as in any other area of academia, you have to learn what people are willing to teach. If there's a lot of positions for food wizard available, it's going to be a lot easier to get into Food Wizard U than it is to get into Avatara training camp. They teach Dispersal Dreams at Harvard, but they teach Monk's Banquet at every community college in the country, essentially. Ha, and you thought a concession would make me stop talking for a few seconds.
: I'd actually thought about winter in Italy while positing
: my argument but forgot to mention it (a leaky memory
: is awfully convenient, at times).
: And presumably they'd have plenty of engineering corpsmen
: to build sod huts and revetments and all the rest. But
: we're getting to a point now where one must ask how
: much infrastructure they have. Either they're a
: guerilla army that lives by its wits (which is going
: to be very, very difficult by the seveneenth year of
: the war), or they're a well-financed, very well
: supported band of disciplined regulars. Either way,
: there remain massive problems of supply and public
: health, best explained away, as you say, by the use of
: magic. It's just so awfully convenient! So pat, so, so
: unrealistic. I suppose the willful suspension of
: disbelief will have to be invoked at some point here,
: lest the Asylum crash under the wait of endless posts.
Hey, if you haven't learned to suspend your disbelief by now, after years of arguing about books that tell the future and talking heads with mind-control powers, I really can't help you. :-)
: As I mentioned above accountancy is not my passion but I
: do know that a government which gets everything for
: free is in danger of runaway inflation and popular
: revolt. The top-heavy economies of the Middle Ages
: were due largely to a surplus of free labor in the
: form of serfs, kept docile by a powerful centralized
: religion. A verifiable threat on the order of
: Myrkridia might work as well. The current system is
: falling apart and nearly bankrupted us (and did in the
: Soviet Union completely). The Mythworld may well
: operate on a permanent wartime economy but it sounds
: pretty fragile to me. Weimar Germany comes to mind...
...but of course Weimar Germany didn't have an incredibly beloved war hero at its head, who went out and personally risked his life to save the entire world. A war hero who also, incidentally, has the power to turn anyone who complains about their taxes into catfish. (I'm assuming for the moment that Alric has discovered the Catfish Dream.)
Remember that, more so than in almost any RL state, there are actual rational reasons for the farmers to support a large standing army. Reasons that come up to their windows and howl at them and try to eat their children every night. Add to this that the populace is accustomed to a medieval-style absolute monarchy. Add to this that the monarch's past heroics make him unusually beloved to his subjects, and that his mastery of the Catfish Dream makes him unusually intimidating to them. Based on all this, I think a top-heavy Province economy would be much more stable than any similar RL one in history. Especially with those Economancers pumping out Raise-Dow spells night and day.
: A draft also means that they'll have to be less selective
: about who they take. Mandatory conscription has been a
: real boon for several cultures in peacetime but a
: wartime draft means having to actually rely on the
: dregs of humanity.
But the Legion's draft is peacetime. Maybe I didn't use the right word--is "draft" only applicable to wartime? Anyway, promising adolescents are conscripted in peace or war, as far as we know. If they had to recruit the dregs of humanity in wartime, we wouldn't see all them unarmed peasants running around in civvies.
: I believe we've both made the point before that Light vs.
: Dark is more complex than it sounds, and I think this
: issue is a perfect example thereof. It's not so much
: that ancient soldiers were trained to be bastards, as
: much as they were removed from the normalizing
: structures which forced them to think of themselves as
: social beings and placed them in evironments where
: mores and folkways were almost absent, thereby
: allowing them to behave according to their desires
: rather than their expectations. However, the best
: argument against this devolves out of your suggestion
: about camp followers above. The Light troops have a
: very clear definition of what is wrong (they see it in
: the actions of their enemies who exist purely to
: despoil) and therefore are more likely to develop a
: strong sense of what is right. There are few truly
: senseless wars in the Mythworld; as a result the Light
: will tend to be better behaved. (the preceding was a
: very longwinded way of saying yeah, dude, that is sooo
: true, but for different reasons).
Hey! I like my reasons! It's not enough that you agree with me; you must agree with me for precisely the same reasons! You should also dye and style your hair to match mine.
Seriously, soldiers' losing their social inhibitions didn't happen by accident (or, at least, not entirely so); it was encouraged in situations where their inculcated mores were at odds with what they were expected to do. So when they came from, say, a Christian society that at least nominally espouses loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek, and they were expected to fight in "kill the enemy, rape his dog and burn down his wife" mode, it was obviously necessary to strip away all the stuff they'd been raised with.
In the Mythworld, on the other hand, most of the wars make sense (as you say). Which means that having a strongly ethical and socially-aware soldiery can only be helpful, and so that kind of feeling will be encouraged rather than discouraged.
: You're welcome.
: Constant warfare will also tend to breed out the
: martinets and textbook generals. Cruniac was clearly
: set up as an example of what the Legion is NOT all
: about (specifically, precision drilling, protocol, and
: the like) and then made heroic by his final nobility
: in the face of his own incompetence (which sounds
: harsh, since he went up against SB with a handful of
: troops. The man had guts... um, bad jokes coming on...
: 1. a whole shield full of them... 2. for which we have
: documented evidence... 3. for a while, anyway...).
Personally, I think Cruniac was pretty much an ideal Legion commander. The narrator admits that he misjudged Cruniac at least twice--first in his tactical skills, and again in his knowledge of dark magics. In retrospect, I'm fairly sure that Cruniac's decision to stop at Willow Creek was motivated by honest and concern more than (as the narrator intimated at the time) political ambition. At what time did he demonstrate incompetence?
: If you like weeds, flowers, watermelons, and pumpkins...
: well, okay, there were potatoes and pickles and muck,
: too. Conceded.
Plus a heft supply of pork, chicken and hawk...
: Whatever happened to the old thread about population
: implosion in the Mythworld? There just can't be that
: many people of any type left...
GURPS says the Province population in the best of times is about 12 million, and that the post-Soulblighter population is somewhat less than half that. Not too bad, really, and conceivably they could be back up to max in a century or two.
: By now I'm in love with the idea of food wizards. Yay,
: food wizards--you guys rock! We couldn't do it without
: you, man!
Put some in your new scenario! A "ham whirlwind" LPGR effect would rock.
: I wouldn't exactly call it a threat... more of a vague
: menace...
Nuisance, then. Brigands collectively are the primary mundane "criminal element" of the West.
: It seems to me to be a major question. Since disease
: killed more men in the nineteenth century than
: Napoleon and my namesake combined, not to mention the
: Bubonic Plague in the Middle Ages... there must be
: some kind of dispersal heal out there. I had actually
: contemplated a level for YOBS where you had to heal an
: entire village before they turned into ghasts but it
: just seemed too ugly. I would imagine something
: similar has shaped Bungie's thinking about disease.
Agreed.
: You're watching my evolution into a netgod while we post.
: To be fair, I think if you go back over all of our
: voluminous correspondence you're likely to find at
: least one prior instance... 8) used to be a favorite,
: since I wear glasses. How about this one: &^#
: I call that one "Person trying to think of a
: workable response to SiliconDream's impregnable
: fortress of logic".
: Yes, one day soon I will even master the fine art of
: acronyms... (remember my confusion over AFK?)
SNUBA! SNUBA! I still don't know what that stands for, but it sure looks silly (the name and the activity)...
And now, a mini-rant.
While I understand your distaste about explaining away aspects of Myth society through magic, my feelings are almost entirely opposed to this. One of my pet peeves in fantasy and sci-fi is when a book or movie or whatever has some world-shattering idea--like human-level AIs or magic--which nevertheless fails to influence society at most levels. It's particulary noticeable in comic books. You've got a population of, say, a few thousand beings who can fly and throw mountains and transmute water into gold and so forth. Does this affect the economy? Does it affect the political structure of nations and the planet as a whole? Not really. The superguys just keep threatening and saving the planet while life goes on as usual. Most of my favorite comics (like those of Ellis, Busiek and Morrison) are ones where this isn't the case, usually because they aren't part of a massive company-owned continuum where every comic has to be consistent with every other one and also be close enough to the real world that the casual reader will become interested in it. In such comics, the existence of superpowers changes the world, and keeps changing it. And that I find much more interesting and reasonable.
So anyway, I'm very happy to have gaps in the economic and political and social structure of the Mythworld filled by magic. Magic destroys continents, and controls the minds of millions, and determines every 1000 years whether or not the entire Mythworld will be destroyed. So it damn well better have some impact on low-level stuff like food production and manufacture. That's what makes it not just a gimmicky plot device, but a fascinating and important element of the whole construct.
--SiliconDream, teaching his fortress of logic to use a diaphragm so it won't be quite so impregnable
