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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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[X] Offer to leave him a calligraphy wyrm and some empty books to be retrieved at a later date (slow progress)

Westeros Semi-professional levy is pretty good by all accounts. Just read the description in the first 3 novels, they are pretty well armoured and trained, well, at least the cream of the levy is.

The farmer with a pitchfork thingy only existed when things got really really desperate, even in medieval Europe.
 
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TotallyNotEvil said:
1-2% is the historical amount that could be raise without unduly hurting the country at these tech levels.

So 400k as the normal levy, another 400k as reinforcements is what would be historically accurate for a population of 40kk.
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I did some wider research on it when I was plotting legion stuff out before, and it varies a little more than that, depending on how the society is structured, but 1-3% is probably the "safe" band if you want to maintain growth, with 3-5% being the martial cultures like the Spartans (a little overlap to account for variance in their economies).

Normal levies usually represent about 10%-20% of the population, but properly motivated citizen soldiers (greek city states, or early Rome) or other motivated groups (like say, the mongols) could raise up to 25-33% of their population in times of war. A citizenry that let women fight (like Summer Islands or Free Folk) could result in a good 50-70% of their total population mobilized, though the aftermath of a costly war in that case would last for generations.

It depends on how much squeezing we're planning for Westeros, which depends on a number of factors (how pressing is our need for troops compared to what we're willing to sacrifice in terms of economic growth or even shrinkage? How costly, in terms of people and produce, was the War for Westeros, etc.) including the issues with summer and winter's weird push and pull. After a long summer there is a population excess, that will simply starve when winter comes (and is an unavoidable fact of life for all of recorded history). Should we worry about not over-recruiting in Westeros to ensure the fields are manned to the last harvest? Or should we recruit heavily to ensure the borders of men are protected enough, so that when summer comes again the kingdoms are still intact (this is the first winter after magic's return), allowing a faster regrowth?

These will be hard questions.
 
No, they are not "pretty good". Well-equipped? Compared to rags and pitchforks, mallets, axes, etc. Yes. They are.

But they are not trained like a respectable standing army should be. They follow leaders, who enact a plan, and then proceed to focus on either personal battles until the death of all key commanders and figureheads on the other side, or like Tywin and Stannis, sit in the back of the army, fight only when absolutely necessary, and continue to direct reserves as the fighting progresses.

There is no unit structure beyond "guys in shiny armor are to be obeyed, if enough guys in shiny armor die, break/surrender".

Though you do raise a good point, why on earth do westerosi lords equip their levies so well but only give decent military training to their Household Guards, Knights and other minor nobles at best? Why are all strategies contingent on certain figureheads looking important and vigorous and fighting the other vigorous and important looking figureheads?

We're going to chew up these poor bastards with our small unit organization and a robust command structure. I guarantee it.
 
Crake said:
No, they are not "pretty good". Well-equipped? Compared to rags and pitchforks, mallets, axes, etc. Yes. They are.

But they are not trained like a respectable standing army should be. They follow leaders, who enact a plan, and then proceed to focus on either personal battles until the death of all key commanders and figureheads on the other side, or like Tywin and Stannis, sit in the back of the army, fight only when absolutely necessary, and continue to direct reserves as the fighting progresses.

There is no unit structure beyond "guys in shiny armor are to be obeyed, if enough guys in shiny armor die, break/surrender".

Though you do raise a good point, why on earth do westerosi lords equip their levies so well but only give decent military training to their Household Guards, Knights and other minor nobles at best? Why are all strategies contingent on certain figureheads looking important and vigorous and fighting the other vigorous and important looking figureheads?

We're going to chew up these poor bastards with our small unit organization and a robust command structure. I guarantee it.
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The answer to that question is pretty simple, Crake. Teach a smallfolk how to fight properly and the next time they hang the taxman and form spear blocks they wont break when said shining knights, including their Lord, charge 'em.
 
bigbow said:
The answer to that question is pretty simple, Crake. Teach a smallfolk how to fight properly and the next time they hang the taxman and form spear blocks they wont break when said shining knights, including their Lord, charge 'em.
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This, you don't want every damn village to be able to form a spearwall and skewer your precious horses. Specially since a mount fit for a Lord is probably worth more than the village that might kill it.

In Westeros, low morale infantry that flees before knights is a feature, not a bug. If your knights failed then you are probably dead, since most Lords lead charges themselves, so why worry about the rest of the battle.
 
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Crake said:
Though you do raise a good point, why on earth do westerosi lords equip their levies so well but only give decent military training to their Household Guards, Knights and other minor nobles at best? Why are all strategies contingent on certain figureheads looking important and vigorous and fighting the other vigorous and important looking figureheads?
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I don't know anything about millitary stuff, from any point in time, but that above, bolded? That sounds like GRRM promoting character conflicts over depicting the realism.

We can not rely on DP doing the same if my (uneducated, ill-informed) hypothesis as to why the thing you said (bad strategy) is, as opposed to is not.

Fatigue is making me potentially unclear. Apologies if case.

Edit: can the maesters make coloured fire things on arrow heads for signaling? Or just a pattern of flaming arrows to communicate?

I was going to suggest fireworks, but if GoT had gunpowder, we'd probably know from the context of society.
 
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On another note, Im actually curious about how Rhaella is going to be portrayed once she pops back up. There's not a lot in Canon to describe her personality just a lot to show how victimized she was. The really only concrete thing we have that points to her frame of mind is the following fact: while literally dying after giving birth, she was politically minded enough to name her newborn daughter in honor of Dorne, the only belligerents in Roberts Rebellion still fighting at the time of her death. So for everyone who's scared that Rhaella will just be a wet blanket liability have some hope!
 
Crake said:
No, they are not "pretty good". Well-equipped? Compared to rags and pitchforks, mallets, axes, etc. Yes. They are.

But they are not trained like a respectable standing army should be. They follow leaders, who enact a plan, and then proceed to focus on either personal battles until the death of all key commanders and figureheads on the other side, or like Tywin and Stannis, sit in the back of the army, fight only when absolutely necessary, and continue to direct reserves as the fighting progresses.

There is no unit structure beyond "guys in shiny armor are to be obeyed, if enough guys in shiny armor die, break/surrender".

Though you do raise a good point, why on earth do westerosi lords equip their levies so well but only give decent military training to their Household Guards, Knights and other minor nobles at best? Why are all strategies contingent on certain figureheads looking important and vigorous and fighting the other vigorous and important looking figureheads?

We're going to chew up these poor bastards with our small unit organization and a robust command structure. I guarantee it.
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Economics, really. Raising your levy, be it to fight, or just train, is expensive. It's a massive swing, since you are taking your most productive workers, and not merely having them not work (and thus not producing wealth), but also having to actively spend money on them while they are gathered. This is actually more important than the fears of well trained peasants rebelling.

It's also a consequence of feudalism. If I'm a Glover man, I follow House Glover. I'm only fighting for Lord Glover, who is fighting for House Stark, who is fighting for the King. Each tier is less real to me, since I probably never met Lord Stark (maybe I saw him once, from a distance) and certainly never met the King. If Lord Glover dies, and another knight is sent to try and rally us...who is that guy? Why am I supposed to listen to him? Lord Glover is dead, and a lot of my friends and neighbors are dead, and why should I listen to this guy? And routs are contagious, so it only takes a few who try to slip away, or "reposition," before everyone thinks they wont be singled out for doing the sane thing to do in response to battle (that is, run away).

Duesal said:
By the way, with our Runestaff of the Old Gods, for its Commune With Nature thing, I saw this:

Holy hell. o_O

Does anyone else wanna spend a bit of time hunting diamonds?

Are there any diamond mines in ASOIAF? Any rumored sources?
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Summer Islands have gemstones.

Commune with Nature only hits the surface though. You want Commune with Earth to get the real mineral survey work.
 
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Crake said:
Though you do raise a good point, why on earth do westerosi lords equip their levies so well but only give decent military training to their Household Guards, Knights and other minor nobles at best? Why are all strategies contingent on certain figureheads looking important and vigorous and fighting the other vigorous and important looking figureheads?
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Well part of it is that ancient/feudal warfare was heavily reliant on morale and psychologically believing that you were invincible. So a leader on the front lines is a legit tactical decision rather than grandstanding. Or that grandstanding is tactics.

Another fun fact about old timey warfare. Fighting itself was not really that lethal. Sure if you flee, people will cut you down but other than that it's really not until WWI that you frequently get the whole fields of corpses thing. To give some perspective you know General Phyrrhus of the term phyrric victory? His kingdom destroying losses amounted to roughly 10% of his fighting forces. So yeah hand in hand with old timey fighting not being super lethal is that old timey people reeaalllyyy had a hard time recovering from people being lost.
 
Rhaella was described as "dutiful". Or rather, she was "well aware of what expectations were placed upon her at all times and acted accordingly". Not "dutiful" like Stannis, I mean she was keen on protecting her children from... basically anyone or anything that would try to harm them, and see to their future well as she could--which is to say, she couldn't really do much for them.

She's probably shrewd though, Targaryens are usually pretty savvy or competent or inordinately incompetent, with very little middle ground.

I mean FFS, Aegon IV was described as pretty competent/charismatic in his youth, but he was completely unable to control his inhibitions, which eroded any and all of that competence when placed in a position of real power rather than simply coveting the Iron Throne from afar.
 
A_Somebody said:
On another note, Im actually curious about how Rhaella is going to be portrayed once she pops back up. There's not a lot in Canon to describe her personality just a lot to show how victimized she was. The really only concrete thing we have that points to her frame of mind is the following fact: while literally dying after giving birth, she was politically minded enough to name her newborn daughter in honor of Dorne, the only belligerents in Roberts Rebellion still fighting at the time of her death. So for everyone who's scared that Rhaella will just be a wet blanket liability have some hope!
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She protected Viserys for 5? 8? Years, and held compassion for Areys' other victims.

And Viserys is in for a big shock when he runs into the fact she has flaws.

One thing is that it might be nice to spend a day in bloodraven's house talking to her, because the next things are going to castle black from wherever we are now, and then diplomancing Mormont and friends.

Do we have a disguise ribbon with us!?

Or maybe Rahella can be imbued with an alter-self from dany? (Unless we run into HD limits).

Oh!

Tounges is cleric 4, 10 minutes/level.

Maybe Dany could have it prepared for the children of the forest.
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Fuck it; the CotF. They're CotF to me now
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When we go to the wall?
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
Well, there's probably a militia program for most of the kingdom. The usual "grab y'er spear and drill for a couple hours every weekend".
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Something like that is traditionally how it's done, be it monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly. Stand together, practice marching, brace your spears, good job! Let's go to the pub, and the old codger tells you how it really was back during the last war.

nixter said:
I meant more along the lines of doing after the current batch of exposition ended so Dragon doesn't have to write exposition for 4 days in a row.
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Sadly, it doesn't make sense to, since leaving exposes us to danger. We'll have to rely on interludes.

iggyfan said:
Speaking of the Summer Islands, do we have any idea what's going on there?
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Nope (though we had rumors the Pale Maiden's Flowers grow down there). We're going to arrange trading Iron/Steel with them, either sending a ship or inviting one of their distinctive Swan ships, so we'll learn more then.
 
Rhaella will be really confused. As in, doubting she's resurrected, but merely experiencing a dream/illusion.
 
Diomedon said:
Nope (though we had rumors the Pale Maiden's Flowers grow down there). We're going to arrange trading Iron/Steel with them, either sending a ship or inviting one of their distinctive Swan ships, so we'll learn more then
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First what are Pale Maiden's Flowers? Second that sounds like an excellent idea, World of Ice and Fire mentions that the Summer Isles are poor in Iron along with most other metals, with us soon being able to produce steel on a semi-industrial scale we'll make a killing.
 
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iggyfan said:
First what are Pale Maiden's Flowers? Second that sounds like an excellent idea, World of Ice and Fire mentions that the Summer Isles are poor in Iron along with most other metals.
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Pale Maiden was the patron goddess of our vampire enemy way way back in the quest when we were still in Braavos. We managed to kill Daario, fortunately, but we hardly managed to purge all of the Pale Maiden's taint.
 
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