: So I have two days to plan my next attack, eh? Well, I
: think I'll...dash of
Dash of salt? Dash off so fast you forget the second "f"?
Well, two turned into three, and not because I was having so much fun I decided to stay up in the mountains (though I did have some fun, but more about that later).
: Naturally, but that's a far cry from telling them what to
: wear.
I still think the berserks would have at least had some blankets that they threw off when they ran into battle. Either that, or a friendly wizard with a "warm breeze up the kilt" spell. The fact that we see them marching with bare chests and dying the same way in the pregame pics is, I think, meant to be taken metaphorically--a lot of the pregame pics are portraits and clearly not battlefield stills.
: Again, he didn't mention that they'd procured food by any
: mundane means either. In fact, his silence on the
: matter might indicate that the food was made by magic;
: if it had to be procured through mundane means there
: probably would have been a shortage (or at least
: difficulties) given the terrible weather and
: waist-deep snow, which he would have had reason to
: write about. The fact that he writes nothing suggests
: that the weather didn't impact food production in the
: slightest, which means MAGIC!
Good point.
: Granted. But my original argument was that the
: Legionnaires were trained to be ethical, not zealous.
All their best role models are pretty zealous, though. Cruniac and his cheerleaders... er, color guard... try to take Soulblighter on by themselves, and look at Alric--the man wades right into ranks of Myrkridia. Sure, he's got Balmung, but still, that's zeal. Was it ethics that made them so hot for the blood of the Mayor and the Baron?
At any rate, they may very well get ethics classes in the Legion--VD films, lectures on why looting is bad, and so on--but any army as disadvantaged as this one is going to need zeal desperately. Besides, the very complexion of war in the Mythworld--slavering armies of destruction versus a ragtag team of good guys--is likely to drive these fellows into a frenzy every time they fight. They'll need something to do with that energy. While we agree that this also make them act a little more responsibly, I hope we can also agree it will make them play hard when they finally get some leave.
: Hey! I just checked and that guy she's hanging on is a
: Warrior, not a Bowman! Aww, now we have to think of a
: whole new set of double entendres.
Are you sure about that? He looks to me like he's got a bowman's hair and build. Did I miss a shield or a helmet or something?
: A vegetarian? And you expect your prayers to carry any
: weight? Haven't you learned from Cain?
Actually, I learned from Abel: don't put your faith in a god as fickle as Jehovah. But that's a whole different post for a whole different forum...
: I assume that Fetch are called female because their
: species can reproduce (at least in their own
: dimension) and the Fetch we see are the ones which do
: the lion's share of growing and caring for the young.
: At least, that's the only meaningful definition of
: "female" I know of that doesn't rely on
: physical or genetic attributes. Well, that and they
: wear skirts.
Huh.
: But for many ancient armies, soldier-to-soldier
: fraternization was also encouraged by the top brass.
: And (you knew I'd say this), the Legion wouldn't need
: to bait soldiers with the promise of a whore a day if
: they're able to conscribe.
Sure, but A) camp followers lower the risk of desertion, and B) if the Myth army is as gender-friendly as you say, it still looks like they've segregated the sexes into different outfits. I'm still operating under the principle that what I see in the game holds more water than what they print in GURPS. C) If they allow fraternization you're still going to have problems with VD. I don't see armies of married couples, I see something closer to Starship Troopers (the movie, at least) where they don't have time to worry about monogamy.
: So we can just let this lead into the disease discussion,
: then.
: The way I'm thinking, these guys learn 2 or 3
: "create nasty-but-nutritious army food"
: spells, 2 or 3 "create/wash clothing
: spells," a telepathic communication spell or two,
: and then some very basic defense/offense spells, like
: low-powered fireballs and stuff. They'd be about as
: powerful as Warlocks, but not nearly so
: combat-oriented.
: Really, I think a lot of people would prefer to be
: all-arounders like this than pure battlemages like the
: Warlocks. It's all very well to be able to atomize a
: dozen attackers, but for most of your life it's a lot
: more handy to be able to keep yourself fed, clean,
: clothed and able to communicate over long distances
: wherever you may be.
Good point, though I tend to think the warlock mystique would still draw more of the young. Kids tend to want to be firefighters, not hotel managers. There will, of course, be exceptions, and some of the mages in the Army will be middle-aged, but in general I think the average magical recruit is going to see those fireballs and start drooling. After all, look at us--I'm probably the oldest person here and I still prefer to blow things up (vicariously, of course) then think about making dinner.
: I still think the threat of being eaten by a Krid or
: enslaved by Shade is big enough to make all the other
: ones look very, very inconsequential. And who knows
: but that the Myth citizens get clear and palpable
: rewards for their generosity--as you say, it may be
: institutionalized that the more a village gives to the
: army, the more diligently the army protects it.
But don't forget that there are extended periods of peace when this sprawling army is just a policing body. Does the economy change during these times? I would think it would have to. Three hundred years after the last Myrk is in the Tain, it's going to be tricky for the tax collectors to explain why it's so important that Connacht have a new war chariot for each year's state-of-the-Empire parade. I know, we were talking about wartime economy but the point I'd like to make here is that at the start of every continental war it's going to be tricky to get that tithe out of people. Which might be one more explanation for why the Light always does so badly at first: just because the Empire's outposts haven't been heard from in a while, farmers in the interior will still be skeptical about handing over crops, sons, random bits of metal--much less billeting soldiers in their working barns. Unfortunately, by the time the people are scared enough to accept martial law and heavily burdening taxation, too many of them will be dead to make an effective tax base.
: Well, it seems to me that we're disagreeing. Maybe I'm
: still not using the right terminology. GURPS tells us
: that the draft isn't universal; they only recruit the
: most promising kids, not the ones who need to be kept
: out of trouble. So I'm thinking of the Legionnaires as
: those with the most talent for heroics, while you're
: (I think) thinking of them as those with the least
: talent for anything else. These will naturally lead to
: different predictions of Legion behavior.
Fighting with a sword and a shield is a tricky skill to master, I'll grant that, but I don't see how it would be possible for them to recruit only those kids they think are up to the challenge. You're talking about wars which kill off half the total population. Half. WWI, WWII, and the influenza epidemic between didn't kill off that many people combined, and still we were forced to draft anyone who wasn't legally blind. While in peacetime the recruits may be the cream of the crop, during the wars they'll need every head that'll fit in a helmet.
: I think the journal writer in particular was showing his
: own naivete and lack of experience. He didn't know
: what a good commander looks like, and he couldn't (at
: first) see past his instinctive dislike of Cruniac to
: recognize his essential greatness.
Again, I'm just talkin' about appearances here. Cruniac's transformation is entirely in the head of the journal writer. This does, however, suggest that the rank and file aren't the highly-disciplined fighters you've been arguing for, but the kind of bewildered and still-learning dregs that I've spoken of. If they don't know what a decent commander looks like, they can't be that good at their jobs when they first show up.
: The Zerks raise sheep for haggis, of course, and must be
: eternally grateful to Vista for introducing their most
: valuable food animal into the Mythworld; they also
: fish. And no, they don't eat turnips; they eat *a*
: turnip. They're about half done.
LOL
: Nifty! Can you use an alpha-tester?
Absolutely.
: You decide. I'll agree.
I've decided that from now on you must disagree with everything I say. Hah! Logic your way out of that paper bag, Mr. Well Read.
: Is it so unpredictable? The spells we see in-game are
: more reliable, in general, than the technology. Dwarf
: bottles misfire, axes break, but fireballs are
: forever. Remember, magic's been employed and
: researched in the Mythworld longer than, say, iron.
: They've got a lot of the kinks out by now.
If your fireballs are forever you've been mucking about in Fear. Mine last about five seconds before they spontaneously combust. Meanwhile, the technology's getting better while the magic stagnates. The dispersal dream hasn't been improved on in generations (even the old school shades still use the same spell, and I'm willing to bet the locks knew how to threw fireballs even before tfl), but the mortar is a long shot better than the fire arrow. Meanwhile, there's still mana to worry about. You can always airlift food in by baloon (even over the cloudspine, which is something RL baloons would have a major problem with, even if they were steerable) but if your food wizard gets stuck in the slough of despond or the doldrums or some place where all the local mana's been used up, well, it's rock soup all around.
: But we know this isn't true. Half the reason no other
: mage respects Warlocks is that they specialize so much
: in combat magic. Almost every other type of wizard
: wields a wide variety of spells. We don't see these,
: of course, because in combat the important spells are
: the ones that heal your friends and hurt your enemies,
: but GURPS does tell us they're there.
Okay, okay, you win! Food wizards for everyone!
: And Superman should organize his time better. :-) (Of
: course, by now we've had endless story arcs where he
: thinks about doing something really major--like
: altering global weather patterns--and always decides
: that he doesn't have the "right" to do
: something like that. Pshaw.)
I don't know if that's such a cop out. Look at our technology. Do we have the tech to feed everyone, eliminate poverty, go to a twenty-hour work week and be happy all the time? Yes. (we really, really do). Why don't we use it? Because A) it's just not that simple--some of these technologies (like doping the ENTIRE population on prozac 24-7) carry their own problems, and B) we're too busy buying this year's model H-Bomb to focus on alternative energy, sustainable foodstuffs, and the like. Superman seems to be responding to both of these concerns, and I can see the Avatara having the same crises of conscience.
: Hey, I think "It all runs by magic" is about as
: simple as you can get...
The problem is that it compounds propositions. The more ludicrously powerful your magic gets, the more laws of physics you have to rewrite and the more explaining you have to do to suggest why this could work. Fireballs can be thought of as superheated air, and dispersal dreams as microwaves collected by the energon cube and then released on a wide spray. Food spells, though, require the direct transmutation of energy into matter--and then the instantaneous self-organization of that new matter (which would most likely take the form of raw quarks) into organic molecules, which must then be further organized into non-poisonous, foodlike compounds, which must further be differentiated and gratuitously formed into cooked, wholesome foods. The food spell therefore invokes far more physics than a dispersal dream and should, therefore, be that much harder to master. Saying "it's magic" and waving your hands may work perfectly well for David Copperfield, but if you want a real effect you're going to need some kind of organizing intelligence behind it... that's why I say that your version is more complex than mine.
: I can wait. Don't get eaten by a raccoon, now.
Okay, the full report: I had a great time on Saturday, hanging with the park rangers (one's an old friend) and hiking around a state park. Sunday morning we had to climb over some rocks to get to this "truly amazing trail". About halfway up I slipped and scraped half my face off. That would have been okay, except my first reaction was, "don't fall on your head," so instead I put one foot down to break my fall and sprained an ankle. Hours of first aid (those park rangers live for this sort of thing), accident reports and repeated insistences that yes, they can get an ambulance into the middle of the woods later I hobbled out and said, oh, rats, I have to go to work tomorrow. Now my boss is on the way to pick me up and watch me limp around the store for eight hours while the bruises on my leg get uglier and uglier... I kind of wish a raccoon had tried to eat me. Still, I had a great time the first day and getting away from the computer, even for a little while, was quite refreshing.
: --SiliconDream
Wellington
