Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen
I'm sceptical too. Low-TL armies didn't avoid looting. At best they may have attempted to ensure that the looting took place in an orderly and civilized fashion, so that it was efficient and didn't cause the important civilians or nobles back home to become upset
|
Private looting is inefficient and counterproductive. It enriches scruffy soldiers, who then probably desert to boot, at the cost of alienating the citizens of the new country being created.
All looting must be organised, and incidentally, should be referred to as 'seizing enemy supplies'. After all, all land and buildings captured will go to important people on the PCs' side and all civilians become their citizens.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen
And I'm not aware of there being anything analogous to military police, in any low-tech armies. Insofar as there was discipline, it'd have been kept by NCOs (Roman-style) or clergy.
|
Praetorians began as personal guards of the legate, who could be used as enforcers of his decrees. Lictors, of course, were ceremonial in nature, but that didn't keep them from being effective if a magistrate ordered the to detain someone for pubishment.
Various royal guards and household warriors have functioned as enforcers of the commander's will and keepers of discipline in armies throughout history.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen
But this is Icelander. He tends to think things through, rather than go for D&D Land, so there's probably an underlying ice(lander)berg of thoughts and rationales that we don't know about, that makes such a thing rather more plausible.
|
The armed forces directly employed by the PC aren't especially low TL. They are essentially TL4, with TL4+1 and TL4+2 in various fields due to magical communications, transport, cartography and intelligence. Their allies are TL2-4 and much more likely to be indisciplined, which is why I wanted to use historical incidence of atrocities on low-tech armies as a benchmark for them.