[Glorantha] Re: Glorantha Digest, Vol 12, Issue 384

In message <177dc5fd0609170648v23cbb552r2134898d5ac4568b@mail.gmail.com> "John Machin" writes:

>Well, perhaps in the "Army of Sartar" as opposed to the "Army of the
>Colymar Tribe"? This is sort of what I meant when I said you needed
>certain size Kings to select certain options; in much the same way
>that if you want Macedonian hypaspists then you need to have Phillip
>or Alexander.

I'm just trying to imagine the organisation involved in bypassing clan and tribal leadership to get this sort of specialised unit to actually work together. Remember the Orlanthi work on the "follow chosen leader" principle so if the High King selects all the Vangarthi for a specific purpose he's got to find someone they'll accept to lead them or do it himself.

>Tarsh is a bit flatter than DP though right? Solid spear blocks make
>sense in such terrain, whereas emphasising getting away from trouble
>and knowing your tula seems, to me, to be more Sartarite. In DBM terms
>this would be "Auxilia", rather than "Spears" - it might make more
>sense to think about it in terms of what the men do if things go
>badly: either clump more and hope for the best (Spears; i.e. Tarshite
>fyrd) or head for the hills (Auxilia; i.e. Sartarite fyrd).

I think in both cases the answer would be "head for home". Get behind a nice solid wall or palisade and shut the gate. The difference between them is more the way they are recruited. The Sartarite fyrd is pretty much every able bodied man from the clan providing their own equipment. The Tarsh shieldwall regiments are paid soldiers recruited from the poor of the cities with training and equipment depending on the generosity of the sponsor. As a result if things go wrong the Tarshites will tend to break ranks and desert because they know their leaders regard them as replaceable. Whereas the Sartarites will try and retreat in good order because they know that loss of the fyrd is loss of the clan.

>How have the Tarshites managed to survive, historically, if they lack
>such magical cults!? I can see more reasons why they are keen on the
>Lunar Way now at least. ;)

Historically they had very much the same structure and cults as the Sartarites. This is the new improved Lunar way which turns warriors into soldiers. If a Tarsh shieldwall unit ends up fighting on their own someone has blundered, they should be operating with skirmishers and either cavalry or shock infantry. The (different) specialist warrior cults are with other units such as Light Foot, Cataphracts, Huscarls and Lancers. The concentration of identical magic in such units is usually more than a match for the random assortment of magics that the Sartarite clans can produce. Also Tarsh has a bigger population, if they loose a shieldwall regiment they can recruit another, if a clan looses their fyrd they are at the mercy of their neighbours for at least a generation.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/