[Glorantha] Re: Sartarite Cavalry is Good cavalry

In message <004801c6db37$9f2dc920$6406a8c0@zorro> "Roderick and Ellen Robertson" writes:

>The Scottish Borders (an area roughly analogous to Sartar) didn't
>have "vast agricultural wealth" either, and it raised the best
>light-medium cavalry in the English Civil War. Hit and run raiders,
>feuds; the wole lot of Sartarite problems were prevalent on the
>Borders as well. And they had "cavalry".

Perhaps better described as the *only* light-medium cavalry in the English Civil War. A war in which cavalry generally made little contribution to the battles because they used to charge the enemy cavalry with the winners going on to loot the baggage train.

>Concealment seems to have been covered by a lot of horse raiders -
>the Plains Indians, Scots Borderers, etc. "Hiding" a horse and rider
>in hilly and brushy/forested terrain isn't particulary difficult
>(looking out the window at my own hills). Most raiding "stealth"
>lies in choosing the correct path to the objective (ie, going where
>people *aren't*), not in ambush when you get to it (hiding in the
>trees). And let's not forget that Finovan raiders get the "Raiding"
>affinity, with "Camouflage animal", "Hide Animal Tracks", and "Silence
>Herd Animal" - all very useful stealth abilities for horse riding
>raiders. Any mobility magic that would aid a person on foot
>would be usable on a horse, and would

Sure there is magic which would be useful to a horseman but where is the cavalry/horseman specific magic? The only thing I can find is under Elmal where two out of six subcults are related to horses - Beren and Redalda. On the basis of the magic available there should be more Orlanthi charioteers than cavalry.

>Well, YGMV. Sartarite cavalry is attested in the one bit of "hard"
>military history (WBRM) that we have.

The trouble with that is the proportions. It would mean that every member of every warband was cavalry and all the infantry are fyrdmen. Furthermore only an average of 40% of the available fyrd are represented. That's why I go with the idea that the Sartarite militia cavalry are really mounted infantry and some even have alternative means of rapid movement. That doesn't mean they can't charge an enemy just that it isn't their primary fighting style.

>Okay, Sartarites are more like Scottish Borderers and Homeric Greeks.

Well Homeric Greeks didn't have cavalry, they used chariots.

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