A Merchant League with a Professional Volunteer Force gets access to the Anvil and Hammer settings, but without the Coeptir and Lord-Pilot lifepaths.
What does the Hammer setting do for the League? If I understand right they cannot actually field anyone who can pilot their Hammer, without falling back on members of the nobility?
Illegal Crucis is the answer to all your troubles
I recall reading somewhere that one of the reasons that Kerrn could not get Iron was because the Illegal Crucis was deficient in some way.
I’m not sure if this is a TBR for balancing decisions, or if this is canon.
I would also expect that this might have been mentioned in the Predominant Military section of the World Burner if the Merchant Leagues had such an easy work-around.
Iron Trained requires Corvus and Crucis. Essentially, the Illegal Crucis only works for Hammer. (I wouldn’t let you use it for Hussar either unless we decided in world burning that you could). There’s no way for Kerrn to get C&C, so they can’t use Iron. The only deficiency in the Illegal Crucis that I’m aware of, though, is just that: It doesn’t work for Iron. It’s fully functional for Hammer, though it doesn’t provide social admittance to the Pilotry.
It’s pretty close to canon that Kerrn can’t use Iron (and I believe it’s been confirmed here by Chris). Gopher doesn’t even though all the other Grey Rats have pimped-out suits.*
If you look at the Pilot LP in the Spacefarer setting, you’ll see the “workaround” spelled out pretty clearly: The LP grants the Illegal Crucis trait. However, they still can’t have Lords-Pilot Hammer, or Hammer Captains, or anything like that. In essence, they can pilot Hammer vessels, but they can’t have those vessels except by connivery.
*As far as I can tell the definition of “TBR” is identical with that of “premise,” so in as far as the Kerrn are part of the premise of the Iron Empires, that might make them a “TBR.” I’d love it if I never saw the term again, personally. It seems like a really condescending way to say that your vision of the future is a bit different than the author’s, and you’re gonna suspend your disbelief. The idea that small, closed guilds of artificers who have successfully kept a technology out of the hands of most of their own species would then carry on by refusing to adapt it to another race seems eminently plausible to me, not bullshit at all. A serious technical intelligence effort by the Kerrn could probably make it happen, but they have other priorities.
EDIT: You know, that was hella growly. I hope you won’t take it personally. I didn’t edit it out because I do feel that calling someone’s work a “transparently bullshit rationalization” is hostile and insulting, but I also know that you mean it more as a sort of “unobtainium” or “reverse the polarity of the neutron coupling array” comment. Perhaps a less aggressive acronym is in order, or perhaps it’s just my growl and you should ignore it.
Right, but they cannot start with them in the world/character-burning stage without paying for them (Ob16 and Ob20) since it says your need Hammer or Anvil Lord for anything big, and Hammer Lord for anything bigger than an Assault Shuttle?
I sort of like the idea of kitting up some pilots with warships as a maneuver, but I don’t think it is the kind of thing that other Hammer Lords, or members of the Pilotry in general, would be happy with.
*As far as I can tell the definition of “TBR” is identical with that of “premise,” so in as far as the Kerrn are part of the premise of the Iron Empires, that might make them a “TBR.” I’d love it if I never saw the term again, personally. It seems like a really condescending way to say that your vision of the future is a bit different than the author’s, and you’re gonna suspend your disbelief. The idea that small, closed guilds of artificers who have successfully kept a technology out of the hands of most of their own species would then carry on by refusing to adapt it to another race seems eminently plausible to me, not bullshit at all. A serious technical intelligence effort by the Kerrn could probably make it happen, but they have other priorities.
It’s enough for me to just say “The Kerrn are already pretty neat - besides if they wore Iron you could not see their funky colouration”. I have no problems with TBRs, in fact a lot of my questions in the Character Burning part of this forum have been actively TBR-seeking. I was really looking to see if there was a reason to counter a fellow player in the following paraphrased discussion:
Player: “Why don’t we have Mercantile Hammer Lords? Surely we can force the Royalist faction to give us the means to install a proper crucis and then fund a professional space force?”.
Me: “Uh well I think that might attract the attention of legitimate Hammer Lords…”.
Player: “We are a High Index Void World.”
Me: “Er, it’s injurious to the setting… I think…”
Whereupon I fled to the forums looking for either some rules or some interesting colour/fluff/flavour/TBR/meticulous crafted setting detail/whatever to tell me why a mercantile state could not have no-noble Hammer Lords (maybe they call 'em Admirals?).
I was also led astray by a passage in the book (Pilgrim’s Parma, as they say on the Ars Magica groups - I am at work) which said that professional Hammer forces can do better than their noble counterparts. However I am not sure how they can do that precisely.
EDIT: You know, that was hella growly. I hope you won’t take it personally. I didn’t edit it out because I do feel that calling someone’s work a “transparently bullshit rationalization” is hostile and insulting, but I also know that you mean it more as a sort of “unobtainium” or “reverse the polarity of the neutron coupling array” comment. Perhaps a less aggressive acronym is in order, or perhaps it’s just my growl and you should ignore it.
Noted, and I hope that I have indicated that I intended no offence. I’ll try handwavium or unobtainium or something next time.
FWIW I didn’t even thing you were that growly - maybe I have been frequenting far more jerky communities until now?
To summarise though! I suppose what I am asking is:
Firstly - What lifepaths would a professional Hammer officer use in a Mercantile or Communal Professional Volunteer Force. (This may be a Character Burning question rather than a World Burning question).
Secondly - Could a Mercantile or Communal PVF military start the game with a sizeable Hammer, or would it need to be Circled and 'Sourced during the phases?
I been spending a lot of time reading Knife Fight, where acting like it’s the Internet is not cool. So my growl-o-meter is prolly better calibrated than usual.
Anyway, the deal is, military power in the Iron Empires is concentrated in the Pilotry. Think of it like late medieval efforts to limit fortification (you know, once the King had enough artillery that those efforts were at least somewhat successful) or like pre-WWI naval treaties, or like nuclear proliferation.
So, a Hammer command officer? Pilot and Ship’s Captain from Spacefarer. First Officer, Hammer Master from Hammer. Maybe some other military LPs. Pirate or Smuggler from Outcast. Think of him like a Sea Dog or something, and he’s probably flying a converted mercator or captured Hammer. Capturing those Hammer warships is totally a maneuver! And a great one! And yes, the pilotry will be ANGRY! It would need to be circled and sourced and tech burned otherwise. You could do some tech burning before play as well.
Think about the military of a medieval free city. They’ve got mercenaries, and some reasonably-drilled infantry, and a few light cannon, and town walls. But they don’t have real knights, they don’t have a siege train, and they don’t have a real, hardened, fortification.
Basically, these are really complicated human systems with whole social classes behind them. No rebel or resistance to the Roman Empire ever raised legions to oppose them (well, when they did they were doing a civil war thing really rather than a rebellion). The Gauls, the Jewish rebellion, none of them. Why? It’s not like they couldn’t walk in lines and carry a sword and a big shield. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. Actually, if you read John Keegan’s latest, “A History of Warfare,” he talks a lot about the social conditions necessary to produce certain kinds of warfare.
Oh, and why don’t the communes or merchant league worlds just raise fake pilotry from outside? Because sooner or later those lords-pilot will figure it out and take over. Look at the Sforzas. Look how many revolutions it took to bring Western civilization to the point where the military stopped becoming an aristocracy. Now imagine that, rather than making that transition when it was safe from outside threats, it was doing so basically while in the process of collapse. As a bit of a historian, this makes a lot of sense to me.
Having the Royalists do it is even worse. Imagine you’re, I don’t know, China just after the revolution. Chiang Kai-shek’s faction is still holding some turf, skirmishing with you, but basically they’re out. They have the ability to make nukes, though (don’t ask how that works, maybe they don’t have the facilities, just the know-how). You ask them “Hey, would you train some of our guys to make and use those?” See where I’m going with this? You’re giving these men the ability to obliterate your whole world, putting them up in a fusion-powered Sword of Damocles, and you’re gonna have the Royalists train them up?
Do the thing where they capture up the Hammer instead. That’s awesome.
Oh, one other thing to remember. The Infiltration phase, and to some extent the Usurpation, happen without obvious Vaylen action. They can be about power struggles between apparently-human factions like this.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I think we are on the same wavelength; your mentioning of Sforza made me jump a bit, since I have a deliberately Sforza-like GMFoN (appears to be useful and trusted, but is ultimately not an asset to the world).
I was thinking about the medieval township as a model as well, although I suspect that in the Iron Empires the matter is power projection. I am expecting that a lot of the “Hammer” in the world that we burned is probably in the form of Gunnery Officers who maintain defensive arrays (of which the League is likely inordinately proud). This provides tolerable security against minor threats, but probably has great flaws when pitted against real Hammer forces.
I’m getting off-topic and specific now though; I have to avoid my instinct to plan plan plan and remember that this stuff will come out in the maneuvers! Out, bad habits!
Awesome discussion, boys. Two points here. First, John, you said your world is a Void world. That can mean a number of things, but one of them is “our world is completely cut off from the center”. Burning Empires (and canon), is primarily concerned with the Iron Empires and their immediate surroundings. Once you get far enough out into the wreckage of the old Human Federation, the IE’s social structures become irrelevant, and any social organization you can imagine might exist.
The nobility is (as Devin so eloquently lays out), is concerned with preserving its prerogatives. Another analogy is feudal Japan, where weaponry was solely in the hands of the aristocracy. To the point where the peasants were forced to develop unarmed fighting, and jury-rigged weapons out of grain-threshing tools (nunchuku).
And as for denying the Kerrn Iron, the Kerrn aren’t human, therefore an underclass. I’m sure someone COULD design a kerrn-sized suit of Iron, but Iron is the primary symbol of the aristocracy, and the guilds who build Iron are totally reliant on their noble patrons. The same is true of the Crucis. An illegal Kerrn crucis probably could be designed, but their numbers are small, they’re a discounted underclass, and who’s going to do the research? Who, nowadays, CAN do the research? Most of IE technology is put together by rote at this point. Without a “Kerrn Crucisizing” recipe, what guilds would know how to go about making one?
Chris