This will have to be quick, I'm afraid--I'm off to the mountains for the weekend in about three hours. Your arguments are so compelling, however, I feel the need to reply.
: 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!
Good point, although it seems to me they would have had to give over some control. If the RAF in World War II had been airlifting food to the Nazis instead of bombing them, I imagine the Allied Supreme Commander (who was an American) would have at least strongly suggested that they stop.
: 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.
Which do you prefer, a turtleneck or a henweigh?
: Hey, I'm just nitpicking random statements of yours. What
: *was* the original point? Let's just assume I won
: there, whatever it was.
I lack the time to fight for my honor. Nooooooooo!
: 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.
They do, however, go into length about the conditions of life around Seven Gates and the Stair of Grief, which might have been a good point to put in, "but at least we have food, since our valiant Culinary Thaumaturges have shown true heroism in drumming up sixty gallons of soy sauce."
: 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.
We'll get to this...
: 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.
Again, it hinges on your definition of devout. I've read some accounts of the Crusaders from the Islamic perspective which marvelled at the fluid morality of the Christians, how they could rape and pillage saracen cities and think they were doing God's work. Zeal and ethics are very strange bedfellows...
: *infers from the emoticon that Wellington has four
: mandibles, shivers*
All my mouthparts are flexible, thank you very much.
: You know what they say about guys with big mustaches...
"Would you like to see my flame arrow?" has to be a better pickup line than, "I can block anything if I see it coming," too.
: C'mon, I want better prayers than *that*. Thighbones
: wrapped in fat, boy!
Sorry, I'm a vegetarian.
: 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.
Sure, okay... female in that non-corporeal alien entity way. Ooh, baby, let me see your soul fly up in the air...
: 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.
It's an arrangement that's never really been tested in recent armies, and my heart really isn't in it anyway (I'm a big fan of gender equality, and I suspect the arguments against fraternization are based on ingrained sexism), so I'm dropping this one.
: 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.
Ah, but for most ancient armies camp followers weren't illicit or covert but actually encouraged by the top brass. It was one of the major inducements.
: And if you can't find a date? Well, that's what the
: prostitutes are for. I didn't say there were NONE. :-)
: 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.)
And my argument wasn't so much for a mobile gang of camp followers as it was for the health problems associated with the army services industry.
: 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.
It would make me turn around and run the other way, definitely. They must have some kind of defensive capability or they wouldn't last long enough to graduate the Culinary Thaumaturge Institute, I'll give you that.
: 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.
Hey, what's that over there? No, really, keep looking, you'll see it.
: 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. :-)
: ...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.
Again, this kind of top-heavy economy will work in a situation where you have massive social controls over the larger population--for a while. It can't last, however. The threat of being turned into a catfish is relatively small. The threat of having soldiers come into your blacksmith shop and taking all the swords you spent six months crafting is very high. This was of crucial importance in the Revolutionary War--the reason popular support fell in behind Washington was not because people believed he was their only hope, but because the British were just taking what they wanted and being really slimy about it.
: 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.
We're not really disagreeing, here. Conscription, which is a universal peacetime draft, tends to get your population in shape, provides a police force, and keeps teenagers from getting into too much trouble. All well and good. A wartime universal draft is a problem because suddenly those same teenagers aren't picking up trash along the highway--they are suddenly the heroes upon whom the very lives of the populace depend. It's largely the same people, but they responsibilities go up about a hundred notches. Therefore, dregs.
: 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.
How about my mustache? :) (and no, I don't have one).
: 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.
We're pretty much in agreement here, though I tend to think the war crimes of ancient armies were more a question of human nature than training, and therefore Mythworld armies, even with a good and solid cause to fight for, would still succumb to them from time to time.
: 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?
I was largely basing that on the journal writer's implication. I think the whole political commander to brave hero transformation was meant to show the quality of the warriors at your disposal, so I don't imagine he ever acted in an incompetent way, people just expected him to.
: Plus a heft supply of pork, chicken and hawk...
Pork which half your army refuses to eat, chicken which is an endangered species, and hawk which are apparently so hard to catch that the Tutorial narrator is amazed by your good shot if one of your bowmen actually gets one. What are these people actually eating? Turnips?
: 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.
: Put some in your new scenario! A "ham
: whirlwind" LPGR effect would rock.
I've already done a whirlwind. This time I've got a ghol that grows to three times normal size and a dwarf mortar who goes up instead of down. Maybe the food wizards just take what food you have and make it expand mightily...
: Nuisance, then. Brigands collectively are the primary
: mundane "criminal element" of the West.
Agreed.
: Agreed.
Agreed.
I'm sorry, were we agreeing on something again, or arguing about something again?
: 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.
Again, cogent and valuable points all. My problem was never with the idea that magic would shape society, merely that it would make the army incredibly vulnerable and therefore couldn't be totally relied on. Magic seems unpredictable at best and therefore using it to completely support and buttress one's society sounds like an invitation to disaster.
And if I may also take a page from comic books, the reason why Superman never got around to curing hunger or building the electric car was that he was too busy fighting Lex Luthor. The balance of power meant that all his time was spent finding new and better ways to fight. I would imagine much the same can be said of the Mythworld. All the magic we've seen is either destructive or healing. I know, I know, why would they put food magic in a game that doesn't worry about resource building, but I think there may be more to it than that. The scholomance and the Avataras and the Culinary Thaumaturge Institute are going to be so busy practicing ways to kill thrall that they won't have a chance to improve the ham whirlwind dream.
Of course, my argument is directed at simplifying the issue while yours tends towards complexity, and given the way this world works I'd say I'm holding the short end of that staff of magic.
: --SiliconDream, teaching his fortress of logic to use a
: diaphragm so it won't be quite so impregnable
Wellington, who wishes he had time for a snappy comeback
