British Military Combatives in the Queen's Service

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by sgtcallistan

Your mention of people loyal to the Royal Family can be expanded upon.

When I joined the Royal Air Force (not the Army), I swore an oath, to (IIRC) 'Her majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, and the government she chooses to place under her'.

The exact wording escapes me, but most people who make such an oath mean it, and will stand by it.

Just so. In many fictional works where the normal order had broken down or was in the process of doing so, the Royal Family of the United Kingdom managed to retain authority over the armed forces. While their actual authority today is not much, it is at least not completely far out to imagine that in a crisis where the normal government was helpless or entirely absent (in this case, due to ignorance of the problem), some people might continue to regard the Crown as a legitimate source of authority. If enough of those people are high-ranking military officers, it is possible that the Crown would effectively have real authority for at least the duration of the crisis.

Originally Posted by sgtcallistan

It did not permit me to obey orders given against the Queen, or her heirs and successors. The rest of the Royal Family is specifically not included.
There's a division right there.
You might have lesser Royals in conflict with the immediate Family of her son Charles, his son Harry, etc. Leading to probems in who obeys.

I haven't made up my mind yet as to precisely who among the royals is aware of the Queen's supernatural gifts and the conspiracy this has led her into founding.

My initial idea was to have most of them kept purposely in the dark, as the Queen feared they'd simply see her as slipping into senility, not actually psychic and sensitive to spiritual phenomena. Initially, she even sought help from her physician for psychological or psychiatric problems and was not convinced of the reality of her paranormal abilities until his research appeared to reveal that there was some substance to her visions and intuitions*.

At some point, the Queen might have provided some partial explanations to her son and grandsons, but I'm not certain how much she'd tell them or how much they'd want to know. Even if they believed that she was just becoming batty, they certainly wouldn't go the Sun with the news.

On the other hand, I'm tempted to cast Harry as an inquisitive, open-minded, active, persistent and idealistic young man, enough so that he has learned about the conspiracy and wants to be a part of it. Given the informal nature of the Rangers and lack of legal command structure, what would the loyal senior people do if the Queen's grandson demanded to be allowed to go on dangerous missions? They can't claim that he doesn't have a relevant skill set and when a mission finally blows up in their faces (a constant fear), with police arriving on the scene, he might be able to talk them into silence when normal ex-police or ex-army recruits would just be arrested.

*She knew things she couldn't have otherwise known, could convincingly relate conversations with spirits with memories allegedly only possessed by deceased relatives of the physician, her prophetic dreams and visions increasingly started coming true in ways that both Queen and her physicians felt was more than coincidence, etc.

Of course, later on, when she became able to control spirits in ways that influenced the material world (early to mid-90s or so), neither she nor anyone she trusted well enough to perform such tricks in front of could deny the reality of the supernatural. One problem with that convincing proof, however, is that it is much harder to do when in the presence of hard-core sceptics and modern technology and sterile environments also appear to make it more difficult. Thus, scientific proof, as opposed to proof that will convince someone already prepared to entertain the possibility, is very hard to come by.

Originally Posted by sgtcallistan

On martial arts styles; 'unarmed combat' exists, the Fairbairn book exists, but I feel most regiments do not train in this stuff, preferring skill at arms.
Elite or specialist units do train in this, so I'd expect SAS and other elites, the Parachute Regiment, the Royal Marines to be the ones that do this.
Individual soldiers study when they have access to schools and have the time. Not very likely in my mind, as deployments to war-zones come first.

All this is based upon my limited knowledge of the army, and my experience of the RAF in the late 1970's to mid 1980's.

Hope this is useful.

While the term is not used any more, I get the feeling that the FCCT in GURPS Martial Arts is generic enough to be a useful basis for a lot of the commando-style sentry removal and hand-to-hand training that modern special operations personnel in the British armed forces might receive.

Would it be reasonable to use a few points spent on that style for recruits who come from the SAS, SBS, Royal Marines and Parachute Regiments?

Perhaps only those who focus the most on sentry removal would, with others having what amounts to 'hard' Judo or Jujutsu with the Military Lens. In any case, these are very similar in game terms.