Ali the Helering

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

I'm laughing on the inside

Quite so, ducky

I hope you all will have a good day today, and a New Year that is a hell of a lot better than this last one!😇

Thinking of you folks in Canada and the US at this time when Christmas isn't a season of rejoicing and reunion

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

Many Durulz don't like humans and the rest barely tolerate them.

It was a joke.

So many people say that they don't like Durulz.  How many ask whether they like you?  Even more important than asking about asparagus, broccoli, cucumber etc etc.

Few of those wield swords.

8 hours ago, Jeff said:

And given that Balazar covers about 50,000 square km, that gives it a population density of a little more than 2.5 people per square kilometer. Or about a quarter of the density of eastern Dragon Pass. That puts it well in the range for complex hunter-gatherer societies (1 to 4 people per square km). 

Which is why I cheered!

3 hours ago, Jon Hunter said:

Their is a scaling difference between GM and the guide, that's best understood as GM showing part of the information, but the guide having a more complete view. from 10,000 meters.  

When the guide came out Id started fan writing on Balazar and this is the best I came up with to  reconcile the two:

http://www.backtobalazar.com/the-clans-of-balazar/

YGMV
 

Absolutely sterling work, and all kudos to you Jon!

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

The Guide agrees with Griffin Mountain in most ways. But Greg corrected the population figures, so instead of about 14,000 people as Griffin Mountain would lead you to believe, Balazar has about 130,000. 

So we can assume that there is somewhere around 200 or so clans, and most maintaining very loose associations with a citadel. Balazar covers a lot of area - more than Sartar, with fewer people.

Indeed, that correction was essential and I heaved a great sigh of relief when it was done, (I seem to remember cheering when I saw it) but that does mean that the understanding of the human population of Balazar doesn't match up between the two products.  The Guide makes it far more interesting.

The principle problem is that the Guide does not agree with Griffin Mountain in any way.  Once you accept that YGWV it simplifies everything.

Although it is worth noting how the Romans spoke of the Huns as monstrous and the Europeans spoke of the Mongols as demonic.  They weren't, but their needs and values were alien.

2 hours ago, JonL said:

...who especially likes to liberate land from the oppression of farmers and also thinks torture is good for you.

and your point is????  😇

The Spolite Empire and the fall of Dara Happa would seem replete with possibilities.

14 minutes ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

The Seleric Wars. A decades long campaign against the nearest Glorantha has ever come to Dark Lord.

The Seleric Wars.  A decades long campaign against empires of dragon-lovers and chaos sympathisers by a great liberator.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Agreed. It was also Saturnalia, Dong Zhi, Toji, Shab-e Yalda, Yule, etc.  The fact is, the Winter Solstice is always going to be celebrated by someone with the nouse to know when it is.

Jesus' birthday, if myths are anything to go by falls around Pesach which is March/April.  In all likelihood we should be celebrating the birth of Jesus on 1st April, no jokes.

Absolutely.  I would still be a grumpy Scrooge type, however.

16 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

Point is, at first they attacked with cavalry only, not waiting for rest of the army to arrive. Only when schiltrons proved to be unexpectedly formidable, they decided to soften them up with missiles.

I am half-Scots, half-Welsh.  You surely don't expect me to defend stupidity on the English side?😜  Point is, they expected the Scots to run.  When they didn't, it required infantry to break them.

16 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

Supposedly. As i said, numbers in such sources are unreliable. More importantly, description of the battle itself has no mention of english foot soldiers. Only cavalry and archers, while scottish infantry are prominently mentioned.

You seem to favour the sources that back you up.  Anything else can be derided.  By the way, archers are foot soldiers.

16 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

Em, date are in the link 🤨

My bad.

16 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wilton "Stephen attempted to break out from the siege, but his army was forced back and dispersed by a cavalry charge from Earl Robert's army"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alnwick_(1093) " and catching the Scottish army by surprise, the English knights attacked them before the ramparts of Alnwick"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alnwick_(1174) only cavalry on english side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baugé reverse Agincourt?😀

That what i found over few minutes, there probably more.

At Wilton Stephen's army was 'forced back' by the whole army before it was 'dispersed' by cavalry, indicating it was on the point of routing anyway..

In 1093 it was 'by surprise', not exactly open battle!  In 1174 they were part (400) of a larger army who happened upon the Scots after getting lost in heavy fog.

At Bauge the rest of the English commanders told Clarence not to go ahead with only his 1500 men at arms.  The attack was sheer stupidity, for which he suffered.

16 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

That's definitely not correct. For starters, there is no such thing as pre-Mongol russia (i was specifically referring to chronicles from actual russia), there was Ruthenia/Rus'. Princes/boyars with retinues was mentioned even in oldest chronicles as part of an ancient tradition, of course with some support from militia (it should be mentioned that at least Novgorod militia had company of heavy cavalry, formed from citi patricians). While the northern Rus' for a long time relied mostly on scandinavian stile of combat, southerners quickly adopted the way of their nomadic adversaries (contrary to popular belief steppe nomads used more lancers then mounted archers).

In which case, they are still named the Rus in 1460, and Ivan IV isn't crowned first Tsar of Russia until 1547, having previously been Grand Prince of Moscow.

If you are shifting your argument to well outside the medieval era, you really should say so.

Anyway, I am bored with this, since you are shifting the goalposts of your argument with each post, and citing atypical battles as though they were the norm.  Bye.

3 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

1) Britain on KAP is a mix of english and french cultures, with centuries of history pressed into decades. And french very much used a lot of cavalry.

2) Agincourt and Crecy are in LMA, earlier english clearly used cavalry charges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lincoln_(1141) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Falkirk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bannockburn ("This was because the woodland gave Bruce and his foot soldiers an advantage since the English were very adept at cavalry"😉)

For saxons (and scandinavians) it wasn't a choice, they had no training in mounted combat. It simply wasn't part of their culture.

Interestingly, art in medieval russian chronicles almost never depict field armies any other way as cavalry. Few examples of soldiers on foot is during sieges/city fights, like crews of mongolian stone throwers.

While there were some cavalry charges in warfare against fellow English or Scots, they didn't tend to fight mounted against other armies.  I assume the Battle of Lincoln you cite is 1141, rather than 1217.  The already outnumbered horse under King Stephen defected, so this was hardly a normal battle in any way.  At Falkirk the English cavalry routed the lighter armed Scots horse, and then signally failed to make any impression until the Scots were routed by massed archery.

At Bannockburn cavalry made up around 15% of the English army.  It was the schiltroms who charged, not the English.

With respect to Russian forces, they can be divided into pre-Mongol conquest and later.  Before, they were almost entirely composed of militia infantry.  After, the boyars and retinue formed the majority, but the nobles and their detachments frequently fought dismounted.

If you relied upon art to indicate unit and equipment prevalence then you would get extremely distorted pictures of forces' strength throughout the whole of history.  Compare the relative frequency of depictions of Armour as against horse-drawn equipment in the Wehrmacht, or of the Pzkfw-I as opposed to Pzkfw-VI.  Art is almost meaningless as a guide to historical forces.

Yup.  It looks far worse elsewhere, wherever you stand. 

As has been said "The grass is always greener over the septic tank"🤣

36 minutes ago, Oleksandr said:

🤨👇

 

Saxons are supposed to be more archaic, in fact, they was. During norman conquest even those who arrived on horses dismounted before battle. There was similar tendency with scandinavians - given that in viking age they primarily engaged in coastal raids and boarding (+generally more rough terrain) it understandable, although, there was curious episode in one saga, when viking returning from France after many years started fighting mounted, to everybody surprise 😅.

More importantly, as demonstrated above, such cavalry heavy armies certainly was a thing, even after it has repeatedly demonstrated that good infantry can be useful.

I am afraid you miss the point.  The English very seldom fought mounted.  Agincourt and Crecy are the most obvious examples of this.

Fighting dismounted was a choice, not an archaicism.  

2 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

I talked quite a lot with people from similar culture. Curiously, many of them couldn't understand way anybody would even want to be represented - "government know better". For them it easier to adjust their needs to whims of ruling elite then vice versa. In fact, most of them believed that representative democracy is a scam. Of course, most historical cultures wasn't as extreme as modern autocracies...

There are no similar cultures now.  It is one of the problems with late 19th and early 20th century anthropology which assumed there could be such parallelism.  Post-modern critique demonstrates that it is not so.

Even representative democracies have a ruling elite.  In the UK certain schools and universities provide the vast majority of our upper political echelons.  Whether you view this as a scam or an inevitable problem is up to you.  I view it as an inevitable outcome of a post-imperial capitalist society.  We too have to adjust our needs to their whims....  

2 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

Dismounted cavalry is not infantry. Just like mounted infantry is not cavalry. Importantly, knight are supposed to be universal soldier.

In KAP standard composition is 1/3 cavalry at most.

I don't own a copy of KAP.  I am simply commenting as an historian with particular interest in the periods involved.

Mounted infantry aren't cavalry either.

Unfortunately British society in those days wouldn't generally understand the concept of 'racism'.  My parents were in the forefront of liberalisation amongst the tail-end of colonialism in the old Raj, but I had massive difficulty explaining that certain words were not acceptable, since they had been raised in the 1920s and experienced the implicit racism of the Empire as the norm.  Tolkien would never have thought of himself as racist, but his unconscious assumptions make LotR difficult to read in the here and now.

Don't get me started on the fact that he wasn't misogynist - he simply couldn't write females well.☹️

2 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

1) i said "almost" purely cavalry. 

I can't help feeling that 28% is a rather significant portion of the army.  This was a force that was less than 3/4 cavalry.

At Bremule the English were almost all dismounted.

5 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

Aforementioned Battle of Kircholm (while out of medieval era, PLC was wery old fashioned - they used quazy medieval military structure until 18thc...). 2600 cavalryman (2100 heavy cavalry), 1000 infantry (played mostly supportive role).

Nonetheless, this is not a purely cavalry army, only 72%.  I am afraid that Delbrueck's work - particularly that relating to the medieval period - is quite undermined by other scholarship, and has been since 1907.

On 11/25/2022 at 9:24 AM, Oleksandr said:

Another question, i read that in the beginning of High Middle Age - golden age of knighthood - armies consisted almost exclusively from cavalry, knights and mounted sergeants, with dismounted cavalry playing infantry role if required. AND thet lance size also variatied, in many cases (especially early on) just 2 combatants (sometime with sergeant replaced with older squire). As i understand KAP goes for more of a mix of eras, but 🧐

I have to agree with Morien - the idea that HMA armies were even predominantly cavalry is incorrect.  They may have been on extremely rare occasions, but I cannot recall any battle when a western European army was in that situation, nor Russian, Polish or Byzantine.  The only army where I think it might have been true is the Kingdom of HUngary, but again I am away from my books....

5 minutes ago, Jex said:

One of the Tusk Riders in the adventure "Defending Apple Lane" in the Adventure Book that came with the Gamemaster Screen Pack is female, and is an initiate of the Bloody Tusk.  (She's even plotting to usurp the leadership of the band.)  So apparently it's not just the males who join the Bloody Tusk.  Granted, that only one of the eight Tusk Riders in that band is female might suggest that there are far more males than females in the cult, but then again that's only one band, and may not be representative.

IMG they are the rulers based at the temple, sending raiding bands out for slaves and loot.

8 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

Mechanically, RQ's fumbles are going to turn up in an elf's history. Using Passions regularly for thousands of years: sooner or later, you'll get a run of fumbles, and completely obliterate the Passion.

Loss of Loyalty or Love could also mean the complete destruction of what inspired Love or Loyalty; an elf may have lost *all* relatives millennia ago. Loss of Devotion means being cut off from the undying lands. Loss of all Fear will kill them sooner or later. Loss of Honor: you are the elf who has been selling secrets to Sauron!

Perhaps the 'age' of an elf should not be measured in years, but in how many types of Passions have been obliterated?

Which simply goes to indicate an implicit problem with the mechanistic approach to fumbles.